Should my kids do extracurricular clubs? How much screen time can I get away with? Oster’s data-driven advice has made her the current go-to expert – but can you really parent by numbers?
When Emily Oster’s first child was a baby, she would not sleep through the night. So Oster and her husband Jesse, both economics professors, read endless sleep books. They bought swaddling blankets, and a special rocking baby sleeper that played music, and learned the “five S” method, which involved a lot of swaying and shushing. But they only really cracked it when their doctor explained the basics of sleep training, or letting the baby cry it out. As Oster would later tell the millions of readers devoted to her data-driven analysis of parenting methods, there’s a vast trove of evidence showing this one actually works (without causing the baby harm). But that doesn’t make sitting on the stairs and listening to the wailing any less tough.
“With my first one, we lived just down the street from a bar,” confesses Oster on a video call from her office at Brown University, Rhode Island, where she specialises in health and development economics. “And at this one point I just went to the bar – I said, ‘Jesse, you have to do this.’ The second child was a lot easier.”
