I haven't read Oster's books yet, but I am trained in economics, worked for the national statistics body, work with data and tell people how to collect evidence and reach conclusions, and now have a 6 month old at home.<p>what I have heard through the grapevine is that her conclusions are very similar to my own doing similar reviews: breast feeding is probably good for some minor things (gastro etc), but its hard to separate it out from education, income, and risks from other sources (ie bad drinking water) and there's probably no long term effects from not doing it if you're smart, rich and clean.<p>A lot of the diet stuff during pregnancy sounded nuts, and the advice (and subsequent stats/research/ recommendation s) seemed culturally affected and based on extremely unlikely/ minimal outcomes.<p>And then I'd see other parents stressing about co sleeping, but not even give the faintest thought or worry to living a life with car dependency and strapping kids into them: apparently culture changes your perception of relative risk.<p>The other things that became apparent to me:<p>-just how dodgy the evidence base is for a lot of claims on parenting<p>- a lot of modern western parenting is pretty anti- woman/parent IMO. so little regard for the idea of taking care of baby by taking care of parents.<p>- the number of people and pop resources abusing and misquoting science, sometimes to reach the opposite conclusion to the one I reached when reading the actual papers/original sources. And yet you have pundits and salespeople repeating 'study found X' ad nauseam.
The recent Freakonomics Podcast episode on Oster and her work was a little more in-depth than this article. I really enjoyed it.<p><a href="http://freakonomics.com/podcast/parenting/" rel="nofollow">http://freakonomics.com/podcast/parenting/</a>
I was at Home Depot buying some stuff with my kids and the 5 year old was hanging of the handle of the cart like a monkey. It was one the low to the floor carts for heavy stuff and the handle was a bit lower than a normal shopping cart. One of the idle cashiers, an older woman, came over said he shouldn’t do that because he might fall and bump his head. I said “that’s how he’ll learn”. She gave me a frown and walked away. He didn’t fall or bump his head, that lesson was saved for another day.<p>Edit; she expressed her concern, she did not cite any company policy or appeal to authority. The handle was low enough such that I wasn’t concerned about a concussion. I wasn’t rude or snarky in this exchange although some seem to read it as such. Wow judgmental reader! I think this was mentioned in the fine article!
"Oster now finds herself brainstorming punishments that a four-year-old will find “devastating.”" (on 1-2-3 Magic)<p>So she found it "just works". But how does she define "it works"? The child becoming obedient? That's not exactly what many parents want, but it would be the classic approach to child rearing (teaching kids obedience)...<p>Her book may be a good thing, for people who find it difficult to dig their way through all the information online. Personally I am wary of that type of public science book of outsiders of the field digging through hundreds of articles. At the end of the day, they might still fall prey to confirmation bias or only consider research that supports their thesis.<p>Any why is it so important to drink alcohol during pregnancy? There really weren't that many rules - no alcohol, no raw cheeses or meats, no honey. It's not an impossible toll on mothers, although my wife still has high respect from me for being extremely consistent about all those rules during pregnancy.
I would expect that if there was a valid debate to be had she would also have peer reviewed papers published on the topic.<p>Skimming <a href="https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/oster/" rel="nofollow">https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/oster/</a> I haven't found any related<p>It seems like her general cause is a good one: to ease parents to relax a bit on what some perceive as apparently harsh recommendations on health and parenting.<p>But it also seems like she misses the point on what public health bodies are for (minimizing risk on large scale) versus clear advice to individuals. Take alcohol for example, if the actual evidence is flimsy on whether 1 drink is bad or not, it's an easy choice if I'm speaking to millions of people: play it safe. That's not the same as claiming that low alcohol consumption is bad, and it's certainly not an attempt to shame.