¶ Intro
One of my favorite things about what you do is using data to bust myths. Panicures and pedicures are safe during pregnancy?
Is sex okay? Can I exercise?
Can you eat spacially?
Can you drink wine?
We created a debunking myths game. Oh great, pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee? That is a you can't eat sushi while pregnant. Also, natural birth is better.
I hate the phrase natural birth.
Breast milk or formula.
People will tell you breastfeeding is free, So I'm sorry. Does my time have no value?
Hey? Everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. And today's topic is one that you are always asking for. And today's guest is someone that has been in high demand, so I'm so excited she's here. Parenting has never come with more information or potentially more anxiety. And today we're joined by best selling author and economist Emily Oster, whose books Expecting Better and Crip Sheet sparked a global conversation
about what the data actually says. If you've ever wondered whether all this advice is helping or just making parenting more complicated, this is the conversation we've all been waiting for. Emily Asta, welcome to on Purpose.
Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
This is such an important subject matter that I feel deserves to have time, energy, effort put into. It's going to transform our lives, the lives of the children you love the most, and I'm so grateful that you've dedicated so much of your life to doing this work so impactfully.
Now, I'm so delighted to be here. I mean, I think parenting is hard but also incredibly fun, and I feel really lucky to get to be part of people's journey,
¶ Why Does Parenting Feel Harder Today?
even even a little bit.
Absolutely, we've probably never had this much data on parenting. Has that made parenting better? Or are we still just overwhelmed? I think yes, I know. I don't think there's a
simple answer to that question. If there are clearly places where we have gotten data, and we can talk about specific examples where we've learned, you know, something from the data that has improved survival or the experience of parenting, or something that makes everyone happier, and I think there are really good examples of that in the evidence.
It is also true that living in an environment where one is constantly fed you know, the data says, the data says, the data says, or where people are constantly looking for you know, what is the evidence that's going to tell me that I'm doing this right. I think that's actually quite stressful and sometimes makes parenting much harder.
So some of the time I wish I could sort of help people think more about you know, here are the pieces of data that are going to kind of help help you craft your approach, and here is the stuff that really it doesn't matter what you do, and stuff trying to look for the right answer, because anything is fine.
Data is really useful, but it is really overwhelming. How do you approach it differently in a way that's actually helping people.
Yeah, so I think there's really two sort of core pieces of what I'm trying to do for people. So one is trying to help them understand which of the pieces of data they're seeing are real and which are not. So there's a lot of confusion of correlation and causation. You know, people told, well, if you do this for your kid, they'll be better in this way, But if you dive into the data, you find that link is
not not causal. And then the second piece is trying to help people prioritize and say, you know, here are some things that are really important, and then here are some things which even if they mattered a little bit,
they can't matter a lot. And so, recognizing that parents have a limited capacity, that we all have a limited capacity to focus on a million different things at once, our goal should be to figure out, you know, what really matters, and then what really matters enough that it should be sort of top priority, and then we kind of do the pieces that we that we can do in the constraints that we have.
What's the most shocking piece of data that you've come across looking at parenting research that really struck you.
So when I was working on Expecting Better, I one of the things I looked at was bed rest, which you know, is actually prescribed to a fairly large share
¶ What the Data Really Says About Parenting
of people for a lot of different complications. So people are just told, you know, and you can sort of see logically where that might you might feel like, well, if you're at risk of preterm birth, maybe if just lay down, like I don't know, the baby will stay in or like there's some kind of logic that connects there. But when you actually look at the data, there's almost no condition for which bad rest is helpful and many conditions for which it's in many ways in which is
actually harmful. This is something we're so obvious in the data that we're doing is not the right thing. And it was one of the things that galvanized me to think, Okay, we actually really need to show people what the evidence says so they can make better choices.
Absolutely, I want to talk about today like lots of different kind of phases of the journey of parenting, and I wanted to start with getting pregnant. From what I'm hearing from people who are trying to get pregnant, it's all about thinking, like getting everything right, having some control. What's your take on how much we can control when you're trying to get pregnant.
It's a lot more limited than people think. You know, people getting pregnant is very stressful for many people, and particularly in an environment where you know the environment. I think a lot of my readers come in where you've waited like a long, you're a little older, which does you know? We know fertility declines with age. It doesn't drop off a cliff, but it goes down and also
¶ Don't Trust This Fertility Advice!
people have like waited and made a lot of investments and thought, you know, okay, this is the right time in my life, and like now they want to be pregnant. Now it's like I waited, I decided the right month, like this is my month, and then it doesn't happen that month and you're like, wait, but this was my month.
And so I think there's a there's a kind of tension that comes with that, and that unfortunately makes people whore trying to get pregnant quite vulnerable to being told all kinds of stuff that they could do that is not based on evidence, but often costs quite a lot of money to improve their chances, for example, by these really expensive prenatal vignments. For me, that's like the most you know, it is important to take a prenatal vitamin. The one at CBS that costs you know, ten cents
a pill is fine. It has the things that you need. People are buying these prenatal vitamins that cost you one hundred and fifty dollars a month and say, you know this is don't you want to give your baby the best start with the best. Is like, vitamins are all the same you know, you don't need to spend it. That's like just one sort of small example, and so much that marketing is praying on this feeling of like, well, I got to get this right, I got to get
this right. The reality is when you think about, you know, what matters for getting pregnant, there's a few things. So one is having sex at the right time. So it's pretty clear there's only a small number of days in the cycle where you can get pregnant, and so some cycle tracking and knowing when you're ovulating is important. And
then you need sperm that is working. So I think the other piece of this that maybe I think people are almost under investing in is we spend so much time with women thinking about all the things that we need to do, and it is true that that is half of the equation, but you also need good sperm, and I actually think we're probably under investing and having
men do some like preconception sperm testing. It's not that hard to do, not really very hard at all, and there are a bunch of things that men can do to improve their quality of the sperm if it turns out you have the sperm issue. So people said to me, like what should I do? I would say track your cycle so you can figure out when you're ovulating, make sure you have sex at the right time, and get your partner sperm tested, and then you know, don't binge, drink, and quit smoking. That's kind of it.
Those are the things within your control.
Those are the main things within your control.
Yeah, and what were some of the recommendations for men who wanted to improve their sperm counter improve their sperm quality as well.
So a lot of those that there's sort of like a category of substances. So smoking, cigarettes or marijuana, heavy drinking, these are all known to affect sperm mobility. Enough of them. They need to be go to swimming, they need to have the right shape, and smoking and drinking affect all
¶ What Affects Sperm Health
of those parameters. The other thing is heat, So sperm don't like to be hot. Testicles don't make good sperm when they're hot, and so sometimes people keep your testicles too hot. If you're doing a lot of hot tub or a lot of sauna, you're wearing like very tight underwear, that can affect sperm count. So sometimes loosening up the underwear quitting the sauna can be helpful.
I liked you've already simplified it to a few things that we can control.
I think that that's both very helpful and often for many people, very frustrating, because actually, you know, I think the way if you want to get this done, you want to be doing something about it every day. Like that's at least for many of the people, Like for myself when I was in this position, like we were trying to get pregnant, I wanted to be investing, you know, like every day, I want something to do that's going
to move me forward. And the advice of sort of like, well, okay, if as long as you've done these things, you pretty much just like it's just a dice roll, Like you know, if you get it exactly right, maybe there's a thirty percent chance in a given month that you will get pregnant and get another try the next month. Then that's sort of all there is. I think that can feel like, well, I wanted to do, like, but what can I do?
And I think that is where we get into people feeling willing to do a variety of other things that feel more like investment. I'll often tell people like you can track, you know, you could you want to like track your cycle, like set yourself up spreadsheet, like enter something in an app every day. If that's the thing that makes you feel like you're moving, you're moving forward.
What are some of the mistakes people can make during pregnancy that have postpregnancy complications?
So there are certainly some behaviors during pregnancy that have you know, potential very long term impacts. So you binge, drinking, heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy, smoking cigarettes during pregnancy also you know, not good. And there of course are some medications that are very counter indicated during pregnancy. Those are kind of the big like behavioral issues that we would point to in terms of contributing to birth defects.
¶ Lifestyle Habits That Affect Fertility
I get an.
Awful lot of questions from people that are worried, very very worried about extreamly unlikely exposures are very minimal concerns, And I think the reality is there are some of these big concerns, but there isn't a bunch of other stuff that you shouldn't be doing that matters a tremendous amount.
There just isn't, and there is research. We're just saying that the research doesn't show anything having that bigger like we have studied these things deeply enough and looked at them.
Yes, and of course we can always do more research. But I would say there's a sort of a couple of pieces how I might think about evidence in that case. So one is, you know there are places where we've studied this and we can see, you know, there's no correlation. In some of those cases, you say, well, what if there's a very tiny effect. You know, we don't have an infinite amount of data, And I'd say, yeah, there are almost anything you could say, well, couldn't there be
a very tiny effect? But those effects are going to be so tiny that we probably shouldn't care about them. They are in the rounding era of everything else that
you're going to do. And so so, in some sense, getting back to something I said at the beginning, I think a lot of this is about thinking about prioritizing and understanding that we want to make choices about things that are important and not obsessed about every tiny thing, even if you know maybe doing this one thing could on average cost your kid point ooooh one IQ points like that's not important.
Should be worried about that.
So I think that's one it's kind of one reason we don't know this and then there are many things where it's mechanistically it's impossible. You know, the other day somebody asked me, you know, my lawn was treated with pesticides, and then I went outside and I touched it, and I washed my hands really carefully. But now I'm really worried. There is no mechanism whereby touching a lawn, even recently treated with pesticides and then washing your hands would actually
impact your pregnancy. Like literally no mechanism, and so it's not an interesting thing to study, but it is impossible.
Yeah, yeah, what's the study that hasn't been done that you would love to see happen?
They're almost an infinite number of alls like that. I mean, I think one to three. The one I would really really like to see is a large randomized trial about SSRIs. So a lot of women come into pregnancy using antidepressants. Antidepressants are really important for a lot of people's daily functioning. Are evidence on the safety of antidepressants a little more complicated, so there are some evidence suggesting they may raise the
risk of postpartum hemorrhage. So not much in the direction of affecting the baby, but some things about health and just in general, that evidence isn't perfect. We don't have
¶ Are Antidepressants Safe During Pregnancy?
a randomized we don't have like large randomized trials. I would like to see large randomized trials because they think many people are avoiding these medications because they are worried about the quality of the evidence, but they are avoiding
them when they would be very helpful. And I suspect that those trials would give us a much better platform from which to make decisions about this thing where there is just a very clear trade off between some potential risks we don't know that much about and they're very real benefits. So SSR trials, what I think, like that would.
Be so fascinating, I feel because with the amount of rising people needing mental health medications, antidepressants, whatever it may be in that space, only going up knowing how that really correlates with make for very very insight. What does it take to get something like that done? Like you, it's hard, probably already happening, is it.
That's definitely not happening, Okay, I think it's it's very hard to do a study like that for like a bunch of different reasons. So one is even the design. You worry a little about ethics, so you know, we wouldn't. You couldn't do a study where you're forcing people to bandy depresses it. Now, that's something you could get around. I think you could say, we have a bunch of people who are on age depressants, with some of them, we're going to encourage them to go off, and we're
going to we're going to not encourage them. Again, that has some ethical issues, but you probably could get it. You'll probably get that through. I think the other issue is, I'm not sure who's going to fund that. So if you think about like how science works, like a lot of what gets drug companies fund a lot of trials. All these drugs are on generic at this point, so like a large share of them, So their drug company is not going to be interested in funding those those trials.
And it isn't clear that like the NIH is interested in funding that trial either. And so I think we're sort of up against some ethics and also some real sort of funding limitations. And it's people don't like to experiment on pregnant women, which is for good Yeah, good reasons, but it has some costs.
Yeah, I was going to ask you, what's one thing that pregnant women worry about that. You'd like them to stop worrying about and stop focusing on something else.
One thing is people worry a tremendous amount of what they eat. I think that that's overblown. Actually, most of the food restrictions that people are told about don't make any don't really make any sense. People worry a lot about exercise. There are a lot that people are told, you know, don't exercise in this way, and actually most of those, again are totally overblown restrictions. And people should be encouraged to kind of keep doing what they what
they are already doing. And I think people should. If you sort of said, like, what should you replace that with?
¶ Which Pregnancy Rules Actually Matter (And Which Don't)
I think people could do more to prepare their marriage and home life for the arrival of another person that requires all of your time and money.
What would you recommend? How would you go about thinking about that?
If you think about what happens when you have a kid to your marriage, you are introducing a new person, somebody who you there's a new project, there's a new group project, and you care more about this group project than you have ever cared about anything in your entire life, but you have no idea how to do it. And you're working with another person who also has no idea how to do it, but really really cares, and you
might not agree. And also you're extremely tired because you haven't slept, and you don't have as much money or time as you did before. It's this terrible goodle project environment. And so I think one of so I think during the pregnancy is a good opportunity to prepare for, like how can we make this group project as good as possible, knowing that it comes with some you know, some challenges. And so one thing I tell people all the time, and I think everyone should do is put meetings on
your calendar for after the baby is born. That there should be a like bi weekly check in meeting with your partner where you sit down and you talk about like what's going well, what's not going well? What can we do differently. This is sort of comes a little bit out of some of what we know about kind of marital satisfaction, which is people like a marital checkup.
It's an opportunity to say, here's the things I'm doing, here's what I'm feeling resentful about, you know, an opportunity to connect in a kind of low sort of you know, cool state rather than in a hot state. But I think early on in people's life you need this much more. And if you don't put those meetings on the calendar before you have the baby, you will never have them because you will not once once the group project starts, you're not going to schedule meetings because of all the
other stuff. I already I already said.
Yeah, I mean that sounds like really wise advice, especially when you explain it like a group project that the environment isn't really say out for.
A lot of parenting is about, you know, if you're parenting with another person, is about managing that that relationship. We assume that it's all going to be great because we love the other person, and I think there's a little bit of saying like you could love someone, but still running a business with them is different. And this is a little bit more like running a business than I think most people think.
Yeah, yeah, we almost think that love is good enough when you're having a baby because it's a byproduct of your love. But the project is still a.
Project, is still there, and love is like so important, it's the most it is such an important thing, but the project is still you know, things still have to happen in the project.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. I was going to ask you what you mentioned this a bit earlier, what are the key differences between trying to get pregnant in your twenties and in your thirties, and what should people be considering both ways.
So, you know, our fertility is very high when we're in our late teens, which is a convenient time for many people to have kids, and then it's sort of slowly declines kind of through slowly through the twenties, maybe getting a little faster through the thirties, and sort of eventually kind of falling off towards towards menopause. So I think one thing for people to understand is just you know, this is a real factor infertility. So there are plenty
of opportunities to extend the life of fertility. IVF is very effective, egg freezing can be an interesting option, but the reality is that it is already upregnant when you're
¶ When Is the Best Age to Have Kids?
older than when you're younger, And that is something that I think people should know and at least understand that
there is some trade off. There is not impossible, but it is harder, and then you have to trade that off with the fact that you may or may not be ready to have a kid when you're twenty, you know, may not have the partner you want, This may not be the right time, And so I think just being realistic about the existence of those trade offs is kind of all you can do in terms of making decisions.
Is The other piece I would often remind people is that your kid doesn't go away after like the first six months to a year, and so there is a little but sometimes sort of pure people be like, well, this year is a really good Like this is a good year for me, because like it's a down year of work, and it's like, well, after this year, like it's still going to be It's still going to be around.
And so I think just sort of understanding that your life is going to no matter when this happens, aspects of other parts of your life are going to change and evolve. As your kids get older, they're going to get easier but also in other ways harder, and this is going to be part of your life forever. And so I would almost never tell people like, like find the best year. It's like it's the best you need the best eighteen years. Do you have a you have a good, solid eighteen years possibly more.
Yeah, Yeah, I used to I have a mentor that used to tell me, when you have kids, you've got to write off. He used to say, And he's, you know, raised three kids and they're all adults now and has a great relationship with them. And he was like, Jade, just right off seven years of your life per kid, like that was his his advice. And I was like, that's interesting. I don't have kids, but that same point as in, like, it wasn't just a one year thing
or two thing. But I appreciate what you're saying because I think and this isn't just about kids. It applies to so many things, but to parenting as well. I think the question we often ask as humans is is this the right time? And it's almost like the better question is do we know how this is going to change our life? Right? Right? Do we know how to adapt? Do we know how to build the environment for the group project? Like do we know what that's going to require?
Is more of an important question than is this the right time? Because time is kind of undefined as to what it's valuable for.
Yeah, and I think it's very very hard to ask is this the right time? And be confident about that over the period that we're talking about. You know, it's just like you just can't know. And so I think it is really much more as you say about kind of crafting, like is this that how can we make this setting work for this project that we are embarking on.
One of my favorite things about what you do is using data to bust myths and also bust these things that we get stressed about and overwhelm us. So what we created for you was a debunking myths okay game for crazy and childcare. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read a bunch of myths, cliches, things that we've all heard, and then you can give us the data driven answer and the insight behind it. So the first one is it's okay to drink one glass of wine when you're pregnant.
Yes, specially in a later trimesters. I mean, if you look at the if you look at the data, it's very clear that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad and binge drinking and anytime a pregnancy is very dangerous. But if you look at the data that looks at occasional drinking during pregnancy, it just doesn't show those it doesn't show those kind of effects. And we actually do have a lot of data on this because in many places outside the US, this kind of alcohol consumption is
¶ Common Pregnancy Myths Debunked
much more common and we have reason nobly good approaches to sort of figuring out causality there. And so that doesn't mean everyone should is going to choose to do this, but I think that that it is that it is something that looking at the evidence, many people are comfortable with the occasional drink.
Got it, Okay, There's no expecting that I didn't know that next one. Pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee.
That is a myth. That is a myth. So there is some discussion about links between caffeine in the first trimester and miscarriage. It turns out that those links don't show up pretty much at all until about four to six cups of coffee. So if you are consuming a sort of typical person amount of coffee a day, you know, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, that is,
there's no evidence of downsides there. But even when we look at people who consume like a tremendous amount of coffee, is like data from Swedener, if people are consuming like eight cups of coffee a day. It's probably the case that any links with pregnancy loss are just driven in by by nausea. So people who are really nauseous don't drink coffee, and that's also correlated with lower risks of miscarriage.
There's a lot of stuff going on in the data, but the bottom line is that some coffee is totally fine.
Well, okay, you can't eat sushi.
While pregnant also not true?
How do people how do we come up with this stuff? Then?
So sushi is you know, you can get food more illness from sushi. Uncooked fish is more dangerous than cooked fish. Is just like that. But that's always true, and it is not more true during pregnancies. This is something I sort of talk a lot about, is thinking about Okay, you should generally think about trying to avoid the neurorovirus from your sushi, and you should be thinking about that when you're not pregnant, and when you're pregnant. There's no particular risk to sushi during pregnancy.
You can't get boat talks while pregnant or breastfeeding.
Okay, botox, you know, this is the number one question people ask me really on, Yes, this is like the number one question, which is amazing, that's fascinating. I know it's only it's only star did like in the last five you know, I mean it was much more like coffee. No, it was. It's always lifestyle stuff. But like botox, like really people are really into botox. Yeah, so you're not gonna be able to find someone to get you to do your botox when you are pregnant, although there is
no evidence that it would be dangerous. It's just like, no one's going to do that during breastfeeding. It is, It is fine. The botox doesn't go into your milk, and you can do it if you want to have your botox. I always tell people that your faceless. Great, you don't name botox. People are like, oh my god, thank you. So then then they're like, oh, but what about GLP ones? That's their next question.
Oh, and what's what's the take on that?
So you shouldn't be on a GLP one when you're pregnant because that's not a time for weight loss. But during breastfeeding, you know, generally, if you're if you're sort of early on in breastfeeding and the supply is still being established. Being on a GLB one can lower your breast milk supply, and so that is probably a reason to avoid it. But if you're later in breastfeeding, it's actually good evidence that they don't pass through to the milk.
So if people want to go back on their hyllope one should be fine.
I think this one's a big one.
Okay, Okay, we have some milk scare.
Of breast milk or formula, Does it make a difference?
Both are great options. There are some small short term benefits to breastfeeding, lower risk of gastro intestinal illness, uh some slightly lower risk of eggzema. But a lot of these long term things people are told, like breast milk makes your kids smarter, thinner, like can fly or whatever. That stuff is all correlation, not causation. So both of these options are very good ones.
Are there any negatives for formula?
I mean, I guess you could sort of say, well, if breast milk lowers the risk of gastro intestinal infections, formula raises. It depends what you're thinking about as your baseline. But I think in that sort of in that comparison, there are some of these things where breast milk shows up, shows up as positive, but I think it's just much much much smaller. The data shows it is much much morech smaller than what a lot of people are told.
Right, And as socioeconomic conversations interesting there as well, isn't it.
Yeah. So one of the reasons why I think we are so frequently hearing you know, breast's best, breast milk has all these positive benefits is because the people who are breastfeeding are very differently selected than the people who are who are not. So breastfeeding tends to be associated with higher maternal education, higher maternal income, other resources, and those things themselves are associated with higher performance on IQ tests.
And so one of the things that's really interesting in something like the breast milk IQ linkage is you can see if you just compare kids who are breastfed to kids who are not, you see big differences in IQ. If you control for you adjust for some differences across the moms, those effects get a little smaller. If you adjust for more differences, if you adjust for say mom's IQ tests, they get even smaller. And then if you
compare siblings, so one kid's breastfed, ones not. But it's the same you see no effect, and that sort of tells me that these initial effects we're seeing are really about differences across who's breastfeeding and who's not as opposed to the effect of the breast milk.
It's right. And then I've swinging to moms as well who are like, also, formula is really expensive too, So it's like.
Well, both things are very I mean, both things are very expensive. You know, people will tell you, you know, holy breastfeeding's free. It's like, I'm sorry, does my time have no value? Actually, these things are both expensive. Formula costs money, breastfeeding costs time. And I think it's not it's not
obvious that one of these is cheaper. I mean, I will say, like, you know, in my mother, when I was writing all these books about pregnancy, I read both the set of pregnancy books that my grandmother had and like then you know, nineteen forty forties and the ones that my mom had in like the early nineteen eighties.
And there's a there's doctor Spark. Spock was like the core to the early nineteen eighties, and in his book from the time that I when I was born, He's got this discussion of breastfeeding, and this is a time in which people were sort of still coming back to breastfeeding after a long period of like formulas the best, and he says something that's like, you know, like breastfeeding a lot you might try breastfeeding. A lot of people like like it. A lot of people think it's good,
you know, enjoy it. And that's sort of how he puts it, like this is something that you should you should try because it might end up working for you.
And I think like that message, I think is really good, Like you should try this, and we should help people figure out how to breastfeed, which is not that easy, and we should be supportive of it because it may work for a lot of people, which is different from saying we should be telling people that if you don't do this, your kid's going to suck, which is how a lot of people are hearing that messaging. And that is not a healthy message and is not true and it is not helpful to anything.
Yeah, it's a lot of pressure, a lot of I'm not taking into account while people do for work, how much time they have, how much income they have, it not taking an account all of that.
Yeah, I mean one of the reasons, and so I had written Expecting Better, which is a book about pregnancy, and then I was not sure if I was going to write a second book. Is like a long time between the two books, and had to have a second kid and all kinds of other stuff. But I think the thing that ultimately pushed me over into writing Cribs Sheet, which talks all about breastfeeding, among many other things, is
the emails that I kept getting from dads. And I remember this one very vividly that was, like, my wife is so like, is like killing herself over breastfeeding and she's depressed and she is all like this is she said, you know, she says she has to do this, and I really like I want to help her, Like I think she would listen to you. Can you tell me how important is this really? Like what does the data say?
And I think that moment of someone being like this is really harming my family, and I think that it would make it would make people feel better to know what the data really says. That was kind of I think that's just really important.
Yeah, And I think we underestimate And this applies to other areas of life as well, where stress about something you care about doesn't end up having a good impact on it. Or for example, staying healthy is important, but stressing about staying healthy is kind of working counterintuitively against
you as well. Yeah, and it doesn't really help. And so similarly, if it's a hard thing with children, I can imagine because you care, and it's a different level of dedication and devotion to a child than it is even to your own health. But stress is always going to be reflected poorly as well, that's more likely to have a bad impact.
Yeah. I think we also have to recognize, like some of what we're like the reason we're having kids and we're doing this is like because it's fun and because we want our family to be functioning in a nice way. And if somebody is very unhappy, if mom is very unhappy, that is negatively affecting how the family is functioning. And sometimes they'll say parents are people too, because I think we often forget that they are an important part of the family.
What do you wish men knew about pregnancy That maybe they don't because they don't experience it and they don't really understand what's going on.
I think it is very hard to really understand the experience of pregnancy. I think there's various things I tell men, you know, like you have fun fact like you get a pee on. Women pay on themselves a lot because there's a lot of pressure, those like things like that, which I think it's good, just good to know the stuff that is that is going on. But I think
¶ How Dads Can Support After Birth
much more important is sort of understanding like how can I engage when the baby arrives like that. You know, that's the time when we often get this sort of bifurcation of mom and dad where the woman ends up doing more of the work and sort of just learning more, and then she knows more and then he doesn't know. And I think there's like a real opportunity in that moment to kind of both lean in to learning how
to do everything at the same time. I would worry much more about that than about kind of understanding all of the nuances of pregnancy, which are just it's hard to explain.
Yeah, got it. Yeah, And no, I'm just asking for.
Myself, yes, yeah, yeah, I mean people would be like, oh, you know, should understand uncomfortable. Yeah, it's pretty like it's pretty uncomfortable.
But even that, I think it's it's what you're saying makes sense to me. It's it's almost like it's the preparation piece. I think it's you can never fully empathize with how painful it is, how difficult, like you never that that isn't even it, but it's, yeah, how can
men better prepare? For example, I had a lot of people that I know whose partners went through like postpum like afterwards, and a lot of men I knew just didn't understand what was going on, and they were just like, she's gone crazy, she's just depressed all the time, like
you know, those kind of things. And it's almost like, I think we're learning a bit more now, I hope, And conversations like this are all to help raise awareness, to have the right conversations, to prepare for the project, to set up homes in a better way, to know what may come next, you know. And so I think there's all of that where it's like you don't you don't know what that person's going through, and if it's pregnancy brain a real thing for example, like is that real?
Not really now? I think it's just your time. Yeah, But I think something to come back to, like the pre pregnancy something I would say, is you know, for for people who are going through like IVF, which can be very like time consuming and a huge amount of that is a place where women will often take the vast brunt of this experience and where actually there's way more they could be shared because there's a lot of logistics.
There's a lot of like paying attention to when are we doing this and what and just keeping up to date, and that is a place where I think men could lean in far more. You know, you can't take the shots. You're not going to be you know, having your eggs harvested. But fundamentally, like there's a lot of logistics.
One of these high end diaper, yeah, versus everyday diaper affordable diaper, does it make a difference.
I wish I could tell you the answer to this. I my kids are ten and fourteen and we use that diaper and it was fine. I will say, people swear by the Coderie diapers, but I haven't seen any any thing outside of the Antec data that Yeah, I mean those worked great, Like you know, no no complaints about the the like, no complaints about the big brand
¶ What's Actually Best for the Baby?
diapers on my side.
Okay, amazing, good tonight, talk to me about the difference between wooden toys and plastic toys.
Plastic toys that make noise are super super annoying. Your kid will love that and it will drive you out of your mind.
I love it.
It's so right, you like it. But we had this so to look at at the data. You know, people will say your kids to woden toys that you know it. Fundamentally, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that some toys are toys can be developmentally appropriate, right, and so some of these making sure that your kid has some things to do that are kind of matching their developmental phase is good. You know, Stacking blocks are good for certain ages, Sorting
things are good for some stuff like that. But does it need to be made of wood or you know, carved in some particular way. No, and kids do like the electronics stuff super annoying.
I've definitely talked to parents who believe in like Montessori techniques or all of that which is all about wood and but there's no data behind that.
There's no no, there's no data on I mean, I think it's fine if that's something like, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, And I think some of this stuff in parenting is a little as much about kind of shaping an experience that you feel good about as it is about you know, optimizing your kid in in some way. And I think that's so some of it. You tell people like that, if that's something you enjoy, Like, that's great. I'm going to be over here with my like pull Ladybug,
Pull Toy. That's the same song.
Yeah, It's it's so hard because it's so hard to think about it. Like I my mom was extremely loving, but extremely disciplined, and so I had a very clear schedule after school, but a lot of love in my life. I look back on it and feel very grateful. I have a very disciplined life I have, you know. And it's like, but who's to say that that was the thing that I don't have no idea, right, It's it's so hard to point to where some of those great qualities come from and the challenges come from.
And also to separate out genetics. Yes, you know your mom was very disciplined, you're very disciplined. Well, is that because she gave you discipline? Is that because you were always going to be a disciplined person? You could have grown up in any environment like we you know, we know genetics matters a lot. Yeah, and so does environment.
Yeah. Okay, back to the myths. Yeah, breastfeeding will help you lose all the weight quickly.
No, sorry, it will not. There's I think the data shows your breastfeeding women lose an average over like the first year, like one point five more pounds. So no, because you eat more you breastfeeded, it's calories and then you consume more calories just like anything else.
Okay, there's no magic pill for that.
There is magic pills called it's called those epics.
¶ More Parenting and Pregnancy Myths
Yeah. You can't dye your hair while pregnant.
That is a myth. There was some discussion of hairdressers having some, but turned out there's really no data on that. Hair dye is mine.
Okay. You can't sleep on your back while you're pregnant.
This is also a myth. So people for a long time we're told not to sleep on their back because of concerns about compressing a vein, and it is true that that can happen, But it turns out if that's happening to you, like, you'll be uncomfortable and you will move. And when we got better data to look at some of the things, people are concerned about the risk of stillbirth. Actually, it turns out sleep position has nothing to do with that.
So if you should sleep, and it is very hard to sleep when you are pregnant, and if you are comfortable on your back you should try eventually that is likely to become uncomfortable.
Got it. You can control whether or not you're going to have a boy or girl.
You cannot control this outside of like, if you have embryos, you can implant embryos of particular particular sex. But a lot of people have this idea that like male sperms swims fast and doesn't live as long, and so if you have sex close to no, just no, that doesn't work.
Natural birth is better.
I hate the phrase natural birth, but it is not better. There is Epidurals are very and different kinds of pain relief are very safe and effective, and there's no better there.
Taking thailanol during pregnancy is not safe.
That is a myth. There's many people heard of the President n RFK say the tail and all causes autism. But when you look at the best data on this, we do not see that link.
Okay, you can't use retinol during pregnancy, so you cannot use acutane during pregnancy, so the sort of oral form of vitamin A is linked.
Acutane is one of the small number of things that are very very clearly linked to very extreme birth defects, like what I think, it's missing limbs a lot of sol birth Like, I mean they so Actually the restrictions on pregnancy. If you are on acutane, you have to be on multiple kinds of birth control. There's like this is like a very category X, which means like you
cannot have that in pregnancy. Retinal is a form of vitamin A, and so there's people will sort of say, okay, well is this the same here, But turns out the absorption through your skin is so so so so so so much less then taking something in an oral form, and so most people will say, like, out of an abundance of caution, don't take this. But there's nothing in the data that would suggest it's risky. And a lot of people use retinal throughout pregnancy, sometimes by accident, and
we don't see much of a negative effect. So I always tell people like, you fine to quit this, but if you were taking if you were using this early in pregnancy, you shouldn't freak out.
Yeah, going back to the tailanyl example and what you said earlier, it's so hard some data is so hard to trust. When you said, you were like, you know, the big drug companies, for example, are funding a lot of the research. So it's like, who would almost go against tailenol, for example, And that may not be the best one to pick on, but I'm just looking at it from that perspective of that's one that So is it just because the drug companies would do the research
and then who else would pay for research against that? Yeah?
So I think in the case of something like people talk a lot about these issues of sort of funding funding conflicts, and in the case of something like tail and al, most of the data we have on this is not from me. Tilen is a generic drug that the company that makes Talentol is not, you know, is
not doing these kind of trials. These are studies done on very large data sets that are collected, you know, by the Danish government on everybody in Denmark, and they have whether they took tail and all, and then things about their kids and they follow them over time. So this is all sort of like large scale government funded data set data bases. When we look at drugs in general. Yeah, a lot of the studies of drugs are run by pharmaceutical companies, but in a very heavily regulated way, like
the farm. A company doesn't just get to decide like what to do whatever. They have to do a study to get their drug approved that is it self approved by the FDA. And so I think that those kind of conflicts are more complicated than many people think.
Got it understood, You should not do screen time before age two?
Okay? Screen time is perhaps the best example of correlation is not causation in parenting. And so people, you send me these studies that say, you know, screen time before the age of one is linked with you know, all of these terrible outcomes. Look at the study and you'll have one group of kids are watching more than four hours of screens a day before the age of one, and then another group that never watches screens before the
age of one, and then they compare them later. The thing I always want to ask people is, like, imagine those two households. Do you think there's anything else different other than the screen exposure? Like, of course, those are really different households. There's many things that are different. It turns out. You can see some of those in the data, but there are just all kinds of pieces of the differences that we're not going to be able to see in the data. And it is not surprising that we
would find different outcomes for those kids. But that's just a correlation, is not a causal link. And so then we're left in a place with screens where people have to make a choice about how much to expose their kids to screens at different ages without very good data. So all the data we have is very crummy, but it is a set of choices you have to make.
I don't think there's anything, as we would see in the data would suggest, you know, your kid watching half an hour miss Rachel, you know a few times a week would be problematic. It's very difficult to imagine how that could be bad. And actually what's interesting is the AP has recently kind of dialed back their screen time restrictions to a set of guidelines that more or less say just kind of think about it a bit more
like give it some thought. And I think this is not a terrible piece of advice that you should think about where screens fit in your day. If your kid's watching eight hours of screens. They're not doing other things that they should be doing if they're watching a half an hour of screens. So you can get dinner ready, guys can all sit down together, Like that's probably a
good thing. And it's ultimately about making a plan that works for your family for when these screens will fit into your day, as opposed to saying like no screens, all screens, which isn't very helpful.
Yeah, is there any day to suggest that a mother's anxiety affects the child when pregnant?
Not anything that you would think of as good. So there's there's a little bit of evidence that very very very stressful events during pregnancy. And we're talking here not like you know, this was a bad week at work, but like your spouse died, that can show up in some small like long term effects on kids, but general
anxiety stress during pregnancy not so much. Very hard to study that because of course paternal anxiety and child anxiety are linked, but probably for both genetic and other environmental reasons having nothing to do with pregnancy.
One of the questions that we got when we announced that you'd be coming on the show, and we're trying to get questions in from our audience was how do you deal with mom guilt? Because that seems to be such a widely held challenge that everyone feels guilty, anxious, stress,
¶ How to Deal With Mom Guilt
that they're doing it wrong, and everything they see online makes them feel like they're doing it wrong. And even the myths we just covered would make you feel like you're doing it wrong.
Yeah. So I think there's the biggest problem for a lot of people is you make a choice, you do something, and then someone is like, why would you make that choice? And then you feel like a grab. I mean that's like a very happens all the time.
Yeah.
I think our best defense against that is to make our choices thoughtfully is to say, I thought about whether you know breastfeeding was right from me, or whether sleep training was right from he, or whatever is your like topic of choice, like, sit down, actually make those decisions deliberately. These are important decisions. They're going to shape your life. They're going to shape even if they don't matter if your kid. They're going to shape how your life is like,
what your experience is like. You should make them deliberately and decide what's the right choice for you and then recognize that that can't be the right choice for everyone else, but that you thought about this choice. I think if we kind of come into these conversations feeling like I know that I made the right choice for me, and I thought about it, and this was the right choice, and I could ever be sure if it was ultimately the right choice, but it was the right choice exante.
I think that's a little bit protective. I think people could spend less time online. That would probably be helpful for some of this, But you know, I mean it's very mom guilt is a topic that I experience, and I think, you know, some of it is is kind of just trying to recognize you're doing a good job some of the time.
Yeah, I know, thank you for saying, thank you for sharing that. And it's again, I can only reflect on it in other areas of life, but it's almost like it's the human trait of needing our choices to be validated and wanting other people to agree with our way of doing and thinking totally. And also how uncomfortable it is when everyone does tell you you're doing something wrong
because they did it another way. So even if you're very happy with your choice, you get triggered by someone else who says, well, my kid's got this IQ level at this age and whatever, and all of a sudden you're triggered by it, or someone actually comes to and says, can't believe you did that, Like, you know, my kids are doing great and I never did that. And so I think there's partly US crowdsourcing and outsourcing and being overexposed to lots of other people and how they do it.
Then you have some frustrating people in your life who are telling you how to do it, to be honest, and then there's just that coming back to what you kind of said which I really appreciate, which is know why you're making the choices you make and be really clear about it in your group project again, Yeah, and have some conviction and confidence that based on your set of beliefs, backgrounds, socio economic status, you're making the best decisions you can. Yeah.
And I think that the point of recognizing that, like your best decisions may not be other people's best decisions is so crucial because I think in these moments we are we want our decisions to be right, and we sort of want them to be so right that they're right for everyone else. And so when you make a
different choice for me. It's it's like hard for me not to read that as as like you think my choice is bad, yeah, or like well you you know I failed or I failed, as opposed to just being like, yeah, this person had a different set of constraints and you know, they made a different choice and the different set of preferences, different set of constraints, and like both choices could be right. We could adopt that approach a bit more. Some of this discourse would be like a little less.
What is the day to say about raising confident kids?
Not too much? Uh, really hard to look at that kind of data. You know, we have pieces of data
¶ How to Raise Confident Kids
about you know, raising kids who are willing to take risks. So there's a lot there's literature about like grit and sort of how to develop grit in kids, and and some of this is things like you know, growth, like the growth mindset stuff, right, like you sort of want your kid to understand that sometimes things are hard and you have to you know, push, like you can get
better at something. Just because you're not good at it now doesn't mean you couldn't eventually be good at And I think that's that's kind of part of this it's not exactly the same as confidence, but it's something that people are often trying to develop. What I will say is I think people take pieces of advice like that, which are very good and are based on data that like we shouldn't discourage kids from having a growth mindset, and they they kind of get it ends up being
getting distilled into advice. It is ridiculous, right, So people end up we go from you know, a growth mindset is good, so it's good for kids to understand that, like it's the values in the effort and it's you know, worth trying to do. And they get to parents as never tell your kid good job, and it's like, well, what do you mean, Like where's the end. He's like, there's no evidence that telling your kid good job is you know, is a problem. We could develop a growth
mindset well occasionally saying a good job, you know. So you have these conversations for a while. We're having these conversations where my kids would come home my kids are a bit older, and they would come home and they'd be like, you know, this is a score I got
on this on this test. And we were reacting being like, you know, well, how do you feel about that, and finally my daughter was like, stop saying that, like that's super annoying, and it was like, okay, fine, you know, it's like it's okay, it's okay to say good job.
Yeah, that's so funny, that's amazing.
I think that's just like there are many things like this where it gets parents are sort of looking so hard for these like here's here's here's something you can just do, like super concrete, super concrete piece of advice, and we distill things that are very complicated into something very simple, which is often wrong.
Well, I think it's hard because it goes back to the point I asked you earlier about when I was talking about my mom and my qualities and things like that, I was like, we we almost are mined. For some reason, likes to think that there's a point to point connection
of every action, choice and decision that impacts something. So if a kid is struggling at school, we're like, oh, it's because I did this, or you know, if they struggle later in life in a relationship, it's like, oh, because me and your dad did this, right, it's yeah. We make connections feel very linear, even though they feel extremely cyclical. Random disconnected and connected and complicated. Quite frankly, it's just too complicated for any of us to know why or how that ended up happening.
Absolutely, and I think we have somehow this kind of idea has translated, I think for a lot of people into a feeling almost that every moment with your child as an opportunity to mess them up forever. And I think that's you know, So, there was an episode of maybe a year ago where people were very worried about hurrying. We got this idea of hurried child syndrome. You are, yes,
miss you did. That's so lucky for you. So there was all of a sudden, all this stuff on social media about hurried child syndrome, which was conveyed to people as if you're hurrying your child out the door in the morning and being like get your shoes on, we have to go that that's going to lead them to have terrible problems with anxiety later and again this name, and people are like, oh my gosh, Like but then
it's sort of for parents. They were like, oh my god, but like sometimes they do need them together, their shoes you have to go to because we have to go to school. Like what am I doing, you know, but every and it again had this feeling of like every moment, every morning when you get out of the house is an opportunity to screw it all up, Like you could be doing everything perfectly, and then there's that one day where you're like, get your shoes on and that's it.
Then later when they're an unsuccessful failure adult, it's because at that time that you said the thing about the shoes, right, and that that is how it's like. No, but I mean, I think it's it's sort of ridiculous when you put it like that, but I think it is how people were, It's her feeling and in the end, actually hurried child syndrome is a total different thing, completely not at all like this.
Which is what is it.
Actually it's an idea coined by some guys in the nineteen seventies that if we push kids to do sort of too much like pre professional like sports and like just sort of grow up too quickly, that they miss out on some of the fun of childhood. But actually very interesting set of issues related to some of the stuff John h I just talked about, like interesting set of issues to discuss, completely unrelated to getting your shoes on. No evans that pushing your kid out the door, you know.
So I think it was just an example of something that kind of got into the into the zeitgeist. But is the stuff parents you're hearing every day, and I think if we could just dial down a little bit, you'd be like, hey, there are some ways you could mess up your kid, but like they're much bigger than this than these kind of tiny daily choices that you're that you're making.
Yeah, definitely. And again it's like I often think about growing up because that's my only experience of parenting, in that sense of being parented, and it's like both my
parents worked. I don't think I got a lot of time in the weekdays with my parents, although we did on the weekends, but the great parts of the parenting were not I never felt left alone or abandoned when I was at daycare or picked up with then my mom went back out to work like that, and if I ever felt lonely, I would just go to work with her in the evenings and lie by her foot and fall asleep while she did work, and then we'd
come home again. And so it's like there was not a long term you know, and again I'm not saying that my experience is everyone's experience. All I can say is that, yeah, it's just that it isn't as causial as we believe it is.
People often say, you know, they're like, the first three years is really important. That's true, Like it it's true. But when when we sort of look at that, like what does that mean in the population, Well, what it means is that it's really important for kids to have, you know, a safe place to sleep, enough to eat, you know, someone who loves them, maybe some books, like some pretty basic things, which unfortunately, at least in America,
like it's actually don't have that. That's something we could work on. But many of the things that at least the kinds of parents I talked to or worried about, are kind of like you're already doing like ninety five percent, and now you're telling me like you're spending all your time obsessing about like you know, the the zero point three percent over here, Like you're you're good.
What's your take on that coming from people's own unhealed stress, pressure, trauma childhood, Like how much of that is coming from their own Is there any day to suggest that we.
I don't think there's a lot of data to suggest that.
¶ Parenting Decisions That Cause Stress
I actually have always read this as something completely different, which is it's coming out of the demographic shift and when when people are having kids. So we you know, it used to be you had kids, you know, you kind of bedroom college whatever. You maybe you didn't go to college and you had some kids like in your twenties. We're now in a demographic space where a lot of people have kind of thought about like, Okay, I'm going to you know, I'm going to get to work on
I'm again to college. I want them, and again in the college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to get the job I want. I'm going to get them and to make partner. I'm going to go to graduate like to digit ive. Like sort of been climbing a ladder of like professional personal and professional things and I've gotten to this point and it's like okay, like all of these things, I put a lot of effort
in and I got it. And now I'm going to have a kid, and I'm gonna put a lot of effort in to win right, Like like sort of the children become the thing you're gonna win next. And I think that generates an enormous amount of pressure because if you think of your child as like a thing to achieve, it's difficult because it's not like going to it's not like getting into college. You know, it's not like if you work harder, like like it goes better. That goes
much worse. But I think that's that's part of it, is this feeling of kind of like this is a this is something that I could that I could win, much more so than some of this unhealed I mean, that's hard to know. I'm sure people do have unhel dramas, but I would guess the demographic shifting is.
Yeah, it's it's the hard toggle between saying it is a group project but it isn't because it's it's what you said earlier. I agree with you, there has to be a business plan almost, but then it's not a business in that it's so it's this.
Yeah, there's like a limit to what you can control. You can control there are things you can do to set up to make the experience of doing this easier, but that is different from being able to control the outcome. And I think that's sort of the core, the core distinction.
I wanted to talk about one of the other big debates around sleep training. Yes, this is probably what you're doing filled with because there's no parent who's not struggling with sleep in some way, shape or form. Is there an ideal way to sleep train one size fits all model.
¶ The Truth About Sleep Training
Definitely not, I think so. So first of all, there are Yeah, there is definitely not a good one size fits all sleep training is not going to be the right choice for many parents, I think the but it is going to be the right choice for some parents. So when we talk about sleep training, one thing people worry about is, you know, is this going to cause long term terrible attachment problems for my kid? And we back up and say, like, what do we mean by sleep training?
Phase? Yah, you can need to find sleep training.
When we talk about sleep training, usually people mean some form of like encouraging independent sleep, which usually involves some crying. There's a wide range of things, so it ranges from kind of the sort of Ferber extinction method where you kind of do a nice bedtime routine, put your kid in the in the bed, close the door, and you know, decide we're not going to come back for some amount of time, and kid will often cry for a long time. Usually it's a few nights of that and then they sleep.
And then there's versions of this where you're sitting in the room with them, where you're coming in. So there's a lot of variations, but it almost always is in the service of trying to encourage a kid to fall asleep independently and to sleep to sort of connect sleep cycles.
So when we sleep, all people, including kids, we wake up every about every ninety minutes between sleep cycles, and so good quality sleep for kids and for their parents means sort of the kids need to connect the sleep cycles in some way, and so then they are sleeping through the night. When you say baby sleeping through the night, you don't mean the they're literally asleep the entire time. You mean that they are going back to sleep on their own after they wake up. Okay, So sleep training
usually involves some kind of crying. So unless people worry that this will cause long term attachments, we have a lot of data on this that suggests that that's not true, including some randomized data, some community based data. There's a lot of evidence that sleep training is not damaging to children, and also a fair amount of evidence that improves sleep for parents, and that it sort of causes improve sleeps for kids in the sense of allowing them to connect
these sleep cycles. Having said all that, I think that means for me, based on the data, that this should be in people's toolbox that when you think about, like what am I going to do about the fact that we need to sleep my kidneys to sleep sleep is really important, we have to decide this should be one of the things in the toolbox. It's not going to be the thing every parent pulls out of their toolbox.
Often find this a little bit of a hard conversation that people kind of end up sort of doing one of two things. Like one of two things is sustainable. One is some kind of sleep training where the kid's going to sleep independently and they're going to sleep for extended periods of time, and the other is co sleeping.
These can work really well for different families. The thing that actually is very hard is like I'm not sleeping in the room with my kid, but they're waking up every ninety minutes and I have to go put them back to sleep. That's really unsustainable for almost every family. They tend to find that people kind of come into one of these two these two options, But that really means that you want to ask yourself, like which of
you know, where are we trying to go? Like are we hoping to all be sleeping together in the bed, which can work for a lot of people, or are we hoping to be sleeping independently? And from there to kind of back out, you know, how are we going to how are we going to get there?
Is there a right age to start sleep training? If that's the tuestion, you may.
Probably not so not before four or five months, and at that point you are not looking for your kid
to sleep all the way through the night. So many of these sort of sleep training approaches there are kind of about learn some independent sleep than sort of putting together a schedule where you think, okay, at some point they will need to eat in the middle of the night, and then as they get older and they need to eat less, they'll kind of connect more of those things and eventually have a longer sleep.
Right, got it? Are there? Any? I mean? I guess it's just painful for a parent to go to sleep thinking that their child's crying and takes a second to you know.
Yeah, I think so. One of the things we see in the data is that sleep training doesn't work well if you are not ready to do it. So the people who are ambivalent about this, who think like that, I'm not comfortable with this, I don't this doesn't feel right to me. This isn't going to work so well because like you're not consistency is important, and it's just like that's not going to work as well for that group.
So I think a lot of it is about being sort of deciding that this is something that is safe, something that is effective, something that's going to work for a family, and deliver at the other side of it, which is often you know, just a few days kind of going to deliver a better environment for your family.
Yeah, anything else in sleep training that we've missed that we haven't talked about, things that you get asked the most about it.
So I think one thing that people really struggle with is actually sleep training for little kids is it can be a hard for like babies and need like a hard decision, but like it's not that hard to implement, Like if you're committed to doing it's not that hard to implement because your kids in the crib and they
can't move. I think it becomes really hard is when people have toddlers and their kids are coming out of the room and we sort of there's often another period where people are spending a lot of time a lot of complicated bedtime stuff, and that's actually a very different problem. It's more of a kind of a need for behavioral
modification than it is a sort of sleep training. And so there, I think the main point for many people is just you got to decide where you're trying to go and then like decide a moment they're in a consistently implement it. Kids tend to respond really well to consistency.
Where did the theory or belief come from that if kids are left crying, that they'll end up feeling abandoned? Where did that come from?
So it's based on psychology detachment theory, a lot of
¶ Does Crying It Out Harm Attachment?
which was developed out of observations of kids who had very very problematic attachment like childhood. So one place this we saw this was in Romanian orphanages. So there was a period of time in Romanian which there were a lot of children who were unwanted and they ended up in these orphanages where they were like basically just left
alone for you know, with very very minimal care. There was a lot of abuse and when researchers came to like observe these because they found the babies really didn't cry. These they sort of had learned nobody would come. And then these kids had problems for very long periods of time.
The difference between a baby that is left, you know, alone for days at a time with not enough food and you know not and sexual and physical abuse, and also the difference between that and kind of crying for even a pretty long period of time for a few nights in the context of an otherwise like loving and stable and happy household, Like, those are really different things. And I think that they sort of know that. But there's kind of a porting of poorting across this, which
I just don't think is appropriate. But that's where it comes from.
Yeah, got it. I didn't know that. That's fascinating.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's incredible what connections we make when they're not really that connected. Yeah.
I mean, I think that this space is a very space is a tough one because it is hard to hear your kid cry and it's hard to think bestly training for a lot of people, it is also incredibly helpful for many families, and I think that's worth noting.
Yeah, are there any data driven techniques to help babies stop crying quickly?
Just consistently implement this consistent multiple you know, over time. I think there's no like this trick. I mean, it doesn't work for every baby, but it really does work on average.
¶ How Much Screen Time Is Too Much?
I wanted to revisit screen time from the point of view of like, as kids are growing up and not looking at you could advise whether it's valuable to look at specific ages or not. But is there any connection now? I know earlier you said, well, it was really not about causality or causition. It was just the fact that it's just a different socio economic condition and different opportunities and different education level of parents and availability of funds
and resources and time and energy and everything else. If that's all it is, Is there any data to suggest it matters on any level?
Yeah, I mean I think it'swer's probably yes. This is a space that's really where data is really new. So you know, if you wanted to ask, you know, what's the impacting being supposed to an I head at the age of two on like high school graduation or college graduation. Like we don't know because the kids who are exposed at the age of two haven't graduated yet, so we're
really in a data poor environment. When we look at younger kids, a lot of the the sort of questions we would ask are about displacement of other activities, So asking, you know, as kids do more and more of these are is that kind of displacing things that they should be doing, like that has sort of active positive value, like any time with their family going outside, Like what, you know, what are we replacing? Is kind of the question I would ask as opposed to thinking about the
screens per se as like good or bad. They are an activity which must be displacing something else, and so if they are displacing sleep, for example, that's really bad. We know kids don't sleep enough and they need a lot of a lot of sleep. There's been a second question as kids get older about kind of the social media, the sort of social media part of screens, where again
we're in very data poor environment. But I think think there's you know, reasonable people have reasonable concerns about girls in particular and the kinds of exposures that we get. And then you're layering on top of this like a whole other AI thing, which like I don't that's new, and so we just there's a lot of choices that parents are having to make that are hard because we have no context for them. And and also our kids
are much better at screens than we are. Uh So a lot of the tools people would put you know, people, I add this tool to my kid's iPad to do this and that, it's like like they don't are you kidding? Are you kidding me? You know, it's like like you know, these are your kids. School is putting up like these restrictions,
like you know, they can't play this game. And they're like, oh, I just went to the website that's like called like my school blocked blah blah blah, and that's where you get the games totally tilting and Windmills on this, on this stuff. Given the the you know, demographic, given the generational.
Shifts, Yeah, I'm at least a supporter of most of all of Jonathan Hight's considerations around that at an our older age, Like I just feel like there's no need to be on social media before a certain age Becau's like there's no need for schools to have phones. Like I just don't you know we all went to schools without phones, And.
Yes, I think there's a few of these things which are like these things all have like little sort of different pieces. I think, like phones in schools, like, yeah, that's distracting. You don't need to distracted, No need for that. I think the social media stuff, I also agree like there should be some sort of thought about ages maybe
going to be different for different kids. I think there should also be a fair amount of kind of scaffolding by parents once your kid gets these social media tools, like you don't you know, it's like a car, right, You don't just hand them the keys and say enjoy, You like teach them. And I think this is kind of like a car, Like you got to be willing to take the keys away. You got to be willing to like help them learn. You know, what's the reasonable
way to interact with this? I will say I think that the relative to the kids who are now like eighteen nineteen, the kids who are now thirteen fourteen, at least in some cases I think, are actually much less into this. There was sort of a period of time when everyone had Instagram when they were twelve, and this is actually dialed down a bit interesting, which you know, maybe it's just reflecting my kids score, but I don't know.
Yeah, there's it's different between just having screen time and then being on social media and being exposed to other people's lives and messaging, and I think they're two totally
different conversations. And I like the way you just said it that if you look to getting a phone like getting a car, and if we were able to start helping society think that way, then it becomes a point of I remember wanting a car and being like excited, nervous that I had to pass a test, preparing for the test, you know, all the levels that you go through to get there, and then you have your first accident, and you know, like that's scary. First take care, Yeah,
you get first take care. It's you know, it's it's but it feels like a whole journey to get it rather than Now, a phone's almost like this ex ac did piece of life that you have no idea what it's exposing you to or your kids too, And it's a tough conversation with parents. I love the scaffolding idea, but I do think that it's hard when it's like, oh, well, your friend's parents, I gave them a phone at twelve and then but I'm waiting to till fourteen, and they're like,
but wait a minute. Everone at school. I had one at ten. And whereas if there's just rules that are not parents set.
Yes, parents could use help on this for sure. And you know, ultimately there's like no substitute for knowing your kid on these things, and every kid is going to be different and it's going to be exposed to be differentially affected by these things, and you need different things.
¶ The Truth About Childhood Vaccines
Which is part of what makes parenting so difficult.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's tough. It's tough. A couple more things I wanted to talk to you about. This one was about vaccines. Yeah, the xener. There's a lot of conversation about it's the vaccines and CDC guidelines change over time. Of course, how would you consider parents think about navigating that.
I think parents should vaccinate their children on the whole. I mean, I think that the AAP has a set of guidelines for many years, the AAP, the American I had Academy of Pediatrics in the CDC had the same vaccine guidelines and they are the sort of primary childhood vaccine series are have been in force for decades and have been really safe and effective and et cetera, et cetera. And over the past year with the current administration, we have dialed way back the number of vaccines that the
CDC has recommended. I think there's a fair amount of holdover from COVID where people were uncomfortable with some of the way that the COVID vaccine was pushed on people, and I think some of that is actually fair. Probably we do not currently need all healthy children to get a COVID booster. Europe doesn't do that. I mean, I think it's a perfectly reasonable position. What is not a
reasonable position is people shouldn't get the measles vaccine. And so I think for parents it's kind of thinking about what is the if you want to think about what the evidence says about these vaccines. These vaccines are really good at preventing disease, and they are really safe and have been in use for a decades. So I find the current vaccine conversation really difficult to engage with because
it feels like, what are you kidding me? Like kids are going to die of the measles, Like kids are going to die of the two kids died of the measles last year, more kids are going to die of the measles this year. In a single week in January twenty twenty six, there were more measles cases in the US than all but a small handful of years over the past two.
Decades because people chose not to.
Yeah, so if you look at the graph, basically we had like two hundred and sixty cases of measles in a week. In almost all full years in the past two decades, we had like far fewer than that. So because people stop vaccinating, and then measles is super super condageous, And so if you get a small amount of outbreaks and the outbreak grows, and we had a lot of cases, and I just think, you know, that means kids are going to die of measles who didn't need to die
¶ Are Kids Being Overmedicated?
of measles, And that just feels terrible.
Yeah. Do you think kids are being over medicated in general?
I mean I think it's a totally different question. YEA, Yeah, it's interesting. I mean I think there's a lot of probably to some extent, I think there if we look at the data on something like ADHD and we look at what's happened to those kind of prescriptions over time, They've gone up a lot, and we do see some
evidence that those are increasing. There's are higher for say kids who are younger when they are first in kindergarten, and I think that's reflecting our expectation of kids in schools, which is totally different than it once was and particularly
probably poorly suited, especially for boys. And so if we sort of think like, okay, we're going to bring a bunch of kids in who kind of aren't that great at sitting still, and when they're not that great at sitting still, which totally age appropriate behavior, where they're going to give them something makes some sense still, and there's a good argument that we've been over using that that approach.
Yeah, no, no, totally two different but which is totally totally two different conversations. Yeah, I think it's become hard. It's it's almost hard for there's some people who never questioned it and tall and then there I think some people who question it because there's a lack of trust or there's for example, like you see the open medication, you see the rise and then you go, wait a minute, there's so many updates and what's happening here and is
it really helping? And where's it? You know, So I think there's a lack of trust, there's curiosity, there's you know, there's there's all sorts of versions of it on the spectrum of why and why we disagree or where they sit.
Yeah, and I think the other, I mean, the other thing about vaccines is like we haven't done a great job of helping parents understand, you know, like which vaccines are most important. I basically think everybody should get all of the vaccines on the schedule because they're all safe.
But I'm curious whether we should be having more of the conversation of Okay, look if you were only going to do you know, if there's real hesitancy for good reason to have a conversation that's like, look, if you were only going to do three, these are your three. And I see why we don't want to have that conversation because it implies that, you know, maybe there's some risk of these other things, which there are not, but it could encourage people to get some subset of the vaccines.
It feels like such a complicated messaging messaging play. You know, if we really think the most important thing is for people to get like the measles vaccine and the tap vaccine and the flu vaccine. Like maybe we should be like pushing the rotavirus vaccine lest even though that is a very good vaccine.
I don't know.
¶ The Many Paths to Parenthood
This is very complicated. I wish people would just get all the vaccines.
Got it understood. You have written emily four books on parenting. I believe if you had three messages for parents that you felt they really needed to.
Hear, one is that there are a lot of right ways to do it. I think that's probably the core message of my second book, which is, you know, here are some data on stuff, but in almost every choice you're going to make, there are a lot of different good options and you just got to find the one that works for you. So I think that's one pretty
core message. I think a second key insight in everything I write is that correlation is not causality, and you should be really, really skeptical of a lot of the evidence that people tell you because a lot of it
is correlation. I guess the third insight is I think people spend two little time thinking in advance about their plans and too much time in therefore in sort of reactive reacting to things that happen, and we're very reluctant to put time in upfront because we're busy, But there are many situations in parenting in which putting some time in upfront thinking about how you want to approach something is going to save you a lot of time and conflict later.
I love that I leve all three of those, that last one especially. I just think we think like I always hear the advice of you're never ready to have kids, which I agree with, like that makes full sense, but at the same time, you're definitely not ready. If you never thought about it like that.
You could be more ready.
Yeah, ready exactly, which applies to everything. Right. It's just that mindset of, oh, you never know what it's going to be like, and it's like, you're right, yeah, I definitely like, as somebody who doesn't have kids, I have no idea what's going to be like. To prepared, I fully hold my hands up. I lose. I you know, I get it. But I can think I can prepare, I can try and and I probably will still fail and make mistakes. And I think that's I think that's
the problem. We think planning means perfection as opposed to as opposed to planning just means planning. Yeah, and that's all it is, and it doesn't mean it's going to be perfectly executed absolutely Emily. Last two segments we have
¶ This or That: Parenting Edition
this or that okay, and then our final five, which we do with every guest on the show. So this or that parenting version gentle parenting or helicopter parenting.
I don't like either of these.
Explain why.
I mean. I think gentle parenting, as a lot of people have interpreted it, is kind of permissive parenting is sort of like I'm not going to put any boundaries, and I think that's really problematic.
So what is good gentle parenting or what is the vest.
I think there's a good version of kind of punishment parenting without rules and without consequences, which is much more about just setting boundaries. It ends up looking really similar to parenting with rules and consequences, but you know, the kind of like saying what the boundary is falling through on the boundary, that's a very clear part of almost any evidence based parenting approach. But gentle parenting, as many people seem to interpret it, I think does not work.
So I think I'm going to go with helicopter parenting, which is being overinvolved, which I also think can be quite problematic.
But perhaps less so what is a proven approach to parenting?
So I think the best sort of evidence based approaches we have to, like behavior modification I have, are things where you have a clear set of expectations, where you know when you there's a behavior, kind of a behavioral issue, there's a clear set of kind of expectations, consequences and rewards. That's often what we see supported best in the in the data. So something like one two three magic.
Or one of these what's one two three magic?
So one to three magic is is one of these sort of evidence based parenting approaches, which is just it's a particular way to kind of scaffold like when somebody in your kid does something bad, you give them like three warnings and then there's a timeout.
It's very effective, right, Yeah, I mean it seems to follow the common sense of what life looks like. Yes, my life has choices and actions, they have consequences, and then like that's kind of what that's what it works as an adult, Yeah, yes, yeah, exactly as an adult that is life. Yep. Yeah, got it, natural remedies or medicated products.
Generally medicated products. I think that there's a lot that we have learned over time about, say antibatics, which are the reason that many people are not dead. So I'm going to go with medicine, although there are certainly places where we sort of overuse antibatics and we have a better off just like not using them because people don't have a bacterial infection, but overall medicated products.
A strict schedule or flexibility.
Can both work personally. So personally, like my family has a very rigid schedule. One might say too rigid, but that is no actually I've much for because I mean, yes, it's a combination of me and my husband, but I think that he is even worse than I am. But like that is what works for us, like for us and our kids, like we really we like to know what's expected, like on the weekends, like we know what
we're gonna do. There are calendar invites, like if we're going on a hike, my husband puts a calendar invite with the drive time in it because he's insane and like, but that's for us, that's really great. I think for other people flexibility can totally work. This is one of the core things I think you need to figure out about your family, which is like, what version of this is going to make us feel confident and happy? There is not a right answer, but there probably is a
right answer for you. You know, if you're a person who just wants to wake up on Sunday morning and be like, let's find out whatever, you're going to be really annoyed when your spouse is like, why didn't you put the calendar invite in for the drive time? But if you're a person who like really wants to have the calendar invite, you know, it can be frustrating to be like, well, let's just over the wind takes us? Well, how I won't it take.
To get there exactly?
So I think you just got to find You gotta find what works absolutely.
Two under two or waiting.
Two hundred two is tough. Again, I would say for me, I wanted to wait. I like the four year age gap worked real well for me. One kid carry their backpack while the other kid you're carrying the other kids the hunter gatherer birth spacing, so this was the common hunter gatherer birthing.
Uh.
I think we think because one kid can kind of walk on their own when you're carrying the the other one.
And my sister and I have a four and a half age yees so great.
But I think you know, if you're if you're like a little older, or there's sort of some other reason why you want to you want to get them, get them in close. That is very tiring. It is very, very tiring to have two two little babies at the same time. You need good scaffolding, got it?
Uh? Plastic bottle or glass bottles.
People are so worried about microplastics. This is not an important source of microplastic exposure relative to the other sources of microplastic exposure. We don't know that much about microplastics. That's like a whole other episode you could do with somebody else. I think people should avoid glass bottles because they shatter.
That's it.
Yeah, and then glass will be everywhere and hurt the kid and hurt the kid or are you yeah?
Yeah? Timeouts or time ins.
Even know what a time in is. I'm a fan of I'm a fan of timeouts. I think timeouts work well. I think that they can a good time. The good timeout works when your kid knows that the timeout is the punishment. They know that we're going to have a set of like you know, they know there are risks for the timeout, and they have an opportunity to fix their behavior. This is why something like accounting approach or
warning approach is good. That you follow through on the timeout when you say that you are going to when the timeout is appropriately timed for the age of the kid, shorter if they're younger, longer if they're older, and then when after the timeout, you don't discuss it anymore. It's not like there's no shaming. There's no it's just like you're in a timeout, you're calm, you put them in the timeout, they have a chance to cool down, You
have a chance to cool down. Nobody is yelling. I think that it can work extremely well.
Yeah. I was going to ask you, are there any more strategies like that in parenting once the kids are growing old where you found extremely useful. You have a ten year old and a fourteen year old.
Yes, when the kids were little, we found the timeouts very that to be a very helpful approach. I think generally find consistency is very good. I will say now, a lot of my considerations are how can I get
my children to continue to speak with me? And I have found that my very best approach with older kids is to be available, and so I spend a lot of time like after dinner, when they're sort of in their rooms, like doing homework, doing whatever, like sitting in the den of our house, which is like kind of near their rooms, just like sitting. I'm like working on my computer or whatever. And then if they happen to want to come out and talk, I like immediately close
the computer and can talk to them. And that that sort of like just being there when your kids are ready to talk to you, I think is a strategy that works pretty well. The only other strategy, really, like deeply seated strategy that we have is don't lie. Try not to lie to my kids. That's why they knew about Santa Claus before everyone else. It was like one time my son was like, was like, Mom, is the tooth Fairy real? And I was like, do you want to know? He was pretty old. He was like, I
was like, do you want to know the truth? He's like yeah. I was like, no, it's not. He was like, I didn't think so, because other fairies aren't real. I was like, yep, you got it.
That's so funny.
How many this is the truth. He's just like, can you put it then put money in my allowance?
Yeah? Absolutely, that's so funny. That's so funny. So even even the fun white lives.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think this Santa thing comes up all the time you watched and I was like, I don't know, I think my husband is Jewish. And he was just like, I'm gonna tell our kids Stamp it's real. Just that for me.
Yeah, got it. Emily, this has been so useful. Thank you for busting all the myths. Thank you for providing all the data and being so open and honest about so much that we're still figuring it out, and we're
¶ Emily on Final Five
still researching and still trying to find good data to back. So we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum, and so Emily, this is your final five. The first question is what is the best parenting advice you've ever heard or received?
Try not to think about it?
Question number two, what is the worst parenting advice you've ever heard or received?
Don't put mittens on your child because she'll never learn to use her hands.
That's brilliant.
It was my mom. I'm almost so great. But that's so funny.
Did you ever follow that? No, that's ridiculous.
I did look it up. I like went so far as to research it.
That's good.
That's what it's like to have a baby.
Question number three. Something you used to believe was true about parenting, but now you disagree with that.
If you do the same thing for two kids, you get the same outcome.
No, fascinating. Yeah, you have to adapt.
You have to kids are It's so easy to think you did a great job on the first one, and then yeah, and then and then they're just different kids in different things.
Question number four. Is there a list of three qualities you try and instill in your kids, like three things you think are universally important.
In my own kids? Yes, I think respect for others, following through on your commitments, and you're trying to pursue excellence and the things that you choose to do.
How do you do that? As again, what's your approach to that.
Some of it is that we say that some of these are our core values. So following through on our commitments is something we will tell the kids are is a core value, and some of it is how you is like what you try to the things that I try to do in my own life and model and yeah those I mean I think it's sort of modeling. And then some explicit like this is how we operate.
Yeah, I express and then be the example exactly. You've got to explain it, make sure they get it, but then they've got to see it through you. Fifth and final question we asked just to every guest who's ever been on the show, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be.
I'm going to go with comprehensive fertility education for people at multiple times of their.
Lives, ideally through the education systell More.
It's a lot we could sure I'm going to be able to implement it in whatever way I want, But yeah, I think through we spend a lot of time telling people like how not to have kids when they're in like they're younger, and then we never tell people how to have kids when they're older. And I think there's a piece of that that's about parenting, but there's another piece which is just like I think that people don't understand their own bodies very well, and I would like them to understand the better.
I love the answer. I can agree with you more. Do you think that's even do you think that's even realistic? It feels like it needs to be realistic to get to it's ridiculous, Like it's like that ridiculous that you're saying that. I'm like, yeah, this is the thing that every humans, not every human, but humanity is going to
need to do for a long long time. And the fact that you literally walk home out of a hospital with a baby and you know nothing about that, Yeah, it's and you have to self educate and read a book like it's listen to podcasts. I'm like, it's insane.
Yeah, I mean, I think you part of it is we used to like live in in a in a society. We used to live in in larger groups where like you didn't have to know this, just like everyone's having babies all the time. And also like the older people
we're doing this. And I think as we have moved away from religious communities, as we have moved like away from our families, it does feel a little bit more like there's missing both some of the I mean, there's like basic fertilities up and then also just sort of like shared There is a need for somehow the parenting advice is filling this gap, but I'm not sure we're filling in quite the way we need to.
Yeah, No, I love that. I think that'd be so powerful. And I also think that even though we did get away with it in the past because the bigger communities and bigger groups of people, I don't think that was really solving the problem either. It was just covering just a different way to Yeah, exactly, Emily. It's been such a joy talking to you today. Thank you so much. Where would you like our audience to find you? Of course they can follow you across social media. We've mentioned
your books. Will put the links in the comments.
And you can find me at parent data dot org, which is where I have links to all of these things and then many many resources to help you make it easier.
Amazing parent Data or Thank you, Emily. Is such a pleasure, and look forward to doing this again. Awesome, Thank you so much. If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with doctor Gable Matte on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past. A therapist one said to me, but if your parents didn't not hold you, you developed the mind you hold yourself aware.
It's a fate of pain, and it's designed to keep you from experiencing pain.