079: Exclusive: Emily Oster on how to make choices in a sea of information overload
How to feel more confident in your decision-making, the best time to make decisions in the first place, and more
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Recently, Well + Good asked if I would be interested in helping them write a feature for their Changemakers series, an annual package that highlights people who are making big changes in their respective industries—from wellness or cooking to, in this case, parenting.
The profile: Emily Oster, Ph.D., a Brown University economist, founder of the parenting info hub ParentData, and author of four best-selling books (Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know was her first in 2013).
I’ve followed Oster’s work for years; I remember reading Expecting Better a few years after its release while pregnant with my first daughter. Her writing was some of the first I had encountered that questioned conventional thinking around pregnancy-related issues. Reading it made me feel like I was less of a patient with an off-limits list and more of a person who could use many different data points to make decisions about my health. Oster’s work—through books, a social media platform, her subscription-based website, and research—puts forward a compelling (and sometimes controversial) case for data-driven approaches to everything from pregnancy to parenthood.
Some people have referred to Oster as a “personal savior.” She’s been called “the parenting guru of a new generation.” Yet, Oster is not without critics. In the Well + Good feature, out today, I write:
“She has been called ‘one of the most controversial health experts’ partly because, well, she isn’t one. With no medical degree, Oster has been criticized for going against the advice of major medical groups and establishments, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she pushed to reopen schools. Some in medicine have argued that her advice on high-stakes, health-related issues, such as drinking alcohol during pregnancy, could be dangerous. Others fear an overreliance on statistical analysis oversimplifies the less tangible and complex emotional, social, or instinctual aspects of parenting.”
When I spoke to Oster last month, I asked her to rewind a bit and tell me about what she set out to do: Before she penned Expecting Better, what were her goals? She told me she didn’t really have big hopes and dreams about the book, let alone changing the parenting space as a whole. As I write in the piece, she never intended to helm a parenting empire—and yet today, she helms a very influential parenting empire.
What stood out to me about Oster is that she doesn’t shy away from any of it…the complicated topics, the criticism; she invites conversation around it. She encourages it. She implores people to continue asking one question: “Why?”
My full Q&A with Oster, which touches on screen time, working amidst a world of “experts,” data (of course), and the one question we should all ask ourselves before making an important decision, is out today. You can read it here.
In addition to our conversation for Well + Good, I asked Oster a few exclusive questions for this newsletter, which are included below in a Q&A for our premium subscribers.
Below, Oster tells us the one change she has yet to see in the modern parenting space that she’d like to see, how to make informed choices in an age of information overload and misinformation, what data she obsesses over, and more.
—Cassie
Q&A with Emily Oster, Ph.D., economist, author & founder of ParentData
Making decisions in a sea of information and misinformation is…challenging and confusing, to say the least. Here are Oster’s thoughts on feeling more confident in your decision-making, the best time to make decisions in the first place, the data she uses the most in her own parenting, and more.
Two Truths (TT): What’s one change you haven’t seen yet in the modern parenting space that you’d like to see?
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