,
5 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
The scariest thing about becoming a parent is there’s nothing in your life you’ve ever been so desperate to get right, you have no idea how to do it, and so much of the advice you get is contradictory or impossible to follow with your baby.
The wonderful thing about @ProfEmilyOster’s books is she does the work to say when that advice is based on good evidence, and should be heeded. The scary thing is she also does the work to show how much of it isn’t. We talk about all that in this podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/173BRg…
This is, on one level, a conversation about some topics of particular interest to new parents — breastfeeding, sleep training, brain development — but it’s also about how we assume experts are basing their confident pronouncements on good data when they often aren’t.
And, speaking personally, there's something terrifying about the constant feeling that You're Doing It Wrong. There's something calming about knowing that, beyond a certain level of love and care, no one knows how to Do It Right, so all you can do is your best.
Also, America's absence of guaranteed paid parental leave and postpartum care is a national embarrassment. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
