Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about what you do is
Speaker 1: using data to bust myths. Panicures and pedicures are safe
Speaker 1: during pregnancy?
Speaker 2: Is sex okay? Can I exercise?
Speaker 1: Can you eat spacially?
Speaker 2: Can you drink wine?
Speaker 1: We created a debunking myths game. Oh great, pregnant women
Speaker 1: shouldn't drink coffee? That is a you can't eat sushi
Speaker 1: while pregnant. Also, natural birth is better.
Speaker 2: I hate the phrase natural birth.
Speaker 1: Breast milk or formula.
Speaker 2: People will tell you breastfeeding is free, So I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Does my time have no value?
Speaker 1: Hey? Everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
Speaker 1: come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. And today's
Speaker 1: topic is one that you are always asking for. And
Speaker 1: today's guest is someone that has been in high demand,
Speaker 1: so I'm so excited she's here. Parenting has never come
Speaker 1: with more information or potentially more anxiety. And today we're
Speaker 1: joined by best selling author and economist Emily Oster, whose
Speaker 1: books Expecting Better and Crip Sheet sparked a global conversation
Speaker 1: about what the data actually says. If you've ever wondered
Speaker 1: whether all this advice is helping or just making parenting
Speaker 1: more complicated, this is the conversation we've all been waiting for.
Speaker 1: Emily Asta, welcome to on Purpose.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: This is such an important subject matter that I feel
Speaker 1: deserves to have time, energy, effort put into. It's going
Speaker 1: to transform our lives, the lives of the children you
Speaker 1: love the most, and I'm so grateful that you've dedicated
Speaker 1: so much of your life to doing this work so impactfully.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm so delighted to be here. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think parenting is hard but also incredibly fun, and I
Speaker 2: feel really lucky to get to be part of people's journey,
Speaker 2: even even a little bit.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we've probably never had this much data on parenting.
Speaker 1: Has that made parenting better? Or are we still just overwhelmed?
Speaker 1: I think yes, I know. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: simple answer to that question. If there are clearly places
Speaker 1: where we have gotten data, and we can talk about
Speaker 1: specific examples where we've learned, you know, something from the
Speaker 1: data that has improved survival or the experience of parenting,
Speaker 1: or something that makes everyone happier, and I think there
Speaker 1: are really good examples of that in the evidence.
Speaker 2: It is also true that living in an environment where
Speaker 2: one is constantly fed you know, the data says, the
Speaker 2: data says, the data says, or where people are constantly
Speaker 2: looking for you know, what is the evidence that's going
Speaker 2: to tell me that I'm doing this right. I think
Speaker 2: that's actually quite stressful and sometimes makes parenting much harder.
Speaker 2: So some of the time I wish I could sort
Speaker 2: of help people think more about you know, here are
Speaker 2: the pieces of data that are going to kind of
Speaker 2: help help you craft your approach, and here is the
Speaker 2: stuff that really it doesn't matter what you do, and
Speaker 2: stuff trying to look for the right answer, because anything
Speaker 2: is fine.
Speaker 1: Data is really useful, but it is really overwhelming. How
Speaker 1: do you approach it differently in a way that's actually
Speaker 1: helping people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think there's really two sort of core
Speaker 2: pieces of what I'm trying to do for people. So
Speaker 2: one is trying to help them understand which of the
Speaker 2: pieces of data they're seeing are real and which are not.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of confusion of correlation and causation.
Speaker 2: You know, people told, well, if you do this for
Speaker 2: your kid, they'll be better in this way, But if
Speaker 2: you dive into the data, you find that link is
Speaker 2: not not causal. And then the second piece is trying
Speaker 2: to help people prioritize and say, you know, here are
Speaker 2: some things that are really important, and then here are
Speaker 2: some things which even if they mattered a little bit,
Speaker 2: they can't matter a lot. And so, recognizing that parents
Speaker 2: have a limited capacity, that we all have a limited
Speaker 2: capacity to focus on a million different things at once,
Speaker 2: our goal should be to figure out, you know, what
Speaker 2: really matters, and then what really matters enough that it
Speaker 2: should be sort of top priority, and then we kind
Speaker 2: of do the pieces that we that we can do
Speaker 2: in the constraints that we have.
Speaker 1: What's the most shocking piece of data that you've come
Speaker 1: across looking at parenting research that really struck you.
Speaker 2: So when I was working on Expecting Better, I one
Speaker 2: of the things I looked at was bed rest, which
Speaker 2: you know, is actually prescribed to a fairly large share
Speaker 2: of people for a lot of different complications. So people
Speaker 2: are just told, you know, and you can sort of
Speaker 2: see logically where that might you might feel like, well,
Speaker 2: if you're at risk of preterm birth, maybe if just
Speaker 2: lay down, like I don't know, the baby will stay
Speaker 2: in or like there's some kind of logic that connects there.
Speaker 2: But when you actually look at the data, there's almost
Speaker 2: no condition for which bad rest is helpful and many
Speaker 2: conditions for which it's in many ways in which is
Speaker 2: actually harmful. This is something we're so obvious in the
Speaker 2: data that we're doing is not the right thing. And
Speaker 2: it was one of the things that galvanized me to think, Okay,
Speaker 2: we actually really need to show people what the evidence
Speaker 2: says so they can make better choices.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I want to talk about today like lots of
Speaker 1: different kind of phases of the journey of parenting, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with getting pregnant. From what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing from people who are trying to get pregnant, it's
Speaker 1: all about thinking, like getting everything right, having some control.
Speaker 1: What's your take on how much we can control when
Speaker 1: you're trying to get pregnant.
Speaker 2: It's a lot more limited than people think. You know,
Speaker 2: people getting pregnant is very stressful for many people, and
Speaker 2: particularly in an environment where you know the environment. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of my readers come in where you've
Speaker 2: waited like a long, you're a little older, which does
Speaker 2: you know? We know fertility declines with age. It doesn't
Speaker 2: drop off a cliff, but it goes down and also
Speaker 2: people have like waited and made a lot of investments
Speaker 2: and thought, you know, okay, this is the right time
Speaker 2: in my life, and like now they want to be pregnant.
Speaker 2: Now it's like I waited, I decided the right month,
Speaker 2: like this is my month, and then it doesn't happen
Speaker 2: that month and you're like, wait, but this was my month.
Speaker 2: And so I think there's a there's a kind of
Speaker 2: tension that comes with that, and that unfortunately makes people
Speaker 2: whore trying to get pregnant quite vulnerable to being told
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff that they could do that is
Speaker 2: not based on evidence, but often costs quite a lot
Speaker 2: of money to improve their chances, for example, by these
Speaker 2: really expensive prenatal vignments. For me, that's like the most
Speaker 2: you know, it is important to take a prenatal vitamin.
Speaker 2: The one at CBS that costs you know, ten cents
Speaker 2: a pill is fine. It has the things that you need.
Speaker 2: People are buying these prenatal vitamins that cost you one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars a month and say, you know
Speaker 2: this is don't you want to give your baby the
Speaker 2: best start with the best. Is like, vitamins are all
Speaker 2: the same you know, you don't need to spend it.
Speaker 2: That's like just one sort of small example, and so
Speaker 2: much that marketing is praying on this feeling of like, well,
Speaker 2: I got to get this right, I got to get
Speaker 2: this right. The reality is when you think about, you know,
Speaker 2: what matters for getting pregnant, there's a few things. So
Speaker 2: one is having sex at the right time. So it's
Speaker 2: pretty clear there's only a small number of days in
Speaker 2: the cycle where you can get pregnant, and so some
Speaker 2: cycle tracking and knowing when you're ovulating is important. And
Speaker 2: then you need sperm that is working. So I think
Speaker 2: the other piece of this that maybe I think people
Speaker 2: are almost under investing in is we spend so much
Speaker 2: time with women thinking about all the things that we
Speaker 2: need to do, and it is true that that is
Speaker 2: half of the equation, but you also need good sperm,
Speaker 2: and I actually think we're probably under investing and having
Speaker 2: men do some like preconception sperm testing. It's not that
Speaker 2: hard to do, not really very hard at all, and
Speaker 2: there are a bunch of things that men can do
Speaker 2: to improve their quality of the sperm if it turns
Speaker 2: out you have the sperm issue. So people said to me,
Speaker 2: like what should I do? I would say track your
Speaker 2: cycle so you can figure out when you're ovulating, make
Speaker 2: sure you have sex at the right time, and get
Speaker 2: your partner sperm tested, and then you know, don't binge, drink,
Speaker 2: and quit smoking. That's kind of it.
Speaker 1: Those are the things within your control.
Speaker 2: Those are the main things within your control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what were some of the recommendations for men
Speaker 1: who wanted to improve their sperm counter improve their sperm
Speaker 1: quality as well.
Speaker 2: So a lot of those that there's sort of like
Speaker 2: a category of substances. So smoking, cigarettes or marijuana, heavy drinking,
Speaker 2: these are all known to affect sperm mobility. Enough of them.
Speaker 2: They need to be go to swimming, they need to
Speaker 2: have the right shape, and smoking and drinking affect all
Speaker 2: of those parameters. The other thing is heat, So sperm
Speaker 2: don't like to be hot. Testicles don't make good sperm
Speaker 2: when they're hot, and so sometimes people keep your testicles
Speaker 2: too hot. If you're doing a lot of hot tub
Speaker 2: or a lot of sauna, you're wearing like very tight underwear,
Speaker 2: that can affect sperm count. So sometimes loosening up the
Speaker 2: underwear quitting the sauna can be helpful.
Speaker 1: I liked you've already simplified it to a few things
Speaker 1: that we can control.
Speaker 2: I think that that's both very helpful and often for
Speaker 2: many people, very frustrating, because actually, you know, I think
Speaker 2: the way if you want to get this done, you
Speaker 2: want to be doing something about it every day. Like
Speaker 2: that's at least for many of the people, Like for
Speaker 2: myself when I was in this position, like we were
Speaker 2: trying to get pregnant, I wanted to be investing, you know,
Speaker 2: like every day, I want something to do that's going
Speaker 2: to move me forward. And the advice of sort of like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: if as long as you've done these things, you pretty
Speaker 2: much just like it's just a dice roll, Like you know,
Speaker 2: if you get it exactly right, maybe there's a thirty
Speaker 2: percent chance in a given month that you will get
Speaker 2: pregnant and get another try the next month. Then that's
Speaker 2: sort of all there is. I think that can feel like, well,
Speaker 2: I wanted to do, like, but what can I do?
Speaker 2: And I think that is where we get into people
Speaker 2: feeling willing to do a variety of other things that
Speaker 2: feel more like investment. I'll often tell people like you
Speaker 2: can track, you know, you could you want to like
Speaker 2: track your cycle, like set yourself up spreadsheet, like enter
Speaker 2: something in an app every day. If that's the thing
Speaker 2: that makes you feel like you're moving, you're moving forward.
Speaker 1: What are some of the mistakes people can make during
Speaker 1: pregnancy that have postpregnancy complications?
Speaker 2: So there are certainly some behaviors during pregnancy that have
Speaker 2: you know, potential very long term impacts. So you binge, drinking,
Speaker 2: heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy, smoking cigarettes during pregnancy also
Speaker 2: you know, not good. And there of course are some
Speaker 2: medications that are very counter indicated during pregnancy. Those are
Speaker 2: kind of the big like behavioral issues that we would
Speaker 2: point to in terms of contributing to birth defects.
Speaker 1: I get an.
Speaker 2: Awful lot of questions from people that are worried, very
Speaker 2: very worried about extreamly unlikely exposures are very minimal concerns,
Speaker 2: And I think the reality is there are some of
Speaker 2: these big concerns, but there isn't a bunch of other
Speaker 2: stuff that you shouldn't be doing that matters a tremendous amount.
Speaker 1: There just isn't, and there is research. We're just saying
Speaker 1: that the research doesn't show anything having that bigger like
Speaker 1: we have studied these things deeply enough and looked at them.
Speaker 2: Yes, and of course we can always do more research.
Speaker 2: But I would say there's a sort of a couple
Speaker 2: of pieces how I might think about evidence in that case.
Speaker 2: So one is, you know there are places where we've
Speaker 2: studied this and we can see, you know, there's no correlation.
Speaker 2: In some of those cases, you say, well, what if
Speaker 2: there's a very tiny effect. You know, we don't have
Speaker 2: an infinite amount of data, And I'd say, yeah, there
Speaker 2: are almost anything you could say, well, couldn't there be
Speaker 2: a very tiny effect? But those effects are going to
Speaker 2: be so tiny that we probably shouldn't care about them.
Speaker 2: They are in the rounding era of everything else that
Speaker 2: you're going to do. And so so, in some sense,
Speaker 2: getting back to something I said at the beginning, I
Speaker 2: think a lot of this is about thinking about prioritizing
Speaker 2: and understanding that we want to make choices about things
Speaker 2: that are important and not obsessed about every tiny thing,
Speaker 2: even if you know maybe doing this one thing could
Speaker 2: on average cost your kid point ooooh one IQ points
Speaker 2: like that's not important.
Speaker 1: Should be worried about that.
Speaker 2: So I think that's one it's kind of one reason
Speaker 2: we don't know this and then there are many things
Speaker 2: where it's mechanistically it's impossible. You know, the other day
Speaker 2: somebody asked me, you know, my lawn was treated with pesticides,
Speaker 2: and then I went outside and I touched it, and
Speaker 2: I washed my hands really carefully. But now I'm really worried.
Speaker 2: There is no mechanism whereby touching a lawn, even recently
Speaker 2: treated with pesticides and then washing your hands would actually
Speaker 2: impact your pregnancy. Like literally no mechanism, and so it's
Speaker 2: not an interesting thing to study, but it is impossible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what's the study that hasn't been done that
Speaker 1: you would love to see happen?
Speaker 2: They're almost an infinite number of alls like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think one to three. The one I would really
Speaker 2: really like to see is a large randomized trial about SSRIs.
Speaker 2: So a lot of women come into pregnancy using antidepressants.
Speaker 2: Antidepressants are really important for a lot of people's daily functioning.
Speaker 2: Are evidence on the safety of antidepressants a little more complicated,
Speaker 2: so there are some evidence suggesting they may raise the
Speaker 2: risk of postpartum hemorrhage. So not much in the direction
Speaker 2: of affecting the baby, but some things about health and
Speaker 2: just in general, that evidence isn't perfect. We don't have
Speaker 2: a randomized we don't have like large randomized trials. I
Speaker 2: would like to see large randomized trials because they think
Speaker 2: many people are avoiding these medications because they are worried
Speaker 2: about the quality of the evidence, but they are avoiding
Speaker 2: them when they would be very helpful. And I suspect
Speaker 2: that those trials would give us a much better platform
Speaker 2: from which to make decisions about this thing where there
Speaker 2: is just a very clear trade off between some potential
Speaker 2: risks we don't know that much about and they're very
Speaker 2: real benefits. So SSR trials, what I think, like that would.
Speaker 1: Be so fascinating, I feel because with the amount of
Speaker 1: rising people needing mental health medications, antidepressants, whatever it may
Speaker 1: be in that space, only going up knowing how that
Speaker 1: really correlates with make for very very insight. What does
Speaker 1: it take to get something like that done? Like you,
Speaker 1: it's hard, probably already happening, is it.
Speaker 2: That's definitely not happening, Okay, I think it's it's very
Speaker 2: hard to do a study like that for like a
Speaker 2: bunch of different reasons. So one is even the design.
Speaker 2: You worry a little about ethics, so you know, we wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You couldn't do a study where you're forcing people to
Speaker 2: bandy depresses it. Now, that's something you could get around.
Speaker 2: I think you could say, we have a bunch of
Speaker 2: people who are on age depressants, with some of them,
Speaker 2: we're going to encourage them to go off, and we're
Speaker 2: going to we're going to not encourage them. Again, that
Speaker 2: has some ethical issues, but you probably could get it.
Speaker 2: You'll probably get that through. I think the other issue is,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure who's going to fund that. So if
Speaker 2: you think about like how science works, like a lot
Speaker 2: of what gets drug companies fund a lot of trials.
Speaker 2: All these drugs are on generic at this point, so
Speaker 2: like a large share of them, So their drug company
Speaker 2: is not going to be interested in funding those those trials.
Speaker 2: And it isn't clear that like the NIH is interested
Speaker 2: in funding that trial either. And so I think we're
Speaker 2: sort of up against some ethics and also some real
Speaker 2: sort of funding limitations. And it's people don't like to
Speaker 2: experiment on pregnant women, which is for good Yeah, good reasons,
Speaker 2: but it has some costs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you, what's one thing
Speaker 1: that pregnant women worry about that. You'd like them to
Speaker 1: stop worrying about and stop focusing on something else.
Speaker 2: One thing is people worry a tremendous amount of what
Speaker 2: they eat. I think that that's overblown. Actually, most of
Speaker 2: the food restrictions that people are told about don't make
Speaker 2: any don't really make any sense. People worry a lot
Speaker 2: about exercise. There are a lot that people are told,
Speaker 2: you know, don't exercise in this way, and actually most
Speaker 2: of those, again are totally overblown restrictions. And people should
Speaker 2: be encouraged to kind of keep doing what they what
Speaker 2: they are already doing. And I think people should. If
Speaker 2: you sort of said, like, what should you replace that with?
Speaker 2: I think people could do more to prepare their marriage
Speaker 2: and home life for the arrival of another person that
Speaker 2: requires all of your time and money.
Speaker 1: What would you recommend? How would you go about thinking
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: If you think about what happens when you have a
Speaker 2: kid to your marriage, you are introducing a new person,
Speaker 2: somebody who you there's a new project, there's a new
Speaker 2: group project, and you care more about this group project
Speaker 2: than you have ever cared about anything in your entire life,
Speaker 2: but you have no idea how to do it. And
Speaker 2: you're working with another person who also has no idea
Speaker 2: how to do it, but really really cares, and you
Speaker 2: might not agree. And also you're extremely tired because you
Speaker 2: haven't slept, and you don't have as much money or
Speaker 2: time as you did before. It's this terrible goodle project environment.
Speaker 2: And so I think one of so I think during
Speaker 2: the pregnancy is a good opportunity to prepare for, like
Speaker 2: how can we make this group project as good as possible,
Speaker 2: knowing that it comes with some you know, some challenges.
Speaker 2: And so one thing I tell people all the time,
Speaker 2: and I think everyone should do is put meetings on
Speaker 2: your calendar for after the baby is born. That there
Speaker 2: should be a like bi weekly check in meeting with
Speaker 2: your partner where you sit down and you talk about
Speaker 2: like what's going well, what's not going well? What can
Speaker 2: we do differently. This is sort of comes a little
Speaker 2: bit out of some of what we know about kind
Speaker 2: of marital satisfaction, which is people like a marital checkup.
Speaker 2: It's an opportunity to say, here's the things I'm doing,
Speaker 2: here's what I'm feeling resentful about, you know, an opportunity
Speaker 2: to connect in a kind of low sort of you know,
Speaker 2: cool state rather than in a hot state. But I
Speaker 2: think early on in people's life you need this much more.
Speaker 2: And if you don't put those meetings on the calendar
Speaker 2: before you have the baby, you will never have them
Speaker 2: because you will not once once the group project starts,
Speaker 2: you're not going to schedule meetings because of all the
Speaker 2: other stuff. I already I already said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that sounds like really wise advice, especially
Speaker 1: when you explain it like a group project that the
Speaker 1: environment isn't really say out for.
Speaker 2: A lot of parenting is about, you know, if you're
Speaker 2: parenting with another person, is about managing that that relationship.
Speaker 2: We assume that it's all going to be great because
Speaker 2: we love the other person, and I think there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of saying like you could love someone, but
Speaker 2: still running a business with them is different. And this
Speaker 2: is a little bit more like running a business than
Speaker 2: I think most people think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we almost think that love is good enough
Speaker 1: when you're having a baby because it's a byproduct of
Speaker 1: your love. But the project is still a.
Speaker 2: Project, is still there, and love is like so important,
Speaker 2: it's the most it is such an important thing, but
Speaker 2: the project is still you know, things still have to
Speaker 2: happen in the project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely. I was going to ask you what
Speaker 1: you mentioned this a bit earlier, what are the key
Speaker 1: differences between trying to get pregnant in your twenties and
Speaker 1: in your thirties, and what should people be considering both ways.
Speaker 2: So, you know, our fertility is very high when we're
Speaker 2: in our late teens, which is a convenient time for
Speaker 2: many people to have kids, and then it's sort of
Speaker 2: slowly declines kind of through slowly through the twenties, maybe
Speaker 2: getting a little faster through the thirties, and sort of
Speaker 2: eventually kind of falling off towards towards menopause. So I
Speaker 2: think one thing for people to understand is just you know,
Speaker 2: this is a real factor infertility. So there are plenty
Speaker 2: of opportunities to extend the life of fertility. IVF is
Speaker 2: very effective, egg freezing can be an interesting option, but
Speaker 2: the reality is that it is already upregnant when you're
Speaker 2: older than when you're younger, And that is something that
Speaker 2: I think people should know and at least understand that
Speaker 2: there is some trade off. There is not impossible, but
Speaker 2: it is harder, and then you have to trade that
Speaker 2: off with the fact that you may or may not
Speaker 2: be ready to have a kid when you're twenty, you know,
Speaker 2: may not have the partner you want, This may not
Speaker 2: be the right time, And so I think just being
Speaker 2: realistic about the existence of those trade offs is kind
Speaker 2: of all you can do in terms of making decisions.
Speaker 2: Is The other piece I would often remind people is
Speaker 2: that your kid doesn't go away after like the first
Speaker 2: six months to a year, and so there is a
Speaker 2: little but sometimes sort of pure people be like, well,
Speaker 2: this year is a really good Like this is a
Speaker 2: good year for me, because like it's a down year
Speaker 2: of work, and it's like, well, after this year, like
Speaker 2: it's still going to be It's still going to be around.
Speaker 2: And so I think just sort of understanding that your
Speaker 2: life is going to no matter when this happens, aspects
Speaker 2: of other parts of your life are going to change
Speaker 2: and evolve. As your kids get older, they're going to
Speaker 2: get easier but also in other ways harder, and this
Speaker 2: is going to be part of your life forever. And
Speaker 2: so I would almost never tell people like, like find
Speaker 2: the best year. It's like it's the best you need
Speaker 2: the best eighteen years. Do you have a you have
Speaker 2: a good, solid eighteen years possibly more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I used to I have a mentor that
Speaker 1: used to tell me, when you have kids, you've got
Speaker 1: to write off. He used to say, And he's, you know,
Speaker 1: raised three kids and they're all adults now and has
Speaker 1: a great relationship with them. And he was like, Jade,
Speaker 1: just right off seven years of your life per kid,
Speaker 1: like that was his his advice. And I was like,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I don't have kids, but that same point
Speaker 1: as in, like, it wasn't just a one year thing
Speaker 1: or two thing. But I appreciate what you're saying because
Speaker 1: I think and this isn't just about kids. It applies
Speaker 1: to so many things, but to parenting as well. I
Speaker 1: think the question we often ask as humans is is
Speaker 1: this the right time? And it's almost like the better
Speaker 1: question is do we know how this is going to
Speaker 1: change our life? Right? Right? Do we know how to adapt?
Speaker 1: Do we know how to build the environment for the
Speaker 1: group project? Like do we know what that's going to require?
Speaker 1: Is more of an important question than is this the
Speaker 1: right time? Because time is kind of undefined as to
Speaker 1: what it's valuable for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's very very hard to ask
Speaker 2: is this the right time? And be confident about that
Speaker 2: over the period that we're talking about. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just like you just can't know. And so I think
Speaker 2: it is really much more as you say about kind
Speaker 2: of crafting, like is this that how can we make
Speaker 2: this setting work for this project that we are embarking on.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about what you do is
Speaker 1: using data to bust myths and also bust these things
Speaker 1: that we get stressed about and overwhelm us. So what
Speaker 1: we created for you was a debunking myths okay game
Speaker 1: for crazy and childcare. So what I'm going to do
Speaker 1: is I'm going to read a bunch of myths, cliches,
Speaker 1: things that we've all heard, and then you can give
Speaker 1: us the data driven answer and the insight behind it.
Speaker 1: So the first one is it's okay to drink one
Speaker 1: glass of wine when you're pregnant.
Speaker 2: Yes, specially in a later trimesters. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look at the if you look at the data, it's
Speaker 2: very clear that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad
Speaker 2: and binge drinking and anytime a pregnancy is very dangerous.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the data that looks at
Speaker 2: occasional drinking during pregnancy, it just doesn't show those it
Speaker 2: doesn't show those kind of effects. And we actually do
Speaker 2: have a lot of data on this because in many
Speaker 2: places outside the US, this kind of alcohol consumption is
Speaker 2: much more common and we have reason nobly good approaches
Speaker 2: to sort of figuring out causality there. And so that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean everyone should is going to choose to do this,
Speaker 2: but I think that that it is that it is something
Speaker 2: that looking at the evidence, many people are comfortable with
Speaker 2: the occasional drink.
Speaker 1: Got it, Okay, There's no expecting that I didn't know
Speaker 1: that next one. Pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee.
Speaker 2: That is a myth. That is a myth. So there
Speaker 2: is some discussion about links between caffeine in the first
Speaker 2: trimester and miscarriage. It turns out that those links don't
Speaker 2: show up pretty much at all until about four to
Speaker 2: six cups of coffee. So if you are consuming a
Speaker 2: sort of typical person amount of coffee a day, you know,
Speaker 2: one in the morning, one in the afternoon, that is,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence of downsides there. But even when we
Speaker 2: look at people who consume like a tremendous amount of coffee,
Speaker 2: is like data from Swedener, if people are consuming like
Speaker 2: eight cups of coffee a day. It's probably the case
Speaker 2: that any links with pregnancy loss are just driven in
Speaker 2: by by nausea. So people who are really nauseous don't
Speaker 2: drink coffee, and that's also correlated with lower risks of miscarriage.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff going on in the data,
Speaker 2: but the bottom line is that some coffee is totally fine.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, you can't eat sushi.
Speaker 2: While pregnant also not true?
Speaker 1: How do people how do we come up with this stuff? Then?
Speaker 2: So sushi is you know, you can get food more
Speaker 2: illness from sushi. Uncooked fish is more dangerous than cooked fish.
Speaker 2: Is just like that. But that's always true, and it
Speaker 2: is not more true during pregnancies. This is something I
Speaker 2: sort of talk a lot about, is thinking about Okay,
Speaker 2: you should generally think about trying to avoid the neurorovirus
Speaker 2: from your sushi, and you should be thinking about that
Speaker 2: when you're not pregnant, and when you're pregnant. There's no
Speaker 2: particular risk to sushi during pregnancy.
Speaker 1: You can't get boat talks while pregnant or breastfeeding.
Speaker 2: Okay, botox, you know, this is the number one question
Speaker 2: people ask me really on, Yes, this is like the
Speaker 2: number one question, which is amazing, that's fascinating. I know
Speaker 2: it's only it's only star did like in the last
Speaker 2: five you know, I mean it was much more like coffee. No,
Speaker 2: it was. It's always lifestyle stuff. But like botox, like
Speaker 2: really people are really into botox. Yeah, so you're not
Speaker 2: gonna be able to find someone to get you to
Speaker 2: do your botox when you are pregnant, although there is
Speaker 2: no evidence that it would be dangerous. It's just like,
Speaker 2: no one's going to do that during breastfeeding. It is,
Speaker 2: It is fine. The botox doesn't go into your milk,
Speaker 2: and you can do it if you want to have
Speaker 2: your botox. I always tell people that your faceless. Great,
Speaker 2: you don't name botox. People are like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: thank you. So then then they're like, oh, but what
Speaker 2: about GLP ones? That's their next question.
Speaker 1: Oh, and what's what's the take on that?
Speaker 2: So you shouldn't be on a GLP one when you're
Speaker 2: pregnant because that's not a time for weight loss. But
Speaker 2: during breastfeeding, you know, generally, if you're if you're sort
Speaker 2: of early on in breastfeeding and the supply is still
Speaker 2: being established. Being on a GLB one can lower your
Speaker 2: breast milk supply, and so that is probably a reason
Speaker 2: to avoid it. But if you're later in breastfeeding, it's
Speaker 2: actually good evidence that they don't pass through to the milk.
Speaker 2: So if people want to go back on their hyllope
Speaker 2: one should be fine.
Speaker 1: I think this one's a big one.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, we have some milk scare.
Speaker 1: Of breast milk or formula, Does it make a difference?
Speaker 2: Both are great options. There are some small short term
Speaker 2: benefits to breastfeeding, lower risk of gastro intestinal illness, uh
Speaker 2: some slightly lower risk of eggzema. But a lot of
Speaker 2: these long term things people are told, like breast milk
Speaker 2: makes your kids smarter, thinner, like can fly or whatever.
Speaker 2: That stuff is all correlation, not causation. So both of
Speaker 2: these options are very good ones.
Speaker 1: Are there any negatives for formula?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess you could sort of say, well,
Speaker 2: if breast milk lowers the risk of gastro intestinal infections,
Speaker 2: formula raises. It depends what you're thinking about as your baseline.
Speaker 2: But I think in that sort of in that comparison,
Speaker 2: there are some of these things where breast milk shows up,
Speaker 2: shows up as positive, but I think it's just much
Speaker 2: much much smaller. The data shows it is much much
Speaker 2: morech smaller than what a lot of people are told.
Speaker 1: Right, And as socioeconomic conversations interesting there as well, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the reasons why I think we
Speaker 2: are so frequently hearing you know, breast's best, breast milk
Speaker 2: has all these positive benefits is because the people who
Speaker 2: are breastfeeding are very differently selected than the people who
Speaker 2: are who are not. So breastfeeding tends to be associated
Speaker 2: with higher maternal education, higher maternal income, other resources, and
Speaker 2: those things themselves are associated with higher performance on IQ tests.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that's really interesting in
Speaker 2: something like the breast milk IQ linkage is you can
Speaker 2: see if you just compare kids who are breastfed to
Speaker 2: kids who are not, you see big differences in IQ.
Speaker 2: If you control for you adjust for some differences across
Speaker 2: the moms, those effects get a little smaller. If you
Speaker 2: adjust for more differences, if you adjust for say mom's
Speaker 2: IQ tests, they get even smaller. And then if you
Speaker 2: compare siblings, so one kid's breastfed, ones not. But it's
Speaker 2: the same you see no effect, and that sort of
Speaker 2: tells me that these initial effects we're seeing are really
Speaker 2: about differences across who's breastfeeding and who's not as opposed
Speaker 2: to the effect of the breast milk.
Speaker 1: It's right. And then I've swinging to moms as well
Speaker 1: who are like, also, formula is really expensive too, So
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 2: Well, both things are very I mean, both things are
Speaker 2: very expensive. You know, people will tell you, you know, holy
Speaker 2: breastfeeding's free. It's like, I'm sorry, does my time have
Speaker 2: no value? Actually, these things are both expensive. Formula costs money,
Speaker 2: breastfeeding costs time. And I think it's not it's not
Speaker 2: obvious that one of these is cheaper. I mean, I
Speaker 2: will say, like, you know, in my mother, when I
Speaker 2: was writing all these books about pregnancy, I read both
Speaker 2: the set of pregnancy books that my grandmother had and
Speaker 2: like then you know, nineteen forty forties and the ones
Speaker 2: that my mom had in like the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: And there's a there's doctor Spark. Spock was like the
Speaker 2: core to the early nineteen eighties, and in his book
Speaker 2: from the time that I when I was born, He's
Speaker 2: got this discussion of breastfeeding, and this is a time
Speaker 2: in which people were sort of still coming back to
Speaker 2: breastfeeding after a long period of like formulas the best,
Speaker 2: and he says something that's like, you know, like breastfeeding
Speaker 2: a lot you might try breastfeeding. A lot of people
Speaker 2: like like it. A lot of people think it's good,
Speaker 2: you know, enjoy it. And that's sort of how he
Speaker 2: puts it, like this is something that you should you
Speaker 2: should try because it might end up working for you.
Speaker 2: And I think like that message, I think is really good,
Speaker 2: Like you should try this, and we should help people
Speaker 2: figure out how to breastfeed, which is not that easy,
Speaker 2: and we should be supportive of it because it may
Speaker 2: work for a lot of people, which is different from
Speaker 2: saying we should be telling people that if you don't
Speaker 2: do this, your kid's going to suck, which is how
Speaker 2: a lot of people are hearing that messaging. And that
Speaker 2: is not a healthy message and is not true and
Speaker 2: it is not helpful to anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of pressure, a lot of I'm
Speaker 1: not taking into account while people do for work, how
Speaker 1: much time they have, how much income they have, it
Speaker 1: not taking an account all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one of the reasons, and so I
Speaker 2: had written Expecting Better, which is a book about pregnancy,
Speaker 2: and then I was not sure if I was going
Speaker 2: to write a second book. Is like a long time
Speaker 2: between the two books, and had to have a second
Speaker 2: kid and all kinds of other stuff. But I think
Speaker 2: the thing that ultimately pushed me over into writing Cribs Sheet,
Speaker 2: which talks all about breastfeeding, among many other things, is
Speaker 2: the emails that I kept getting from dads. And I
Speaker 2: remember this one very vividly that was, like, my wife
Speaker 2: is so like, is like killing herself over breastfeeding and
Speaker 2: she's depressed and she is all like this is she said,
Speaker 2: you know, she says she has to do this, and
Speaker 2: I really like I want to help her, Like I
Speaker 2: think she would listen to you. Can you tell me
Speaker 2: how important is this really? Like what does the data say?
Speaker 2: And I think that moment of someone being like this
Speaker 2: is really harming my family, and I think that it
Speaker 2: would make it would make people feel better to know
Speaker 2: what the data really says. That was kind of I
Speaker 2: think that's just really important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think we underestimate And this applies to
Speaker 1: other areas of life as well, where stress about something
Speaker 1: you care about doesn't end up having a good impact
Speaker 1: on it. Or for example, staying healthy is important, but
Speaker 1: stressing about staying healthy is kind of working counterintuitively against
Speaker 1: you as well. Yeah, and it doesn't really help. And
Speaker 1: so similarly, if it's a hard thing with children, I
Speaker 1: can imagine because you care, and it's a different level
Speaker 1: of dedication and devotion to a child than it is
Speaker 1: even to your own health. But stress is always going
Speaker 1: to be reflected poorly as well, that's more likely to
Speaker 1: have a bad impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we also have to recognize, like some
Speaker 2: of what we're like the reason we're having kids and
Speaker 2: we're doing this is like because it's fun and because
Speaker 2: we want our family to be functioning in a nice way.
Speaker 2: And if somebody is very unhappy, if mom is very unhappy,
Speaker 2: that is negatively affecting how the family is functioning. And
Speaker 2: sometimes they'll say parents are people too, because I think
Speaker 2: we often forget that they are an important part of
Speaker 2: the family.
Speaker 1: What do you wish men knew about pregnancy That maybe
Speaker 1: they don't because they don't experience it and they don't
Speaker 1: really understand what's going on.
Speaker 2: I think it is very hard to really understand the
Speaker 2: experience of pregnancy. I think there's various things I tell men,
Speaker 2: you know, like you have fun fact like you get
Speaker 2: a pee on. Women pay on themselves a lot because
Speaker 2: there's a lot of pressure, those like things like that,
Speaker 2: which I think it's good, just good to know the
Speaker 2: stuff that is that is going on. But I think
Speaker 2: much more important is sort of understanding like how can
Speaker 2: I engage when the baby arrives like that. You know,
Speaker 2: that's the time when we often get this sort of
Speaker 2: bifurcation of mom and dad where the woman ends up
Speaker 2: doing more of the work and sort of just learning more,
Speaker 2: and then she knows more and then he doesn't know.
Speaker 2: And I think there's like a real opportunity in that
Speaker 2: moment to kind of both lean in to learning how
Speaker 2: to do everything at the same time. I would worry
Speaker 2: much more about that than about kind of understanding all
Speaker 2: of the nuances of pregnancy, which are just it's hard
Speaker 2: to explain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. Yeah, And no, I'm just asking for.
Speaker 2: Myself, yes, yeah, yeah, I mean people would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, should understand uncomfortable. Yeah, it's pretty like it's
Speaker 2: pretty uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But even that, I think it's it's what you're saying
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. It's it's almost like it's the
Speaker 1: preparation piece. I think it's you can never fully empathize
Speaker 1: with how painful it is, how difficult, like you never
Speaker 1: that that isn't even it, but it's, yeah, how can
Speaker 1: men better prepare? For example, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: people that I know whose partners went through like postpum
Speaker 1: like afterwards, and a lot of men I knew just
Speaker 1: didn't understand what was going on, and they were just like,
Speaker 1: she's gone crazy, she's just depressed all the time, like
Speaker 1: you know, those kind of things. And it's almost like,
Speaker 1: I think we're learning a bit more now, I hope,
Speaker 1: And conversations like this are all to help raise awareness,
Speaker 1: to have the right conversations, to prepare for the project,
Speaker 1: to set up homes in a better way, to know
Speaker 1: what may come next, you know. And so I think
Speaker 1: there's all of that where it's like you don't you
Speaker 1: don't know what that person's going through, and if it's
Speaker 1: pregnancy brain a real thing for example, like is that real?
Speaker 2: Not really now? I think it's just your time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But I think something to come back to, like the
Speaker 2: pre pregnancy something I would say, is you know, for
Speaker 2: for people who are going through like IVF, which can
Speaker 2: be very like time consuming and a huge amount of
Speaker 2: that is a place where women will often take the
Speaker 2: vast brunt of this experience and where actually there's way
Speaker 2: more they could be shared because there's a lot of logistics.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of like paying attention to when are
Speaker 2: we doing this and what and just keeping up to date,
Speaker 2: and that is a place where I think men could
Speaker 2: lean in far more. You know, you can't take the shots.
Speaker 2: You're not going to be you know, having your eggs harvested.
Speaker 2: But fundamentally, like there's a lot of logistics.
Speaker 1: One of these high end diaper, yeah, versus everyday diaper
Speaker 1: affordable diaper, does it make a difference.
Speaker 2: I wish I could tell you the answer to this.
Speaker 2: I my kids are ten and fourteen and we use
Speaker 2: that diaper and it was fine. I will say, people
Speaker 2: swear by the Coderie diapers, but I haven't seen any
Speaker 2: any thing outside of the Antec data that Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean those worked great, Like you know, no no complaints
Speaker 2: about the the like, no complaints about the big brand
Speaker 2: diapers on my side.
Speaker 1: Okay, amazing, good tonight, talk to me about the difference
Speaker 1: between wooden toys and plastic toys.
Speaker 2: Plastic toys that make noise are super super annoying. Your
Speaker 2: kid will love that and it will drive you out
Speaker 2: of your mind.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: It's so right, you like it. But we had this
Speaker 2: so to look at at the data. You know, people
Speaker 2: will say your kids to woden toys that you know it. Fundamentally,
Speaker 2: there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that some toys are
Speaker 2: toys can be developmentally appropriate, right, and so some of
Speaker 2: these making sure that your kid has some things to
Speaker 2: do that are kind of matching their developmental phase is good.
Speaker 2: You know, Stacking blocks are good for certain ages, Sorting
Speaker 2: things are good for some stuff like that. But does
Speaker 2: it need to be made of wood or you know,
Speaker 2: carved in some particular way. No, and kids do like
Speaker 2: the electronics stuff super annoying.
Speaker 1: I've definitely talked to parents who believe in like Montessori
Speaker 1: techniques or all of that which is all about wood
Speaker 1: and but there's no data behind that.
Speaker 2: There's no no, there's no data on I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it's fine if that's something like, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with that. Yeah, And I think some of this stuff
Speaker 2: in parenting is a little as much about kind of
Speaker 2: shaping an experience that you feel good about as it
Speaker 2: is about you know, optimizing your kid in in some way.
Speaker 2: And I think that's so some of it. You tell
Speaker 2: people like that, if that's something you enjoy, Like, that's great.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be over here with my like pull Ladybug,
Speaker 2: Pull Toy. That's the same song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's so hard because it's so hard to
Speaker 1: think about it. Like I my mom was extremely loving,
Speaker 1: but extremely disciplined, and so I had a very clear
Speaker 1: schedule after school, but a lot of love in my life.
Speaker 1: I look back on it and feel very grateful. I
Speaker 1: have a very disciplined life I have, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's like, but who's to say that that was the
Speaker 1: thing that I don't have no idea, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: so hard to point to where some of those great
Speaker 1: qualities come from and the challenges come from.
Speaker 2: And also to separate out genetics. Yes, you know your
Speaker 2: mom was very disciplined, you're very disciplined. Well, is that
Speaker 2: because she gave you discipline? Is that because you were
Speaker 2: always going to be a disciplined person? You could have
Speaker 2: grown up in any environment like we you know, we
Speaker 2: know genetics matters a lot. Yeah, and so does environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, back to the myths. Yeah, breastfeeding will help
Speaker 1: you lose all the weight quickly.
Speaker 2: No, sorry, it will not. There's I think the data
Speaker 2: shows your breastfeeding women lose an average over like the
Speaker 2: first year, like one point five more pounds. So no,
Speaker 2: because you eat more you breastfeeded, it's calories and then
Speaker 2: you consume more calories just like anything else.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's no magic pill for that.
Speaker 2: There is magic pills called it's called those epics.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You can't dye your hair while pregnant.
Speaker 2: That is a myth. There was some discussion of hairdressers
Speaker 2: having some, but turned out there's really no data on that.
Speaker 2: Hair dye is mine.
Speaker 1: Okay. You can't sleep on your back while you're pregnant.
Speaker 2: This is also a myth. So people for a long
Speaker 2: time we're told not to sleep on their back because
Speaker 2: of concerns about compressing a vein, and it is true
Speaker 2: that that can happen, But it turns out if that's
Speaker 2: happening to you, like, you'll be uncomfortable and you will move.
Speaker 2: And when we got better data to look at some
Speaker 2: of the things, people are concerned about the risk of stillbirth. Actually,
Speaker 2: it turns out sleep position has nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: So if you should sleep, and it is very hard
Speaker 2: to sleep when you are pregnant, and if you are
Speaker 2: comfortable on your back you should try eventually that is
Speaker 2: likely to become uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Got it. You can control whether or not you're going
Speaker 1: to have a boy or girl.
Speaker 2: You cannot control this outside of like, if you have embryos,
Speaker 2: you can implant embryos of particular particular sex. But a
Speaker 2: lot of people have this idea that like male sperms
Speaker 2: swims fast and doesn't live as long, and so if
Speaker 2: you have sex close to no, just no, that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Natural birth is better.
Speaker 2: I hate the phrase natural birth, but it is not better.
Speaker 2: There is Epidurals are very and different kinds of pain
Speaker 2: relief are very safe and effective, and there's no better there.
Speaker 1: Taking thailanol during pregnancy is not safe.
Speaker 2: That is a myth. There's many people heard of the
Speaker 2: President n RFK say the tail and all causes autism.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the best data on this,
Speaker 2: we do not see that link.
Speaker 1: Okay, you can't use retinol during pregnancy, so you cannot
Speaker 1: use acutane during pregnancy, so the sort of oral form
Speaker 1: of vitamin A is linked.
Speaker 2: Acutane is one of the small number of things that
Speaker 2: are very very clearly linked to very extreme birth defects,
Speaker 2: like what I think, it's missing limbs a lot of
Speaker 2: sol birth Like, I mean they so Actually the restrictions
Speaker 2: on pregnancy. If you are on acutane, you have to
Speaker 2: be on multiple kinds of birth control. There's like this
Speaker 2: is like a very category X, which means like you
Speaker 2: cannot have that in pregnancy. Retinal is a form of
Speaker 2: vitamin A, and so there's people will sort of say, okay,
Speaker 2: well is this the same here, But turns out the
Speaker 2: absorption through your skin is so so so so so
Speaker 2: so much less then taking something in an oral form,
Speaker 2: and so most people will say, like, out of an
Speaker 2: abundance of caution, don't take this. But there's nothing in
Speaker 2: the data that would suggest it's risky. And a lot
Speaker 2: of people use retinal throughout pregnancy, sometimes by accident, and
Speaker 2: we don't see much of a negative effect. So I
Speaker 2: always tell people like, you fine to quit this, but
Speaker 2: if you were taking if you were using this early
Speaker 2: in pregnancy, you shouldn't freak out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going back to the tailanyl example and what you
Speaker 1: said earlier, it's so hard some data is so hard
Speaker 1: to trust. When you said, you were like, you know,
Speaker 1: the big drug companies, for example, are funding a lot
Speaker 1: of the research. So it's like, who would almost go
Speaker 1: against tailenol, for example, And that may not be the
Speaker 1: best one to pick on, but I'm just looking at
Speaker 1: it from that perspective of that's one that So is
Speaker 1: it just because the drug companies would do the research
Speaker 1: and then who else would pay for research against that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I think in the case of something like people
Speaker 2: talk a lot about these issues of sort of funding
Speaker 2: funding conflicts, and in the case of something like tail
Speaker 2: and al, most of the data we have on this
Speaker 2: is not from me. Tilen is a generic drug that
Speaker 2: the company that makes Talentol is not, you know, is
Speaker 2: not doing these kind of trials. These are studies done
Speaker 2: on very large data sets that are collected, you know,
Speaker 2: by the Danish government on everybody in Denmark, and they
Speaker 2: have whether they took tail and all, and then things
Speaker 2: about their kids and they follow them over time. So
Speaker 2: this is all sort of like large scale government funded
Speaker 2: data set data bases. When we look at drugs in general. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of the studies of drugs are run by
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical companies, but in a very heavily regulated way, like
Speaker 2: the farm. A company doesn't just get to decide like
Speaker 2: what to do whatever. They have to do a study
Speaker 2: to get their drug approved that is it self approved
Speaker 2: by the FDA. And so I think that those kind
Speaker 2: of conflicts are more complicated than many people think.
Speaker 1: Got it understood, You should not do screen time before
Speaker 1: age two?
Speaker 2: Okay? Screen time is perhaps the best example of correlation
Speaker 2: is not causation in parenting. And so people, you send
Speaker 2: me these studies that say, you know, screen time before
Speaker 2: the age of one is linked with you know, all
Speaker 2: of these terrible outcomes. Look at the study and you'll
Speaker 2: have one group of kids are watching more than four
Speaker 2: hours of screens a day before the age of one,
Speaker 2: and then another group that never watches screens before the
Speaker 2: age of one, and then they compare them later. The
Speaker 2: thing I always want to ask people is, like, imagine
Speaker 2: those two households. Do you think there's anything else different
Speaker 2: other than the screen exposure? Like, of course, those are
Speaker 2: really different households. There's many things that are different. It
Speaker 2: turns out. You can see some of those in the data,
Speaker 2: but there are just all kinds of pieces of the
Speaker 2: differences that we're not going to be able to see
Speaker 2: in the data. And it is not surprising that we
Speaker 2: would find different outcomes for those kids. But that's just
Speaker 2: a correlation, is not a causal link. And so then
Speaker 2: we're left in a place with screens where people have
Speaker 2: to make a choice about how much to expose their
Speaker 2: kids to screens at different ages without very good data.
Speaker 2: So all the data we have is very crummy, but
Speaker 2: it is a set of choices you have to make.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's anything, as we would see in
Speaker 2: the data would suggest, you know, your kid watching half
Speaker 2: an hour miss Rachel, you know a few times a
Speaker 2: week would be problematic. It's very difficult to imagine how
Speaker 2: that could be bad. And actually what's interesting is the
Speaker 2: AP has recently kind of dialed back their screen time
Speaker 2: restrictions to a set of guidelines that more or less
Speaker 2: say just kind of think about it a bit more
Speaker 2: like give it some thought. And I think this is
Speaker 2: not a terrible piece of advice that you should think
Speaker 2: about where screens fit in your day. If your kid's
Speaker 2: watching eight hours of screens. They're not doing other things
Speaker 2: that they should be doing if they're watching a half
Speaker 2: an hour of screens. So you can get dinner ready,
Speaker 2: guys can all sit down together, Like that's probably a
Speaker 2: good thing. And it's ultimately about making a plan that
Speaker 2: works for your family for when these screens will fit
Speaker 2: into your day, as opposed to saying like no screens,
Speaker 2: all screens, which isn't very helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there any day to suggest that a mother's
Speaker 1: anxiety affects the child when pregnant?
Speaker 2: Not anything that you would think of as good. So
Speaker 2: there's there's a little bit of evidence that very very
Speaker 2: very stressful events during pregnancy. And we're talking here not
Speaker 2: like you know, this was a bad week at work,
Speaker 2: but like your spouse died, that can show up in
Speaker 2: some small like long term effects on kids, but general
Speaker 2: anxiety stress during pregnancy not so much. Very hard to
Speaker 2: study that because of course paternal anxiety and child anxiety
Speaker 2: are linked, but probably for both genetic and other environmental
Speaker 2: reasons having nothing to do with pregnancy.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that we got when we announced
Speaker 1: that you'd be coming on the show, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to get questions in from our audience was how do
Speaker 1: you deal with mom guilt? Because that seems to be
Speaker 1: such a widely held challenge that everyone feels guilty, anxious, stress,
Speaker 1: that they're doing it wrong, and everything they see online
Speaker 1: makes them feel like they're doing it wrong. And even
Speaker 1: the myths we just covered would make you feel like
Speaker 1: you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think there's the biggest problem for a
Speaker 2: lot of people is you make a choice, you do something,
Speaker 2: and then someone is like, why would you make that choice?
Speaker 2: And then you feel like a grab. I mean that's
Speaker 2: like a very happens all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think our best defense against that is to make
Speaker 2: our choices thoughtfully is to say, I thought about whether
Speaker 2: you know breastfeeding was right from me, or whether sleep
Speaker 2: training was right from he, or whatever is your like
Speaker 2: topic of choice, like, sit down, actually make those decisions deliberately.
Speaker 2: These are important decisions. They're going to shape your life.
Speaker 2: They're going to shape even if they don't matter if
Speaker 2: your kid. They're going to shape how your life is like,
Speaker 2: what your experience is like. You should make them deliberately
Speaker 2: and decide what's the right choice for you and then
Speaker 2: recognize that that can't be the right choice for everyone else,
Speaker 2: but that you thought about this choice. I think if
Speaker 2: we kind of come into these conversations feeling like I
Speaker 2: know that I made the right choice for me, and
Speaker 2: I thought about it, and this was the right choice,
Speaker 2: and I could ever be sure if it was ultimately
Speaker 2: the right choice, but it was the right choice exante.
Speaker 2: I think that's a little bit protective. I think people
Speaker 2: could spend less time online. That would probably be helpful
Speaker 2: for some of this, But you know, I mean it's
Speaker 2: very mom guilt is a topic that I experience, and
Speaker 2: I think, you know, some of it is is kind
Speaker 2: of just trying to recognize you're doing a good job
Speaker 2: some of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, thank you for saying, thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing that. And it's again, I can only reflect on
Speaker 1: it in other areas of life, but it's almost like
Speaker 1: it's the human trait of needing our choices to be
Speaker 1: validated and wanting other people to agree with our way
Speaker 1: of doing and thinking totally. And also how uncomfortable it
Speaker 1: is when everyone does tell you you're doing something wrong
Speaker 1: because they did it another way. So even if you're
Speaker 1: very happy with your choice, you get triggered by someone
Speaker 1: else who says, well, my kid's got this IQ level
Speaker 1: at this age and whatever, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're triggered by it, or someone actually comes to and says,
Speaker 1: can't believe you did that, Like, you know, my kids
Speaker 1: are doing great and I never did that. And so
Speaker 1: I think there's partly US crowdsourcing and outsourcing and being
Speaker 1: overexposed to lots of other people and how they do it.
Speaker 1: Then you have some frustrating people in your life who
Speaker 1: are telling you how to do it, to be honest,
Speaker 1: and then there's just that coming back to what you
Speaker 1: kind of said which I really appreciate, which is know
Speaker 1: why you're making the choices you make and be really
Speaker 1: clear about it in your group project again, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: have some conviction and confidence that based on your set
Speaker 1: of beliefs, backgrounds, socio economic status, you're making the best
Speaker 1: decisions you can. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that the point of recognizing that, like
Speaker 2: your best decisions may not be other people's best decisions
Speaker 2: is so crucial because I think in these moments we
Speaker 2: are we want our decisions to be right, and we
Speaker 2: sort of want them to be so right that they're
Speaker 2: right for everyone else. And so when you make a
Speaker 2: different choice for me. It's it's like hard for me
Speaker 2: not to read that as as like you think my
Speaker 2: choice is bad, yeah, or like well you you know
Speaker 2: I failed or I failed, as opposed to just being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this person had a different set of constraints and you know,
Speaker 2: they made a different choice and the different set of preferences,
Speaker 2: different set of constraints, and like both choices could be right.
Speaker 2: We could adopt that approach a bit more. Some of
Speaker 2: this discourse would be like a little less.
Speaker 1: What is the day to say about raising confident kids?
Speaker 2: Not too much? Uh, really hard to look at that
Speaker 2: kind of data. You know, we have pieces of data
Speaker 2: about you know, raising kids who are willing to take risks.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot there's literature about like grit and
Speaker 2: sort of how to develop grit in kids, and and
Speaker 2: some of this is things like you know, growth, like
Speaker 2: the growth mindset stuff, right, like you sort of want
Speaker 2: your kid to understand that sometimes things are hard and
Speaker 2: you have to you know, push, like you can get
Speaker 2: better at something. Just because you're not good at it
Speaker 2: now doesn't mean you couldn't eventually be good at And
Speaker 2: I think that's that's kind of part of this it's
Speaker 2: not exactly the same as confidence, but it's something that
Speaker 2: people are often trying to develop. What I will say
Speaker 2: is I think people take pieces of advice like that,
Speaker 2: which are very good and are based on data that
Speaker 2: like we shouldn't discourage kids from having a growth mindset,
Speaker 2: and they they kind of get it ends up being
Speaker 2: getting distilled into advice. It is ridiculous, right, So people
Speaker 2: end up we go from you know, a growth mindset
Speaker 2: is good, so it's good for kids to understand that,
Speaker 2: like it's the values in the effort and it's you know,
Speaker 2: worth trying to do. And they get to parents as
Speaker 2: never tell your kid good job, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, Like where's the end. He's like,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence that telling your kid good job is
Speaker 2: you know, is a problem. We could develop a growth
Speaker 2: mindset well occasionally saying a good job, you know. So
Speaker 2: you have these conversations for a while. We're having these
Speaker 2: conversations where my kids would come home my kids are
Speaker 2: a bit older, and they would come home and they'd
Speaker 2: be like, you know, this is a score I got
Speaker 2: on this on this test. And we were reacting being like,
Speaker 2: you know, well, how do you feel about that, and
Speaker 2: finally my daughter was like, stop saying that, like that's
Speaker 2: super annoying, and it was like, okay, fine, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's okay, it's okay to say good job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so funny, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: I think that's just like there are many things like
Speaker 2: this where it gets parents are sort of looking so
Speaker 2: hard for these like here's here's here's something you can
Speaker 2: just do, like super concrete, super concrete piece of advice,
Speaker 2: and we distill things that are very complicated into something
Speaker 2: very simple, which is often wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's hard because it goes back to
Speaker 1: the point I asked you earlier about when I was
Speaker 1: talking about my mom and my qualities and things like that,
Speaker 1: I was like, we we almost are mined. For some reason,
Speaker 1: likes to think that there's a point to point connection
Speaker 1: of every action, choice and decision that impacts something. So
Speaker 1: if a kid is struggling at school, we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because I did this, or you know, if they
Speaker 1: struggle later in life in a relationship, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: because me and your dad did this, right, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: We make connections feel very linear, even though they feel
Speaker 1: extremely cyclical. Random disconnected and connected and complicated. Quite frankly,
Speaker 1: it's just too complicated for any of us to know
Speaker 1: why or how that ended up happening.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think we have somehow this kind of
Speaker 2: idea has translated, I think for a lot of people
Speaker 2: into a feeling almost that every moment with your child
Speaker 2: as an opportunity to mess them up forever. And I
Speaker 2: think that's you know, So, there was an episode of
Speaker 2: maybe a year ago where people were very worried about hurrying.
Speaker 2: We got this idea of hurried child syndrome. You are, yes,
Speaker 2: miss you did. That's so lucky for you. So there
Speaker 2: was all of a sudden, all this stuff on social
Speaker 2: media about hurried child syndrome, which was conveyed to people
Speaker 2: as if you're hurrying your child out the door in
Speaker 2: the morning and being like get your shoes on, we
Speaker 2: have to go that that's going to lead them to
Speaker 2: have terrible problems with anxiety later and again this name,
Speaker 2: and people are like, oh my gosh, Like but then
Speaker 2: it's sort of for parents. They were like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: but like sometimes they do need them together, their shoes
Speaker 2: you have to go to because we have to go
Speaker 2: to school. Like what am I doing, you know, but
Speaker 2: every and it again had this feeling of like every moment,
Speaker 2: every morning when you get out of the house is
Speaker 2: an opportunity to screw it all up, Like you could
Speaker 2: be doing everything perfectly, and then there's that one day
Speaker 2: where you're like, get your shoes on and that's it.
Speaker 2: Then later when they're an unsuccessful failure adult, it's because
Speaker 2: at that time that you said the thing about the shoes, right,
Speaker 2: and that that is how it's like. No, but I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's it's sort of ridiculous when you put
Speaker 2: it like that, but I think it is how people were,
Speaker 2: It's her feeling and in the end, actually hurried child
Speaker 2: syndrome is a total different thing, completely not at all
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 1: Which is what is it.
Speaker 2: Actually it's an idea coined by some guys in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies that if we push kids to do sort
Speaker 2: of too much like pre professional like sports and like
Speaker 2: just sort of grow up too quickly, that they miss
Speaker 2: out on some of the fun of childhood. But actually
Speaker 2: very interesting set of issues related to some of the
Speaker 2: stuff John h I just talked about, like interesting set
Speaker 2: of issues to discuss, completely unrelated to getting your shoes on.
Speaker 2: No evans that pushing your kid out the door, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think it was just an example of something
Speaker 2: that kind of got into the into the zeitgeist. But
Speaker 2: is the stuff parents you're hearing every day, and I
Speaker 2: think if we could just dial down a little bit,
Speaker 2: you'd be like, hey, there are some ways you could
Speaker 2: mess up your kid, but like they're much bigger than
Speaker 2: this than these kind of tiny daily choices that you're
Speaker 2: that you're making.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. And again it's like I often think about
Speaker 1: growing up because that's my only experience of parenting, in
Speaker 1: that sense of being parented, and it's like both my
Speaker 1: parents worked. I don't think I got a lot of
Speaker 1: time in the weekdays with my parents, although we did
Speaker 1: on the weekends, but the great parts of the parenting
Speaker 1: were not I never felt left alone or abandoned when
Speaker 1: I was at daycare or picked up with then my
Speaker 1: mom went back out to work like that, and if
Speaker 1: I ever felt lonely, I would just go to work
Speaker 1: with her in the evenings and lie by her foot
Speaker 1: and fall asleep while she did work, and then we'd
Speaker 1: come home again. And so it's like there was not
Speaker 1: a long term you know, and again I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that my experience is everyone's experience. All I can say
Speaker 1: is that, yeah, it's just that it isn't as causial
Speaker 1: as we believe it is.
Speaker 2: People often say, you know, they're like, the first three
Speaker 2: years is really important. That's true, Like it it's true.
Speaker 2: But when when we sort of look at that, like
Speaker 2: what does that mean in the population, Well, what it
Speaker 2: means is that it's really important for kids to have,
Speaker 2: you know, a safe place to sleep, enough to eat,
Speaker 2: you know, someone who loves them, maybe some books, like
Speaker 2: some pretty basic things, which unfortunately, at least in America,
Speaker 2: like it's actually don't have that. That's something we could
Speaker 2: work on. But many of the things that at least
Speaker 2: the kinds of parents I talked to or worried about,
Speaker 2: are kind of like you're already doing like ninety five percent,
Speaker 2: and now you're telling me like you're spending all your
Speaker 2: time obsessing about like you know, the the zero point
Speaker 2: three percent over here, Like you're you're good.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that coming from people's own unhealed stress, pressure,
Speaker 1: trauma childhood, Like how much of that is coming from
Speaker 1: their own Is there any day to suggest that we.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a lot of data to suggest that.
Speaker 2: I actually have always read this as something completely different,
Speaker 2: which is it's coming out of the demographic shift and
Speaker 2: when when people are having kids. So we you know,
Speaker 2: it used to be you had kids, you know, you
Speaker 2: kind of bedroom college whatever. You maybe you didn't go
Speaker 2: to college and you had some kids like in your twenties.
Speaker 2: We're now in a demographic space where a lot of
Speaker 2: people have kind of thought about like, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 2: to you know, I'm going to get to work on
Speaker 2: I'm again to college. I want them, and again in
Speaker 2: the college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going
Speaker 2: to get the job I want. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: them and to make partner. I'm going to go to
Speaker 2: graduate like to digit ive. Like sort of been climbing
Speaker 2: a ladder of like professional personal and professional things and
Speaker 2: I've gotten to this point and it's like okay, like
Speaker 2: all of these things, I put a lot of effort
Speaker 2: in and I got it. And now I'm going to
Speaker 2: have a kid, and I'm gonna put a lot of
Speaker 2: effort in to win right, Like like sort of the
Speaker 2: children become the thing you're gonna win next. And I
Speaker 2: think that generates an enormous amount of pressure because if
Speaker 2: you think of your child as like a thing to achieve,
Speaker 2: it's difficult because it's not like going to it's not
Speaker 2: like getting into college. You know, it's not like if
Speaker 2: you work harder, like like it goes better. That goes
Speaker 2: much worse. But I think that's that's part of it,
Speaker 2: is this feeling of kind of like this is a
Speaker 2: this is something that I could that I could win,
Speaker 2: much more so than some of this unhealed I mean,
Speaker 2: that's hard to know. I'm sure people do have unhel dramas,
Speaker 2: but I would guess the demographic shifting is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's the hard toggle between saying it is
Speaker 1: a group project but it isn't because it's it's what
Speaker 1: you said earlier. I agree with you, there has to
Speaker 1: be a business plan almost, but then it's not a
Speaker 1: business in that it's so it's this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like a limit to what you can control.
Speaker 2: You can control there are things you can do to
Speaker 2: set up to make the experience of doing this easier,
Speaker 2: but that is different from being able to control the outcome.
Speaker 2: And I think that's sort of the core, the core distinction.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about one of the other big
Speaker 1: debates around sleep training. Yes, this is probably what you're
Speaker 1: doing filled with because there's no parent who's not struggling
Speaker 1: with sleep in some way, shape or form. Is there
Speaker 1: an ideal way to sleep train one size fits all model.
Speaker 2: Definitely not, I think so. So first of all, there
Speaker 2: are Yeah, there is definitely not a good one size
Speaker 2: fits all sleep training is not going to be the
Speaker 2: right choice for many parents, I think the but it
Speaker 2: is going to be the right choice for some parents.
Speaker 2: So when we talk about sleep training, one thing people
Speaker 2: worry about is, you know, is this going to cause
Speaker 2: long term terrible attachment problems for my kid? And we
Speaker 2: back up and say, like, what do we mean by
Speaker 2: sleep training?
Speaker 1: Phase? Yah, you can need to find sleep training.
Speaker 2: When we talk about sleep training, usually people mean some
Speaker 2: form of like encouraging independent sleep, which usually involves some crying.
Speaker 2: There's a wide range of things, so it ranges from
Speaker 2: kind of the sort of Ferber extinction method where you
Speaker 2: kind of do a nice bedtime routine, put your kid
Speaker 2: in the in the bed, close the door, and you know,
Speaker 2: decide we're not going to come back for some amount
Speaker 2: of time, and kid will often cry for a long time.
Speaker 2: Usually it's a few nights of that and then they sleep.
Speaker 2: And then there's versions of this where you're sitting in
Speaker 2: the room with them, where you're coming in. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of variations, but it almost always is in
Speaker 2: the service of trying to encourage a kid to fall
Speaker 2: asleep independently and to sleep to sort of connect sleep cycles.
Speaker 2: So when we sleep, all people, including kids, we wake
Speaker 2: up every about every ninety minutes between sleep cycles, and
Speaker 2: so good quality sleep for kids and for their parents
Speaker 2: means sort of the kids need to connect the sleep
Speaker 2: cycles in some way, and so then they are sleeping
Speaker 2: through the night. When you say baby sleeping through the night,
Speaker 2: you don't mean the they're literally asleep the entire time.
Speaker 2: You mean that they are going back to sleep on
Speaker 2: their own after they wake up. Okay, So sleep training
Speaker 2: usually involves some kind of crying. So unless people worry
Speaker 2: that this will cause long term attachments, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of data on this that suggests that that's not true,
Speaker 2: including some randomized data, some community based data. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of evidence that sleep training is not damaging to children,
Speaker 2: and also a fair amount of evidence that improves sleep
Speaker 2: for parents, and that it sort of causes improve sleeps
Speaker 2: for kids in the sense of allowing them to connect
Speaker 2: these sleep cycles. Having said all that, I think that
Speaker 2: means for me, based on the data, that this should
Speaker 2: be in people's toolbox that when you think about, like
Speaker 2: what am I going to do about the fact that
Speaker 2: we need to sleep my kidneys to sleep sleep is
Speaker 2: really important, we have to decide this should be one
Speaker 2: of the things in the toolbox. It's not going to
Speaker 2: be the thing every parent pulls out of their toolbox.
Speaker 2: Often find this a little bit of a hard conversation
Speaker 2: that people kind of end up sort of doing one
Speaker 2: of two things. Like one of two things is sustainable.
Speaker 2: One is some kind of sleep training where the kid's
Speaker 2: going to sleep independently and they're going to sleep for
Speaker 2: extended periods of time, and the other is co sleeping.
Speaker 2: These can work really well for different families. The thing
Speaker 2: that actually is very hard is like I'm not sleeping
Speaker 2: in the room with my kid, but they're waking up
Speaker 2: every ninety minutes and I have to go put them
Speaker 2: back to sleep. That's really unsustainable for almost every family.
Speaker 2: They tend to find that people kind of come into
Speaker 2: one of these two these two options, But that really
Speaker 2: means that you want to ask yourself, like which of
Speaker 2: you know, where are we trying to go? Like are
Speaker 2: we hoping to all be sleeping together in the bed,
Speaker 2: which can work for a lot of people, or are
Speaker 2: we hoping to be sleeping independently? And from there to
Speaker 2: kind of back out, you know, how are we going
Speaker 2: to how are we going to get there?
Speaker 1: Is there a right age to start sleep training? If
Speaker 1: that's the tuestion, you may.
Speaker 2: Probably not so not before four or five months, and
Speaker 2: at that point you are not looking for your kid
Speaker 2: to sleep all the way through the night. So many
Speaker 2: of these sort of sleep training approaches there are kind
Speaker 2: of about learn some independent sleep than sort of putting
Speaker 2: together a schedule where you think, okay, at some point
Speaker 2: they will need to eat in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: and then as they get older and they need to
Speaker 2: eat less, they'll kind of connect more of those things
Speaker 2: and eventually have a longer sleep.
Speaker 1: Right, got it? Are there? Any? I mean? I guess
Speaker 1: it's just painful for a parent to go to sleep
Speaker 1: thinking that their child's crying and takes a second to
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. One of the things we see
Speaker 2: in the data is that sleep training doesn't work well
Speaker 2: if you are not ready to do it. So the
Speaker 2: people who are ambivalent about this, who think like that,
Speaker 2: I'm not comfortable with this, I don't this doesn't feel
Speaker 2: right to me. This isn't going to work so well
Speaker 2: because like you're not consistency is important, and it's just
Speaker 2: like that's not going to work as well for that group.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of it is about being
Speaker 2: sort of deciding that this is something that is safe,
Speaker 2: something that is effective, something that's going to work for
Speaker 2: a family, and deliver at the other side of it,
Speaker 2: which is often you know, just a few days kind
Speaker 2: of going to deliver a better environment for your family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything else in sleep training that we've missed that
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about, things that you get asked the
Speaker 1: most about it.
Speaker 2: So I think one thing that people really struggle with
Speaker 2: is actually sleep training for little kids is it can
Speaker 2: be a hard for like babies and need like a
Speaker 2: hard decision, but like it's not that hard to implement,
Speaker 2: Like if you're committed to doing it's not that hard
Speaker 2: to implement because your kids in the crib and they
Speaker 2: can't move. I think it becomes really hard is when
Speaker 2: people have toddlers and their kids are coming out of
Speaker 2: the room and we sort of there's often another period
Speaker 2: where people are spending a lot of time a lot
Speaker 2: of complicated bedtime stuff, and that's actually a very different problem.
Speaker 2: It's more of a kind of a need for behavioral
Speaker 2: modification than it is a sort of sleep training. And
Speaker 2: so there, I think the main point for many people
Speaker 2: is just you got to decide where you're trying to
Speaker 2: go and then like decide a moment they're in a
Speaker 2: consistently implement it. Kids tend to respond really well to consistency.
Speaker 1: Where did the theory or belief come from that if
Speaker 1: kids are left crying, that they'll end up feeling abandoned?
Speaker 1: Where did that come from?
Speaker 2: So it's based on psychology detachment theory, a lot of
Speaker 2: which was developed out of observations of kids who had
Speaker 2: very very problematic attachment like childhood. So one place this
Speaker 2: we saw this was in Romanian orphanages. So there was
Speaker 2: a period of time in Romanian which there were a
Speaker 2: lot of children who were unwanted and they ended up
Speaker 2: in these orphanages where they were like basically just left
Speaker 2: alone for you know, with very very minimal care. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of abuse and when researchers came to
Speaker 2: like observe these because they found the babies really didn't cry.
Speaker 2: These they sort of had learned nobody would come. And
Speaker 2: then these kids had problems for very long periods of time.
Speaker 2: The difference between a baby that is left, you know,
Speaker 2: alone for days at a time with not enough food
Speaker 2: and you know not and sexual and physical abuse, and
Speaker 2: also the difference between that and kind of crying for
Speaker 2: even a pretty long period of time for a few
Speaker 2: nights in the context of an otherwise like loving and
Speaker 2: stable and happy household, Like, those are really different things.
Speaker 2: And I think that they sort of know that. But
Speaker 2: there's kind of a porting of poorting across this, which
Speaker 2: I just don't think is appropriate. But that's where it
Speaker 2: comes from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. I didn't know that. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible what connections we make when they're not
Speaker 1: really that connected. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that this space is a very
Speaker 2: space is a tough one because it is hard to
Speaker 2: hear your kid cry and it's hard to think bestly
Speaker 2: training for a lot of people, it is also incredibly
Speaker 2: helpful for many families, and I think that's worth noting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there any data driven techniques to help babies
Speaker 1: stop crying quickly?
Speaker 2: Just consistently implement this consistent multiple you know, over time.
Speaker 2: I think there's no like this trick. I mean, it
Speaker 2: doesn't work for every baby, but it really does work
Speaker 2: on average.
Speaker 1: I wanted to revisit screen time from the point of
Speaker 1: view of like, as kids are growing up and not
Speaker 1: looking at you could advise whether it's valuable to look
Speaker 1: at specific ages or not. But is there any connection now?
Speaker 1: I know earlier you said, well, it was really not
Speaker 1: about causality or causition. It was just the fact that
Speaker 1: it's just a different socio economic condition and different opportunities
Speaker 1: and different education level of parents and availability of funds
Speaker 1: and resources and time and energy and everything else. If
Speaker 1: that's all it is, Is there any data to suggest
Speaker 1: it matters on any level?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think it'swer's probably yes. This is
Speaker 2: a space that's really where data is really new. So
Speaker 2: you know, if you wanted to ask, you know, what's
Speaker 2: the impacting being supposed to an I head at the
Speaker 2: age of two on like high school graduation or college graduation.
Speaker 2: Like we don't know because the kids who are exposed
Speaker 2: at the age of two haven't graduated yet, so we're
Speaker 2: really in a data poor environment. When we look at
Speaker 2: younger kids, a lot of the the sort of questions
Speaker 2: we would ask are about displacement of other activities, So asking,
Speaker 2: you know, as kids do more and more of these
Speaker 2: are is that kind of displacing things that they should
Speaker 2: be doing, like that has sort of active positive value,
Speaker 2: like any time with their family going outside, Like what,
Speaker 2: you know, what are we replacing? Is kind of the
Speaker 2: question I would ask as opposed to thinking about the
Speaker 2: screens per se as like good or bad. They are
Speaker 2: an activity which must be displacing something else, and so
Speaker 2: if they are displacing sleep, for example, that's really bad.
Speaker 2: We know kids don't sleep enough and they need a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of sleep. There's been a second
Speaker 2: question as kids get older about kind of the social media,
Speaker 2: the sort of social media part of screens, where again
Speaker 2: we're in very data poor environment. But I think think
Speaker 2: there's you know, reasonable people have reasonable concerns about girls
Speaker 2: in particular and the kinds of exposures that we get.
Speaker 2: And then you're layering on top of this like a
Speaker 2: whole other AI thing, which like I don't that's new,
Speaker 2: and so we just there's a lot of choices that
Speaker 2: parents are having to make that are hard because we
Speaker 2: have no context for them. And and also our kids
Speaker 2: are much better at screens than we are. Uh So
Speaker 2: a lot of the tools people would put you know, people,
Speaker 2: I add this tool to my kid's iPad to do
Speaker 2: this and that, it's like like they don't are you kidding?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? You know, it's like like you know,
Speaker 2: these are your kids. School is putting up like these restrictions,
Speaker 2: like you know, they can't play this game. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just went to the website that's like called like
Speaker 2: my school blocked blah blah blah, and that's where you
Speaker 2: get the games totally tilting and Windmills on this, on
Speaker 2: this stuff. Given the the you know, demographic, given the generational.
Speaker 1: Shifts, Yeah, I'm at least a supporter of most of
Speaker 1: all of Jonathan Hight's considerations around that at an our
Speaker 1: older age, Like I just feel like there's no need
Speaker 1: to be on social media before a certain age Becau's
Speaker 1: like there's no need for schools to have phones. Like
Speaker 1: I just don't you know we all went to schools
Speaker 1: without phones, And.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think there's a few of these things which
Speaker 2: are like these things all have like little sort of
Speaker 2: different pieces. I think, like phones in schools, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's distracting. You don't need to distracted, No need for that.
Speaker 2: I think the social media stuff, I also agree like
Speaker 2: there should be some sort of thought about ages maybe
Speaker 2: going to be different for different kids. I think there
Speaker 2: should also be a fair amount of kind of scaffolding
Speaker 2: by parents once your kid gets these social media tools,
Speaker 2: like you don't you know, it's like a car, right,
Speaker 2: You don't just hand them the keys and say enjoy,
Speaker 2: You like teach them. And I think this is kind
Speaker 2: of like a car, Like you got to be willing
Speaker 2: to take the keys away. You got to be willing
Speaker 2: to like help them learn. You know, what's the reasonable
Speaker 2: way to interact with this? I will say I think
Speaker 2: that the relative to the kids who are now like
Speaker 2: eighteen nineteen, the kids who are now thirteen fourteen, at
Speaker 2: least in some cases I think, are actually much less
Speaker 2: into this. There was sort of a period of time
Speaker 2: when everyone had Instagram when they were twelve, and this
Speaker 2: is actually dialed down a bit interesting, which you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's just reflecting my kids score, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it's different between just having screen time and
Speaker 1: then being on social media and being exposed to other
Speaker 1: people's lives and messaging, and I think they're two totally
Speaker 1: different conversations. And I like the way you just said
Speaker 1: it that if you look to getting a phone like
Speaker 1: getting a car, and if we were able to start
Speaker 1: helping society think that way, then it becomes a point
Speaker 1: of I remember wanting a car and being like excited,
Speaker 1: nervous that I had to pass a test, preparing for
Speaker 1: the test, you know, all the levels that you go
Speaker 1: through to get there, and then you have your first accident,
Speaker 1: and you know, like that's scary. First take care, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get first take care. It's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: but it feels like a whole journey to get it
Speaker 1: rather than Now, a phone's almost like this ex ac
Speaker 1: did piece of life that you have no idea what
Speaker 1: it's exposing you to or your kids too, And it's
Speaker 1: a tough conversation with parents. I love the scaffolding idea,
Speaker 1: but I do think that it's hard when it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: your friend's parents, I gave them a phone at twelve
Speaker 1: and then but I'm waiting to till fourteen, and they're like,
Speaker 1: but wait a minute. Everone at school. I had one
Speaker 1: at ten. And whereas if there's just rules that are
Speaker 1: not parents set.
Speaker 2: Yes, parents could use help on this for sure. And
Speaker 2: you know, ultimately there's like no substitute for knowing your
Speaker 2: kid on these things, and every kid is going to
Speaker 2: be different and it's going to be exposed to be
Speaker 2: differentially affected by these things, and you need different things.
Speaker 2: Which is part of what makes parenting so difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's tough. It's tough. A couple
Speaker 1: more things I wanted to talk to you about. This
Speaker 1: one was about vaccines. Yeah, the xener. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of conversation about it's the vaccines and CDC guidelines change
Speaker 1: over time. Of course, how would you consider parents think
Speaker 1: about navigating that.
Speaker 2: I think parents should vaccinate their children on the whole.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the AAP has a set
Speaker 2: of guidelines for many years, the AAP, the American I
Speaker 2: had Academy of Pediatrics in the CDC had the same
Speaker 2: vaccine guidelines and they are the sort of primary childhood
Speaker 2: vaccine series are have been in force for decades and
Speaker 2: have been really safe and effective and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And over the past year with the current administration, we
Speaker 2: have dialed way back the number of vaccines that the
Speaker 2: CDC has recommended. I think there's a fair amount of
Speaker 2: holdover from COVID where people were uncomfortable with some of
Speaker 2: the way that the COVID vaccine was pushed on people,
Speaker 2: and I think some of that is actually fair. Probably
Speaker 2: we do not currently need all healthy children to get
Speaker 2: a COVID booster. Europe doesn't do that. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it's a perfectly reasonable position. What is not a
Speaker 2: reasonable position is people shouldn't get the measles vaccine. And
Speaker 2: so I think for parents it's kind of thinking about
Speaker 2: what is the if you want to think about what
Speaker 2: the evidence says about these vaccines. These vaccines are really
Speaker 2: good at preventing disease, and they are really safe and
Speaker 2: have been in use for a decades. So I find
Speaker 2: the current vaccine conversation really difficult to engage with because
Speaker 2: it feels like, what are you kidding me? Like kids
Speaker 2: are going to die of the measles, Like kids are
Speaker 2: going to die of the two kids died of the
Speaker 2: measles last year, more kids are going to die of
Speaker 2: the measles this year. In a single week in January
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, there were more measles cases in the
Speaker 2: US than all but a small handful of years over
Speaker 2: the past two.
Speaker 1: Decades because people chose not to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you look at the graph, basically we
Speaker 2: had like two hundred and sixty cases of measles in
Speaker 2: a week. In almost all full years in the past
Speaker 2: two decades, we had like far fewer than that. So
Speaker 2: because people stop vaccinating, and then measles is super super condageous,
Speaker 2: And so if you get a small amount of outbreaks
Speaker 2: and the outbreak grows, and we had a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: and I just think, you know, that means kids are
Speaker 2: going to die of measles who didn't need to die
Speaker 2: of measles, And that just feels terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think kids are being over medicated in general?
Speaker 2: I mean I think it's a totally different question. YEA, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. I mean I think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: probably to some extent, I think there if we look
Speaker 2: at the data on something like ADHD and we look
Speaker 2: at what's happened to those kind of prescriptions over time,
Speaker 2: They've gone up a lot, and we do see some
Speaker 2: evidence that those are increasing. There's are higher for say
Speaker 2: kids who are younger when they are first in kindergarten,
Speaker 2: and I think that's reflecting our expectation of kids in schools,
Speaker 2: which is totally different than it once was and particularly
Speaker 2: probably poorly suited, especially for boys. And so if we
Speaker 2: sort of think like, okay, we're going to bring a
Speaker 2: bunch of kids in who kind of aren't that great
Speaker 2: at sitting still, and when they're not that great at
Speaker 2: sitting still, which totally age appropriate behavior, where they're going
Speaker 2: to give them something makes some sense still, and there's
Speaker 2: a good argument that we've been over using that that approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, totally two different but which is totally
Speaker 1: totally two different conversations. Yeah, I think it's become hard.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost hard for there's some people who never
Speaker 1: questioned it and tall and then there I think some
Speaker 1: people who question it because there's a lack of trust
Speaker 1: or there's for example, like you see the open medication,
Speaker 1: you see the rise and then you go, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: there's so many updates and what's happening here and is
Speaker 1: it really helping? And where's it? You know, So I
Speaker 1: think there's a lack of trust, there's curiosity, there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's all sorts of versions of it on the
Speaker 1: spectrum of why and why we disagree or where they sit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the other, I mean, the other
Speaker 2: thing about vaccines is like we haven't done a great
Speaker 2: job of helping parents understand, you know, like which vaccines
Speaker 2: are most important. I basically think everybody should get all
Speaker 2: of the vaccines on the schedule because they're all safe.
Speaker 2: But I'm curious whether we should be having more of
Speaker 2: the conversation of Okay, look if you were only going
Speaker 2: to do you know, if there's real hesitancy for good
Speaker 2: reason to have a conversation that's like, look, if you
Speaker 2: were only going to do three, these are your three.
Speaker 2: And I see why we don't want to have that
Speaker 2: conversation because it implies that, you know, maybe there's some
Speaker 2: risk of these other things, which there are not, but
Speaker 2: it could encourage people to get some subset of the vaccines.
Speaker 2: It feels like such a complicated messaging messaging play. You know,
Speaker 2: if we really think the most important thing is for
Speaker 2: people to get like the measles vaccine and the tap
Speaker 2: vaccine and the flu vaccine. Like maybe we should be
Speaker 2: like pushing the rotavirus vaccine lest even though that is
Speaker 2: a very good vaccine.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is very complicated. I wish people would just get
Speaker 2: all the vaccines.
Speaker 1: Got it understood. You have written emily four books on parenting.
Speaker 1: I believe if you had three messages for parents that
Speaker 1: you felt they really needed to.
Speaker 2: Hear, one is that there are a lot of right
Speaker 2: ways to do it. I think that's probably the core
Speaker 2: message of my second book, which is, you know, here
Speaker 2: are some data on stuff, but in almost every choice
Speaker 2: you're going to make, there are a lot of different
Speaker 2: good options and you just got to find the one
Speaker 2: that works for you. So I think that's one pretty
Speaker 2: core message. I think a second key insight in everything
Speaker 2: I write is that correlation is not causality, and you
Speaker 2: should be really, really skeptical of a lot of the
Speaker 2: evidence that people tell you because a lot of it
Speaker 2: is correlation. I guess the third insight is I think
Speaker 2: people spend two little time thinking in advance about their
Speaker 2: plans and too much time in therefore in sort of
Speaker 2: reactive reacting to things that happen, and we're very reluctant
Speaker 2: to put time in upfront because we're busy, But there
Speaker 2: are many situations in parenting in which putting some time
Speaker 2: in upfront thinking about how you want to approach something
Speaker 2: is going to save you a lot of time and
Speaker 2: conflict later.
Speaker 1: I love that I leve all three of those, that
Speaker 1: last one especially. I just think we think like I
Speaker 1: always hear the advice of you're never ready to have kids,
Speaker 1: which I agree with, like that makes full sense, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, you're definitely not ready. If you
Speaker 1: never thought about it like that.
Speaker 2: You could be more ready.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ready exactly, which applies to everything. Right. It's just
Speaker 1: that mindset of, oh, you never know what it's going
Speaker 1: to be like, and it's like, you're right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely like, as somebody who doesn't have kids, I have
Speaker 1: no idea what's going to be like. To prepared, I
Speaker 1: fully hold my hands up. I lose. I you know,
Speaker 1: I get it. But I can think I can prepare,
Speaker 1: I can try and and I probably will still fail
Speaker 1: and make mistakes. And I think that's I think that's
Speaker 1: the problem. We think planning means perfection as opposed to
Speaker 1: as opposed to planning just means planning. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: all it is, and it doesn't mean it's going to
Speaker 1: be perfectly executed absolutely Emily. Last two segments we have
Speaker 1: this or that okay, and then our final five, which
Speaker 1: we do with every guest on the show. So this
Speaker 1: or that parenting version gentle parenting or helicopter parenting.
Speaker 2: I don't like either of these.
Speaker 1: Explain why.
Speaker 2: I mean. I think gentle parenting, as a lot of
Speaker 2: people have interpreted it, is kind of permissive parenting is
Speaker 2: sort of like I'm not going to put any boundaries,
Speaker 2: and I think that's really problematic.
Speaker 1: So what is good gentle parenting or what is the vest.
Speaker 2: I think there's a good version of kind of punishment
Speaker 2: parenting without rules and without consequences, which is much more
Speaker 2: about just setting boundaries. It ends up looking really similar
Speaker 2: to parenting with rules and consequences, but you know, the
Speaker 2: kind of like saying what the boundary is falling through
Speaker 2: on the boundary, that's a very clear part of almost
Speaker 2: any evidence based parenting approach. But gentle parenting, as many
Speaker 2: people seem to interpret it, I think does not work.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm going to go with helicopter parenting,
Speaker 2: which is being overinvolved, which I also think can be
Speaker 2: quite problematic.
Speaker 1: But perhaps less so what is a proven approach to parenting?
Speaker 2: So I think the best sort of evidence based approaches
Speaker 2: we have to, like behavior modification I have, are things
Speaker 2: where you have a clear set of expectations, where you
Speaker 2: know when you there's a behavior, kind of a behavioral issue,
Speaker 2: there's a clear set of kind of expectations, consequences and rewards.
Speaker 2: That's often what we see supported best in the in
Speaker 2: the data. So something like one two three magic.
Speaker 1: Or one of these what's one two three magic?
Speaker 2: So one to three magic is is one of these
Speaker 2: sort of evidence based parenting approaches, which is just it's
Speaker 2: a particular way to kind of scaffold like when somebody
Speaker 2: in your kid does something bad, you give them like
Speaker 2: three warnings and then there's a timeout.
Speaker 1: It's very effective, right, Yeah, I mean it seems to
Speaker 1: follow the common sense of what life looks like. Yes,
Speaker 1: my life has choices and actions, they have consequences, and
Speaker 1: then like that's kind of what that's what it works
Speaker 1: as an adult, Yeah, yes, yeah, exactly as an adult
Speaker 1: that is life. Yep. Yeah, got it, natural remedies or
Speaker 1: medicated products.
Speaker 2: Generally medicated products. I think that there's a lot that
Speaker 2: we have learned over time about, say antibatics, which are
Speaker 2: the reason that many people are not dead. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to go with medicine, although there are certainly places
Speaker 2: where we sort of overuse antibatics and we have a
Speaker 2: better off just like not using them because people don't
Speaker 2: have a bacterial infection, but overall medicated products.
Speaker 1: A strict schedule or flexibility.
Speaker 2: Can both work personally. So personally, like my family has
Speaker 2: a very rigid schedule. One might say too rigid, but
Speaker 2: that is no actually I've much for because I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: it's a combination of me and my husband, but I
Speaker 2: think that he is even worse than I am. But
Speaker 2: like that is what works for us, like for us
Speaker 2: and our kids, like we really we like to know
Speaker 2: what's expected, like on the weekends, like we know what
Speaker 2: we're gonna do. There are calendar invites, like if we're
Speaker 2: going on a hike, my husband puts a calendar invite
Speaker 2: with the drive time in it because he's insane and like,
Speaker 2: but that's for us, that's really great. I think for
Speaker 2: other people flexibility can totally work. This is one of
Speaker 2: the core things I think you need to figure out
Speaker 2: about your family, which is like, what version of this
Speaker 2: is going to make us feel confident and happy? There
Speaker 2: is not a right answer, but there probably is a
Speaker 2: right answer for you. You know, if you're a person
Speaker 2: who just wants to wake up on Sunday morning and
Speaker 2: be like, let's find out whatever, you're going to be
Speaker 2: really annoyed when your spouse is like, why didn't you
Speaker 2: put the calendar invite in for the drive time? But
Speaker 2: if you're a person who like really wants to have
Speaker 2: the calendar invite, you know, it can be frustrating to
Speaker 2: be like, well, let's just over the wind takes us? Well,
Speaker 2: how I won't it take.
Speaker 1: To get there exactly?
Speaker 2: So I think you just got to find You gotta
Speaker 2: find what works absolutely.
Speaker 1: Two under two or waiting.
Speaker 2: Two hundred two is tough. Again, I would say for me,
Speaker 2: I wanted to wait. I like the four year age
Speaker 2: gap worked real well for me. One kid carry their
Speaker 2: backpack while the other kid you're carrying the other kids
Speaker 2: the hunter gatherer birth spacing, so this was the common
Speaker 2: hunter gatherer birthing.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think we think because one kid can kind of
Speaker 2: walk on their own when you're carrying the the other one.
Speaker 1: And my sister and I have a four and a
Speaker 1: half age yees so great.
Speaker 2: But I think you know, if you're if you're like
Speaker 2: a little older, or there's sort of some other reason
Speaker 2: why you want to you want to get them, get
Speaker 2: them in close. That is very tiring. It is very,
Speaker 2: very tiring to have two two little babies at the
Speaker 2: same time. You need good scaffolding, got it?
Speaker 1: Uh? Plastic bottle or glass bottles.
Speaker 2: People are so worried about microplastics. This is not an
Speaker 2: important source of microplastic exposure relative to the other sources
Speaker 2: of microplastic exposure. We don't know that much about microplastics.
Speaker 2: That's like a whole other episode you could do with
Speaker 2: somebody else. I think people should avoid glass bottles because
Speaker 2: they shatter.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then glass will be everywhere and hurt the
Speaker 2: kid and hurt the kid or are you yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Timeouts or time ins.
Speaker 2: Even know what a time in is. I'm a fan
Speaker 2: of I'm a fan of timeouts. I think timeouts work well.
Speaker 2: I think that they can a good time. The good
Speaker 2: timeout works when your kid knows that the timeout is
Speaker 2: the punishment. They know that we're going to have a
Speaker 2: set of like you know, they know there are risks
Speaker 2: for the timeout, and they have an opportunity to fix
Speaker 2: their behavior. This is why something like accounting approach or
Speaker 2: warning approach is good. That you follow through on the
Speaker 2: timeout when you say that you are going to when
Speaker 2: the timeout is appropriately timed for the age of the kid,
Speaker 2: shorter if they're younger, longer if they're older, and then
Speaker 2: when after the timeout, you don't discuss it anymore. It's
Speaker 2: not like there's no shaming. There's no it's just like
Speaker 2: you're in a timeout, you're calm, you put them in
Speaker 2: the timeout, they have a chance to cool down, You
Speaker 2: have a chance to cool down. Nobody is yelling. I
Speaker 2: think that it can work extremely well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to ask you, are there any
Speaker 1: more strategies like that in parenting once the kids are
Speaker 1: growing old where you found extremely useful. You have a
Speaker 1: ten year old and a fourteen year old.
Speaker 2: Yes, when the kids were little, we found the timeouts
Speaker 2: very that to be a very helpful approach. I think
Speaker 2: generally find consistency is very good. I will say now,
Speaker 2: a lot of my considerations are how can I get
Speaker 2: my children to continue to speak with me? And I
Speaker 2: have found that my very best approach with older kids
Speaker 2: is to be available, and so I spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time like after dinner, when they're sort of in
Speaker 2: their rooms, like doing homework, doing whatever, like sitting in
Speaker 2: the den of our house, which is like kind of
Speaker 2: near their rooms, just like sitting. I'm like working on
Speaker 2: my computer or whatever. And then if they happen to
Speaker 2: want to come out and talk, I like immediately close
Speaker 2: the computer and can talk to them. And that that
Speaker 2: sort of like just being there when your kids are
Speaker 2: ready to talk to you, I think is a strategy
Speaker 2: that works pretty well. The only other strategy, really, like
Speaker 2: deeply seated strategy that we have is don't lie. Try
Speaker 2: not to lie to my kids. That's why they knew
Speaker 2: about Santa Claus before everyone else. It was like one
Speaker 2: time my son was like, was like, Mom, is the
Speaker 2: tooth Fairy real? And I was like, do you want
Speaker 2: to know? He was pretty old. He was like, I
Speaker 2: was like, do you want to know the truth? He's
Speaker 2: like yeah. I was like, no, it's not. He was like,
Speaker 2: I didn't think so, because other fairies aren't real. I
Speaker 2: was like, yep, you got it.
Speaker 1: That's so funny.
Speaker 2: How many this is the truth. He's just like, can
Speaker 2: you put it then put money in my allowance?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, that's so funny. That's so funny. So even
Speaker 1: even the fun white lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think this Santa thing
Speaker 2: comes up all the time you watched and I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think my husband is Jewish. And
Speaker 2: he was just like, I'm gonna tell our kids Stamp
Speaker 2: it's real. Just that for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. Emily, this has been so useful. Thank
Speaker 1: you for busting all the myths. Thank you for providing
Speaker 1: all the data and being so open and honest about
Speaker 1: so much that we're still figuring it out, and we're
Speaker 1: still researching and still trying to find good data to back.
Speaker 1: So we end every episode of On Purpose with a
Speaker 1: final five. These questions have to be answered in one
Speaker 1: sentence maximum, and so Emily, this is your final five.
Speaker 1: The first question is what is the best parenting advice
Speaker 1: you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: Try not to think about it?
Speaker 1: Question number two, what is the worst parenting advice you've
Speaker 1: ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: Don't put mittens on your child because she'll never learn
Speaker 2: to use her hands.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant.
Speaker 2: It was my mom. I'm almost so great. But that's
Speaker 2: so funny.
Speaker 1: Did you ever follow that? No, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I did look it up. I like went so far
Speaker 2: as to research it.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 2: That's what it's like to have a baby.
Speaker 1: Question number three. Something you used to believe was true
Speaker 1: about parenting, but now you disagree with that.
Speaker 2: If you do the same thing for two kids, you
Speaker 2: get the same outcome.
Speaker 1: No, fascinating. Yeah, you have to adapt.
Speaker 2: You have to kids are It's so easy to think
Speaker 2: you did a great job on the first one, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, and then and then they're just different kids
Speaker 2: in different things.
Speaker 1: Question number four. Is there a list of three qualities
Speaker 1: you try and instill in your kids, like three things
Speaker 1: you think are universally important.
Speaker 2: In my own kids? Yes, I think respect for others,
Speaker 2: following through on your commitments, and you're trying to pursue
Speaker 2: excellence and the things that you choose to do.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? As again, what's your approach
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Some of it is that we say that some of
Speaker 2: these are our core values. So following through on our
Speaker 2: commitments is something we will tell the kids are is
Speaker 2: a core value, and some of it is how you
Speaker 2: is like what you try to the things that I
Speaker 2: try to do in my own life and model and
Speaker 2: yeah those I mean I think it's sort of modeling.
Speaker 2: And then some explicit like this is how we operate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I express and then be the example exactly. You've
Speaker 1: got to explain it, make sure they get it, but
Speaker 1: then they've got to see it through you. Fifth and
Speaker 1: final question we asked just to every guest who's ever
Speaker 1: been on the show, if you could create one law
Speaker 1: that everyone in the world had to follow, what would
Speaker 1: it be.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with comprehensive fertility education for people
Speaker 2: at multiple times of their.
Speaker 1: Lives, ideally through the education systell More.
Speaker 2: It's a lot we could sure I'm going to be
Speaker 2: able to implement it in whatever way I want, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think through we spend a lot of time telling
Speaker 2: people like how not to have kids when they're in
Speaker 2: like they're younger, and then we never tell people how
Speaker 2: to have kids when they're older. And I think there's
Speaker 2: a piece of that that's about parenting, but there's another
Speaker 2: piece which is just like I think that people don't
Speaker 2: understand their own bodies very well, and I would like
Speaker 2: them to understand the better.
Speaker 1: I love the answer. I can agree with you more.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's even do you think that's even realistic?
Speaker 1: It feels like it needs to be realistic to get
Speaker 1: to it's ridiculous, Like it's like that ridiculous that you're
Speaker 1: saying that. I'm like, yeah, this is the thing that
Speaker 1: every humans, not every human, but humanity is going to
Speaker 1: need to do for a long long time. And the
Speaker 1: fact that you literally walk home out of a hospital
Speaker 1: with a baby and you know nothing about that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and you have to self educate and read a
Speaker 1: book like it's listen to podcasts. I'm like, it's insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think you part of it is
Speaker 2: we used to like live in in a in a society.
Speaker 2: We used to live in in larger groups where like
Speaker 2: you didn't have to know this, just like everyone's having
Speaker 2: babies all the time. And also like the older people
Speaker 2: we're doing this. And I think as we have moved
Speaker 2: away from religious communities, as we have moved like away
Speaker 2: from our families, it does feel a little bit more
Speaker 2: like there's missing both some of the I mean, there's
Speaker 2: like basic fertilities up and then also just sort of
Speaker 2: like shared There is a need for somehow the parenting
Speaker 2: advice is filling this gap, but I'm not sure we're
Speaker 2: filling in quite the way we need to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I love that. I think that'd be so powerful.
Speaker 1: And I also think that even though we did get
Speaker 1: away with it in the past because the bigger communities
Speaker 1: and bigger groups of people, I don't think that was
Speaker 1: really solving the problem either. It was just covering just
Speaker 1: a different way to Yeah, exactly, Emily. It's been such
Speaker 1: a joy talking to you today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Where would you like our audience to find you? Of
Speaker 1: course they can follow you across social media. We've mentioned
Speaker 1: your books. Will put the links in the comments.
Speaker 2: And you can find me at parent data dot org,
Speaker 2: which is where I have links to all of these
Speaker 2: things and then many many resources to help you make
Speaker 2: it easier.
Speaker 1: Amazing parent Data or Thank you, Emily. Is such a pleasure,
Speaker 1: and look forward to doing this again. Awesome, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. If you love this episode, you'll love my
Speaker 1: interview with doctor Gable Matte on understanding your trauma and
Speaker 1: how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from
Speaker 1: the past. A therapist one said to me, but if
Speaker 1: your parents didn't not hold you, you developed the mind
Speaker 1: you hold yourself aware.
Speaker 2: It's a fate of pain, and it's designed to keep
Speaker 2: you from experiencing pain.