Menu.page-389868128{--metaColor:#17256B;--navColor:#17256B}party pooper?The Big Reason Emily Oster Doesn't Go To Kids' Birthday PartiesHow would you RSVP TikTok / @wemetatacmeKids’ birthday parties are way less fun as a parent than they are to kids. That’s a hard fact of adulthood. You’ve probably sighed upon receiving a classmate’s birthday invitation at least once and shared with host Lindsey Metselaar why her family largely forgoes weekend birthday festivities Oster explained that her anti-birthday party stance isn’t so much about the celebrations themself but about deciding to prioritize other ways to spend limited weekend hours this idea of prioritizing some time that the four of us can spend together that is family time it sort of rules out many other things,” she said “It's not that I'm categorically opposed to the concept of a birthday party If there were a Sunday afternoon birthday party which is a time at which we don't generally do things as a family I would be happy to let my kid go if they wanted,” Oster continued “But if the birthday party is Sunday morning which is a time that we like to go hiking or do other stuff together Oster said that having family time scheduled in on the weekends creates a simplicity that works for her family “It's just like we decided a thing that was important and this other thing is less important because we said this first thing was the most important,” she said The majority of the comments fell pretty handedly against Oster “Sounds more like mom doesn’t want to change her personal lifestyle for her kids,” one user said the kids would likely rather be at a birthday party for a friend.” I'm always shocked by how some brag about the anti social behaviors they are instilling,” said another All of mine played very serious travel sports had to sacrifice somewhere & happy we did,” one user said We live in manhattan and my husband works all week long the weekends are the only time we have together as a family,” said another Family time is certainly important, but I’m not sure if a rigid weekend schedule is the answer to ensuring it. A little bit of flexibility can go a long way for maintaining friendships, and being a good member of your village. If you are already a paying subscriber to Persuasion or Yascha Mounk’s Substack this will give you ad-free access to the full conversation with Emily plus all full episodes and bonus episodes we have in the works support the podcast by becoming a subscriber today Set Up Podcast And if you are having a problem setting up the full podcast feed on a third-party app, please email our podcast team at leonora.barclay@persuasion.community In addition to being a Professor of Economics at Brown University Emily Oster is the founder and CEO of ParentData Emily is also a New York Times best-selling author Yascha Mounk and Emily Oster explore how parents can make data-driven decisions whether screen time for kids should be avoided completely This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity Yascha Mounk: You've carved out a very interesting niche for yourself in public discourse by doing something very simple: asking about important emotional decisions—a lot of them to do with parenting some to do with topics like COVID and school closures—from an empirically informed perspective and looking at which parts of the conventional wisdom are actually backed up by pesky things like studies Emily Oster: I am trained as an economist and a professor of economics at Brown The things that I do there are really about data and decision-making thinking about how data can help us make decisions either about policy pregnancy—in the context of things like COVID When I was working as an economist and a professor and I found myself wanting to use all of the tools that I had from my job in service of my pregnancy and later But it starts from the core professional belief that data can help us make decisions which is what I think most economists believe Mounk: So you’re in the proud tradition of practicing the dismal science of using quantitative data to get people pissed off at you The standard medical advice is for mothers to not drink at all You doubted that in your book on pregnancy What's the basis for why we should mistrust that conventional wisdom just tell us a little bit about your process How do you go about determining for yourself how much you yourself might choose to drink during pregnancy Oster: I want to step back and first talk about what motivated this question and many other ones about pregnancy people give you a long list of things not to do—don't drink I wanted to understand why people were saying these things Are some of them more important than others That's partly because I'm just a person who wants to understand why I'm making the choices that I'm making you get quite varied recommendations—including about alcohol Something like 40% of doctors in the United States will tell their patients that an occasional drink is fine is very different from the official guidelines Why is it different from what someone else thinks When you look at the evidence on pregnancy one thing that's crystal clear is that heavy drinking or binge drinking during pregnancy It can lead to negative outcomes for kids on many dimensions But when you then look at the evidence on occasional or moderate drinking—meaning not more than one drink at a time—you don't see those kinds of effects showing up We have a lot of data on that because alcohol consumption at those levels is much more common outside the United States this kind of occasional drinking in the later trimesters is just something that more people do you have better evidence making it clear that we don't see these negative effects I read hundreds of papers and wrote in a way that tried to help people understand why one might come to those conclusions I am not interested in telling people to drink or not drink I'm not interested in telling you to breastfeed or not breastfeed or to circumcise or not I'm not interested in telling you what to do I'm interested in helping you make decisions that work for you I would encourage people to read the evidence think about their preferences and make decisions for themselves That’s the core idea behind how we can be confident in our own choices Mounk: One thing that I think a lot of your findings have in common is that there's a kind of conventional wisdom which says this or that is bad and that we shouldn’t do them it turns out that we're at a level of abstraction that actually seems to mislead about the underlying data I believe there's a study which says that certain kinds of significant health outcomes may be causally related to not breastfeeding Perhaps you're a little bit more likely to have colic or to have a cold at the age of two in a baby that is not breastfed versus in a baby that is breastfed the way in which most people then consume that information—whether in the form of doctors’ recommendations or in the popular press—is that there are really bad health outcomes when you don't breastfeed your baby They take away that their child at 16 or 18 is going to have some seriously adverse health outcome and will not be able to lead a fulfilling life that is just not what the underlying data shows there's a second question about whether we are dealing with causation as opposed to correlation Is it that not breastfeeding really has that bad impact on the child or do situations in which the mother might already be having health challenges—perhaps she's from a lower socioeconomic status or other things that might lead to worse health outcomes for the baby—also cause them to be less likely to breastfeed You have captured exactly what is really difficult about a lot of public health messaging which is that in the service of trying to be simple if you think about some of the goals of public health messaging let's look at the world and decide which of these behaviors is better By “better” we mean whatever has a positive impact If you look at some of the really good data I think we can reliably say that there's some small impacts on gastrointestinal illness in the first six months of life That gets taken by the public health establishment and turned into the simplest version that message gets pushed in a way that convinces people to do it because the public health establishment is saying we've looked at this data and we've decided it's better and don't you wanna give your kid the best start what they mean by the “best start” is a moderately reduced risk of gastrointestinal illness in the first six months That is really different from what many people are hearing I think that's one area where I do feel like there's a lot of potential for our public health messaging to better help people understand the true risks they should at least give people a sense of how large the impact is and if it is possible that it's outweighed by some other factor that might be important to them and this also comes up in the breastfeeding case A tremendous amount of our evidence is driven by correlation if you look at the characteristics of people who breastfeed versus not probably the most significant issue in that data is that a higher likelihood of being married—all of those things correlate with breastfeeding Many of the long-term outcomes that we look at in studies say that kids who are breastfed perform better on their A-levels All of that kind of data is really driven by correlation It's driven by differences across these groups Mounk: Just to make that a bit clearer to listeners who are not social scientists: part of this is that the kinds of people who are particularly likely to be tuned into public health advice and to feel pressure on themselves to live up to it might be people with a higher educational and socioeconomic status Those things are so powerfully related to these other outcomes that you might get this confounding variable You might get this appearance of a causal effect when it doesn't exist What you're saying is that the people who are breastfed are different from the people who are not This is probably not because of the breastfeeding itself We know that to be true because when we look at data where the researchers are able to adjust for differences across families you see the effects of breastfeeding get much smaller that tells us that a lot of what we're seeing in some of this correlational data is really not about breast milk It's about mom's education or mom's resources in some way part of this is that the gold standard in medical research is randomly controlled trials but we can't tell mothers to randomly breastfeed or not Oster: We do actually have a little bit of randomized trial data on breastfeeding and it basically doesn't show what these correlational studies show you absolutely cannot force people to make feeding choices—but you can encourage more people to breastfeed but it exists and gets overwhelmed in the discourse by these flawed studies which reinforce what many medical practitioners already think and we've all told everybody that breastfeeding is great seeing a study that says breastfeeding is great makes us think that the study must be right because it reinforces what we already thought Mounk: Some other studies that also have a smaller effect are sibling studies where there are siblings from the same family that end up being breastfed and not breastfed the sibling studies are probably the best we have because the mother is typically constant You can look at them and at least know that the family circumstances are the same Those studies show very little effect on any of these long-term outcomes Mounk: There's an interesting dynamic here I was joking earlier about the reputation of economists as practicing the “dismal science.” They have the reputation of just looking at quantitative data in this kind of cold-hearted way I think critics of your writing might sometimes say shouldn't we just prioritize doing the best for our kid under any circumstance I think that the insights you're sharing with us also liberate people to take other things into consideration when you start public health advice with a study that shows that gastrointestinal illness is stronger at six months people feel that all the other considerations in their life—does my work schedule actually allow me to breastfeed all the time Do my parenting norms actually allow me to breastfeed all the time?—take a back seat and they become overwhelmed by that kind of data I'm really struck by an observation from a friend of mine who did want to breastfeed her first child and for whatever reason the child wasn't taking to the breast She realized that she ended up having a much more co-equal parenting relationship with her husband because when the mother is the only source of nourishment it makes it harder for the father to play an equal role in the household But because they were bottle feeding—which is not what they had planned to do but it’s what ended up happening—she felt that made it much easier for her husband to be the one who gets up at 3 a.m the dismal science is actually allowing people to make decisions in a way that also reflects those other considerations that are not easily quantifiable I think that we ignore individual preferences when we give this blanket advice that is supposed to be best for everyone: For every single family in every circumstance Think about the variation across human experience How could it be that this recommendation is correct for everyone because what we need to do is think about how the data combines with the constraints and preferences that people face That's how economists would say it: We're going to take the evidence and combine it with preferences and constraints What we really mean is that the things that you care about and the values that you hold should be an important part of your decision making The data should also matter and it's worth looking at There are places where the data is clearer about some behavior the evidence just doesn't say that one thing is so enormously better that it shouldn't be outweighed by Mounk: The other thing that's interesting to me—where an analytical look may result in another way of thinking about things—is how do you trade off between the interests of different people who constitute a family It seems to me that one of the things that drives a lot of the conventional wisdom—whether that is from public health authorities or from parents—is that under no circumstances can they do any harm to the child prioritize the interest of a child over all other interests small adverse health outcome from drinking a glass of wine in the seventh month of pregnancy or from not breastfeeding has to take absolute priority over everything else is there a potential benefit from driving my child to this extra enrichment class in ballet or violin what a monster I would be if I didn't give them that opportunity life is full of trade-offs and the family has trade-offs between the interests of children and parents Oster: You exactly hit on the messaging parents get: if there's any suggestion that this behavior would be harmful to their baby even if it were infinitely valuable to them what if I don't take them to violin class and there's a quarter of a percent chance that they could have played one time at Carnegie Hall The constraints of the parents or the preferences of the rest of the family are just not relevant I think that this is not a very healthy way to operate But I think it really puts pressure on families to not think in big-picture terms about the fact that even if you only care about the outcomes for your kids having parents who are happy with the choices that they have made and who like to enjoy their lives actually does matter This comes up sometimes in conversations about breastfeeding I would much rather have a mom who is not depressed and is using formula than a mom who is depressed because they are killing themselves trying to breastfeed and it isn't working That's not a good trait even if you thought there was some small gastrointestinal benefit to doing it I think that this current generation of parents too heavily prioritize their kids but there's also a little bit of put your own oxygen mask on first and doing things that fill your bucket some of the time you are not going to be a happy person and that's gonna make you a worse parent even if that were the only thing you care about This is a very hard thing to say because immediately people assume it is very selfish Mounk: Let's distinguish between two strains of this conversation One is the way to push against a mistaken cultural norm where the children always have to come first and how that’s actually not good for the kids If you're really struggling to breastfeed and it means you have to get up in the middle of the night every time that is going to have a much worse impact on the child than the difference between breastfeeding or not I'd love for you to tell me whether this is founded empirically or not but there are studies where if you ask children at most ages what is the thing you most wish to change about the parenting you had? they don't say that they wanted to go to an extra sports club or whatever whatever you can do to have them be less stressed feels like a really important thing for the well-being of those children especially if we believe what they're telling us I agree with you that there are going to be many contexts where there isn't a trade-off Both the parents and the children would be better off if the parents make sure that they are happy and healthy individuals Their relationship is so strong together that perhaps there's some relaxed family time every now and again rather than just rushing from one class to another I would love to hear more from you on that I didn’t expect you to flinch away from the hardest question There are going to be times where there's a real trade-off but you’re just exhausted—they’ve already been to three different classes Or take a glass of wine: it's unlikely that one glass is going to be the difference between you being depressed or not or that it’s somehow going to have a huge benefit for your child There might be a small risk for your child on one side there’s your ability to enjoy something—to have a moment of sociability with friends and indulge in a glass of wine And what's the case for sometimes putting their own interests first Oster: It's so interesting that you mentioned flinching because I think I do We all sort of flinch about that because it's very hard to say I'm going to choose this because I like it So I think we are always looking—as parents—for some potential benefits for the child I think we also need to make it okay for parents to say: sometimes my kid will suffer in a small way because I’m choosing something I enjoy I love running—I do it a lot—and my kids don’t like that It definitely makes me a worse parent sometimes If I go for a long run in the morning and then have to parent all day and I’m shorter with them than I should be because running matters to me—it’s something I care about just for myself It really is worse for my kids in some ways I could say it’s good for them to see me enjoy something But it’s also okay to say: there are multiple people in this house and everyone’s preferences matter—even if some matter more than others And it’s just not true that our kids’ preferences matter more than everything else it’s actually good for my kids that I ran 22 miles so perhaps it's easier for me to say that because I don't picture my children and feel guilty You care more about your running than you do about me Mounk: It's really important for children to learn that they're not always the center of attention I think one of the differences in cultural norms about parenting in the United States and in Europe for example—particularly in Southern Europe—is that in the United States there's this expectation that when you're spending time with your kids they need to be at the center of attention I think that leads to all kinds of bad behavioral traits we're having a fun time together at this family dinner and we wanna have a real conversation the kids are gonna be part of the conversation the son's gonna interrupt to make a request or ask a question They also need to understand that there are other people with their own interests and they wanna have a serious conversation about other stuff and it's not all about them I actually think that that is a really healthy part of a child’s upbringing that again goes back to the rationalization of things by saying they are good for kids I want to say that if you have a broadly utilitarian outlook on the world—which I don't in every respect but I think it's good for a lot of moral questions—it's just not right that we should give some tiny marginal improvement in the happiness of a child more importance at the greater cost of the happiness of the parents I think some parenting approaches suggest that that trade-off ratio should basically be infinite It shouldn't be that one unit of my happiness for one unit of yours and perhaps that's a choice that—to some extent in a theoretical manner and every day in some practical manner—parents have to make all the time one very big question that people ask about is screen time There is a real sense that there is a mental health epidemic among a lot of teenage girls in particular there’s this idea that even a little screen time early in childhood—before we’re talking about social media and so on—might impact attention span and brain development What does the evidence say about screen time and social media Oster: I think those things are pretty different The data that people bring to bear on questions like the impact of screen time on the development of two-year-olds is really bad It is far worse in terms of the correlation versus causation problem it should be very easy for people to understand this Take one example: studies comparing kids under one who watch more than four hours of screens a day to those who watch none Then they look at developmental measures—say test scores—when those kids are five or six But if you ask someone to imagine a household where a one-year-old is watching four to six hours of TV a day and another where the one-year-old watches none—do you think those households are otherwise similar I think it’s hard to imagine they would be But they’re not just different in obvious ways—they differ in all kinds of ways So maybe those kids are different for reasons unrelated to screen time I try to frame it as: screens aren't inherently bad or inherently good Screens are really just something that displaces other activities So rather than treating them like a boogeyman it helps to think in terms of opportunity cost It’s probably better for your kid to be reading a book or sleeping—activities we know have clear benefits But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do any screens If they have an hour of screen time while you're cooking dinner so that they can then be ready to have that nice family dinner and be in a good place And there isn't anything in the data that would say that it's not I think this is an area where it helps to structure the choice and avoid having screens everywhere all the time it is not helpful to assume that any amount of screen time is terrible because that is just not supported by the data Mounk: That's a really helpful framing actually which slightly changes my instincts about this you have to wash up or clean up or do some kind of errand How do you make sure that you can do that while your child is happy and entertained rather than being in the way and making you cranky Let them watch something on the iPad or play something They're not going to have a very meaningful experience during that hour in any case I'm too lazy to read the kid a story at that time and I'll just give them the iPad at that time because this is an important family ritual and this is a moment where they're actually going to be learning a lot How would you think about an in-between case You're taking the kids to a restaurant for dinner That feels to me like one of the cases where the iPad is the most useful because perhaps they're about to have a meltdown or get bored or annoyed giving them the iPad is a great way to be able to have a restaurant experience for the parents and that's important for their happiness Maybe they have a friend visiting who they really want to connect with perhaps that precisely is the kind of experience where it's important for children to understand that this is a social experience where they’re not at the center of attention that this is part of what it is to grow up and to be a member of a family unit Perhaps a little bit of boredom and frustration is Oster: I would just tell parents that they have to make that decision deliberately based on what they’re trying to accomplish What is the purpose of going out to dinner Is it that you would like to have a date with your spouse and you can't get a babysitter There's no child care option but you just really want to spend some quality time with your spouse it may well be the right solution to give the kids an iPad I would like to go out to dinner because I want our family to be a family who can go out to dinner and sit together and talk and order from a menu That's an experience I want my kids to be able to have when they grow up adults shouldn’t sit at dinner watching videos on their phone I would say that you should not have iPads at dinner because it is not accomplishing your goal even though your kid might be kind of whiny and having trouble sitting down So it's not definitely terrible to have iPads at dinner or not If we ask that question around our use of screens I think we'll be in a much better position to scaffold the boundaries in a way that we can then tell our kid where the boundaries and expectations are That is going to make it much easier to hold the boundary if you've told the kid in advance what it is Now we're not talking about two or three-year-olds at the restaurant whmo we're trying to distract for half an hour we're talking about how bad an impact things like Instagram and TikTok have on self-image which definitely suggests some negative impacts on mental health It's clear there's a fair amount of variation Some kids do seem to benefit from the connections they can make on social media they don't benefit and that the kind of experience particularly for teen girls around things like Instagram and TikTok is not very good You're there and you're seeing people whose skin looks great and you're thinking my skin doesn't look great even though I bought all the products that this person said But kids in this age range do not have the frontal lobe structure that adults do I think it makes it very hard to process things in a positive way the data does not suggest very good things about teenagers and their exposure to social media I think there's other reasons we should hold boundaries on phones But I think phones and social media are two pretty distinct things Mounk: So I take that as an empirically cautious vote that Haidt may be onto something I would love to have more data to confirm that But I would say I'm an empirically cautious voter in favor of at least being more careful There are parts of Jonathan Haidt’s work that I agree with even more strongly I don't think we should have phones in schools You don't need a video game that's pinging you every 20 seconds while you're trying to learn math Mounk: Your writing has informed a lot of my thinking on the specific questions that we've touched on I'm trying to think of how it adds up to an overall attitude to areas like parenting and shepherding kids to that extra ballet class is a sense that the fate of these children is in our hands and that what we do at every moment is going to really add up to determining the future It is in our hands whether we're going to bring up a happy and healthy adult who gets accepted to Brown University or a drug addicted and depressed dropout who lives in my basement for the rest of time I would love to hear your take on the overall data about how much parenting actually matters Is it just a matter of obviously avoiding being physically abusive with children Or does it depend on broader questions of socioeconomic status Do you think that those smaller-range decisions actually add up to making a real impact on the trajectory of children on average Oster: I think one of the things that seems to be true of modern parenting is that people view every moment of their parenting as an opportunity to ruin their child forever They think that if you rush them out the door in the morning that could be it; that could be the decision that ruins them for their whole lives but it imbues every interaction with an intense sense that it's the be-all and end-all One is that there's a lot of evidence that the first three years matter a lot there's huge differences across socioeconomic status Even before they've been in any formal schooling we see kids who have grown up with more resources doing way better Mounk: A quick question about this—how do we know that that is rooted in parenting practices of the parents in those first five or three years rather than genetic inheritance or other things that may not be down to their parenting choices Some of it we know from what kinds of impacts you can have with simple parenting interventions And some of it is by looking at how much we can catch up with things like Head Start We know that if you try to equalize things in those early years Mounk: And what are the most powerful of those interventions Oster: Here are the things that seem to be really important Kids having someone in their life who is a consistent and positive force There is maybe also a little bit of evidence that having access to some books and some reading can improve school readiness but they are also very hard and many kids do not have access to them So it isn't like saying that these things are so easy anybody could achieve them There are many kids in America and elsewhere that don't have access to this that is 95% of the way to what we are trying to accomplish how can I train my kid to win the math Olympiad If your entire goal is to train your kid to win the math Olympiad you probably can make a little bit of progress by doing more math that's probably not really your goal most of the time If your goal is to raise a happy and healthy adult but the things that you can do to influence that are pretty basic Mounk: Let me put what you just said in a slightly more polemical way and see if you agree Let's distinguish between public policy in a deeply unequal society like the United States where there is widespread poverty despite overall wealth and the kinds of questions the average listener of this podcast might be asking themselves That is why I think it is important to specify which interventions actually matter When you say the first five years of life are really important I have to make sure story time is a full hour instead of thirty minutes But most of the people listening to this podcast can give their kids enough to eat they have a stable and loving relationship with their child Those are not the questions they are wrestling with So the message to them might simply be: do not worry if you care about children in the United States or around the world maybe the focus should be on ensuring child benefit payments our energy is better spent there than on marginal improvements in our own parenting routines I think that these conversations about being the optimal parent are happening in spaces where they’re already doing everything that actually could matter We're not having the conversation about how we think about the right policies to support parents more broadly where kids do not have access to these pretty fundamental needs Mounk: What about beyond the age of five or six One thing that I'm sure a lot of listeners to this podcast really worry about is school choice How much do those kinds of things matter for outcomes Oster: Parents ask a lot about school quality I think the reality is that much of the variation in school quality—which in the United States we typically just measure by test scores—is just driven by differences in the kids who show up at the school And that's not really because of what the school is doing That seems to be mostly because of the kids that they get as inputs and what the parents are doing We have a little bit of evidence around how we can provide better school quality to kids who would not have access to high quality public schools Charter schools tend to have better outcomes than the district public schools that's probably a lot about who the kids are who is coming into the school and not what the school is doing So the landscape of school choice is pretty tricky and it's not usually very obvious so much of the variation is just about family variation and not about anything systematic that we're doing within the school Mounk: One of the things that strikes me as odd about this whole conversation is that it's a strange mix between altruism and egotism there's this expectation that you completely prioritize your children over everything else that you do bring them to that extra ballet class that you spend a lot of financial resources on making sure that they go to a marginally better private school and so on It is a way of showing how altruistic you are How these children are going to fare depends on me Look at the agency I'm having in determining what's going to happen 70 years later to this being that's under my care Do we need to unlearn both the excessive altruism and the excessive egotism we are not helped by thinking of our children as something we are trying to accomplish I'm going to be the best at it and like my kids are going to be the outcome of that winning I think this puts far too much stress on our kids But I think it also gives us too much of the illusion of control What we do on these smaller scales probably doesn't matter too much that whole atmosphere forgets an important part of parenting which is why many people become parents in the first place Spending time with them is genuinely enjoyable I think they are interesting and wonderful people If we only think of kids as people we are serving or as tools to further our dynastic aspirations we lose sight of the fact that they are interesting and fun people I think about that a lot in the conversations happening in policy circles about why people are not having kids We often present parenting as an incredibly hard job But it is also amazing to have people in your life whom you cannot believe you love so much It is a completely unique and deeply interesting experience and we lose sight of that when we treat parenting as just another job where you are supposed to achieve a promotion Yascha and Emily discuss how data was used to justify decisions during COVID and how to communicate scientific information when our knowledge is constantly changing This part of the conversation is reserved for paying subscribers… Thanks for reading! The best way to make sure that you don\u2019t miss any of these conversations is to subscribe to The Good Fight on your favorite podcast app If you are already a paying subscriber to Persuasion or Yascha Mounk\u2019s Substack Subscribe now Set Up Podcast Yascha Mounk: You've carved out a very interesting niche for yourself in public discourse by doing something very simple: asking about important emotional decisions\u2014a lot of them to do with parenting some to do with topics like COVID and school closures\u2014from an empirically informed perspective pregnancy\u2014in the context of things like COVID Mounk: So you\u2019re in the proud tradition of practicing the dismal science of using quantitative data to get people pissed off at you people give you a long list of things not to do\u2014don't drink you get quite varied recommendations\u2014including about alcohol But when you then look at the evidence on occasional or moderate drinking\u2014meaning not more than one drink at a time\u2014you don't see those kinds of effects showing up That\u2019s the core idea behind how we can be confident in our own choices Mounk: One thing that I think a lot of your findings have in common is that there's a kind of conventional wisdom which says this or that is bad and that we shouldn\u2019t do them the way in which most people then consume that information\u2014whether in the form of doctors\u2019 recommendations or in the popular press\u2014is that there are really bad health outcomes when you don't breastfeed your baby or do situations in which the mother might already be having health challenges\u2014perhaps she's from a lower socioeconomic status or other things that might lead to worse health outcomes for the baby\u2014also cause them to be less likely to breastfeed By \u201Cbetter\u201D we mean whatever has a positive impact what they mean by the \u201Cbest start\u201D is a moderately reduced risk of gastrointestinal illness in the first six months a higher likelihood of being married\u2014all of those things correlate with breastfeeding you absolutely cannot force people to make feeding choices\u2014but you can encourage more people to breastfeed I was joking earlier about the reputation of economists as practicing the \u201Cdismal science.\u201D They have the reputation of just looking at quantitative data in this kind of cold-hearted way people feel that all the other considerations in their life\u2014does my work schedule actually allow me to breastfeed all the time Do my parenting norms actually allow me to breastfeed all the time?\u2014take a back seat But because they were bottle feeding\u2014which is not what they had planned to do but it\u2019s what ended up happening\u2014she felt that made it much easier for her husband to be the one who gets up at 3 a.m Mounk: The other thing that's interesting to me\u2014where an analytical look may result in another way of thinking about things\u2014is how do you trade off between the interests of different people who constitute a family It seems to me that one of the things that drives a lot of the conventional wisdom\u2014whether that is from public health authorities or from parents\u2014is that under no circumstances can they do any harm to the child the same is true later in childhood\u2014like People\u2014including doctors\u2014will tell me One is the way to push against a mistaken cultural norm where the children always have to come first and how that\u2019s actually not good for the kids I didn\u2019t expect you to flinch away from the hardest question but you\u2019re just exhausted\u2014they\u2019ve already been to three different classes and you don\u2019t know if you have it in you or that it\u2019s somehow going to have a huge benefit for your child there\u2019s your ability to enjoy something\u2014to have a moment of sociability with friends and indulge in a glass of wine So I think we are always looking\u2014as parents\u2014for some potential benefits for the child I think we also need to make it okay for parents to say: sometimes my kid will suffer in a small way because I\u2019m choosing something I enjoy I love running\u2014I do it a lot\u2014and my kids don\u2019t like that and I\u2019m shorter with them than I should be because running matters to me\u2014it\u2019s something I care about just for myself I could say it\u2019s good for them to see me enjoy something But it\u2019s also okay to say: there are multiple people in this house and everyone\u2019s preferences matter\u2014even if some matter more than others And it\u2019s just not true that our kids\u2019 preferences matter more than everything else it\u2019s actually good for my kids that I ran 22 miles for example\u2014particularly in Southern Europe\u2014is that in the United States I\u2019m not talking about the old fashioned I actually think that that is a really healthy part of a child\u2019s upbringing I want to say that if you have a broadly utilitarian outlook on the world\u2014which I don't in every respect but I think it's good for a lot of moral questions\u2014it's just not right that we should give some tiny marginal improvement in the happiness of a child more importance and perhaps that's a choice that\u2014to some extent in a theoretical manner and every day in some practical manner\u2014parents have to make all the time there\u2019s this idea that even a little screen time early in childhood\u2014before we\u2019re talking about social media and so on\u2014might impact attention span and brain development Then they look at developmental measures\u2014say test scores\u2014when those kids are five or six and another where the one-year-old watches none\u2014do you think those households are otherwise similar I think it\u2019s hard to imagine they would be But they\u2019re not just different in obvious ways\u2014they differ in all kinds of ways It\u2019s probably better for your kid to be reading a book or sleeping\u2014activities we know have clear benefits perhaps that precisely is the kind of experience where it's important for children to understand that this is a social experience where they\u2019re not at the center of attention based on what they\u2019re trying to accomplish adults shouldn\u2019t sit at dinner watching videos on their phone There are parts of Jonathan Haidt\u2019s work that I agree with even more strongly Mounk: A quick question about this\u2014how do we know that that is rooted in parenting practices of the parents in those first five or three years I think that these conversations about being the optimal parent are happening in spaces where they\u2019re already doing everything that actually could matter I think the reality is that much of the variation in school quality\u2014which in the United States we typically just measure by test scores\u2014is just driven by differences in the kids who show up at the school In the rest of this week\u2019s conversation This part of the conversation is reserved for paying subscribers\u2026 The wedding of Dovid Perlow of Sydney, Australia and Faigy Oster of Crown Heights took place at Oholei Torah Hall in Crown Heights. Photos Δdocument.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()) Δdocument.getElementById("ak_js_2").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()) Mazal Tov to the wonderful Chattan and Kallah This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply words: Adam Teeter It’s no wonder that consumers of alcohol in America are extremely confused All of the studies and recommendations are based on a set of data that scientists and doctors have been analyzing for the last few years in the release of these reports is how this data was collected and what actual takeaways and behavioral changes alcohol consumers should make based on the findings Emily Oster to help us make sense of it all Oster is the founder of ParentData and is on a mission to empower people by providing the data and tools they need to make confident decisions After getting a PhD in economics from Harvard Oster went on to pursue research in health economics and is now a professor of economics at Brown University She is the New York Times best-selling author of “Expecting Better,” “Cribsheet,” “The Unexpected,” and “The Family Firm.” Dr Oster uses her expertise in reviewing and analyzing data to help others navigate topics related to health and parenting What follows is a transcript of our conversation If you would like to hear the full conversation you can listen to it on the VinePair Podcast Links to the episode can be found at the bottom of the page VinePair Co-founder and CEO: Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts on these alcohol studies and announcements that are making real waves right now I am happy to be here to talk about science AT: So there have been a lot of reactions to the studies that have come out recently and while we know that most people have a general understanding that alcohol is not something that is ultimately good for them because the articles and proclamations that are coming out around these studies are really alarming Individuals don’t understand the data that’s being used to come to the conclusions in these studies I think there’s a lot of ways to start But I think one way to start to frame these studies for people is to say if you wanted to know the health effects of alcohol what would be the ideal way to learn about that And the ideal way to learn about that would be to take an infinitely large sample of people randomly assign them to consume different amounts of alcohol over the course of many and then later analyze their health outcomes And if you could randomly assign them and follow them forever you could be very confident in establishing what we call a causal link between alcohol and health And there are a lot of reasons we don’t do that kind of study but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that that’s kind of what we’re trying to replicate We’re trying to understand the relationship between alcohol consumption and health holding constant everything else about people So sort of comparing two people who drink different amounts And that’s what we’re trying to do when we’re talking about studies of alcohol and health AT: And why is a study like this so hard to do One is that if you wanted to follow people for their whole life you would be dead before you found out if they were dead It’s also hard to get people to change their alcohol consumption behaviors in either direction So I think there are some practical barriers to doing this in a randomized way The reality of what these studies do is they go out and ask people they will then follow those people over time and see do they die of heart disease or do they develop cancer what you see in the studies is that there are differences in cancer development among people who drink not at all versus a little bit versus a lot And there are differences in things like heart disease The fundamental problem is that those people are not the same in other ways tend to be different in terms of their education different in terms of their smoking behavior different in terms of their dietary choices different in terms of their income and their health resources All of those variables are also varying across people in these different groups I’m going to attribute to alcohol consumption Because how do you know it’s the alcohol and not the smoking How do you know it’s the alcohol and not a lack of access to resources And it’s especially hard when we’re talking about moderate drinking So I think this is actually a really important distinction to make There are a lot of reasons to think that drinking a lot is bad for your health There are a lot of very strong correlations between drinking a lot and many health outcomes drinking too much alcohol causes liver disease is in what to make of the kind of small differences between someone who has one or two drinks a day versus someone who has none Those differences are very small in the data and it’s really really hard to know if they’re about the alcohol or about something else that’s different across those groups AT: When people are looking at the surgeon general’s recommendation are we to basically assume that the reason that recommendation is being made is just because since there is some sort of a risk the medical establishment has at this point decided they have to basically alert us to that risk even if we can’t quantify how great of a risk it is to us although I think that the thing that’s a little weird about that argument which I think is basically a correct description of why they’re doing this is that if you take this kind of observational data where you observe how much people drink and you observe their health drinking a little bit is associated with slightly higher risk of cancer relative to not drinking at all drinking a little bit is associated with a lower risk of heart disease than not drinking at all if you look at what we call all-cause mortality actually drinking a little bit is associated with a lower risk of dying I personally do not think any of those correlations are particularly likely to be causal I think they are almost all reflecting other differences across the groups what’s a little odd about some of the messaging is that if you were going to say I really believe this correlation about cancer then I think you have to also believe the correlation about heart disease and all-cause mortality which go in the other direction And so there’s something a little confusing for those of us who are steeped in the data about saying I’m going to believe one piece of this data but not the other piece I’m going to believe this one piece because it’s consistent with some other set of beliefs I have but not so much because I am learning from the data VinePair editor-in-chief: That’s really interesting And actually the leading cause of death in America is heart disease so do you drink moderately to protect your heart or not at all to prevent cancer as someone who spends so much time in this data I think these effects are basically zero in either direction That drinking a little bit is basically not positive or negative It’s just about zero and certainly well within the other risks we take every day in either direction But I don’t think anyone wants to hear that because everyone defines moderation differently EO: If you looked in the kind of graphs we are examining in these studies which again are based on this observational data I’m not sure how much we can take from them but if you sort of look at where the correlations between drinking and cancer sort of start to go up more it’s kind of around three or four a day So the current government recommendation we have is probably not an unreasonable definition of moderate I think the data is completely incomplete to make a claim across the board like that I do think there’s a piece of this which should be so much more personalized than it is I have two drinks a day and I’m not comfortable with my relationship with alcohol I feel too wedded to that relationship and I feel like I should cut down And that is a reason to cut down on your alcohol consumption even if two drinks a day was sort of fine from a health standpoint And I think that we’re sort of missing in this conversation is that we’re looking for something that’s going to be driven by health but really some of this should be about preferences and about sleep and other things which have nothing to do with what’s a correlation in some large data set AT: What about this idea that some people have that wine is better for you than other types of alcohol Do we see that in the data and could we ever design a study that proves that EO: It would be technically possible to prove this And I think there is enough data in these large data sets that you could separate people based on how much wine do you drink But the issue is that the people who are consuming these different kinds of drinks are themselves different we already know there’s an issue with people who consume alcohol versus those who don’t consume any There’s also an important distinction between people who consume different types of alcohol One of the examples I often give is if you said what is the health and longevity of the people who drink 20-year-old Barolos with dinner every night The answer would be that those people are doing great And they have a lot of resources to stay healthy You could almost line up the sort of price of your nightly wine with your longevity and it would have nothing to do with the wine It would have everything to do with the resources and education and other things that people are And I think that’s an illustration of why this study is extremely difficult to do AT: So basically what you’re saying is that if you have the means to go to the doctor you’re probably preventing a lot of the issues that you would have if you didn’t go to the doctor And I think when we look at these kinds of patterns of alcohol consumption and different kinds of alcohol you’d also see correlations with exercise you’d see correlations with smoking behavior things which we know themselves contribute to longevity Like you can’t ever have physiological constants to make this study work but there are really important differences between people that you can just never observe or never observe completely enough And that is what makes this kind of evidence so difficult to learn from Because obviously right now it feels like there’s a lot of the journalism that basically is just saying there’s no way this is good for you at all let’s run some randomized trials on this The fact that it has never happened suggests to me that there are probably some reasons why this type of study isn’t likely to happen I wish this conversation would shift into more trying to help people who are struggling with alcohol than to be this sort of zero one messaging as with much other public health messaging when you say every bit of alcohol is terrible for you the goal of that seems to be to try to get everybody to drink a little bit less But the result of this is that people who are already only drinking a little will move to drinking a little bit less And the health impacts of that are basically none And the people who are drinking a lot will not change their behavior at all And that feels like those are the people you actually want to help So we’re kind of focused on a message which is only going to reach the people who don’t need it And so it does feel like maybe a message that would somehow be more targeted to getting people to reduce if you’re having seven glasses of wine a day or a 6-pack of beer every day might be more effective than the messaging we currently are working on how much does the data show us that messaging like the surgeon general’s proposed warning is impactful at all This is the other thing about the surgeon general’s idea which is the idea you’re going to put warning labels on this and that’s going to matter we know from many other settings that putting warning labels on things is just a completely ridiculous farce and say warning labels work but the reality is that part of the reason the messaging about cigarettes worked when it did is that people truly didn’t know it It was like they had never heard before that cigarettes were bad for you The surgeon general was the first one to be like it’s like this messaging is just over and over and over again Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify This story is a part of VP Pro, our free platform and newsletter for drinks industry professionals, covering wine, beer, liquor, and beyond. Sign up for VP Pro now! Please select what you would like included for printing: Copy the text below and then paste that into your favorite email application This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors Public health officials should tell the truth, even when it's complicated. Even when some people might misunderstand. Otherwise, says economist Emily Oster of Brown University, the public will come to distrust the people we need to trust if we are to make good decisions both personally and publicly. Listen as Oster talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about vaccines and the lessons learned and yet-to-be learned from the Covid pandemic It’s an incomplete data set to talk about school closures without looking  at the negative effects without evaluating the additional costs of treating those teachers and grandparents in a healthcare system collapsing from the burden of a naive population without therapeutics Clotted cream can be made with pasteurized cream Most culinary uses can be made with pasteurized cream or milk since cultures will be introduced from other sources and native pathogens make recipes fail https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/diseases-injuries-risks/factsheets/2021-covid-19-level-3-disease I see two mistakes that promote cynicism in this and other podcasts in this series The first one is to treat “public health” as a monolithic enterprise with a fixed viewpoint The second is to follow up on this and take either the worst moments or the most extreme viewpoints and ascribe them to the entire “public health” enterprise said that children need to be in school; however this podcast suggests that the entire public health establishments ignored the harms of extended school closures If we treated the economics profession or the opposition to school closings in the same way this podcast treats public health we would come up with similarly ridiculous policies — encouraging infection among healthy people My cynicism about public health was established well before the pandemic because its definition changed At least here in Australia there was a shift in the 1980s away from mundane matters of vaccinations sewage treatment and cleanliness of eating establishments in favour of lecturing about the evils of sugary drinks or abusing statistics to “prove” that coal power station emissions were killing thousands each year Public health had become a playground for activist academics Then the pandemic hit and there could hardly have been a less well equipped band of “experts” suddenly in the spotlight It takes a group like that to concoct the surreal idea of preventing the spread of a disease by confining all the uninfected people to their homes (a cargo-cult quarantine) The *competent* minority of public health experts were roundly criticised for going against the consensus At least that’s how it played in Australia What I saw of goings on in the USA suggests it wasn’t all that different there My favourite headline from the time was Media outraged that not enough Swedes are dying That’s it in a nutshell: purity of action mattered; effectiveness was secondary Public health deserves opprobrium for the crazy COVID actions Maybe a discussion with Haidt and Oster on Parenting There is one point that needs to be refined   I am not advocating for one position or another; just trying to point out that some decisions are harder than they look Both Russ and Emily seem to agree that it was wrong (or more wrong) to take away the choice from grandparents to see their grandchildren during the pandemic Grandparents can express their preferences for the risk of dying vs the enjoyment of interacting with grandchildren and if we were discussing choices that affected only the grandparents who were making these choices flying to see the family for the holidays comes with a risk of the airplane crushing but grandparents can decide to take this risk to see grandkids It is their choice and has no effect on others such as increasing the spread of the virus and this spread is among the vulnerable population (elderly this is no longer just an individual choice One person seeing their grandkids could endanger the rest of the community if collective action is required to produce the desired outcome those who would prefer less risk are deprived of their choice in the matter by those who are willing to tolerate risk we are reducing the freedom of choice for some individuals by giving the freedom of choice to others This is what makes public health decisions difficult This is the same argument for why vaccinations are required Because individual actions are not enough to protect the population Surprising that Emily and Russ took one position on vaccines but another on freedom of choice to see grandkids It is essentially the same type of choice Unpasteurized milk is a gain of function experiment without bio security considering the current rapid spread of H5 N1 in American dairy herds The fact that not all people in Europe have fluoridation is irrelevant to the value of fluoridation  The reason has to do with municipal infrastructure  They tend to have fewer water treatment plants Greater Vancouver and Brussels have about the same size of population but Greater Vancouver has 2 treatment plants and Brussels has 26  Water fluoridation loses its cost effectiveness when there are many water treatment plants per capita public health does assume that people will choose not to have a dental decay if it can be avoided  Fluoridation reduces dental decay by approximately 25% safely and cost effectively   No one has to do anything to but to drink the water to achieve at least a one quarter reduction in the most common chronic disease of childhood and a leading chronic disease of adulthood The current attacks on water fluoridation are baseless and benefit only the sellers of water filters (e.g dentists for those people who can afford dental care “Public health officials should tell the truth Otherwise…the public will come to distrust the people we need to trust if we are to make good decisions both personally and publicly.” Have we not already reached  —  even gone past  —  that point of public distrust I appreciate Professor Oster’s care in the wording of her statement as well as admire what I take to be responsible professional restraint and I thank her for providing admirable example But — with my appreciation specifically noted as well as the need for rigorous investigation recognized — I suggest that there is sufficient evidence to support my question Most people I know who buy raw milk from a farmer DO pasteurize their milk Homogenization breaks down the fat molecules so the cream cannot be separated Some believe the fat broken down is less healthy but I would love to buy non-homogenized milk that was already pasteurized at the store I don’t know if that will ever be an option since people lump the two processes together and only discuss raw versus processed With the disclaimer that I am only a novice cheese maker: Pasteurization impacts how the milk acts in cheese making You can still make cheese with pasteurized milk but sometimes you have to add calcium chloride to get it to form curds correctly Ultra-pasturized milk is completely unusable in cheese making because of how much the milk proteins are changed Raw milk is superior for some types of cheese making but you want to be using the freshest milk from a farm with good hygiene and testing practices The health of the cow the milk comes from is very important Also for safety reasons some raw milk cheeses have to be aged for a certain minimum time during which the amount of acid in the cheese naturally increases I watched a documentary about the meat industry in the USA Apparently all meat was irradiated because the butchering process sometimes might introduce poop One expert had a memorable remark: on being told the meat was safe she said — with conviction — “I don’t want to eat cow poop Is the safety of pasteurisation just opening the door for less diligence about cleanliness Some overlap with the argument of whether an airbag or a sharp spike would do more for road safety but it’s not actually true that dental health outcomes are worse in Europe where water fluoridation doesn’t happen (we generally have it in toothpaste instead) If you compare the US to countries like Bulgaria But if you compare it to relatively similar countries in terms of per capita economic output and other results Additional ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode: A few more readings and background resources: * As an Amazon Associate This is Emily's sixth appearance on EconTalk Our conversation will be based on a recent audio essay you did for the New York Times on public health messaging We'll also talk about some of the health issues in the air as we approach the second Trump Administration We'll probably get into some other topics as well Russ Roberts: I talked about the incoming Trump Administration We're recording this--I just want to let listeners know--remind listeners this is November of 2024 This will come out sometime probably in December but it will still have issues that are the same as these even if some people who might talk about them are not the same you talked in your piece at the Times about three issues that have been discussed recently and championed [?] that conversation by Robert F who has been nominated by President-elect Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services these three issues are often lumped together as if they're all the same What's beautiful about them is they all illustrate something slightly different let's talk about measles and maybe vaccines in general when you look at the landscape of information about vaccines there's a tremendous amount of information suggesting safety and efficacy of childhood vaccinations which is what we're talking about with measles The measles vaccine in particular has been around for many I think it's easy to forget that things like measles and pertussis and the basic stuff we vaccinate kids for and they certainly killed a lot of people before vaccines this is a space where it's both we have a lot of evidence of safety There's a lot of reason to think that high vaccination rates are important measles is actually something that lives on surfaces You need a very high vaccination rate to generate herd immunity; but the vaccine itself is incredibly protective we have this sort of basic misinformation about links between different people could see things differently the evidence on which that idea is based was literally made up Somebody made it up in the service of money But the study that initially linked those was just not correct there's tons of data after that from large scale data sets that show that there's no link there this is a place where I think that the evidence on both benefits and the evidence on risks is really clear that vaccination for measles and for pertussis and some of these early childhood vaccines are a really good idea but I don't think we had the vaccine in 1955 but we'll let listeners weigh in on that if they want the bottom line is it's a relatively recent thing All of them have a risk of other effects that we don't intend; and it's really a question of how likely those effects are your point here is that the effects are very small There may be other issues that could they come from the vaccine but that's not the one that we should ever think about no one has ever [?] through a vaccine or that your child isn't going to get a fever Many kids do get a fever about 10 days after the measles vaccine I think we don't want to pretend that literally there could never be any--that there are no possible side effects of something I think we need to give the message that those side effects are small there's a lot of reason why you should want your kid to have this vaccine so they don't get the measles I would remind listeners that I interviewed Brian Deer on this issue of autism and vaccination and scientific fraud terrible--his investigation of what happened there and why this came to even be a possibility that there was this connection between autism and vaccination and I encourage--we'll put a link to it and listeners can find it most of the milk that people in the United States consume is pasteurized It's a procedure that was developed by Louis Pasteur It's also actually a miracle of modern science because it allows us to transport and store milk safely milk would be transported fairly long distances without pasteurization like large tuberculosis outbreaks associated with milk I think it is not an exaggeration to say that this also saved many millions of lives as a result of having this pasteurization Raw milk has an interesting regulatory space in America which is literally just unpasteurized milk It cannot be transported across state lines you can't milk your cow in Rhode Island and sell it in Massachusetts different states have different rules about whether you can sell raw milk at the farm There's a variety of--the regulatory landscape is very complicated it is definitely true that raw milk is more likely to cause disease than pasteurized milk if you look at foodborne outbreaks of illness from dairy they are disproportionately--relative to the consumption amounts it's sort of clear why that would be: When you milk the cow there might be poop around because there's poop it's not surprising to learn that raw milk would cause more disease Having said that--and this is the sort of nuance of the point--it's not that likely that raw milk will cause disease if you count up the chance and number of cases and how much foodborne illness we see from it It's within the kinds of risk numbers that people would take in other aspects of their lives--some people Would only a crazy person drink raw milk?' I don't think so Is it the safest form of milk to drink from an illness perspective The safest form of milk to drink is pasteurized milk I think there's a sort of--this is the point I was trying to make in the Times essay--I think to tell people that 'choosing to drink raw milk from a local farm is just as problematic as choosing not to vaccinate your kid for measles,' I don't think that those things are comparable in the quality of the evidence that you'd be basing that on I think there are advantages to raw milk in cuisine I think you can do things with raw milk that you can't do-- Emily Oster: This is a little--people tell you all kinds of stuff about raw milk: it has this feature and that feature I don't think those things are real well-supported in the data some people--I mean maybe this is what you're saying--some people like the way it tastes more I think what I'm saying--and it could be false--and one of the lessons of this conversation for me and in our world generally right now is: it's really hard to figure out what's true but there's a certain aspect of that in modern times that is especially troubling that's because a lot of people yell on both sides of many issues--distort and then you have to decide of the people yelling You can sometimes look at the data yourself; but it's a very strange world that we're in right now The thing I was told--and I might get this wrong so again listeners help me out--is that you can't make clotted cream from pasteurized milk It may be just a matter of degree--it's easier or harder--but there are countries where you can buy raw milk there are many places where people sell raw--I mean this could be traditions and cultural reasons and they love clotted cream or whatever it is or whatever is the real reason cuisine-wise I think that there's something that you gain by having some nuance here which is this ability to make it clearer to people What are the circumstances that would make--if you said "safest choice" from an illness standpoint'--if we totally dismiss the concept and say this is incredibly dangerous and no one should do it,' we sort of miss the opportunity to explain to people: 'You know here are some things you want to be thoughtful about.' Like 'You want to get this from a trusted source You want to go to a farm where you know that they're washing things correctly before they put the milk in.' And those kind of lessons are not really possible if we're not communicating in a nuanced way They just want to be told the right thing to do we believe--I think correctly--that there are no solutions only trade-offs; and telling people the magnitude of the trade-offs is not always what they are interested in And I think it's something that I struggle with because my whole I do very much take the point that some people would just like to be told what--would be like to be told what to do I continue to think we have too many--we spend too much time with the view that everyone wants to be told what to do In a world in which people are doing their own research Emily Oster: a good chunk more than used to are doing their own research in the world in which people are doing their own research you need to give them information to help them do that smarter We have to--as public health communication we have to respect the fact that people are looking into what we're saying and they're trying to figure out what is the right thing giving them better information to make that choice is part of the job of public health I think about my own decision-making here as president of a college in Jerusalem nuance just doesn't help because you can't quantify these things reliably you still have a hard choice to make sometimes If the upside risk is small and the downside risk is great But I'm just wondering if that's my pitiful human frailty and having trouble with nuance--if it just makes it easier for me I guess the way I would see it is I think that if we're going to encourage nuance and thoughtfulness in decisions we also have to help people think about priorities and sort of what decisions are really worth where there's a real trade-off or there's a real what are the choices where we want--we actually really want--people to be able to engage with them where it matters a lot for either themselves or for public health here's what we don't recommend,' but we don't want to have them that be the decision they invest a lot in Let me give you an example of this; and so I do a lot of parenting stuff and I talk to pediatricians about how we are communicating to parents one of the things about being a new parent is you get like a--parents are looking to do the right thing there's a tremendous amount of advice and things you're told where you're told what to do it's actually pretty important to make--or at least there's a lot of evidence--that one choice would be medically a better idea than another there are many things where the pediatrician may say should you start with purees or baby-led weaning 'This is what you should do.' Because they think people are looking for an answer that's a place where it's not so much that you want nuance If you want me to tell you which one to pick if you really want to dig into something where you want to make a nuanced decision here are the actual important things to think about There are many areas of life where I would say--the way I would describe it: The stakes are small even if one decision is wildly better than the other you really shouldn't sweat that small stuff there are many places where it's very large--the outcome is very large if you're choosing between trying to decide where to go to college your life will be radically different if you choose one over the other it's impossible to know which one of those is better for you you might have some idea or a subject you're particularly interested in I think it's very hard for people in those situations because they do realize there's a lot at stake; and the fact that they don't have any information about what the outcomes is going to be is very hard for humans Russ Roberts: Let's go to the third issue--which is kind of shocking to me how this has come into the public discourse--which is fluoride Emily Oster: I think of these three examples fluoride is by far the most complicated on a bunch of dimensions Partly the data is hard to understand for people and partly just the whole conversation is very complicated let's--we can back up and parcel it out a bit fluoride is good for protecting your teeth 'What do we know about fluoride in general?' It's fluoride toothpaste--there's a lot of evidence that that prevents cavities in kids and in adults They're bad because your teeth hurt and you need--but actually they're kind of broadly bad It's not good for you to have a lot of untreated cavities in order to address the so inequity of access to fluoride for a long time been in many places--in Israel also most places in the United States--there's municipal water fluoride systems Fluoride is added to municipal water supplies so people get access to fluoride with the hope that that will improve dental health The evidence supporting the improvement of dental health there I think is kind of reasonably good some of the best evidence comes from Israel where you stopped putting fluoride in the water and then a lot more kids had bad cavities especially with the existing knowledge about fluoride that actually this approach improves teeth The concern that people have is that fluoride in water can cause neurodevelopmental problems when consumed by pregnant women fluoride is a toxin that affects your brain what's hard about this is it is true that at very high levels that that's the case India--where the groundwater fluoride levels are very high: like five times as high as what you'd see in municipal water supplies in the United States at those levels there's some evidence of negative impacts--not like it's spectacularly large but there's some neurodevelopmental stuff that you're seeing We don't see that in the data that looks at fluoride levels that are closer to if you are a person who spends a lot of time with data is: The dose matters here this seems to be good for protecting teeth and doesn't seem to have any negative effects you're having an argument or a discussion about what's the right dose: what's the point at which it becomes too much I'll give you one example of why this is so hard somebody wrote to me the other day and they were like: 'What about this study that shows that concentrations at this level which is the same as the level in the United States water supplies this is not measuring the water supply level This is measuring the urinary fluoride level which turns out to be basically half of the water.' It was something was so in the weeds about how are we measuring fluoride in these different studies And that's where I think you get into trouble--where it's actually very hard to communicate nuance because there's so much nuance and we cannot possibly expect everybody to be an expert on the difference between municipal water fluoride levels and urinary fluoridation levels esoteric thing that people don't want to invest in because you can't say fluoride is totally fine at any level and because it's also clear that probably is fine at some level we're arguing something in the middle that's tough I think that's why this conversation has gotten so confusing Russ Roberts: What's fascinating to me about this is that when I heard that Robert F [RFK Jr.] was saying something about fluoride--whatever the statement was didn't matter: it was taken out of context almost certainly to suggest that he was crazy--and I thought When fluoride was first--meaning that's absurd that's crazy--when fluoride was first starting to become prevalent in the United States--I just looked it up many or most cities in America had fluoridated their water there was a big issue about--there were people who claimed it was a Communist plot And the--but there was something considered un-American--and this is a really interesting issue for me--in forcing everyone to consume this "safe," generally a great deal for your teeth I think we'll come back in a little bit and talk about COVID I think culturally for Americans around COVID policy had to do with this I don't think we should force people to do certain things.' Now I think most people other than the hardest-core libertarians are in favor of seatbelt laws Many of my friends are not because they're hard-core libertarians partly because it's part of conspiracy thinking; and you would do something with the nation's water supply seems different to my total surprise that many countries don't fluoridate their water accused me of sanewashing RFK [RFK Jr.--Econlib Ed.] has said are--really do not make any sense and-- Russ Roberts: It's not the topic of this conversation-- Emily Oster: Not the topic of this conversation-- But I allow you to make such a correction if you feel the need I do think in this case--it's my belief having read the data and thought carefully about it--is that we should be fluoridating municipal water supplies In part because I think that actually the people who would suffer from taking it out are largely the most vulnerable individuals because people with good access to dentistry--people whose kids are going to the dentist all the time--they're going to get these fluoride rinses or other ways that they're getting fluoride The value of putting it in the water is that it enables it to be available even to groups that are otherwise not getting as much access but I do understand why people want to talk about it Russ Roberts: I think it's kind of ironic that in Europe where we generally think of it as much more of a nanny-state than the United States and where individual freedom and living on the frontier is not so big; but as it is in the United States--they let their people drink--a lot of countries let their people drink raw milk and drink unfluoridated water Although what I'm curious about is in China and India whether that five-fold thing: Do they have fabulous teeth I think there's a limit to how much fluoride you need to improve your dental health Russ Roberts: I wonder if they get other effects Russ Roberts: Before we move on to some general issues around this you have people who are not sophisticated in how they think about risk--isn't it better to just tell them not the whole story Emily Oster: I often think that if people were robots if your view was basically: the way that people are reacting to information is that they hear what you say and they do the thing you said in a world which everyone is the same--like has the same preferences--it would be fine to just say let me actually--so my husband has some academic work on this where they think about he's thinking about how should you show data to economists How much should we express our results as either the answer is two you could ask that question if people are really economists here But what is the amount of information we want to provide people I think that their key insight is that it matters a lot whether everybody has the same preferences--everybody's interested in doing the same thing with the data In a world in which people's preferences are heterogeneous then it's already a little tricky for there to be one piece of advice Even if you thought everybody was going to do it apply the data to my preferences and tell you what to do.' Well if you're not a person with my preferences I think that's one problem; and that's one reason why nuance can help people here are the benefits,' they can combine that with their preferences to think about the right choices I think the second piece--which is probably more practically important--is that people aren't going to listen to you Russ Roberts: Meaning don't put them in the same bed as you Emily Oster: Don't have your baby in your bed Don't have your baby in your bed: It's very dangerous That's a very clear piece of advice that everybody gets Many people--very high shares of people--co-sleep with their babies and that's for a bunch of different reasons we just want to give that advice because that's the best advice.' But the thing is that people aren't listening to it and they're doing something else you've lost the opportunity to explain to them Or to give them some more context for what circumstances might make this more or less risky You've basically made the outcome worse by trying to tell people they don't listen; and then they do it in a way that is less safe I think that nuance can be an opportunity for us to help people make the best choices even if those best choices almost like aren't the first-best It is like a way to help people make a second-best choice and I think this is important to acknowledge there will be some people who behave in the way that you don't think is the right way here are the safest ways to do it,' you are probably going to get a little bit of an uptick in the number of people who are co-sleeping you need to trade that off with the fact that everyone or that people will be doing it in a safer way we're economists: We're very comfortable with the idea of there are risks this is not necessarily a Pareto-improvement I think that that's much harder sometimes in public health but I don't like the idea of public health officials making those trade-offs for us Partly because of what you said earlier: we have different preferences The idea that they would try to figure out how many people are going to ignore the advice now that we've said 'It's okay if you do it this way,' and they don't end up doing it that way but they just feel they've gotten a blanket permission I just don't think that's the right way for public health officials to make the decision about what to say my argument would be--and I know you are aware of this--is that: the destruction of trust and expertise is mainly a bad thing the last few years have done incredibly devastating damage to the trust that experts have from the public They make statements that are not true--that either ignore the nuance I just think it's really important to just tell the truth even if you don't like the consequences but I think we also erode trust by not explaining uncertainty very unwilling to say: Here's what we know now this came up--when we talk about COVID if you want--but this came up a lot in COVID when information was coming out at all times and public health officials were changing their advice quite frequently Like: What new information did you learn that made you do this And that's a way that people--changing your mind without explaining is really a way to lose people's trust Here's how we're going to learn about it more and we'll come back and tell you later what we've learned and maybe it will change,' I think that would have been a way to pull more people along Russ Roberts: And to be fair to the people in those situations--some of whom I have little or no respect for I am quite aware of the challenges of the job--to say-- Russ Roberts: 'We're going to--we'll just explain it We'll tell the truth and we'll just explain it.' People's attention spans are short Some of the explaining requires a level of sophistication that listeners don't have I don't want to pretend this is so straightforward I also think that that explaining is a skill it is something that could be developed and invested in one of the pieces of the advice--if anyone were ever to ask me 'What would you have public health invest in?' I think one of the things I would have them invest in is this kind of And it's a different skill than producing the research I don't think it's crazy to imagine that being something that public health authorities invested in learning more about and figuring out not only do the spokespeople need to be trained but the listeners--the public--could be trained Russ Roberts: There was an enormous fad--I don't know if it's still going on--but there was enormous fad in teaching statistics to high school and younger children understanding uncertainty is probably one of the most important things we don't teach Teaching statistics is not the way to get people to do that which is the application of combinatorics and then some definitions about what's-- Those are all somewhat variable and somewhat useful But they don't give people the sophistication they need--how to think about--uncertainty and risk we way underestimate how much kids could learn this stuff like--I have a talk I give about where does data come from Which is about--I start with: How do we know what share of people in America are overweight you dive into--and I've given a version of that talk to 11-year-olds and to the Brown Corporation how would you figure this out?' Somebody's Would you weigh people at a football game?' And Those are a particular kind of people.' And And that's something actually kids are really good at I've thought about teaching an economics class that just starts with the question: Are we better off as a country than we were 50 years ago when you start to think about how hard that question is to answer and the number of pieces involved I want to apply some of what we're talking about to COVID We talked--we did an episode in November of 2020 about the decision to close schools during COVID but maybe not--it's still a contentious time People have not come to a consensus about what we've learned in the aftermath I wanted to start with the question of what you think we've learned since then You came out very strongly against closing schools Has anything that you have seen since then changed your mind Emily Oster: Nothing that I have seen since then has changed my mind I wrote that piece with the title "Schools Aren't Super-Spreaders" in October of 2020 I think that basically all of the--we were basing that on some data from Europe some data we'd gotten from the United States some of the early just basic early observations about what was going on in schools that were open Subsequent data--some of which was from us complicated studies--basically completely proved that out but that particularly that first school year when schools were closed the schools that were open did not spread a lot of COVID I just think that the data ended up--the data we had at that time--was supported by all the other data that came out later is how problematic the school closures have been long-term looking at what were the downsides for kids Part of the reason I pushed this so hard in October of 2020 was it already seemed to me like this was really going to be very bad for kids and bad for their learning and probably bad for many other things I've continued a project in the wake of the pandemic about what's happened to test scores but especially in places that had closed schools--took an enormous hit during the pandemic I think that there are cohorts of kids who are going to be affected forever I just think this was an even bigger mistake than I thought it was at the time Certainly relative to the amount of hate I got in October of 2020 I think there are many more people who would now say And I was shocked at the vitriol directed at you partly ideological issues around partisan politics the response is not really a careful look at the data I think that there's a far--maybe there's a sort of far-left contingent on this I make people angry on all sides of the spectrum on the particular issue of school closures: Yes I think that there's a set of people on the Left who still feel that school closures were a good idea Maybe that they should have been closed longer that if only we had shut everything down and done nothing I also think that position has become more fringe part of what was tough in the early parts of this were many people thought that this position like: 'This position of we should open schools,' was basically something that 'You're not right.' Not so much on the right There's always going to be people who don't like me I think the part that's interesting as an economist is that I remember that debate very well and I reveled in it a bit because it was a wonderful example of how economists understand some things that are not well understood When I would argue that we should open the schools or that we shouldn't mask four-year-olds or three-year-olds or two-year-olds because it had consequences for their ability to interact with other human beings You can't equate having healthy social development and healthy educational development with children dying.' And an economist is kind of acculturated to feel that there is some amount of social dysfunction and some amount of educational disaster that is not worth enduring even if some lives are saved because there's an enormous to those things that are lost And I can't measure them and equate them and then do a cost-benefit analysis Some economists can--and think they can--and I think that's wrong just the very idea that you would risk some death to save a generation from social dysfunction was considered insane And it's interesting: a lot of people didn't that way of thinking--that there are trade-offs and that you would want to think about the sides of the trade-offs think about the educational costs and think about how those are spread across social groups and whatever it is that there would be trade-offs--that that idea was just not--there was a very clear if one person got COVID at school and died it would not have been worth it to open schools for everyone I got the sense that that's kind of what people believe-- if I told you I can open the schools--I can open all the schools 100% and give kids exactly this but one additional elderly person will die--they would be And I think that's a kind of view about this that one could have; but it isn't the view that I had And I also think it would have been useful to say that's how we're thinking about the trade-offs.' the other thing that made me--that I found really complicated and problematic about this--was there was a kind of component of this which is: you're trying to hurt poor families who are going to be the ones who are most likely to have COVID like: Those kids are also the ones who lost the most They're the ones who are the most likely to have school closures and they lost the most from school closures the other thing I'll just say on a personal level is that people would--at that time 'You just want your kids out of the house.' Like 'You're just advocating for open schools because you don't like having your kids around.' And 2020--in school five days a week for the entire year I am not doing this for my kids.' First of all I didn't want them to have them in my house; but I love them very much I just thought school was a better place for them But the thing--this was about advocating for people who didn't have those kind of resources And I thought that was a really odd--that was a very frustrating interaction I think about people who made the argument that: if we send the kids to school It is true they are not very likely to be harmed by it because we found out fairly early on that this was a very different disease for the young versus the old They're going to go home and kill their grandparents.' the idea that we should make public policy based on that ignored two things: The possibility that we could tell grandparents that their children might be more risky to be around more importantly: most grandparents don't want to punish their grandchildren by having them have a terrible educational experience and social dysfunction because they're looking at other people with masks on all day the idea that we should make that decision for them--coming back to our earlier discussion--I found very sad There are many times during the pandemic where people would say so-and-so--we shouldn't have this event because there will be old people there.' And so but old people can't come because it's more dangerous for them to this wedding,' say you're telling a person who is 84 years old They're going to die with or without COVID and you're telling them they can't enjoy this moment that's precious to them I feel like we went in--partly kind of insane in the spring of--maybe in May or something of 2020 where I got it I was writing a lot about grandparents and daycare and this trade-offs for people I was spending a day--I have a two-month-old grandson I was spending a day-a-week taking care of him now my daughter doesn't want me to see him because she's afraid that I'm going to get sick.' And she said 'I would rather die than not have this time with my grandkid.' And this is--and it was just we are really missing something if we think--it was just a moment of: We're really missing something someday you'll be a grandmother--and the story will make you cry even earlier in the telling of it Because I tear up just hearing it; and I didn't get the full text and have the emotional investment we've been talking about lack of nuance--the death/no death thing the idea that you would deprive a grandmother--I understand why a daughter might be worried about her mother dying from contact with her grandchild And it's hard to say that: It's a selfish decision I wrote to this person--I had written to her my daughter relented because we needed the child care and now we have another grandkid,' and everything But I think it was a moment of realizing that's a trade-off I want to make because this is--I don't know you were [?] involved in this issue of school closing and the issues we've been talking about Are there other parts of the COVID public health messaging that you think we really got wrong and need to learn something different for the next time Or do you think this was just an example of people struggling in uncertainty and making mistakes inevitably I look back on it and what overwhelms me is how little we've learned And I think our partisan identities have greatly hampered our ability to learn lessons from this It's not what normally would be a political issue It's about human flourishing and safety; and it's weird I think that--I continue to think the current messaging around COVID vaccines needs to be a little more targeted I think we're way under-emphasizing the value for older adults of getting consistent boosters and probably overestimating the value to younger people the conversation about masking was very complicated and probably could have been more nuanced the schools are the biggest policy failure but that's partly because that's the one that I was most--like the fact that we failed to protect nursing homes which were the source of such an enormous share of the actual deaths Russ Roberts: Let's close and talk about your new podcast the idea is--this is in partnership with The Free Press and the idea is to talk about some of these big parenting issues that have been coming up in the last couple of years that people are hearing a lot about--phones Why is there so much mental health issues with kids We have an episode on discipline in which we talk to everybody from the gentle parenting/never-punish side and trying to understand the differences across those perspectives is there anything that's bringing them together and just--it's basically about perspective Russ Roberts: You've become a parenting guru and maybe the most famous one in the country alive right now There's some dead ones who are pretty famous Emily Oster: It feels like a tremendous amount of responsibility because I want to help people make good choices but also huge privilege and a very good use of my talents relative to what I was doing before Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Emily Oster Enter your email address to subscribe to the Econlib monthly newsletter our final episode drops and asks the biggest question of all: “Should You Even Have Kids?” For most of human history, having kids wasn’t really a choice. Social expectations, a lack of birth control, and limited autonomy for women presented a simple menu of options: Have kids or join the convent. But after the 1960s ushered in easy, effective contraception and greater career opportunities for women many could choose how many children to have—or whether they should have them at all Fast forward to today, and more people are choosing not to have children for a variety of reasons. Some say they don’t want kids because of financial strain, or climate apocalypse, or because they simply don’t want them. Others say they do want kids, so they can heal generational trauma A man once told me it was important for him to bear heirs so he could pass on his spectacular genes as many countries got richer and women chose to have fewer kids the fertility rate has fallen by more than half For economists—and I’m one of them—the speed of this plummeting fertility rate is cause for alarm Economic growth partly depends on population growth Retirees rely on younger workers to generate taxes and contributions to Social Security we cap things off with a fundamental question: Should you even have kids—and what happens if we don’t Spoiler: I won’t tell you whether or not to have kids It’s a personal decision and also a financial one our final episode drops and asks the biggest question of all: \u201CShould You Even Have Kids?\u201D For most of human history, having kids wasn\u2019t really a choice. Social expectations, a lack of birth control, and limited autonomy for women presented a simple menu of options: Have kids or join the convent. But after the 1960s ushered in easy, effective contraception and greater career opportunities for women many could choose how many children to have\u2014or whether they should have them at all Fast forward to today, and more people are choosing not to have children for a variety of reasons. Some say they don\u2019t want kids because of financial strain, or climate apocalypse, or because they simply don\u2019t want them. Others say they do want kids, so they can heal generational trauma Maybe that\u2019s the underlying motivation even if most would not put it quite so. . . bluntly.  For economists\u2014and I\u2019m one of them\u2014the speed of this plummeting fertility rate is cause for alarm we cap things off with a fundamental question: Should you even have kids\u2014and what happens if we don\u2019t?  Spoiler: I won\u2019t tell you whether or not to have kids It\u2019s a personal decision and also a financial one Print Every generation has its parent whisperer My mother and father had Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician who promoted the revolutionary idea that children should be cherished and held “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” became one of the best-selling books of the 20th century When I became pregnant, I relied on “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel, which dominated the market for years after it was first published in 1984. I gather it’s since fallen into some disfavor for what a number of new parents see as an alarmist approach leading detractors to call it “What to Freak Out About When You Are Expecting.” As President Trump takes a hammer to reproductive rights a Mississippi legislator proposes making it illegal to ejaculate without the ‘intent to fertilize an embryo.’ After my daughter was born in 1992, I relied on T. Berry Brazelton a deeply compassionate pediatrician whose “Touchpoints” books popularized new ways of thinking about children’s development Then along came Harvey Karp who wrote 2002’s “The Happiest Baby on the Block.” His important contribution was the idea that the first three months of life are essentially the “fourth trimester.” He taught us to trigger the baby’s comfort reflex by swaddling He was also my daughter’s first pediatrician though by the time he published his mega-best-seller Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea to Trump the day after his inauguration exemplified the principled criticism the president deserves regardless of his victory Friends my age who have become grandparents tell me that things have changed Their children generally take a more structured approach to mealtimes and bedtime And the parent whisperer for their generation of digital natives raised with easy access to all human knowledge She is Emily Oster, a Brown University economist and mother of two whose books “Expecting Better,” “Cribsheet” and “The Family Firm” encourage parents to take a data-driven approach to decision-making. (Her popular website is ParentData.) Armed with the best and most relevant information from high-quality studies, she argues, moms and dads can make their own decisions about subjects such as breast feeding, sleep training, toilet training and — perhaps her most controversial position — whether it’s OK to have an occasional glass of wine while pregnant (I had two glasses of wine on the first night of the Los Angeles riots and my daughter has degrees from UC Berkeley and Yale.) confirmed my fears — although doctors now tend to recommend some sort of pain blocker for the procedure “I wanted to approach pregnancy in the way that I was accustomed to in the rest of my life as a person who loves data,” Oster told me by phone Thursday “I wrote ‘Expecting Better’ out of that frustration.” she made decisions about the evening meal as an economist Did it make more sense to cook from scratch “How does the cost of these choices compare to meal planning and prepping on my own?” she writes or “opportunity cost,” as an economist would put it “This economic approach to decision making,” she writes Karp once told me that becoming a parent for the first time is like standing on one side of a high brick wall: You can only imagine what is on the other side “most of us are prepared to be a bit surprised by the whole experience knew things would come up that I didn’t expect.” so she would not inadvertently scratch herself Then her mother told her that would ensure that Penelope would never learn to use her hands Oster dived into the research. Though she found no studies on whether mittens prevent babies from learning to use their hands, she did find one showing that over the last half-century, there were only 20 reports of babies being injured by mittens— hardly enough to get worked up about older-generation advice that I think is often very well-meaning and is not always helpful,” Oster told me “I think part of the issue is actually — and I say this with love — it’s difficult to remember what it’s like to have an infant.” each generation comes up with new parenting practices and prohibitions ‘Put the baby to sleep on its stomach,’ ” Oster said Co-sleeping with your baby is also considered a no-no “It is now absolutely something that you will be told not to do,” said Oster “and it is also something that a large share of people do and do not talk about.” “what I try to be clear about is that co-sleeping is not without its risks there are some low risks in line with risks that people take every day and you have to balance the risk against the benefit.” “The one thing you have to know is that no parent thinks any other parent is doing a good job.” One of the great challenges of parenthood is learning to fortify yourself against everyone else’s opinions and advice This is where the parent whisperers come in: The best of them give you the confidence to do what’s right for you Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. She writes about news, politics and culture. Her columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday. Follow her on Bluesky @rabcarian.bsky.social and Threads @rabcarian. Lifestyle Subscribe for unlimited accessSite Map Vanderbilt’s residential college experience is a special aspect of student life at the university rooted in authentic connection and engagement Undergraduate houses and colleges are led by faculty creating another vibrant layer of learning and community Meet the university’s newest faculty heads of house and heads of college in this special series Jessica Oster, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences and director of graduate studies, is faculty head of Stambaugh House on The Ingram Commons Oster’s research aims to expand the understanding of climate change by unlocking valuable climate information from geologic and environmental archives That means searching deep underground in caves using geochemical tools to develop and interpret records of climate change Oster involves diverse teams of scholars, including undergraduates, in her research, participating in projects like collecting samples from stalagmites found in Tennessee and analyzing cave drip water samples in Curaçao Oster was named a Chancellor Faculty Fellow in 2022 and is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant Watch a video of Jessica Oster and students doing research deep inside Tennessee area caves Read about other faculty heads of house in this special series Learn more about Vanderbilt’s residential colleges Nashville, Tennessee 37240 615-322-7311 • Contact Us Vanderbilt University’s Online Privacy Notice The Florida Thoroughbred Horsemen group in South Florida announced Feb 19 that its executive director Herb Oster is stepping down to concentrate on recent health issues Oster has been embroiled in controversy involving a legislative initiative that would allow Thoroughbred racetracks to operate casinos or card rooms without being required to run live racing The FTH initially supported the legislative effort when bills were filed with the Florida Legislature Jan "By supporting the statutory amendments to Chapter 550 to enable Gulfstream Park's live racing schedule to become independent of the venue's pari-mutuel license we are securing a sustainable future for horsemen in Florida that sensibly addresses the challenging economic realities facing the industry," Oster said back in January After a meeting with Stronach Group representative Keith Brackpool who told Florida horsemen that live racing could not be guaranteed beyond 2028 because the land on which Gulfstream sits is too valuable the FTH board of directors changed its position and now opposes the legislative change Sign up for BloodHorse Daily "The future of Thoroughbred racing in South Florida is too important and too uncertain if HB 105 is passed We cannot take that risk without a definitive plan going forward," read a Feb "Unless and until that solution is developed and agreed upon the Florida Thoroughbred Horsemen will be against decoupling or any legislation that threatens continued Thoroughbred racing in South Florida." Photo: Coglianese PhotosRacing at Gulfstream Park The FTH will establish a search committee to find a suitable replacement for Oster.  "The organization extends its best wishes to Herb for his future endeavors and health," the FTH said in its announcement of Oster's resignation "His contributions to the Thoroughbred racing community will be fondly remembered and greatly missed." This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page When economist Emily Oster became pregnant with her first child in 2010 she found stress relief in numbers and facts about parenting Data abated her anxieties and answered questions that her pediatrician books and the internet often couldn’t agree on — questions like is it OK to drink coffee during pregnancy and what is the risk of miscarriage in prenatal testing Pregnancy seemed like “a world of arbitrary rules,” Oster later wrote in the introduction to “Expecting Better,” her 2013 parenting guide that debunked conventional parenting myths with data and research was translated into 19 languages and catapulted Oster into the spotlight as a modern Amid the anxiety-generating landscape of parenting guidance filled with conflicting and sometimes patronizing advice Oster offered women the best research so they could decide for themselves what worked best for them Comedian Amy Schumer called Oster “the non-judgmental girlfriend holding our hand and guiding us through pregnancy and motherhood.” Oster went on to write three more parenting books: “Cribsheet” and “The Family Firm” for parents of toddlers and school-age kids, and “The Unexpected,” which she co-wrote with Dr. Nathan Fox. She also founded ParentData — a hub for data-based parenting advice which includes a newsletter and a podcast and has around 230,000 subscribers While Oster’s data-driven approach has earned her a large following Oster’s advocacy to reopen schools put her in the center of a heated political debate attracting pushback from public officials and teachers Now in “Raising Parents,” a new podcast in partnership with The Free Press Oster continues to venture into controversial subjects most provocative questions about our culture: Are we over-parenting our kids Are boys being left behind in education and society What does the data actually say about the most effective approach to disciplining kids Her guests include big names such as Becky Kennedy Oster doesn’t always agree with her guests bringing in data to support or challenge their arguments And she doesn’t tell parents what to think but instead distills thorny parenting issues into practical take-aways — you shouldn’t discipline your kids when angry setting consistent boundaries is important and kids need independence to become confident adults In a climate fraught with suspicion and discord can Emily Oster cut through the confusion with the cool reason of data wore a black top with a black pearl-like necklace to our 9:30 a.m and recorded a few Instagram stories for her 430,000 followers whose message began with “Urgent!,” asked whether she should cancel a birthday party due to hand-foot-and-mouth disease exposure (no need to cancel Oster said.) She is matter-of-fact in her delivery with hints of a deadpan sense of humor “You’d think that she’d have her brain in data and spreadsheets all the time but she’s really warm,” said Tamar Avishai a producer of the ParentData and “Raising Parents” podcasts Oster will answer a series of written questions that came in on Instagram that include “What’s the data on eating your placenta after birth?” (There is no data on that but it’s not recommended to just eat raw placenta) and “I worry about accidentally breaking my baby’s fingers every time I dress him New parents are famously nervous about whether they are doing the right things but the modern way we get advice is fraught from the outset you do an internet search looking for answers to “Is it safe to co-sleep?” the information that comes back is very “un-nuanced,” she said The advice is often framed as binaries of do’s and don’ts without much explanation about the underlying reasons “There is just very little that’s in the middle that acknowledges that different people might make different choices and helps people make better choices,” she said ”And even when the answer is ‘definitely you should do this one thing,’ I think people would make that choice more confidently and frequently if we explained why.” Growing up as the daughter of two Yale University economists in New Haven Oster saw how concepts like opportunity cost and comparative advantage operated in everyday life who saw the high opportunity cost of grocery shopping long before grocery delivery was commonplace arranged with the local store to deliver the family’s groceries in milk crates her idea of fun was fiddling with a regression program her dad taught her to use Oster pored over historical records to figure out why the local canal in New Haven was converted into a railroad “It really hit this spark for me that research is a thing that data is a thing where you could answer a question that you might care about,” she told me It was only natural that during her pregnancy she wanted to know the numbers that backed up her pediatrician’s advice But “the numbers were not forthcoming,” she wrote in “Expecting Better.” So she went to randomized trials herself to parse out the risks and benefits of various decisions What she found clashed with the existing conventional wisdom: coffee (up to three cups) was safe she concluded; an occasional glass of wine was fine especially in the second and third trimesters She later wrote: “The key to good decision making is taking the information and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses.” Oster taught at the University of Chicago before becoming a tenured professor of economics at Brown University in 2015 Oster focuses on health and statistical methods Oster applies those skills to evaluate studies and isolate the central ones from the weak ones “A lot of it is about figuring out whether a study is showing a causal effect,” she said there is not one single way to be a good parent And taking into consideration your personal preferences doesn’t make you a bad parent “Oster gave agency back to mothers,” Avishai told me who read classical pregnancy books like “The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy” and “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” told me that reading Oster’s work was the first time she felt treated like a woman capable of digesting complex information and making responsible decisions on the basis of that information Oster’s breastfeeding advice alleviated the feelings of panic and shame for another mother whose milk supply plummeted when she returned to work “It helped me feel that I’ve done my best – and should not beat myself up about it,” Swensen said Oster writes in her 2019 book “Cribsheet” that breastfeeding improves digestion and helps with allergic rashes in babies but “the data does not provide strong evidence for long-term health or cognitive benefits of breastfeeding for your child.” that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s foundation a program at George Mason University supported by Peter Thiel However, subsequent data from the CDC and other experts have supported many of Oster’s findings Oster says she has no regrets about standing her ground on school reopenings “It felt very important and I think something that is true about me is that I am OK with people yelling at me,” she told me It’s not that she’s not affected by criticism but Oster said she tends to move on quickly — in a way “I have aged into understanding what it is to have people be upset with you.” The “Raising Parents” podcast is well-crafted with Oster offering data points to unpack her guests’ comments which are rarely included in conversations about parenting Oster and her producers interviewed over 50 people for the limited series Hearing from a range of experts was “clarifying” and helped her construct a more balanced narrative on topics like ultra-processed foods (they’re not poison but should make up an occasional snack and not the majority of the diet) For the episode titled “Are we feeding children the wrong foods?” who runs food services for a school district near Sacramento and explains how he makes a blood orange appealing to school kids by likening it to fruit punch and letting it drop from his chin “It was just cool to listen to someone who was so passionate about something that is so important where we deeply undervalue that kind of expertise,” Oster said But there were conversations she found unsettling when it’s done “in love and respect,” can help kids and she told listeners about her disagreements with Chaffee’s views She noted that studies show that physical punishment leads to worse behavior at older ages She continued: “To surface my personal views completely independent of anything in the data.” But she wanted to hear Chaffee out “I think it’s really important in these conversations for us to understand where other people are coming from,” she told me “If we’re going to go out and say that every single one of those people is evil and bad and we’re not going to listen to them or engage with them — that’s a really problematic approach.” That bit of the podcast didn’t sit well with some listeners. One mother told me she stopped listening when she reached that point in the conversation. (According to the 2021 American Family Survey 52% of men and 42% of women believe spanking as a discipline method.) Others have questioned Oster’s choice to align with The Free Press citing a hostile work environment and the stifling of intellectual diversity (One comment on Instagram said: ”A big fan of you But a little disappointed this is under the umbrella of The Free Press one of the most biased ‘news’ outlets of our time.”) Oster said she hopes these conversations will get a broader audience “The Free Press ethos is to have conversations even if we do not always agree which felt right for these big questions.” And while Oster doesn’t agree with everything The Free Press publishes — ”which is part of the point!” — she respects the outlet “I knew that we could make something really interesting together,” she said “Raising Parents” has been drawing more men “I think it’s really good — we could use more people of both genders engaged with these questions,” she added I confessed to Oster that my seven-year-old daughter doesn’t eat fruits or vegetables despite my attempts to change that “It’s really hard,” Oster offered empathetically she said she resorted to telling her 9-year-old son that he’d get scurvy if he didn’t finish his vegetables and Oster clarified: “You will not get scurvy Now that Oster has looked at data on nearly every major — and some not-so-major parenting issues (think: rotating toys) — I wondered how that knowledge of best practices colors her own parenting “It’s much easier to tell people what to do than do it,” she said But data relieves her anxieties and boosts her confidence as a parent “After spending much time in this literature you realize — there are some core things that matter — giving your kid a stable home and enough to eat “But most of this stuff around the edges is not as important.” There are still many “answerable” questions she could work on she says — like what the data says about milk storage or treating mastitis robust data is still lacking on many issues The ongoing debate over phones in schools is one of them “I think it’s a good idea to take (the phones) out of schools but I also think it would be great if we could show why it’s a good idea,” she said often sounds just like your fellow mom friend Parents don’t prioritize themselves enough And Oster is not talking about just getting an occasional massage “I think the most important thing for parents to hear is it’s OK to structure your life in a way that gives you something you enjoy that you get to do even every day,” she said Oster’s message to stressed-out parents is simple: “Give yourself a break You’re doing a good job.” The data is there Oster assures us: chances are your kid is going to be OK Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Accidentally ate Brie cheese while pregnant What if I went in a hot tub for just five minutes at 16 weeks pregnant Forgot to take prenatal vitamins for three months My closest friend during my first pregnancy was the search bar of Google I had no friends to ask—I was 27; my friends were years away from having kids My own mother couldn’t remember so many years back she advised: “We were allowed to eat deli meats back then!”  and Google would present me with an array of unsettling and often conflicting answers from Reddit and British mommy forums circa 2005 (thank you I don’t remember how or when, but a copy of the economist’s book of pregnancy wisdom, Expecting Better, landed in my apartment, and it is no understatement to say: It saved me. At last, I had answers. Scientific answers. Data-backed answers. Answers based on peer-reviewed evidence. For a math-major married to an engineer, my husband and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Most importantly: I could finally stop asking the waiter if the cheese in the salad was pasteurized, which was a win for everyone who dined with me that year. (Not once did the waiter know the answer.) “Expecting Better landed in my apartment and it is no understatement to say: It saved me my husband and I couldn’t have been more thrilled,” writes Kahn For millions of women all over the world (the book has been translated into 19 languages) She wasn’t a doctor; she was better than one Emily tells you how to think—how to weigh pros and cons how to evaluate different types of studies how to discern good evidence from bad evidence she reminded me that I had choices during this bewildering and daunting time I was no longer consumed by the crippling anxiety of new parenthood and I was starting to develop real confidence as a mother I have two awesome kids and a third on the way The questions swirling in my head as I fall asleep at night are now much deeper than ‘can I have sushi while pregnant?’ ChatGPT can’t answer them,” writes Kahn The questions swirling in my head as I fall asleep at night are now much deeper than “can I have sushi while pregnant?” ChatGPT can’t answer them I’m thinking about things like: How do I raise an independent and self-sufficient child in an era where we don’t even let our kids walk to the mailbox alone How do I teach my children to be respectful Are my parents right that we’re too soft on kids these days How can I resist screens when everyone around me gives in Why do so many kids have diagnoses these days Why are so many boys taking medication for ADHD Why are so many teen girls unhappy and anxious—and how can I prevent my daughter from becoming one of them How do I make sure my kids turn out to be confident No one has really answered these questions although there are plenty of momfluencers on Instagram trying to convince me that they have I encounter a river of content from “parenting experts” who say that the answer to all of my questions is to spend every waking attending to their every need with kindness and thoughtfulness and the wisdom of 12 TikTok videos asking my kids how they feel about themselves all while making a roast chicken and green beans and a side of toxin-free “Parenting—making choices about how to raise our kids—is perhaps the most high-stakes thing we do in this life,” writes Kahn can and should be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.” All of this leaves many of us wondering: What’s going on I’m not only a mom with Emily Oster books on the shelf I also make podcasts here at The Free Press Over the next eight episodes of our new series Emily will bring her trusted voice to the most challenging and controversial parenting questions today alongside those we most relate to: ordinary parents and kids who is the only kid in his class who walks to school by himself; 18-year-old Ruby who resisted peer pressure and refused to get a phone; and 6-year-old Asa Parenting—making choices about how to raise our kids—is perhaps the most high-stakes thing we do in this life can and should be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves and their families That’s why we are so excited for you to hear Raising Parents Episode 1—“Are We Over-Parenting Our Kids?”—is out today Listen and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode And if you like what you hear, let us know. Write to us at Parenting@TheFP.com and share your thoughts on this episode. Can’t wait to hear from you.  Candace Mittel Kahn is an executive producer at The Free Press Share200 more comments...No posts I had two negronis before I took a pregnancy test I had no friends to ask\u2014I was 27; my friends were years away from having kids My own mother couldn\u2019t remember so many years back she advised: \u201CWe were allowed to eat deli meats back then!\u201D  I don\u2019t remember how or when, but a copy of the economist\u2019s book of pregnancy wisdom, Expecting Better, landed in my apartment, and it is no understatement to say: It saved me. At last, I had answers. Scientific answers. Data-backed answers. Answers based on peer-reviewed evidence. For a math-major married to an engineer, my husband and I couldn\u2019t have been more thrilled. Most importantly: I could finally stop asking the waiter if the cheese in the salad was pasteurized, which was a win for everyone who dined with me that year. (Not once did the waiter know the answer.) \u201CExpecting Better landed in my apartment my husband and I couldn\u2019t have been more thrilled,\u201D writes Kahn (Courtesy of the author)It wasn\u2019t just me She wasn\u2019t a doctor; she was better than one Emily tells you how to think\u2014how to weigh pros and cons The questions swirling in my head as I fall asleep at night are now much deeper than \u2018can I have sushi while pregnant?\u2019 ChatGPT can\u2019t answer them,\u201D writes Kahn The questions swirling in my head as I fall asleep at night are now much deeper than \u201Ccan I have sushi while pregnant?\u201D ChatGPT can\u2019t answer them I\u2019m thinking about things like: How do I raise an independent and self-sufficient child in an era where we don\u2019t even let our kids walk to the mailbox alone Are my parents right that we\u2019re too soft on kids these days Why are so many teen girls unhappy and anxious\u2014and how can I prevent my daughter from becoming one of them I encounter a river of content from \u201Cparenting experts\u201D who say that the answer to all of my questions is to spend every waking \u201CParenting\u2014making choices about how to raise our kids\u2014is perhaps the most high-stakes thing we do in this life,\u201D writes Kahn can and should be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.\u201D All of this leaves many of us wondering: What\u2019s going on I\u2019m not only a mom with Emily Oster books on the shelf really doesn\u2019t like girls.   Parenting\u2014making choices about how to raise our kids\u2014is perhaps the most high-stakes thing we do in this life can and should be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.  That\u2019s why we are so excited for you to hear Raising Parents Episode 1\u2014\u201CAre We Over-Parenting Our Kids?\u201D\u2014is out today Listen and subscribe to make sure you don\u2019t miss an episode And if you like what you hear, let us know. Write to us at Parenting@TheFP.com and share your thoughts on this episode. Can\u2019t wait to hear from you.  Candace Mittel Kahn is an executive producer at The Free Press.  Subscribe now This website uses cookies to enhance your experience. Read our WAMU Privacy Notice. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. parents have more questions and more concerns Illustration by Katie MartinFebruary 13, 2025 ShareSave Listen-1.0x+0:008:08Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (Noa) using AI narration I published a book about how to use data in early-childhood parenting and one of the book’s long chapters was on vaccines and evidence for their safety I wondered whether I would get questions on this topic But I remember being asked about vaccines only once And those conversations over the past few years—and especially the past year—have completely changed The first change is obvious: The parents and public personalities who strongly oppose vaccines have gotten louder and faced less stigma for making hard-line anti-vaccination statements Read: To understand anti-vaxxers, consider Aristotle but more important: There has been huge growth in the number of parents who belong to what I think of as “the middle group”—parents who are not fundamentally opposed to vaccines but do have more questions and (often) more skepticism than parents had in the past or at least hear about the details of research from people and institutions they trust—which does not include the government or the American Academy of Pediatrics With more parents in this questioning group the market for vaccine misinformation is bigger than ever have gotten no airtime are now being widely circulated “Can you reassure me?” “I’m about to vaccinate my child but now I’m not sure!” This is where we are the ways that COVID shifted Americans’ conception of which authorities are trustworthy Some people may still believe that the early-era COVID restrictions were a good idea Parents were angry about school closures; businesses were angry about lost customers Many of these restrictions had a political bent—Republicans were less in favor of restrictions than Democrats People started to lose trust in some institutions—such as the government and mainstream public-health groups—and transferred some of that trust to others Read: What an undervaccinated America would look like I want to be clear: Operation Warp Speed was That anxiety was an opening for people who oppose vaccines Some of them were able to use the trust they had recently gained to generate vaccine resistance that the vaccine was developed quickly) to imply falsehoods (for example such as initial overstatements about the vaccines’ effect on transmission This might have stayed in the domain of COVID except that these activists now had people’s trust and their concerns about vaccines did not end with the new COVID shots If you trust me rather than the public-health authorities on this one vaccine I think some loss of trust would have taken place to some extent no matter what but in the years during and since the pandemic public-health advice has inadvertently made the problem worse public-health advice continues to recommend that everyone—including healthy adults and children—get a COVID-19 booster every year These vaccines have been shown to be safe and I think getting an annual COVID shot is a reasonable choice the universal recommendation is out of step with many of our peer countries’ guidelines have failed to explain why the recommendations differ The push for mass COVID boosters has provided a continued opening for those who oppose vaccines to sow further doubt There has been an effective weaponization of these booster recommendations to feed the narrative that governmental authorities are blindly promoting vaccines People’s discomfort with these recommendations provides another opportunity to generate mistrust in the rest of the vaccine schedule Billy Ball: My 6-year-old son died. Then the anti-vaxxers found out. The result of the combination of public-health overreach and motivated anti-vaccination forces is a reality with lower vaccination rates for childhood illnesses The world without childhood vaccines isn’t one I want to live in As measles and pertussis vaccination rates go down The same is true for other vaccine-preventable illnesses How can trust be regained, or at least vaccination rates increased? One real, but unfortunate, avenue is disease. I’ve found in my research that when there are outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases If measles or polio vaccination rates fall to a point that those diseases begin to appear frequently in the population A more hopeful possibility lies in the role of pediatricians and that group has an opportunity to help parents really understand their vaccine choices and if that message can be delivered by someone whom parents trust Monday (May 5) for more than 3,200 seats on city councils The county is looking at whether Segale Properties’ proposed environmental mitigation strategies are enough to protect the local environment 12-year-old dies after late-night crash in Enumclaw « Back She was America’s parenting hero. Then the backlash cameEmily Oster set out to empower moms through data. Now she has angered everyone from gentle parenting advocates to the medical establishment — but she doesn’t mind at all, she tells Holly Baxter It’s lunchtime and Emily Oster has been reading about tapeworms all morning with a slightly unsettling smile on her face “The worms can grow to be 12 meters long.” minimalist office at Brown University in Providence with a dog-eared copy of her first bestselling book — Expecting Better — in my bag and a sticky puddle of my two-year-old’s regurgitated blueberry breakfast smeared across my jacket sleeve Like most people who had a child in the 2020s I was gifted Expecting Better at my baby shower and I promptly bought myself the follow-ups: Cribsheet (2019) The Family Firm (2021) and The Unexpected (2024) which put Oster’s PhD in economics from Harvard to unconventional use parse out the existing medical literature on a subject and let you know how seriously you should take the conventional wisdom on pregnancy and childrearing For women used to vibes-based parenting manuals and paternalistic medical attitudes these books were nothing short of a revelation Obstetricians will tell you to cut out coffee and alcohol; Oster concludes that studies suggest you can actually safely have a small amount of both Doctors also caution women to avoid deli meats and never to eat sushi; Oster’s research suggests high-quality sushi is just fine (“People eat it every day in Japan,” she reminds me) and deli meats are no riskier than salads she concludes there’s only a minuscule benefit as compared to formula-feeding She also says bacteria levels show you can probably leave pumped breastmilk in storage much longer than you’ll be told by your pediatrician The way she comes to these conclusions is by crunching numbers and then parsing out the quality of each medical study — were the people involved from a certain socioeconomic background or from an unusually risky or risk-averse group Are listeria outbreaks really found primarily in sliced ham She also looks into cause and effect — for instance just because people who miscarry often report having consumed a lot of coffee can we fairly conclude that that’s what harmed the pregnancy because high levels of the pregnancy-protective hormone hCG causes nausea and people who are nauseous tend to avoid caffeine people whose pregnancies had the best chance of success might have been the ones who stopped drinking coffee in the first place.) Oster transferred the newsletter onto her own website and ParentData is now run by a team of people who help her edit publish and design each page as she reacts in real-time to parenting issues linked to the news to suggest women shouldn’t consume any caffeine at all Oster replied that the studies included in the review were too flawed for that conclusion: “You can say every study shows the same thing A quote from James after the publication of his caffeine study neatly underlines how Oster’s attitude diverges from the attitude of the medical establishment: "Certainly there is no evidence to suggest that caffeine benefits either mother or baby even if the evidence were merely suggestive and in reality it is much stronger than that the case for recommending caffeine be avoided during pregnancy is thoroughly compelling." That implication — that women should only be counseled to do things that directly benefit a pregnancy and should be told to avoid anything that could be even potentially harmful — is what irks Oster “I have a couple of problems with that attitude,” says Oster my general sense is that… women are adults and we should tell people actual evidence so they can make choices for themselves But I also think even from an efficacy standpoint I am not sure that this approach is actually delivering the thing you want In part because if you tell people a thousand rules and you express them as if all of them are equally important I guess probably doing half of them is fine I'll just sort of pick whatever half I think I would like,’ then you're actually not in a good position Because you haven't helped people prioritize.” A person who gets told a fully abstinent approach to cigarettes and alcohol is equally important might reason they can only achieve one so they’ll smoke lightly throughout their pregnancy And we know that the babies of people who smoked in pregnancy have much worse outcomes than the babies of mothers who had a glass of wine a week Oster believes women both want and deserve accurate up-to-date information about pregnancy and childrearing — Cribsheet and The Family Firm dive into the data surrounding such controversial parenting topics as sleep training daycare and how to handle toddler tantrums — and she believes that delivering that information is a social good two whiteboards and a few framed photographs of her colleagues’ kids — she juggles office hours with her economics students with research for the next ParentData article A pile of cream-colored ParentData-branded sweatshirts spills out of a white Ikea shelving unit in the corner with her face bare of make-up and her dark hair pulled back and it is more like that.” But it’s actually gotten too chaotic to meet in mainly because there are piles and piles of shoeboxes in the center of it — she estimates there are seven pairs of New Balance alone That’s because Oster has reached the level of celebrity where brands pay attention to her likes and dislikes Running is a personal hobby — marathon-running in particular — hence the uncontrollable deluge of sneakers Yet Oster’s fame is a very particular type: for one section of the population she’s a regular topic round the dinner table When I mentioned on social media that I was en route to Providence to interview her the DMs from my friends with kids were admiring: “Woah less admiring parent said I should ask Oster “why she’s so keen for pregnant women to drink.” irresponsibly individualistic conclusions based on incomplete data at a time when people were crying out for a savior “I'll tell you the thing that bothers me the most which is when people are just like: ‘You're not a doctor,’” she says I have never said that I'm a medical doctor… and certainly there are like doctors that I write with where they'll be like I don't agree with your take on this because I see what you're saying about studies but the way that I'm seeing it in clinic is different That's something that one could have like a concrete discussion about you therefore are not in a position to comment on this data’ feels frustrating because I am an expert in a particular thing — in data.” why would you do something like this?” It seemed like she might have made a huge “professional mistake.” The aptly named Providence was where she ended up juggling office time with economics students about population spread and statistical analysis with her own endlessly burgeoning extra workload on crunching the numbers on parenting A small city of cobblestone streets and coffee shops in New England — population 190,000 — Providence is just down the road from where she grew up in leafy New Haven Gaggles of students gather in the central square by the war memorials waiting for fully electric buses; local hotels fly LGBT flags; and the cafe by the Amtrak has a sign outside that reads: “This cafe stands against fascism It feels like an unnatural environment for Oster stays away from politics and avoids committing (at least publicly) to any ideology it’s the first time she flounders in a conversation where she’s usually both quick off the mark and straight to the point: “I certainly would have described myself as a feminist I think for my mother this was a thing that would've been very important to her I think a lot about the messaging that I'm sending to more junior women and sort of how do you make sure that that one is acting as a role model which is a little different than — aggressive is not the word I'm looking for but sort of like different to an outward feminism I’m not really sure what that word means.” one might say it is a supremely feminist act to restore real choice to women who have been underserved in healthcare for generations But the reason I ask the question initially isn’t because of her books It’s because of one particular episode of Oster’s 2024 podcast which is titled “Are Boys Being Left Behind?” In it Oster interviews a variety of people — teachers founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men Richard Reeves — about why boys are continuing to fall behind girls academically meaning that school results and college classes are skewing more and more female As the mother of a young son and a self-proclaimed feminist myself I freely admit that I felt a little conflicted “Whenever Richard and I have done stuff in front of a broader audience,” Oster says “people have feelings… They have a hard time with that message.” It’s surely difficult for women’s activists in the U.S — who are still actively fighting for gender equality in so many spheres and indeed the rolling-back of some hard-won victories like abortion rights — to be told to sit for a moment and think about how one area might be weighted against males It doesn’t win you friends to write a podcast episode about equity for boys in that environment But Oster isn’t out to win friends. Indeed, drawing attention to the numbers that other people are ignoring is kind of her bread and butter. That’s one reason why she produced her podcast with The Free Press, the right-leaning, anti-“woke” website co-founded by Bari Weiss after she left The New York Times and supposedly committed to giving every viewpoint a fair hearing Oster is careful when I ask her why she teamed up with The Free Press saying only that it was a “really good opportunity to make a really high-quality podcast about complicated questions where we talked to a lot of people across the political spectrum,” something that “is hard to get in the kinds of echo chambers that we often are in.” “There are definitely things I don't agree with The Free Press does,” she adds “And there are things that I do agree with and we sort of knew going into that we would have places we agreed and places we didn't agree And I'm really proud of what we produced.” Not everyone featured on that podcast has been as easy to collaborate with as Richard Reeves Oster says two people come to mind when she thinks of tough conversations she’s had in her line of work — one is Hal Chaffee a self-styled public preacher who made a YouTube video called “How To Spank Your Kids the Right Way” and was interviewed for one of her podcast episodes about discipline he was in some ways a perfectly pleasant guy to listen to,” says Oster “and he was saying very things that sounded very sensible — and then he was like: You just have to make sure that you hit them hard enough this is not aligned with how I [parent].” Why platform him at all Half of people are using some form [of physical chastisement],” she says And if the data says it’s happening in those numbers what’s the point of denying that person a seat at the table The other person she found difficult to deal with was Erica Komisar a social worker and psychoanalyst who advocates hard for mothers to stay at home with their children and believes that daycare is harmful who was very judgmental about my personal choices where people are saying to your face: ‘You know but there's still an opportunity to make some progress!’” Oster is a human being herself and has had to make parenting decisions like the rest of us Her kids went to daycare; she breastfed for a year per child; she chose unmedicated births (“I’m totally glad I did that even though there’s no point… It was just like let’s see if I can do it!”); much to the chagrin of many a gentle-parenting advocate “One of the things people say [when they’re criticizing my books is]: You're just trying to defend your own choices Those are the choices that I made based on the preferences and constraints that I have And I'm actually very confident that they were the right choices for me I genuinely think that there are different people who are going to make different choices… I would like to help people make choices that work for them.” If she could go back in her own parenting history “I wish I’d given myself more of a break.” and I worked really hard to do that,” she says “And I did all kinds of stuff to try to make that work particularly with my first kid who was a pain in the ass about it I still very much understand the temptation to be like: Well it better be important.” According to her own data analysis the benefits of breastfeeding are marginal at best — and those much-touted advantages in IQ disappear entirely when the numbers are balanced “Bummer isn’t exactly the way I’d put it,” she says but she thinks she put herself under far too much pressure in the moment the act of suffering is part of the sacrifice of parenting it’s not like sometimes parenting isn’t a sacrifice but we should be picking the sacrifices that matter.” That brings us back to the 12-meter tapeworms and specifically the reason she’s been reading about them all morning The latest parenting craze she’s become aware of is the “parasite cleanse,” a fad diet exploding throughout parenting social media wherein people with children who have autism or ADHD or developmental delay claimed they have “cured” them with the right diet supposedly one that will starve off the secret parasites that have been causing all the problems is the part of her job that gets her out of bed in the morning: “We decided I was going to write about parasite cleanses and I was delighted to get the opportunity to learn about parasites figure out how to explain — the challenge of: How do I help people understand what is going on with parasites but also why taking a bunch of herbs is stupid?” The sacrifice of the parasite cleanse is clearly not worth it But Oster understands that “when stuff is going wrong with your kids all you want is a way to fix it.” There is a real kindness to her pragmatism a clear compassion for the mothers and the children who she’s addressing when she writes When I ask her if people DM her about their individual children’s problems she immediately replies: “All the time.” In the early days the volume of messages makes that impossible — but she’ll still do it every once in a while she told a heavily pregnant woman on Instagram that it was fine to have a can of Diet Sprite Probably the biggest misconception about Oster as a person is that she is a relaxed parent herself simply because she wrote a book (Cribsheet) with the subtitle “A data-driven guide to better she and her husband were at a local neighborhood event and someone familiar with her work came up to her and said: “You must be the most relaxed parent!” She shakes her head “And my husband just started to laugh and he was like: She's not even the most relaxed person standing on that square of asphalt!” it’s reassuring to hear that Oster is as anxiety-ridden as the rest of us — not just because it makes me feel more normal but because I don’t want a relaxed person working through medical data any more than I’d like a relaxed pilot flying my plane or a relaxed surgeon doing my open-heart surgery The problem with parenting is that the stakes are so often life and death That makes every decision potentially agonizing It also makes it very hard to write about parenting without provoking the full spectrum of emotions from your audience It’s easy to understand why it’s hard to be an economist and a writer who focuses on parenting “The fact that the thing that is the most important to you in the world is out of your control I think genuinely that is the hardest part.” Is working with data a way to wrest back some semblance of control over a fundamentally uncontrollable situation? “Yes, totally. But it’s still the thing that keeps you up — and there’s no way to work yourself through that or whatever. It’s just like: Yeah. Sit with that.” Across the world, so many of us — over 2 billion of us — do sit with that every single day Oster keeps at it — diligently raking through the numbers; reading through the studies; separating out fact from assumption; feeling the anxiety so that the rest of us don’t have to feel it quite so much More aboutparentingBreastfeedingAlcohol ConsumptionJoin our commenting forumJoin thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies {"adUnitPath":"71347885/_main_independent/gallery","autoGallery":true,"disableAds":true,"gallery":[{"data":{"title":"Screenshot 2025-04-03 at 10.22.17 AM","description":"Emily Oster","caption":"Emily Oster Then the backlash came","description":"Emily Oster set out to empower moms through data Now she has angered everyone from gentle parenting advocates to the medical establishment — but she doesn’t mind at all Professor Jessica Oster has been named as a faculty head of Stambaugh House, joining six other faculty members who will start in fall 2024 Oster is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences and director of graduate studies She was named a Chancellor Faculty Fellow in 2022 and has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER grant Oster brings her extensive expertise in climate research and teaching to her role in residential colleges India and the ABC Islands in the Caribbean Oster’s research aims to increase our understanding of Earth’s past climate by unlocking valuable climate information from geologic and environmental archives She couples the use of geochemical tools with sophisticated global climate models to develop and interpret records of climate change which includes drilling samples from stalagmites found in Tennessee and collecting and analyzing cave drip water samples in Curaçao “Having a remarkable scholar like Professor Oster as one of our faculty leaders in the residential colleges reflects the kind of immersive learning environment that we create on our campus I am so pleased to know that the students will have the opportunity to interact with her as part of our community” said Melissa Gresalfi dean of residential colleges and residential education  “The residential college system provides an invaluable opportunity for our faculty and students to connect on a deeper level fostering a true sense of community and belonging Jessica’s impressive research and leadership experience will be a wonderful addition to Stambaugh House.” who has served as faculty head of Stambaugh House since 2017 Noble is leaving Vanderbilt to take an associate vice president position at Indiana University Noble served as senior lecturer for sociology former director of the Bishop Joseph Black Cultural Center Gresalfi said Noble “has been an invaluable member of the Vanderbilt community providing strategic leadership on critical matters of equity He has been committed to fostering a welcoming and supportive environment for all we are grateful for his many contributions and wish him all the best in his new role at Indiana University.” A full list of Vanderbilt’s residential faculty is on the Residential Colleges website. Faculty interested in learning more about faculty head positions and the application process are encouraged to contact Gresalfi. Faculty interested in a faculty head position should complete an application Residential Colleges maintains a list of interested faculty on an ongoing basis Faculty will be contacted and interviewed as new opportunities emerge; thus Letters of interest will remain active and on file for five years Love and grief are often inextricably tied together they’re also powerful tools that have helped her both process immense loss and create something truly compelling Oster grew up in Southold and was very close to her grandparents fellow Southold residents Harold and Loretta Schwerdt Harold and Loretta met on the playground during the Great Depression and stayed together until her death in 2007 Oster was given a box full of letters her grandparents wrote to one another during Mr Schwerdt’s time as a prisoner of war in World War II as a way of processing her grief and out of sheer fascination — these letters told a remarkable story of love during wartime — transcribed and adapted the letters into a serialized story called “Letters to Loretta,” which was published over 35 weeks on Sandboxx News a non-partisan military news publication.  Oster didn’t receive the box and immediately work on telling her grandparents’ story After graduating from Southold High School she earned a degree in English from Bridgewater State University in 2012 then pursued her talents as a writer and got an MFA in screenwriting from the David Lynch School of Cinematic Arts in 2023 Her various personal losses spurred her to make a change and she moved from Southold to Grand Rapids where she now teaches English and film studies as adjunct faculty at Davenport University and Grand Rapids Community College.  Oster also found that writing helped her channel her grief and she revisited the box of letters her grandfather had given her Opening that box of 120 letters proved to be transformative both creatively and personally Oster learned more about her grandparents and stayed connected to them via their remarkable wartime correspondence “I always joke that I only ever knew my grandpa as an old man,” Ms The letters — Harold’s written on German prison camp parchment paper — told an incredible story of survival while he was held captive at the Stalag XVII-B prison.  “Being able to apply my research skills to my narrative writing skills I feel like I did a good enough job of honoring the history as well as the fact that it’s a love story,” she said which was the inspiration for the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes and came to appreciate why her grandfather hated talking about the war “It was so overcrowded that there were two to three men to a bed,” she said “The American camp was designed to house 1,200 people The Red Cross would deliver stuff but the Nazis would make sure it didn’t get there on … the latrine was dismantled It wasn’t anywhere as depicted in Hogan’s Heroes But while the story explores the horrors of World War II Harold shielded his horrific experience for Loretta writing of better times in the prison camp like the rare instances the prisoners were allowed recreation and played softball and he wrote letters that told her everything was okay even though they weren’t,” she said.   After the war — Harold survived, while his brother, Artie, was killed in action — the Schwerdts bought a summer bungalow in Southold in the early 1970s and stayed there. They became deeply involved with the community with Harold serving as the commander of the Southold American Legion and Harold visited Loretta’s grave after she died to leave roses every Saturday “The human will is so incredible that you have somebody worth surviving for someone you are desperate to come home to,” said Ms “The noonday sun that melts the snow brings thoughts of you and how easily my heart would melt if your rays could reach me.” A drive east from Riverhead to Orient this time of year passes row after row of farms bathed a.. who has turned around his tennis game with.. Leon Maurice Creighton of Greenport Village died Monday In a post on the Florida Thoroughbred Horsemen Instagram account, the FTH announced that Executive Director Herb Oster will be leaving his post at the end of February The post went on to say that Oster will be leaving to concentrate on recent health issues “Herb has been a fixture in racing both in [New York] and Florida for [more than] 25 years and as executive director of Horsemen since January 2024,” the statement read “Herb’s great love is the benevolence side of the business and he instituted many programs that enhanced the lives of the backstretch communities at both Gulfstream Park and Palm Meadows Training Center.” The statement went on to say that a search committee will be formed to find a new executive director of the FTH Return to the February 20 issue of Wire to Wire © Copyright 2012 - 2025 The Florida Horse / FTBOA | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Built by Blue Million for The Florida Horse ParentData CEO Emily Oster joins CNN’s Paula Reid to discuss Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins gives an inside look on the grounds of the White House for the week of President Trump's first 100 days of his second term '+n.escapeExpression("function"==typeof(o=null!=(o=r(e,"eyebrowText")||(null!=l?r(l,"eyebrowText"):l))?o:n.hooks.helperMissing)?o.call(null!=l?l:n.nullContext||{},{name:"eyebrowText",hash:{},data:t,loc:{start:{line:28,column:63},end:{line:28,column:78}}}):o)+" \n '+(null!=(o=c(e,"if").call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2PreText"):l,{name:"if",hash:{},fn:n.program(32,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:63,column:20},end:{line:63,column:61}}}))?o:"")+"\n"+(null!=(o=(c(e,"ifAll")||l&&c(l,"ifAll")||n.hooks.helperMissing).call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Text"):l,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Link"):l,{name:"ifAll",hash:{},fn:n.program(34,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:64,column:20},end:{line:70,column:30}}}))?o:"")+" The L'Chaim of Dovi Bronstein and Menucha Oster, both of Crown Heights, took place at Bais Rivkah Hall in Crown Heights. Photos Toronto, ON – The Ontario Hockey League today announced that Jacob Oster of the Oshawa Generals is the OHL Goaltender of the Week going 2-0 along with a 1.00 goals-against average Backstopping the Generals to a 2-0 series lead over the Barrie Colts in the Eastern Conference Final, Oster stopped 58 shots last week. He turned aside 27 of 28 attempts on Friday, earning third star honours in a 3-1 win. Oster was solid again on Sunday, making 31 saves in a 7-1 victory Oster posted a 32-17-3-1 record this season along with a 2.81 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage The former fifth-round pick (92nd overall) by the Guelph Storm in the 2020 OHL Priority Selection is now in his fourth OHL season boasting a career record of 100-64-15-5 with a 3.15 goals-against average and nine shutouts over 196 regular season games split between the Storm and the Generals He ranks fourth among all OHL goaltenders in 2025 playoff goals-against average playing to a 10-4 record with a 2.60 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage Oster was awarded 2024 OHL Goaltender of the Year honours and was named to the OHL First All-Star Team Also considered for the award this week, Austin Elliott of the London Knights played to a 2-0 record along with a 2.00 goals-against average and .918 save percentage • 2025 OHL Playoff Tracker • Generals’ Marrelli named Cogeco OHL Player of the Week • 67’s sign third overall pick Brock Chitaroni • Knights’ Elliott named OHL Goaltender of the Week • 67’s sign Jaxon Williams, son of former NHL star Justin Williams • Rangers’ Arquette named OHL Rookie of the Week • Spirit ink third round selection Levi Harper • London Knights claim record third straight Wayne Gretzky Trophy • Oshawa Generals win second consecutive Bobby Orr Trophy • Rangers’ Parsons named OHL Goaltender of the Year • Generals, City of Oshawa and Oak View Group secure new 30-year partnership • Otters announce changes in hockey operations • Knights’ Dickinson named OHL Defenceman of the Year • Colts announce 15-year lease extension with City of Barrie • 101 OHL graduates competing in Stanley Cup Playoffs • Schaefer, Misa lead 64 OHL players on NHL Central Scouting’s Final Rankings • 303 players selected in 2025 OHL Priority Selection presented by Real Canadian Superstore • OHL Scholarship Program continues funding academic pursuits in 2024-25 • Big names featured in 2024-25 OHL Coaches Poll results • Peterborough to host 2026 Connor McDavid OHL Top Prospects Game • Registration underway for OHL Performance Development Program Which two teams will emerge to compete in the OHL Championship Series View Results Copyright ©2025 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. 2025ShareEmily Oster Wants You to Ask “Why?” More OftenOver a decade ago Oster made waves with her groundbreaking book she’s pushing for more questions than ever “I had little sense of what would come from it or how it would be received,” she tells Well+Good of the book “The book reflected how I wanted to approach my pregnancy; writing is how I process what's going on.” a New York Times bestseller the year of its release pioneered a data-driven approach to pregnancy the broader medical establishment; it bucked the system empowering pregnant women to ask questions and be reflective before making decisions The book also became instantly controversial: By presenting data that showed lower levels of risk than traditionally assumed it questioned whether pregnant women really needed to completely avoid things like caffeine “I wish I could say something profound about the hopes I had when I started out,” Oster says people just seemed more interested in engaging in evidence-based decision-making and thinking about their health this way maybe there's more to this than I thought.’” In three bestselling books that followed Expecting Better—Cribsheet (2019) which she co-wrote with maternal-fetal medicine specialist Nathan Fox M.D.—Oster took her data-first approach to early parenting such as pregnancy loss or hyperemesis gravidarum She pushed the idea that you could talk about data and science in the prenatal and parenting spaces in a way that was accessible—and popular.  Oster doesn’t shy away from this criticism always encouraging people to continue asking one question: “Why?” Just last month, ParentData expanded to cover trying to conceive, and Oster says there is still data she has her eyes set on breaking down. Below, we spoke with Oster about everything from advocating for yourself to what to do when data doesn’t provide the answers you need. Emily Oster: It’s such a balance. I do think there is tremendous positive because when we tell people to ‘do this’ and ‘not that,’ and we don't explain why or how to prioritize things, it makes it very difficult for people to make good choices.  It’s true in early parenting, too. Sometimes, we'll tell people to do a set of things, and it feels impossible to achieve all of them: make sure that your baby sleeps on their back, always sleeps in their own crib, and sleeps in your room.  We also say, ‘It's really important that you sleep,’ and, ‘you know, by the way, you should be breastfeeding.’  Right, and it’s like, ‘I can't do all those things.’ The piece of this that I feel most strongly is a positive change is the idea of telling people that if you engage with the question of ‘Why?’ it will help you make better decisions that work for you—and not every decision is the same forever for everyone.  Doctors do have some expertise [laughs]. I'm not a doctor. We're not all doctors. The challenge here is to ask how I can ask ‘why?’ and bring the expertise that is my understanding of myself to a conversation where this other person knows much more about doctoring. and yet you speak to plenty of health-related topics including pregnancy—and you’ve faced criticism for that Where do we draw the line for physicians and other voices in the space?It's important to recognize different kinds of expertise there are ways in which the expertise that comes with being an obstetrician differs from that of being an expert in reading data I disagree with people I'm very aligned with ‘This is what the data says,’ and he will say That is a reasonable difference of opinion but the way we want to engage in explaining them is different I think that kind of disagreement is very reasonable.  I find it frustrating when people ‘credentialize’ and say ‘I’m a doctor.’ When you complete medical school they don't hit you with a knowledge wand at graduation.  ‘I disagree with your reading of the evidence.’ In this case I would like to discuss what piece of it they disagree with I'll probably want to push back; maybe they’ll push back We're bringing different things to the discussion.  and so I don't have to engage with your arguments because I have this special wand.’ That feels unhelpful You get many more clicks with war than with compromise That's an issue with social media; extreme voices can dominate Interactions with screens, for one; the data is just really bad and not complete in the way we would want. I would like us to turn the attention there to navigating these relationships.  I also think we underinvest in understanding things that would improve the logistics of early parenting lives Many of the guidelines on this are not really based on anything even though it would be very straightforward to learn the answer to these questions.  I'm not sure it's worse than it ever was. As parents, we want to do the best job. It's easy to get occupied with things that are actually very small and to lose sight of what is really important, like consistent love, a place to sleep, and enough to eat. Those very important basic things are very different from some of the stuff people are most obsessed about. Yes, and it’s such an important insight. For example, the breastfeeding data suggests that many of the benefits are overstated. But sometimes people say, ‘This is really important to me. This is a relationship and a thing I really want to do. It matters to me.’ That’s a really good reason to do something.  Every time someone tells me, ‘You helped me feel better,’ that's why I'm doing this. What a privilege to get to do something where I'm making anyone's life easier. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Got it, you've been added to our email list. load moreSign Up for Our Daily NewsletterGet all the latest in wellness, trends, food, fitness, beauty, and more delivered right to your inbox.Subscribe... Henrik Rydstrom's side were out to put that right on home soil and though they had considerably less of the ball in the opening 45 minutes were much more creative when they were in possession And they took advantage after 32 minutes, when a low cross from the right from Otto Rosengren caused havoc in the Oster box and was turned in at the back post by Hugo Bolin Any hopes the home fans had of the floodgates opening were unmerited given that despite the visitors' poor form they had only conceded three times in their previous four outings they were on course for a fourth 1-0 loss in succession the chance of an identical score line once again were put to bed 46 seconds into the second half things didn't change in the manner they were hoping for Busanello broke down the left wing and fed Bolin inside the area. He got to the byline and squared the ball across goal to Isaac Kiese Thelin That was, in fact, the only shot on target in the second half for either side until deep into added time, but it was job done for the Himmelsblatt who ensured their winless run did not surpass any they had in last year's Allsvenskan Though they have scored fewer goals than any other side in the top half a third clean sheet of the campaign has seen Malmo rise to fourth in the standings are still searching for a first league win over Malmo since 2006 and for a first point on the road since promotion Follow the Allsvenskan on Flashscore. She was the daughter of Clyde Harley and Emma Lucille (Carlson) Belvill Annabell was the 1950 Rodeo Queen for the Boulder County Fair and Rodeo Surviving Annabell are her son Kenneth (Kay) Oster of Republic MO; her daughter Chris (Ronald) Tidwells of Witchita CO; and her daughter Liz (Ben) Warner of Cortez Annabell was preceded in death by her parents and deeply gentle soul who believed in justice for all and left an unforgettable impact in his short time on earth On this one-year tragiversary of Albert's untimely death the void in our lives without Albert on this earth goes beyond words he grew up in Kentucky and ultimately relocated to Rehoboth Beach This was his final home and resting place as he was a budding Blue Hen at his beloved alma mater but the largest and most pure part of him was always his heart still growing and developing physically and finding his way as a young man he had blossomed into an intellectually curious academically driven individual who was determined to make a positive difference in the world there were glimmers of the greatest potential Al was a quick-witted deep thinker who could evoke the most profound philosophical and heartfelt conversations Albert could bring about provocative thought and comic relief in even the most difficult situations caring soul who loved and felt deeply for others He always seemed to be able to sense when someone else was in pain or struggling and would know exactly what to say or do to make you feel better He would stop to talk to the downtrodden loitering at convenience stores and gas stations and talk to them about their lives gave the shirt off of his back (which happened to be one of his favorites) to assist with first aid efforts His beautiful soul created so many acts of quiet goodness and love that lifted others and showed up for his friends and family in any time of need His compassion for others’ pain and struggles was only matched by his gentle love of animals and desire to help make a positive impact on them and the world and never missed an opportunity to be present for them even traveling long distances and sacrificing his responsibilities to care for them was dedicated to physical fitness and weight lifting his athleticism and basketball abilities were extraordinary and he became known as the “Osterizer.” He led his high school varsity basketball team to the state championships and was involved with the intramural teams at UD He was lauded as the “most improved player” in high school Newspapers highlighted and celebrated “Getting Osterized,” as he could be relied upon to score record-breaking points in key games He used to teach basketball skills at summer camps and also played with his brother and friends whenever and wherever he could Al enjoyed hanging out with his brother and friends They loved to laugh at edgy jokes and roast each other endlessly he worked as a lifeguard in Rehoboth Beach and as a server and host at The Moorings at Lewes He was always eager to give help or work in any capacity from pruning trees to cleaning pools to walking dogs to weeding Albert was a full-time student double-majoring in political science He was so close to graduation and fulfilling his dream to pursue a career in law with a passion to equalize legal inequalities and seek justice for all  Law always held a certain fascination for Albert but it was really a legal tragedy during his childhood that inspired him to pursue a career in the field Al’s passion was to help others balance legal inequalities and especially help children involved in complex custody matters to avoid the same heartache he endured as a child Albert was a fierce advocate for the plight of others experiencing challenges and was active in several capacities to create student support to never allow others' traumatic experiences to go unchecked or unserved  Albert attended both Hebrew school and Bible school and deeply loved G_d wrap his loving arms around Al with wholly perfect love and peace and may Al feel that love and peace forever It is the simplest of moments together in Rehoboth with Al hearing his laughter and laughing together During challenging times Al often reminded us that “at least we are together and have each other,” and in the end we realize this is really what always mattered most and how blessed and grateful we are for having you in our lives we are so very proud of you for the amazing human you were and the even greater man you could have become if given the chance We mourn the future we will not get to have with you We will carry a part of your light and love with us on earth to create good in this world as you intended until we meet again  Al was preceded in death by his maternal and paternal grandparents Kimberly Parasher and Deborah Gerondis; cousin Kiran Parasher; and many extended family members and close friends and pets  For Albert brought a light so great to the world that now and the lessons from his premature passing shall remain If you would like to do something to honor Al's memory we ask you to write your congressman to pass legislation prioritizing mental health protocols and crisis intervention policies on our college campuses If you see someone in the throes of a life storm and talk to them about their hopes and dreams and lasting impact your life on earth has left behind