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know, back up, being

1:22

a parent is

1:25

a little like not seeing

1:27

a gorilla. What?

1:30

No. No. Hear me out. So there's

1:32

this experiment that two

1:35

psychologists at my university undertook

1:37

in nineteen ninety nine. It's a famous

1:39

paper that they wrote called Gorillas in our midst.

1:41

Mhmm. What it was was a psychology

1:44

experiment that looked at

1:46

when people are focusing on

1:48

one trivial thing, how they can become

1:51

effectively blind to

1:54

a much bigger thing. And

1:56

and here's how the experiment went. They

1:58

had videotapes that

1:59

they were playing to undergraduate students. And

2:02

they were of

2:03

basketball players -- Mhmm. --

2:05

teams of basketball players, two teams of three

2:07

people, and they were passing basketballs back

2:09

and and the people watching

2:11

the tapes had to do just one thing,

2:14

which was count the number of passes between

2:16

the players.

2:18

Okay. And

2:19

see how accurately they could count the passes. It

2:21

was kinda complicated because they're passing it back and forth

2:23

and back and forth. And then in the middle of

2:25

the tape, a guy in a gorilla

2:27

suit walks into the frame.

2:30

It just walks back and forth and back and forth

2:32

behind the door passing the ball. And then at

2:34

the end, the researcher

2:37

says, how many times did they pass

2:39

the ball back and forth and they give the number? And then they

2:41

ask, what about the guy in the gorilla

2:43

suit? And in like,

2:45

forty six percent of the cases, the

2:48

people in the experiment said, what guy in the

2:50

gorilla suit? If you see this and

2:52

you can see this on the Internet, you can get this on

2:54

YouTube. It's the most obvious thing,

2:56

but all they saw was passing

2:58

the ball. Now, that's

3:00

what it's like.

3:01

to be the parent of a little kid.

3:03

How so? I'm not I'm not seeing

3:05

the analogy here. You

3:08

you're counting the passes and you miss the gorilla.

3:15

This is how to build a happy life. I'm

3:18

Arthur Brooks. Harvard

3:19

professor, and contributing writer at

3:21

The Atlantic. And I'm Rebecca

3:23

Rashid, a producer at The Atlantic.

3:29

You're not paying attention to

3:32

being happy and having a happy baby

3:35

you're worried about whether or not you boil

3:37

that pacifier. Mhmm.

3:39

You're not worried about the big picture of,

3:41

you know, what's going on in your family and the relationships

3:43

that you're building because you're so completely distracted

3:46

by counting the number of times

3:48

the kid went to the bathroom today. I

3:51

mean, there's a gorilla back there. Right.

3:53

The gorilla is the most amazing thing.

3:56

Right. I'm guilty. I mean,

3:58

when my kids were little, it was I'm telling

4:00

you, I could tell you every bit of minutiae about

4:02

what was going on in the lives. But

4:04

a lot of the times I wasn't thinking to the stuff

4:06

that I would really like to remember

4:08

today, which is What were

4:10

we feeling? Where were we going?

4:13

How were they developing? You

4:16

know, sometimes they didn't even take as many

4:18

pictures as I wish I had because I was

4:20

so occupied with the ball

4:22

passing that the funniest

4:24

thing the most amazing thing,

4:26

the guy in the gorilla suit slipped

4:28

right by me.

4:34

There's a bunch

4:36

of ways that you could modify your

4:38

vision that would

4:40

deliver on some of the things that you want,

4:43

but they require acknowledging sacrifices.

4:47

If

4:47

there's any area of life where our expectations

4:49

for ourselves seem impossible to

4:52

me, it's parenting. We

4:54

tend to be fixated on parenting

4:56

outcomes. and that really

4:58

never works. I wanna

5:00

understand how parents can actually make

5:02

good decisions or maybe just good

5:04

enough decisions. I'd be happy

5:06

at the same time.

5:08

Thanks for doing the show. Appreciate it.

5:10

Of course. I'm excited. Can you start by

5:12

introducing yourself on tape the way you like it?

5:14

I'm Emily Oster. I'm a professor

5:16

of economics at Brown University and

5:18

the author of expecting better

5:20

crib sheet and the family firm.

5:22

Emily Oster is an author on many

5:24

sensitive issues in parenting. As

5:27

a trained economist, Oster

5:29

takes a data centric approach to parental

5:31

decision making. teaching parents how to

5:33

best understand the data behind the so

5:35

called mandates of modern parenting.

5:38

Now, Oscar is an economist, not

5:41

a mental health professional. But

5:43

her analytical approach to this personal

5:45

subject provides a new lens into

5:47

the complexities of any individual

5:49

decision making.

5:55

A lot of my work is on

5:57

data and is on data and parenting and

5:59

using data to make decisions

6:02

in pregnancy and around our child

6:03

rearing and then also writing

6:06

about the decision making part of it, the

6:08

part of economics where we think about trading off

6:10

costs and benefits and trying to have structured

6:12

approaches to how we make choices. And in

6:14

some ways, the sort of central pieces of everything I

6:16

do is that those tools

6:17

which we might ordinarily think of

6:19

as useful in kind of business

6:21

settings are also pretty useful in

6:23

our personal lives. Howard Bauchner: Yeah,

6:25

yeah, and and you know they think about being an economist

6:28

as as you and I are, is that

6:30

you feel like you don't know anything until

6:33

you get the data. So did you feel

6:35

that about being a mom? Like, yeah, I

6:37

kinda know, but I don't have strong opinions. I

6:39

better go out and get some date on it. Was this research

6:41

rather than research? Oh, absolutely. No.

6:43

There's no question. Yes. It's it's hugely

6:44

research and the I love that.

6:47

So expecting Better, which is the

6:49

first book I wrote, was really a book

6:51

that I wrote while I was pregnant.

6:53

I sold the book at thirty five weeks fragant

6:55

having, you know,

6:56

basically done all of this research just

6:59

so I could know what to do. Right? Like,

7:01

you know, some people Well, could I have a cup

7:03

of coffee? Like, maybe I'll read a few different

7:05

sources and kind of, you know, just kind of decide

7:07

what works for me. But I was like, no, I have to go,

7:09

like, gonna go down the rabbit hole in this. Like,

7:11

this is how I'm gonna approach the

7:13

world as I'm gonna find out, like, what all the

7:15

studies about coffee saying, what the interesting

7:17

empirical issues associated with this

7:19

question and how can I explain it to people?

7:21

So there's almost a sort of statistician

7:24

approach

7:24

even more than an economist approach, but

7:26

at a minimum, the decisions

7:29

that we make should be made with

7:31

all the facts in mind. And it's

7:33

almost never the case that the data

7:35

is gonna tell you the decision. We

7:37

can't almost can't approach the decision

7:39

without knowing the evidence behind

7:42

it.

7:42

So give me an example. You're

7:44

thirty five weeks pregnant selling a book, by

7:47

the way, that's just that's awesome. Tell

7:49

me something that the data overruled

7:52

some preconceived notion that you

7:54

had and that you started to behave differently.

7:56

So there are pieces of data that

7:58

were pricing.

7:59

I mean, I think one place where

8:02

the data probably pretty clearly affected

8:04

what I was doing there was about epidurals.

8:06

So, you know, epidural is pain

8:08

relief during labor, and I think

8:10

I'd sort of assumed that I would do that.

8:12

Epidural is really good at preventing labor pain,

8:14

but they have some sort of limits

8:16

and some some downsides in terms of

8:18

recovery. It's a place where actually the data

8:20

doesn't at all make the decision for you. So it's a sort

8:22

of example of a place where when I got the

8:24

data, It wasn't definitive in

8:27

one direction or the other, but

8:29

it was the thing that let me

8:31

make the decision that was different than

8:33

the decision I had anticipated. So

8:35

it really is this sort of structure of, like,

8:37

we're gonna get all the information, and then we're gonna

8:39

make a choice, and that choice is gonna be

8:41

informed by the information and the

8:43

data. Do you think that

8:45

since subsequent to the birth of your children that you

8:47

do a lot of stuff differently with your own

8:49

kids and the basis of your research, have you kept this

8:51

protocol up of you know, I don't know what to

8:53

do with these kids. Is this how you're

8:55

approaching parenting day to day? Particularly

8:57

when they were younger, yeah. So I think

8:59

that there's a little bit of a progression. So,

9:01

you know, you have your first kid and I, like, everyone

9:03

else, have my first kid. And then I I guess I thought I

9:05

had would have

9:05

time to, like, figure out how to do it. You know, I

9:08

would have time to do the research. But actually, when you

9:10

have your first kid, there's no time to do anything

9:12

except just, like, basically, hang on to the roller

9:14

coaster and hope that, like, they buckle you in

9:16

correctly. Right? And so that was a sort of

9:18

chaotic mess for a a few

9:20

years. When we

9:20

had our second, I felt like

9:22

I was in a much better to be

9:25

prepared. And that's actually when I wrote the

9:27

second book. So I sort of wrote the second book

9:29

post the second kid because

9:31

it was much easier to focus

9:34

on the questions or the

9:36

areas of decision making that I felt were

9:38

really important. When

9:38

you write things about

9:41

parenting and particularly when you

9:43

write about kind of how to work through the hard

9:45

parts of parenting, getting your kid to sleep,

9:47

like dealing with discipline, you know.

9:49

It's very easy to write what

9:50

you should do. It's very hard to implement

9:53

those things. So I would say in in my

9:55

own parenting, I'm frequently trying to implement

9:57

things that I'm failing at implementing

9:59

even though I

9:59

know that I should implement them. It's

10:02

much easier to tell people what to do

10:04

than to do it. yourself, I find. Yeah.

10:06

For sure. I'm a happiness researcher. I'm well

10:08

aware. So let give me an example of

10:10

something so we can make this more concrete because, you know,

10:12

we're talking in the abstract about parents.

10:14

Okay. give me an example of something that, you

10:16

know, the data say, you gotta do

10:18

this, and then you wind up never doing

10:20

this. So here's the thing. It's

10:22

about sleep. When you are encouraging your kids

10:24

to sleep or trying to enforce a sleep

10:26

schedule, particularly with an older kid data, it tells

10:28

you basically three

10:29

things. you need to have

10:31

a bedtime routine. That's easy.

10:33

You shouldn't have screens before bed. That's

10:35

also not that hard. And

10:37

if your child is coming out of

10:39

the room, routinely, you know,

10:41

disrupting you which is a common thing that little kids

10:43

or older kids do, you

10:45

should be consistent every time in way

10:47

you react. So if you have

10:49

said that was the last hug, then every time

10:51

they come out, you should, you know, take

10:53

them back into the room, put them in the bed, don't do

10:55

another hug. you know, leave when they

10:57

come out

10:57

again, you put them back in the room. You can so it

11:00

turns out, like, they're just that that will

11:01

work. Okay? If you can implement that, that

11:03

is basically a very effective. It actually works

11:05

pretty quickly. It works like within a a few

11:07

days. But it is

11:09

almost impossible I

11:11

find to implement. So I have one

11:13

of my kids is older. She's very

11:14

asleep. But my other kid, it's always like a

11:16

little more variable. And we have

11:18

many nights where he

11:20

will come out a lot of times. And

11:22

I will say this is the last time

11:24

I'm gonna do this, but I cannot follow

11:26

through on that. I just know. If I just do

11:28

it one more time, then, like, eventually, he will just

11:31

go to sleep and kind of investment

11:33

in the moment of, like,

11:35

do I wanna be, like, holding the door close

11:37

while he screams, like, is that what I wanna

11:39

do with my night? Even though I

11:41

know that if I do the other thing, it's

11:43

have these long term consequences. You know, it's just it's the

11:45

things like that are just hard to follow us right now. Yeah. Yeah.

11:47

Let them cry it out. Because I

11:49

was fine letting a cry out when it was, you

11:51

know, when when my kids were babies

11:53

because I think partly it

11:55

was a much more controlled environment. It was just

11:57

like much easier to achieve. with an

11:59

older kid,

11:59

you know, it's a whole other Yeah.

12:02

They're they're, like, they're claiming they're dying.

12:04

And Right. Yeah. They're, like, oh, but I have to

12:06

I gotta get out of the room because I have

12:08

to pee.

12:08

I don't think you

12:10

have to pee. You recently pee.

12:13

So okay. The

12:15

the picture that I'm getting here is

12:17

that you

12:18

should keep an open mind and be open

12:20

to evidence. And you, Emily

12:22

Oster, have a boatload of evidence because what you

12:24

do for a living. But parents have

12:26

evidence too based on their experiences and they

12:28

should be willing and flexible to

12:30

update what they do and not be dogmatic.

12:33

on the basis of what people are telling them. Right? So

12:35

everybody can be kind of their own kind

12:37

of economist, but you have to think like an

12:39

economist, which is Let's see

12:41

what's really going on and change our

12:44

behavior on the basis of what we see and what

12:46

the patterns actually are as opposed to what the

12:48

Internet is telling me. Is that fair? Yeah. I

12:49

think that's fair, and I think it's particularly important

12:52

as kids get older. So it

12:54

is gonna be much less frequently the

12:56

case that we can make statements like

12:59

the data shows x. You

13:01

know? So to give you like a concrete example, there's

13:03

a lot of really good data showing that are introducing

13:06

allergens like peanuts eggs,

13:09

things like that that introducing those to your

13:11

kids earlier rather than later reduces

13:13

the risk of of allergies later.

13:15

Okay? So that's it turns out it's just like a really good

13:17

idea to give your kids allergens

13:19

early. It's shown in randomized

13:21

trials. It's relatively straightforward

13:23

to implement

13:24

there are more things like that in

13:26

little kid parenting -- Mhmm. -- where the data

13:28

will tell you either this is important or

13:30

this is not important or, you know, do

13:32

whatever you want. As your

13:33

kids get bigger, the things that are coming up

13:35

are more complicated, and they get

13:37

really wrapped up in questions around what

13:39

are our family values, what are we trying

13:42

to achieve what we want our days to look like.

13:44

And once you're in that world,

13:46

there is, I think, more space

13:48

for just

13:50

these kind of differences in the outcomes that

13:52

we're gonna get to. But what I

13:54

think people

13:54

should share or what I think would

13:56

help people in in these spaces

13:59

is just being more

13:59

deliberate in the way they are making those

14:02

decisions. Mhmm. It's not that that

14:04

you should or should not rely on the Internet. It's

14:06

that when you come into some complicated

14:08

decision or some choice, you should

14:10

sit down and think about the choice and give

14:12

the choice at this space that it needs in

14:14

your brain. And I

14:15

think that's often what we are missing

14:17

in this era of parenting.

14:19

Mhmm. You realize people aren't

14:21

almost struggling with even

14:24

articulating the different options. And

14:26

that's kind of getting in the way. So let me give you like a

14:28

concrete example of this. So sort

14:30

of discussing with someone the other day,

14:32

the following issue. Before they had kids,

14:34

what they envisioned for their their sort of

14:36

family meal situation was

14:38

that they would all sit down, they in

14:40

their house and their kid would sit down at the table at six

14:42

o'clock every night and they would eat

14:43

an interesting meal that they had

14:46

prepared and then her eighteen month old would love the

14:48

food. You know, it'd be like a wonder family

14:50

activity where they all sat there and, like, enjoyed

14:52

the food

14:52

and they got to cook interesting things and so

14:54

on.

14:54

Like, fast forward eighteen months the

14:56

reality is that her kid isn't really like her food

14:59

that much and is kind of picky. It's just what

15:01

it is. It is impossible to

15:03

achieve this thing that

15:05

she was envisioning, achieving. Correct. It's just

15:07

it's impossible. Like and it's not her fault. It's not

15:09

that she did something wrong. It's just, like, kids are picky

15:11

and, like, there's not there's a limited amount of time and

15:13

that's just the reality. rather

15:15

than recognizing, okay, I can't have this

15:17

first best, but let me figure out what are

15:19

the key things I do wanna have. Is it more

15:22

important to sit at table or interesting

15:24

foods? Or is it more important to, you

15:26

know, eat together as a family or

15:28

be able to have more time for for cooking?

15:30

There's a bunch of ways that you could

15:32

modify your vision that

15:34

would deliver on some of the things that

15:36

you want, but they require

15:38

acknowledging sacrifices. And so we

15:40

sort of talked about the idea that by

15:42

not confronting the limitations

15:45

that had arrived, she was not

15:47

able to get to a second

15:49

best She was envisioning the first best.

15:51

Mhmm. She can't

15:51

have the first best. Right. So

15:53

I was I was saying, like, let's think about what's

15:55

the second best. And instead, we're in, like, the twenty

15:58

seventh best. So

15:59

one of the things that we noticed is we became less and

16:01

less and less scrupulous with

16:03

our parenting as as the children were born.

16:05

So our first son was born and, you know,

16:07

the pacifier falls out. Right? Oh

16:09

my goodness. You got a passive. And so

16:11

you've got, like, a ziplock bag full of

16:13

pacifiers and you take the old

16:15

pacifier home, you boil it, and you it

16:17

for fifteen minutes or whatever it is and then you

16:19

can make sure it's completely sterilized. So the second

16:22

kit comes along a couple years later

16:24

and and the pacifier falls out. And

16:26

so, yeah, you find a drinking fountain, you rinse it

16:28

off and you give it back to them. Third

16:30

child comes along and the

16:32

pacifier falls out. And the first thing you do is to look and

16:34

see if anybody's watching. then you

16:36

wipe it off and put it back in her mouth. And it turns

16:38

out that she's the best adjuster. it

16:41

off. That would be number four, you

16:43

know. But you know, the third is like the

16:45

most the best adjusted child, the

16:47

least stressed out, probably because

16:49

that's this, you know, bad parenting behavior is

16:51

correlating with all sorts of other standards

16:53

that we're developing here. And I mean, one of

16:55

the the first themes is, you know, be

16:57

deliberate thing for yourself, but also one of the

16:59

themes in your research is relax,

17:01

man. Right? Right.

17:03

Yeah. Absolutely.

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18:13

Now you're not a

18:16

pediatrician and you're not a psychologist. You're economist.

18:18

What what led you as an economist to take

18:20

up this to take up this topic of

18:22

parenting and families and how to be

18:24

parents and how to be kids. Yeah. So

18:25

pretty much becoming a parent was sort of

18:28

the that was my entry into

18:30

parenting and into writing

18:32

about parenting. But you know, I think

18:34

for for me I kind of came into parenting with

18:36

the tools from my job. I was familiar

18:38

or comfortable with the idea

18:41

of using tools of data analysis

18:43

and structured decision making in my

18:45

life before my parenting and most of

18:47

the writing that I do about parenting uses

18:49

those tools, takes those those insights.

18:51

I'm married and non

18:53

American. So my wife's from Barcelona. She

18:56

thinks that Americans are all

18:58

about fads and panics. That all of

19:00

American culture is a combination of fads

19:02

and panics. It's like we're all gonna do this.

19:04

We all stand for the current thing

19:07

or we're all freaked out in protesting

19:09

this thing all the time. So

19:11

she said, you know what? I

19:13

don't think anything matters that much

19:16

except love. and she's sort of a monest

19:18

in this way. How terrible is that

19:20

rule? I don't think that's a terrible

19:22

rule.

19:22

I mean, I think if you look at evidence

19:24

on almost any individual

19:27

parenting choice, you

19:29

would struggle to find concrete

19:31

evidence that it matters in

19:33

some meaningful way. We know on

19:35

the one hand if we compare sort of

19:37

across resource levels. So if we compare

19:40

across income groups in the US that there are, you

19:42

know, big differences in, say, school

19:44

achievement for for kids based on what

19:46

happens in the first years. So, obviously,

19:48

something that is going on is

19:50

really important for various aspects of

19:52

kids development. Right. And yet it's very difficult

19:54

to identify any individual piece

19:57

of that. individual thing that you

19:59

as a parent could

19:59

do to, like, enhance

20:02

this achievement metric or whatever

20:04

it is. And I I think like your wife have always

20:06

sort of interpreted that result as

20:09

sort of something about not so much love,

20:11

but but even just sort of stability.

20:13

that the idea that like there's a lot of

20:15

value to sort of a kind of

20:17

stable, well resourced

20:19

home and that that is

20:22

something that we could be thinking about policy solutions too.

20:24

But that is not the same as, like,

20:26

does your montessori preschool have

20:27

only wooden toys or whatever? Yeah. And

20:29

did you listen to a lot of moats

20:31

when you're -- Right. Right. -- that turns out to be

20:33

garbage. That that's what's outside of it. You

20:35

know, that some combination is bad and

20:37

panicked. Right? Which, you know, gets back to the

20:40

Right? And now speaking of Faz and Panics, you write

20:42

about parenting mandates. So give

20:44

me an example of a parenting

20:46

mandate. So

20:47

there's a there's this idea that, like,

20:49

if you're making infant formula,

20:50

you have to boil the water.

20:52

And

20:52

it's an example where turns out the

20:55

reason to do that is, effectively

20:57

a hypothetical risk for something

20:59

that is more or less not definitely

21:02

not going to happen, or it's like a tiny,

21:04

tiny, probability thing.

21:06

And I talk about this as, like, parenting mandates, unfunded

21:08

parenting mandates, things where we

21:10

were told, you know, here is all of

21:12

the fifty seven thousand things you need

21:15

to do. if you, like, add up

21:17

the time for all of those things, it's, you know,

21:19

seventy two

21:19

hours every day. And there's,

21:21

like, well, I only have twenty four

21:23

hours. Like, which of these things should I do? It's like, well, all of them. Okay?

21:25

But I've already told you, like, that seventy two

21:27

hours of things. So it's like, well, I guess do them faster.

21:29

It's like, well, you know,

21:31

So what what should we do instead? I mean, I understand why

21:34

there are rules. I mean, I I get

21:36

it. I I guess that some of our

21:38

listeners would say, well, what approval is conversation? You know,

21:40

these people all access to all this, you

21:42

know, good data and and

21:44

were raised in really stable homes.

21:46

And they can sit there and say that

21:48

we don't need parenting mandates where a lot of people

21:50

didn't have access this information and and

21:52

easy rules are the best way to do it. You're

21:54

not saying that we should get rid of

21:56

all mandates

21:56

or I don't know. What's what what's

21:58

your mandate

21:59

on mandates?

22:00

What's hard? I mean, this is a sort of key

22:02

issue in public health communication, which is

22:05

one that came up all the time in the COVID

22:07

pandemic as well. we somehow need

22:09

a way to communicate to

22:11

people levels of risk.

22:13

So co sleeping is a good

22:15

example of So the kind of

22:17

rhetoric that we have on co sleeping is like under no

22:19

circumstance should you sleep in the bed with

22:21

your baby. This is like the public health advice

22:23

on this is, you know, that's extremely dangerous.

22:25

And we don't provide that with much nuance.

22:27

And in fact, if you look at the data on

22:29

that, it is pretty nuance in the sense that

22:31

there are safer and less safe ways

22:33

to co sleep. So think even in

22:35

the safest, it carries some small risk,

22:38

but it is

22:38

much riskier if one of

22:40

the

22:40

parents is smoking, if

22:43

you know, lot of covers in the bed if

22:45

the baby is premature early on

22:47

in life. There's all kinds of subtleties to

22:49

that, which I think could be communicated

22:52

but aren't And people are left

22:54

in a situation in which

22:56

they almost may find it impossible

22:59

and you haven't provided them with

23:01

another alternative. Alright?

23:03

So people say, literally, you've told me I

23:05

can't sleep with my baby and my baby will only

23:07

sleep with me. So there's no

23:09

solution for this. And that's where you get

23:11

into situations and this is the real

23:13

things that have more people say, well, I'm

23:15

gonna try really hard to stay awake. I'm gonna hold the

23:17

baby because that's the only way it'll sleep. I'm try really

23:19

hard to awake. I'm gonna go to I'm on the couch and you told

23:21

me the worst possible thing is to sleep

23:23

in the bed with my baby. Well, it turns out

23:25

the worst possible thing is to

23:27

fall asleep accidentally on a couch with

23:29

your baby. That is like fifty times

23:31

as dangerous as co sleeping

23:33

in the in the safest way. Now

23:35

by not providing any subtlety in

23:37

our public health messaging, we've

23:39

left people in a situation where the

23:41

choice that they

23:42

will make trying to achieve what

23:44

you want is a worse

23:47

choice. And I don't

23:47

have a solution to that, but I I do

23:50

think that we need to be

23:52

far more thoughtful about the way we're

23:54

sending these messages, because

23:56

we're sending them to

23:58

people and not to autonomous robots who are

23:59

able to just say the things that we

24:02

want. Yeah. Now,

24:03

there are obviously really bad ways

24:05

to do that. I mean, they're they're really

24:08

irresponsible ways to throw out the rule book and say,

24:10

basically, you know, I don't believe any of

24:12

this, so I'm gonna smoke all I'm pregnant. And there's

24:14

a ton of evidence says you shouldn't do that. Even

24:16

less should you drink cold or you're pregnant for

24:18

example. And there are all kinds of ways that you can put your

24:20

baby at risk. But there are some people that are, you

24:22

know, more nuanced about that. You know,

24:24

their who are kind of counter

24:26

cultural parents. And they say, I'm I'm

24:28

gonna do these things because I wanna do these things. And

24:30

I wanna have a deep connection with my child and I

24:32

don't really care what you

24:34

know, Daddy Internet

24:36

says, what's your view on sort of

24:38

counter cultural parenting where

24:40

you figured out like people

24:42

did for millennia.

24:43

The broader

24:45

answer, the broader thing I think a lot of

24:47

people struggle with is whiplashing

24:49

between decisions. Right?

24:51

So that probably the worst decision making approach

24:53

is to do one thing because one book says it and

24:55

then as soon as you read a different book or your mom

24:57

comes to visit, do the other thing.

25:00

The more you can make

25:00

one choice and try to stick to

25:03

it, the easier is your parenting

25:04

going to be since many of these choices

25:07

that you make don't matter very much.

25:09

I mean, I think up to issues that you raise, which is

25:11

like, there are some things which you, you know, which

25:13

are very dangerous, you should not do. I think

25:15

that's actually completely Like,

25:17

that's completely great. Mhmm. What I think many

25:19

people struggle with is that

25:21

they struggle to implement that. Right.

25:23

So that that in the reality of

25:26

it, the kind of I'm just gonna go

25:28

with my gut. Does

25:29

it work for everybody? Because for many

25:32

people that

25:32

can lead to well, I actually

25:34

wasn't really sure and now I'm rethinking

25:37

it because of the thing this person at the

25:39

playground said to me. So when people tell me,

25:41

like, I'm I'm, like, really

25:43

confident

25:43

in my decisions, and I'm not really reading books and I'm not

25:45

really making them based on data and I just like, this

25:47

is what I wanna do and this is what works for me.

25:49

I think that's like that's absolutely

25:52

fantastic. when they say, I'm gonna go

25:54

in this direction, but then as soon as you

25:56

say, well, this, you know, there's here's this piece of data.

25:58

It's like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I made the

26:00

wrong choice. then I I think we're

26:02

in a space where you actually aren't

26:04

almost aren't able to go with

26:05

your gut because the stimulus

26:07

of

26:07

the information is the way you wanna go,

26:10

but you haven't managed to process it

26:12

correctly? Yeah, one of

26:13

the reasons that people,

26:15

they don't follow mandates is, as

26:17

you point out, in your work, is

26:20

because kids force the deviation

26:22

from the script. Mhmm. The

26:24

kids themselves actually kind of force the deviation. Lots of

26:26

cases of this, you know. I want

26:28

another hug, and and it's really compelling in

26:30

the terms that you want to give the child another hug,

26:32

for example. Or, you know, when they get a little bit older

26:34

and bilingual households, one of the things

26:37

that we all of us in bilingual households find is

26:39

that the kids don't

26:41

necessarily want to talk to the parent who speaks

26:43

a non English language in the

26:45

United States. in

26:47

that foreign language. We see this again and

26:49

again and again that the non native English

26:51

speaking parent will be forced into

26:53

English with the kid by the kid. happens

26:55

all the time, path of least resistance. So talk to me

26:57

a little bit about kids

26:59

forcing changes to the

27:01

rules and if this is good or

27:03

bad or should we care. kids

27:04

are people

27:07

too. One of the most

27:09

challenging aspects of being a

27:10

person who likes control,

27:12

who has children is the realization that like there

27:14

are some things

27:15

that you basically can't make them

27:17

do. There's the many moments in

27:20

parenting. whether it's sleep or food or or something else

27:22

where you realize, oh, actually, I can't

27:24

force this person -- Right. -- to do this

27:26

thing. It closely relates

27:28

to a

27:30

set of questions around

27:31

how much autonomy your kids have

27:33

and how much of the

27:35

way that your family operates is going to

27:37

be driven by the things that the kid

27:40

wants.

27:40

And when you should start thinking

27:42

about that? When does your kid

27:44

get a say in what

27:47

extracurriculars they do? you

27:49

know, when they're ten months old and you enroll them

27:51

in baby music. Presumably, you're not

27:53

like, you know, well, like, would

27:55

you wanna go to the baby music

27:57

about gaffy? Or do you wanna go to the moats or baby music?

27:58

You just, like, enroll them in

27:59

whatever thing is available. When your

28:01

kid is fifteen, presumably, they

28:03

do get a pretty significant say

28:05

in what extra pillars they're doing. But where's

28:07

that line? Like, when do you listen to them? What's

28:09

the what's the time that you make that choice? And how do

28:11

you know it's gonna be the right choice or not

28:13

the right choice in the long run? I think that

28:16

part of kid autonomy

28:18

around decision making is is just it's

28:20

really challenging. You've heard about

28:22

the free range parenting debate.

28:24

which is this debate about whether or not we

28:27

over structure our kids lives and we over

28:29

protect our kids. You know, within normal

28:31

boundaries of the of the current

28:33

conversation, where would you put yourself? in this

28:35

debate. So

28:35

in terms of physical autonomy,

28:38

which is almost how sort of I think of the

28:40

the free range parenting. So how much do you let your

28:42

kid, like, walk to the library by themselves

28:44

or walk home or I actually

28:46

think where I'm relative to my

28:48

peer group somewhat far

28:50

on on this. I actually think there's a

28:52

lot of value. kids and having

28:54

them navigate the the

28:56

world outside of your four

28:58

walls on their own is

29:00

pretty important. Yeah.

29:01

Okay. So you're you're more free range

29:03

than most people of your generation, most parents

29:05

of your generation for sure. Right? And you have

29:07

this you not because you don't believe there is

29:10

exist, but because you, as an economist,

29:12

are trying to assess risk versus reward. Is

29:14

that fair to say? I think that's fair to

29:16

say. Yep. I think probably also you

29:18

would assert, and I would agree with you,

29:20

that the reason that more people

29:22

don't subscribe to this point of view is

29:24

because all they hear about is a

29:26

risk. Mhmm. they don't hear about the reward. I mean, you don't hear on the news.

29:28

You know, a child walks to library

29:30

alone and has a great time and becomes

29:32

better adjusted. Yeah. That's not a

29:34

headline, you know, when the kid doesn't get snatched.

29:36

And so that's a that's a problem. Isn't

29:38

it when it's all risk or reward in the way that we

29:40

hear about parenting? Yeah.

29:42

I

29:42

think it I think it is. And you this goes along with

29:44

the question of, you know, do I bring my kid

29:46

their shoes

29:49

at school when they forget them. You know, if my kid

29:51

forgets their soccer shoes, is their job to bring them and they

29:53

forget their soccer shoes, what

29:55

is

29:55

my approach to that? what I bring them

29:57

the soccer shoes? Or to what extent is

29:59

it

29:59

learning experience? And I think that's

30:02

a really complicated question. In in some ways, it's

30:04

the complicated for the same

30:06

reason that it's complicated to know

30:08

whether I should go in and give my kid that last hug

30:10

because I know that they will shut them up

30:12

now, but it will have consequences later.

30:14

you know, if I bring my kid soccer shoes when they're ten, it's like,

30:16

yeah, then they'll have their soccer shoes and, like, it's,

30:18

like, would be very bad if they had to

30:21

play. somewhat bad if they had to set out of

30:23

this game. But, like, I'm still bringing them their

30:25

soccer shoes when they're nineteen and they, like, went

30:27

to college. So I find

30:29

those conversations just

30:31

really difficult to navigate to to

30:33

think about what's the right thing to do.

30:34

Yeah. And by the way, helicopter parenting

30:36

is all about bringing child, her

30:38

soccer shoes at age nineteen when she's a sophomore

30:40

in college. I mean, that's -- Absolutely. -- and there's a

30:42

ton of data on this. There's a ton of actually interesting

30:45

research on that shows a helicopter

30:47

parent. They lowers the sense of autonomy, increases

30:49

rates of depression and anxiety.

30:51

It attenuates the relationship with the parents. All

30:53

the things you think is not supposed

30:55

to do it does. Yeah. All the good things you think it's gonna

30:57

bring it brings the opposite is the bottom line.

30:59

That's why free of autonomy are so critically

31:02

important, but habits are habits and habits

31:04

are ingrained when the kids are little. Right?

31:06

It's almost that you

31:06

need a deliberate break in those habits because

31:09

it's really hard to break

31:10

those habits when your kid is

31:12

older, because things feel more consequential.

31:14

You know, because it's

31:15

like, well, now it's the soccer

31:17

game that the, you know, recruiters

31:19

are at. And so I can't like,

31:21

have them forget their shoes for that game. There does

31:23

have to be a point at what you say, you know,

31:25

now this is your job. Like you as a

31:27

kid, this is your job, but it's gonna mean that

31:29

you're gonna have to follow through some

31:31

consequences, and that's a choice people have to

31:33

make. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, we

31:34

started with being

31:37

pregnant and getting out, getting

31:39

out And now our kids are forgetting their their lifestyle. And now our kids

31:41

are, yeah, in soccer shoes in college, but we're

31:43

making this progression. It's interesting.

31:45

And my my kids will bring up

31:47

I had a technique that I used when my kids were

31:49

in high school. So I made my kids write

31:51

a business plan. And they made very

31:53

original business plans and they all kinda

31:55

did their own thing. I mean, one

31:57

went to, you know,

32:00

Princeton University, a famous

32:02

university did really well. Another one went worked on

32:04

a farm for two years. and that

32:06

was a sniper in the Marine Corps. And

32:08

and one of them made a run for the border and

32:10

is studying in Spain. And they were all part of their, you know, what

32:12

they were gonna do. do you grow that approach?

32:14

And how do you feel about trying

32:16

to to tease out the way that our

32:18

kids can be, you know, their own

32:20

person from the very beginning? Or is that a

32:22

dangerous way of approaching

32:24

parenthood. Should you be giving them more parameters

32:26

or or trying to encourage them to

32:28

be kind of Yeah. I mean,

32:29

I'm not sure would tell everyone they need their to make a

32:31

business plan. Although I like, what you're getting

32:33

at that I really find resident is

32:35

the idea of your kids

32:39

not being an extension of

32:41

your dreams fulfilled or or

32:43

unfulfilled. We all

32:45

have these these

32:45

images or these ideas for, like, what our

32:48

kids are gonna be or what they're gonna be excited about. And a

32:50

lot of times, they're the things that we're good at are the

32:52

things that resonate with us. And for many

32:54

of us, a part of parenting that is

32:56

challenging is is seeing, you know, okay, well,

32:58

this is what my kid wants to do, and maybe it's not

33:00

the thing I envision for them, maybe it's not the

33:02

thing that that I envision for myself, but it's a thing that

33:04

they like. And it's a thing that I need

33:06

to sort of celebrate the ways in

33:08

which this person is in fact

33:10

a person and that becomes so much more

33:12

vivid and visual as your kids get older, you

33:14

sort of realize. And that's a part of my own

33:16

parenting. I find both very, very

33:18

rewarding and also very hard you. It's easy for

33:20

me to to connect with the

33:22

pieces of, like, my daughter that we

33:24

are very similar, but much

33:26

harder on the on the things that she's good at

33:28

that I'm not but they're also the most fun

33:30

things to be like, oh my gosh, I could never do

33:32

that. Like -- Yeah. -- I could just absolutely

33:34

never do that, and

33:34

I'm so impressed that you that

33:37

you can. No. It's amazing. And when when actually see these

33:39

things, they know when you're amazed

33:41

too. They know when you're blown

33:43

smoke. They know when you're, oh,

33:45

that's wonderful They can sense a

33:47

participation trophy at a hundred

33:49

meters. Exactly. But boy or boy

33:51

do they know when they've amazed parents.

33:53

So encourage them to do amazing

33:55

things and then be authentically amazing. No. My

33:57

daughter plays plays a violin, and she's, like,

33:59

quite good at it. And

33:59

I, like, I listen. I'm, like, wow. I

34:02

don't even know what what you're talking about.

34:04

You know? She's like, oh, that that that that that I'm like, I don't

34:06

understand the words, but it sounds nice.

34:08

Right.

34:08

Fantastic.

34:10

What do you think is the single

34:12

biggest mistake that American parents are making today? Probably

34:16

overthinking it.

34:16

mean, I

34:18

feel like this is such a ridiculous thing for

34:20

someone like me to say who's, like, entire thing is,

34:22

like, think more about your parenting and be more

34:25

deliberate. But like, probably there is a sort

34:27

of mistake somewhere in here

34:29

around planning it too much or relying

34:31

too much on this

34:33

idea that, like, if I could

34:35

only get this one like, if I could only find the one key, there's like one

34:37

key to getting it right. There's no key

34:39

to getting it right.

34:42

Thank you

34:46

to

34:47

our how to listeners who helped make this

34:50

show what

34:52

it is. We asked you to tell us about your

34:54

most clever parenting moment.

34:56

And here's what you said.

35:00

Hi. This is Marilyn from Oak Park

35:02

Illinois, and I think one of my cleverest

35:04

parenting moments was when my daughter was

35:06

in middle school posted

35:08

something that we thought she shouldn't have on social

35:10

media. As punishment for her

35:12

irresponsible use of technology,

35:13

we took away her phone and told her

35:15

that for the next week, she

35:17

couldn't use any technology that wasn't available

35:20

in nineteen seventy

35:20

six, which was when I was in

35:23

middle school. That

35:23

mostly meant that could only use the

35:25

landline phone in the kitchen and had next to the wall pretending the phone was on

35:28

a

35:28

cord. Years later, we still

35:30

talk about how fun that week

35:33

was, and I think all of us learned some

35:35

good

35:36

lessons.

35:38

I remember,

35:42

for example, that I kept reading that if my my baby was

35:44

crying during the night, you should just let

35:46

him cry it out. Cry

35:48

it out.

35:50

cry it out. Cry it out. They call it crying it

35:52

out. And it's like I don't want to let them cry it out. I

35:54

don't want to do that. So I

35:56

decided I wasn't going to. And

36:00

It was fine. He didn't grow up to be

36:02

a bank robber. He didn't grow up

36:04

to be as horrible, spoiled

36:06

person. You

36:08

know, he's He's great. Did well in school

36:10

and and took responsibility for his actions

36:12

despite the fact that I didn't let him cry

36:14

it out. the time. And remember

36:16

I was kind of worried at the

36:18

time that I was stunting his growth

36:20

because I was trying to,

36:23

you know, do something that would that would satisfy my own desires.

36:25

But the truth of the matter was that as

36:27

time went on, I realized that there's just a lot

36:29

more flexibility and things that you do. recognize

36:31

why they have these guidelines is probably good advice, but

36:34

it's just not something to

36:36

you shouldn't set your watch to,

36:38

you know, parenting regulations is what

36:40

I found. And and that was important for me

36:42

to figure out. And it turned out

36:44

that it's not as bad as they say

36:46

or at least, I don't know. I mean, the truth

36:49

is I still don't know. I still don't

36:51

know and you know I'll be a grandfather and not

36:53

know. So I guess I'm

36:55

more comfortable with

36:58

not knowing.

37:00

That's

37:03

all for

37:04

this week's episode of how to build a

37:07

happy life. episode was produced by

37:09

me, Rebecca Rashid, and hosted by

37:11

Arthur Brooks, editing by AC

37:14

Valdez

37:15

and Claudine Ibate. Fact

37:17

check by Anna Alvarado, our engineer is

37:20

Matthew Symonson.

37:33

This episode is supported by

37:36

ONEDRAM,

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a reliable resource for

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information,

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support, and strategies to give

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your mental well-being the boost it needs,

37:44

all presented by practicing professors, experts, and

37:46

instructors. For special offers, go

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to

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one dream dot com slash how

37:52

to.