Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool

Cribsheet follows on the heels of Oster’s first book, 2013’s Expecting Better, a guide to pregnancy and childbirth that became a runaway bestseller. The work’s popularity stemmed, in large part, from Oster’s approach: A economist in her “day job,” she uses her research skills to unpack huge volumes of data, in the process puncturing overinflated fears and questioning burdensome recommendations that lead to small or uncertain benefits. This approach was a welcome corrective to the overwhelming information environment many US parents found themselves in at that time. In a 2019 Washington Post review of Cribsheet, writer Jenny Rogers captures the sense of relief that many readers of Expecting Better experienced: “That sort of context is often missing from the Internet and our parenting messaging boards, where everything from swaddling to potty-training timing is presented as a matter of life or death” (Rogers, Jenny. “Parents Are Drowning in Advice.” The Washington Post, 2019). Cribsheet picks up where Expecting Better left off, aiming to equip new parents to navigate the flood of often contradictory and hyperbolic advice they’re likely to find on the Internet.

Oster’s emphasis on data-driven decision-making is tailored for a cultural moment in which parents have access to more information than ever before but often struggle to evaluate that information or to choose among competing viewpoints. The debate around vaccination is an extreme example. Oster summarizes this controversy, in which a fraudulent paper by Andrew Wakefield suggested a link between childhood vaccination and autism. The paper has since been thoroughly discredited, but the narrative it proposed took hold on the Internet, where it grew into a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that no amount of subsequent research has been able to fully dislodge. This is one of the few questions Oster addresses for which she says there is a single, straightforward answer: The link between vaccines and autism does not exist, and children should be vaccinated on schedule.

Most parenting dilemmas, however, are less straightforward, and here Oster’s role is to help parents crunch the data and come up with solutions that work for their families. Oster addresses the challenges faced by working mothers, the societal pressures on women to breastfeed, and the negotiation of parental responsibilities. This mirrors the ongoing, Internet-driven cultural discourse in the United States about gender equality, work-life balance, and the evolving roles of mothers and fathers.

The themes of parental anxiety, decision-making dilemmas, and the quest for reliable guidance create a narrative that resonates with parents in the Internet age. Oster’s data-driven methodology and emphasis on critical thinking promote an inclusive perspective that acknowledges the agency modern parents have to find answers for themselves, while offering a guide to help them choose among the many answers available.