The Right Choices in Parenting

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The mandates of modern parenting can be dizzying. But in the effort to optimize our parenting, we may lose sight of the values we hope to impart to our children—and the skills necessary for individual decision making.

A conversation with economist Emily Oster helps with understanding the nuances of choice-making in parenthood.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Matthew Simonson.

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This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Brooks: You know, being a parent is a little like not seeing a gorilla. There’s this experiment that two psychologists at my university undertook in 1999. It’s a famous paper that they wrote called Gorillas in Our Midst.

It was a psychology experiment that looked at when people are focusing on one trivial thing, how they can become effectively blind to a much bigger thing. Now, that’s what it’s like to be the parent of a little kid.

You’re not paying attention to being happy and having a happy baby. You’re worried about whether or not you boiled that pacifier. You’re not worried about the big picture of what’s going on in your family and the relationships that you’re building, because you’re so completely distracted by counting the number of times the kid went to the bathroom today.

I’m guilty. I mean, when my kids were little, I could tell you every bit of minutia about what was going on in their little lives. But a lot of the time I wasn’t thinking about the stuff that I would really like to remember today, which is: What were we feeling? Where were we going? How were they developing?

Brooks: If there’s any area of life where our expectations for ourselves seem impossible to meet, it’s parenting. We tend to be fixated on parenting outcomes. And that really never works. I want to understand how parents can actually make good decisions or maybe just good-enough decisions and be happy at the same time.

Oster: I’m Emily Oster. I’m aExpecting BetterCribsheetThe Family Firm