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

By Emily Oster

From the author of Expecting Better, The Family Firm, and The Unexpected an economist's guide to the early years of parenting.

“Both refreshing and useful. With so many parenting theories driving us all a bit batty, this is the type of book that we need to help calm things down.” —LA Times

“The book is jampacked with information, but it’s also a delightful read because Oster is such a good writer.” —NPR

With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting. 

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule—or three—for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? 

Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they're ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren't necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. 

Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent's guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert—and mom of two—who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions—and stay sane in the years before preschool.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780525559269

Emily Oster

Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and the author of Cribsheet and Expecting Better. Listed as one of TIME's most influential people 2022, her work is centred around humanising data to help people work through hard decisions. She spoke at the 2007 TED conference and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Esquire. Oster is married to economist Jesse Shapiro and is also the daughter of two economists. She has two children.

Reviews for Cribsheet

[andjhostet-527429 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pretty similar to Expecting Better, however slightly different topics covered. Oster continues to do a great job of giving readers the data, interpreting it the best way she can, and letting the reader make a judgement call armed with the information.

[drmom62 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Limited evidence on a lot of things but it's good to know where there is evidence and where there is not. A lot of this I guessed when I was raising my own children. Hopefully this is just the beginning of better quality information to base recommendations on

[arosoff-513117 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not quite the target audience for this book, since my kids are already past the preschool stage, but having had mixed feelings about her first book, I was curious about how her approach would work.

My suspicions were borne out: it's hard to use a data driven approach when so many of the issues have poor or conflicting data. Whether intentionally or not, the book exposes the limitations of her approach. As with her last book, she's come into conflict with epidemiologists over her take on breastfeeding, and I think both sides have a point: A woman's personal choice reflects a great deal more than the theoretical risks and benefits from a health perspective. At the same time, Oster's approach is belied by the underlying assumption that all the health considerations are equal--she does mention some of the benefits in specific cases, but doesn't really apply them.

Ultimately, she winds up showing that parenting has a great deal to do with what you value, and that's not an easy element to put through her kind of analysis. Once again, she's limited by her use of her personal lens: this reads like a very white, upper middle class book.

None of that is to say that the book is useless. It's a fun read. She's got a very conversational, I'm your friend tone that works well with the material, and she does get through a lot of topics, some of which deserve the airing such as the gore of the postpartum period and the importance of postpartum mental health.

[mcelhra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Emily Oster uses the same data-centered approach in Cribsheet that she did in Expecting Better. (You can read my review of that here.) That’s why I loved Expecting Better so I knew I’d love Cribsheet too. Oster wrote Expecting Better after she had her first child and drew on her own experience of pregnancy for that book. She would present the data and explain why she made the choice she did but was never judgmental about it. The choice was ultimately left up to the reader. Cribsheet is the same, only Oster wrote it after the birth of her second child. She knows from personal experience that all children are different and what works for one may not work for another – even if they have the same parents.Cribsheet covers the most heated topics related to a baby’s first year – sleep training, breast vs. bottle, vaccinations, working vs. staying home, etc. The section on toddlers includes walking, talking, potty training, discipline, education and more. Like in Expecting Better, she presents the various approaches to each topic and then her analysis of the available data, without judgment. My oldest child is 16 years old and my youngest is 18 months old. A lot has changed in 16 years. One example is that it’s now recommended that children sleep in the parents’ bedroom for their first year. This blew me away! My older kids were in their own room within weeks of birth and this was pretty much standard at the time. After reading Oster’s section on sleep, I understood why the recommendation had been put into place and was able to decide how long I thought it was appropriate for my new baby to sleep in my bedroom given the available data.I hope that Oster continues to write books as her children grow. I’ll be first in line for all of them!

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A considered discussion of an analysis of the evidence base for many of the first year decisions and challenges.

[juva_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is designed to review and summarize all the concrete research data about various decision points in parenting. There are lots of theories, methods, and anecdotal advice that gets thrown and new parents and it can be very overwhelming. The author experienced this herself and decided that it would be very helpful to have an analysis of not just the research, but the validity of the research. Every book, system, and blog can cite at least one study that seems to support their philosophy, but how well were these studies conducted? How much can we really glean from them and are their any studies that show the opposite? The author does a great job of surveying the research landscape and distilling all the data into easily digestible bites. Her logical approach will be very helpful and comforting to the panicky or over-anxious parent who is paralyzed by the contradicting advice they are receiving.