The ParentData Series

EXPECTING BETTER overturns standard recommendations for alcohol, caffeine, sushi, bed rest and induction, while putting in context the blanket guidelines for fetal testing, weight gain, risks of pregnancy over the age of 35, and nausea, among others. Oster offers the real-world advice one would never get at the doctor's office. Knowing that the health of your baby is paramount, listeners can know more and worry less. Having the numbers is a tremendous relief - and so is the occasional glass of wine.

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.

Parenting is full of decisions, nearly all of which can be agonised over. There is an abundance of often conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends and strangers on the internet. 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 and offers non-judgemental ways to consider our options in light of the facts.

In The Family Firm, Brown professor of economics and mom of two Emily Oster offers a classic business school framework for data-driven parents to think more deliberately about the key issues of the elementary years: school, health, extracurricular activities, and more. Unlike the hourly challenges of infant parenting, the big questions in this age come up less frequently.

In Expecting Better, Emily Oster revolutionized the pregnancy landscape with her data-driven approach. In the years since, she kept hearing questions from readers on how to approach a second pregnancy when the first has not gone as planned. The Unexpected is a book that Oster hopes no one needs—but in reality, 50 percent of pregnancies include complications, and we don’t talk about it.