Emily Oster’s Pandemic Parenting Guidance Is All About the Data
Legions of fans are taking their cues from a hyper-rational, best-selling Brown University professor whose version of economics is keeping them sane.
Over the course of a few days in mid-May in Providence, in between homeschooling her 5- and 9-year-olds, grading undergrad research papers, baking bread, revising her first book, and co-chairing Brown University’s Healthy Fall 2020 Task Force over Zoom, Emily Oster sat down in front of her laptop with a steady supply of coffee. A few months earlier she’d started writing a newsletter called ParentData, aimed at the following of pregnant women and new parents she’s amassed over the years. It started as a guide to making data-driven decisions about such things as side sleeping and sippy cups. But as with everything else, the pandemic had taken over. She’d wake up each day to an inbox full of frantic questions: Was it safe to visit the grandparents? Are play dates off the table? What about sending kids back to school?
Oster, an economics professor, has built a thriving career applying the tools of her discipline to everyday life. Her first book, 2013’s Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know, shot her from academic obscurity to household name. It dug into data to bat down blanket bans issued by obstetricians (including hers during her pregnancies) on deli meats, sushi, and alcohol. “Economists’ core decision-making principles are applicable everywhere,” she wrote. “And that includes the womb.”