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This episode brought up some really great points. However, it seems like no matter what we do as parents, the older generations are going to tell us we are doing it wrong. Parents today really can't win.

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So many comments contain advice on child rearing that I want to add my own. Neither the mother nor the father should forget the other spouse.

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Great first episode. Oster’s books aren’t just for mothers; I really got a lot out of Cribsheet when my wife was pregnant with our first.

Oster’s rationality and common sense approach has influenced my parenting. I’m a Gen X girl dad and really will try to see my kids have independence, like my parents gave me.

Also being a helicopter parent just sounds too much of a hassle.

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The message in this essay is perhaps the most important message we can be delivering to the country and the world. Thanks to Mrs. Kahn for her obsessive parenting drive, and to Emily Oster for her wisdom and insights (and thanks for the great theme of the first episode!)

Peace to mothers everywhere!

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Motherhood is a critically importantjob-but the first rule is to unconditionally love your children

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I very seldom think "this country is going to hell in a hand basket," but I did a couple of days ago. A young mother was riding her bicycle down my busy street and her 3-year-old was trailing on an electric tricycle. At that age, I was exercising my little legs attempting to crash into my neighbor's trike.

He became a lifelong friend.

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There are so many kids AND adults on electric bikes. What happened to exercise? That’s why it’s estimated that nearly 70-80% of our population is overweight, not to even mention the number who are obese. Exercise and good nutrition are seriously lacking.

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I'd love to see parents push back on all the sports that kids are doing. While sports are good generally, they now eat up all the time that kids could be spending developing friends or God forbid, hanging out, far from hovering adults.

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Sports keep kids off screens and prevent obesity.

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That’s covered in one of her books. Decide as parents how much time you’ll spend driving kids to after school activities. I remember doing karate 3x a week from 700pm-830pm. My mother would drive me the 10 miles and read a book in the car while waiting for class to end. As a teenager I never considered her sacrifice.

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Raising three self-sustaining GenXers wasn't bump-free, but hindsight shows that Wifey and I gave up most of our hobbies to be home waayyy more often than not. Also, our house was where they and their friends hung out to have fun and learn about the small things. They ruined a pool table, carpet, two broken couches from wrestling, and about $5,000 in pizza and other foods - and it was worth every penny.

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"Experts say . . ." The most frightening phrase in the English language.

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No kidding. Or, "I am from the government and I'm here to help..."

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I have long wondered if advanced US weapons sold to foriegn countries come with secret 'kill switches' embedded deeply in the coding or firmware if the weapons were to be used against the US or Israel.

For example, some US client trys to attack Israel with US made aircraft and out goes a coded message. Suddenly, it is all the Muslim pilot can do to keep the plane at half speed in the air while his weapons refuse to arm. Attack aborted!

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We're Just Not That Bright...or long term thinking.

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“Parenting in 2024 has become an all-consuming obsession. But the paradox is that our kids are, by many measures, worse off today than 30 years ago. They are more anxious than ever. They’re more depressed than ever. They’re more medicated than ever. Kids’ reading and math scores haven’t recovered since their decline during the pandemic. Childhood obesity has risen to 19.7 percent in America, where the average child spends 7.5 hours in front of a screen for entertainment each day. More kids are being raised without two parents in the home than ever before. And just a few weeks ago, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory, warning that parents are more stressed, worried, overwhelmed, and lonely than ever.”

Instead of talking to all these so called experts, podcasters and tic tok influencers, how about talking to parents from 30 years ago. If kids are doing worse, then just maybe those old folks living next door, in the nursing homes, seniors centers and at grandparents day maybe know a thing or two more than you and your neurotic generation. How about interviewing a few of those folks for your series.

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That’s exactly what she did. Compare previous parenting with current practices and discuss the outcomes. Of course, current parents and teenagers will tell you life is so much harder now.

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I couldn't agree more with your sentiment. But I'm very familiar with Emily Oster and Jonathan Haidt (not the others), and rest assured these "experts" are indeed urging people to use a lot of the common sense from 30 years ago. And they are showing empirically why those approaches get the outcomes we want as parents.

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Sep 19·edited Sep 20

This is a good chance to reflect on that staggeringly thoughtless essay under "What School Didn't Teach Us" urging young people to take up drinking alcohol.

A woman who develops a taste for alcohol, gets to drinking heavily, decides to become a mother, and then can't abstain during pregnancy is liable to inflict irreparable brain damage on her child. (Of course, smoking is even worse). A woman who never starts drinking avoids that risk and doesn't miss out on anything remotely as important.

Drinking alcohol is not [just] a lifestyle choice. It's not a trendy partisan eat-your-peas bone of contention. Humanity's experience with alcohol is overwhelmingly negative: shortened lives, blighted families, wrecked careers, manslaughter.... On the other side of the ledger, nobody -- woman or man -- loses anything of great value by abstaining. The "joys of alcohol"? Please.

Non-drinking kids are fortunate kids. Let them be. When the time for parenthood comes, they'll have one less thing to worry about.

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My mom smoked and drank through her pregnancy with me. And we never knew what a car seat was.

The Horror!

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Thanks for your reply. Please follow up after you’ve collected a lot more anecdotes to counter the evidence against smoking and drinking during pregnancy.

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Once we outlaw drinking altogether, what is your next gig? Red meat?

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Let’s not exaggerate.

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Thanks for your reply, but I said nothing about outlawing drinking. Is that how you understand "Let them be"?

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No, it is how I read "drinking alcohol is not a lifestyle choice." I took it as opposition to the choice itself, but perhaps I misunderstood.

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I get your point now. I ought to have written, “not just a lifestyle choice.”

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Professor Oster opposed Lockdown tyranny? That's news to me.

Her own "Call for Covid Amnesty" implies otherwise. She seems to have toned down the hysteria which caused her to mask her small children and teach them to live in terror of human faces. But for at least two years, Emily was a very devout member of the Covid cult. She did NOT oppose the politicized hypochondria from the start.

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You’re leaving out important context of available information at the time she made those statements. Scientists and officials aren’t right or wrong unless they knowingly make choices when evidence suggest otherwise (pediatric gender medicine). We told parents to avoid peanuts with infants and now we know that increases development of fatal peanut allergies. We still promote breast feeding when its benefits are negligible. She changed her recommendations as current evidence did.

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I will admit to being a Covid cult person early in the pandemic because I'm a health care provider. I had confidence in the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics and that cute little Dr. Fauci. But then, as if coming out of a fever dream, I realized that Covid is probably a man-made disease bought and paid for by unknowing American taxpayers, and that closing churches and schools was an unnecessary assault on our freedoms and well-being. I was trusting and a bit gullible, just like when I flop into a chair to watch a late-night talk show and realize that the world is completely and probably irretrievably changed, and that instead of being entertained I will be lectured. I hope I can be forgiven for my blindness early on, and I think the new podcast should be given a chance.

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Thank you.

I'm glad you can learn and are not too proud to admit you were wrong.

I had had a very negative experience with pharmaceuticals years before Covid. This helped me understand what was going on as I would not have otherwise.

I hope Emily has also learned. I'm just pointing out that she was not always so.

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Any chance we could read these columns instead of listening to them?!

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My 35 year old son recently said parents have obligations to their children just as children have obligations to their parents, suggesting some equality. I told him the parent obligation was that they gave the child life. Nothing equates with that. All the instincts that follow or should follow are to support the offspring, but even if the parents fail, they have given life. Don’t underestimate that gift you have given. As the mother, you have been the very factory of life, with the means of sustenance beyound the act of birth. It is such a special role, a gift to the child but also a gift to you.

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You now have multiple kids. You will see that they are not all alike; in fact, the next one fills the vacuum the first leaves. I mean, one will be calm and quiet, the next noisy and demanding. When you think you know what to expect, you find you are wrong. And I hope Emily says this is life and appreciate it. So my advice is don’t overthink things, do react, but remember to keep your authority position; if you don’t you never regain it. Oh yes, this is a hugely important job, for you, your family, and for everyone around you.

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