The Importance of Sleep Training for New Parents

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Sleep training is a big challenge for new parents and actually any kind of parent because kids aren't the same. And co-sleeping tends to, in some people's experience, leads to better parents and better kids - at least for a while. So I think sometimes we really need to step back.

Economist and author Emily Oster of Brown University talks about her book Cribsheet with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Oster explores what the data and evidence can tell us about parenting in areas such as breastfeeding, sleep habits, discipline, vaccination, and food allergies. Oster often finds that commonly held views on some of these topics are not well supported by the evidence while on others, the evidence appears decisive. Oster thoughtfully explores the challenges of using empirical work and balances our sometimes ignorance with common sense.