Emily Oster is the author of Crib Sheet, a book about raising children. She says her best parenting advice was to not worry too much about what might happen when your child gets stung by bees. The most important thing you can do for your kids is make them well-behaved and disciplined so that they will be good friends with other people.
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.