The Importance of Choice in Breastfeeding

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It's overwhelming. It's just an emotional time and there's often a lot of crying. The process of the book was telling people, look, here, this is okay to do and here is why in at least some of the situations. But so much more important than that is thinking, structuring the decision in a way that takes seriously these costs and benefits but also thinks about the preferences of your family.

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.