I’ll be a dad this year (God willing)!
I’ve been trying to learn some of the science around pregnancy, birth, and parenting, and to work through (some of) my own parenting opinions. I’m also reading more about fertility decline (with a bit of a new perspective).
So here’s everything I’m reading and listening to to get ready1 to be parent:
Expecting Better by Emily Oster. I listened to this on audiobook. Most of the “conventional wisdom” on do’s and don’ts during pregnancy do not hold up to RCTs. Caffeine was the most interesting. Older studies showed a relationship between low birthweight and caffeine, hence the conventional wisdom. But it turns out that was just correlation: moms with worse morning sickness early on tend to have healthier pregnancies. Coffee makes most of them want to throw up, so they cut it out.
Cribsheet by Emily Oster. Audiobook. I don’t remember much of this. Mostly my heuristic is that the things that are “better” for a baby are better at a small margin, and so it overall you should often prioritize parent sleep and calm too. There are a few safety things, like actually backsleeping is better. (Yes even though they told your mother-in-law tummy was better back in the day)
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan. I read this one. As usual you must at least consider Caplan’s arguments. I think too many people take this book to be saying “everything nature or “there is no nurture”. His point is really just: if you have kids or maybe want kids, at the margin you should round upwards and here are some reasons why. And that would probably be correct, even without any evidence, given that people are having fewer kids than they self-report wanting? But then there is evidence, too. My framework going forward is that 80% of the actual work as a parent is to not give your kids any Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) (or at least not more than one). Caplan’s best point is that you should think much more about how many grandkids you have. This is why I write for my grandkids. Also see Scott Alexander’s review. He should revisit in a few years; twin toddler is hard-mode.
Hunt Gather Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff. Audiobook while marathon training. I enjoyed the stories. What I want to apply is: WEIRD people seem to overestimate toddlers emotional capacity, and underestimate toddlers physical capacity. I confess I get the “ick” when people ask their 2 year old “how did that make you feel?” — adults can hardly answer that… (Admittedly I’m finding the takeaways that fit my priors, but remember Caplan said parenting is fake!)
Raising Parents podcast series hosted by Emily Oster. Some nice edutainment but not much stuck out. Mostly I thought Oster gave too much credit to both sides and should have stuck to her guns more in this seires.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I like the norm ideas (e.g,. phone-free schools). I’m not convinced the harms of phones/social media are this high — too little discussion of how much. Also Haidt says there are TWO trends negatively impacting the youths at the same time: overparenting, and phones/social media. I was there was discussion in this book about untangling the two. What if it’s mostly overparenting that’s causal? Maybe there’s a Substack on that. Regardless Haidt’s work is important because he’s doing the hard part and synthesizing lots of research.
Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman. Audiobook; dnf.
A few podcasts with Lyman Stone. It’s interesting that there’s still so much debate about why fertility is declining. Stone is one of the experts though.
Fertility Roundups #1 to #4 by Zvi Mowshowitz. Still working through these. And of course On Car Seats as Contraception, which I guess was referenced by the Vice President? What a time to post. And also Zvi’s Childhood Roundup #1 through #7+
Is There Hope for Low Fertility? from the Institute for Family Studies. To-read. I wonder if this will answer all my questions
Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Honorable mention; not sure I’ll prioritize.
And I suppose Gilead by Marilynne Robinson deserves a mention. Probably the last time I cried…
Footnotes
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“get ready” is of course, not really possible and in practice I’ll just jump into the deep end. ↩