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Do you want the truth?
Welcome to Do You Want The Truth? where we dive deep into the real raw stories from parents in the trenches of parenthood.
Season 2 is brought to you by Sam Strom and Freelance Journalist Zara Hanawalt, along with guest co-hosts such as Jaime Fisher.
Season 1 is brought to you by Paige Connell & Sam Strom. They bring you candid conversations with parents who share their experiences of parenthood and what they wish they knew before having kids. You'll hear the real stories. The stories that are typically reserved for best friends. The stories with TMI. We believe in the power of truth telling because when someone asks, do you want the truth? We always say yes. Join us as we explore the highs and lows and everything in between so you can feel less alone on your journey.
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Do you want the truth?
Breaking Down Parenting Data with Emily Oster
Economist Emily Oster transformed parenting literature by applying data analysis to decisions most books treated as black-and-white rules. After becoming pregnant in 2010, she found herself frustrated with pregnancy recommendations that came without explanations—why no sushi? Why limit coffee? As someone trained to evaluate research, she began investigating the evidence behind these directives, eventually writing "Expecting Better" and subsequent bestsellers that have sold over a million copies. She now runs the wildly popular newsletter and website parentdata (they even have a bot that can help you with those late night parenting AI searches).
What makes Oster's approach revolutionary isn't just her ability to interpret research, but her fundamental belief that data should inform rather than dictate parenting choices. "I think my view about data always is that it is not bossy," she explains. Her work restores agency to parents who want to make thoughtful decisions based on both evidence and their personal circumstances, preferences, and knowledge of their specific children.
During our conversation, Oster tackles controversial topics with nuance—revealing that the best studies show minimal differences between children in high-quality daycare versus at-home care, with these small differences fading by elementary school. She debunks extreme claims about attachment theory and breastfeeding, areas where she believes parents face unnecessary pressure beyond what research actually supports. Most reassuringly, she emphasizes that "a huge share of choices are fine" and that what truly matters in early childhood is much simpler than many parents realize: stability, love, and basic needs being met.
Oster is a Professor of Economics at Brown University and the author of Expecting Better, Cribsheet and The Family Firm. She holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard. Prior to being at Brown she was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Oster’s books analyze the data behind choices in pregnancy and parenting. Expecting Better analyzes the data behind many common pregnancy rules, and aims to improve decision-making for pregnant women. Cribsheet does the same for early childhood — what does the evidence really say on breastfeeding, co-sleeping or potty training. Finally, The Family Firm takes this approach to parenting in the early school years, looking at data on school, extracurriculars, sleep and also providing a framework to make unexpected decisions and address the logistical challenges of this period of parenting.
Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com
Connect with Sam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Connect with Zara:
Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/
Today's guest is someone whose work has profoundly shaped how we navigate one of life's most intense and personal decisions. Emily Oster is one of the leading voices in the world of parenting data. After earning her PhD from Harvard, she dove into research in health economics and is now a tenured professor at Brown University. Beyond the credentials, what's most remarkable is how her work has given so many parents clarity and the permission to trust themselves. Emily's work helps parents make decisions like should I sleep train? Will daycare really mess with my kids' attachment style? Is it bad to bribe them with M&Ms just to get their shoes on? There's a reason. She's a New York Times bestselling author with more than a million books sold and, if I'm being honest, one of only three parenting writers I've ever read. Cover to cover. Emily Oster, welcome to Do you Want the Truth?
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and I'm glad you read my whole book. Yes it was you, Ina May, and Growing Up Bebe. Oh, I love those other books I've also read those cover to cover.
Speaker 1:So there you go, I'm in good company, yeah, yeah. And you also have a podcast and a really successful newsletter and all of these other things, and so we really want to talk to you today about your parenting journey. I mean, that's kind of what started you off in all of this. Right? Can you tell us a little bit about kind of that moment where you're like I need to work on this, this is what I need to be doing?
Speaker 2:So I got pregnant with my daughter in 2010, in July of 2010.
Speaker 2:And I was working as an economist at the University of Chicago and I very rapidly had this experience I think a lot of people have with their pregnancy, where it's like sort of it's all consuming and I wanted to know everything.
Speaker 2:And for me that meant wanting to know why are you telling me to do this, why are you recommending this particular intervention or this particular test, or why can't I have sushi, and what about coffee and all the other things I love so much?
Speaker 2:And I started doing a lot of research in the same spirit as my academic work, really using the skills and tools that I had in that domain to serve the domain of pregnancy. And then at some point in this part, like a little bit less clear in my mind exactly how I got from A to B, but I decided it would be fun to write about that in a broader way, and that was a source of expecting better and I can sort of say a little bit more about how that happened, but it was just I mean, the best way to describe it is I just felt that this needed to exist, like I felt that I had to like vomit out this book, because it was so, the experience was so, in some ways so frustrating to me, but also just felt like I had to. I had to get my hands around what was happening to me.
Speaker 3:I've been a journalist in the space since 2015. And I feel like that was kind of a cultural moment where there was a lot of attention given to pregnancy and parenting. Back in 2010, did it kind of feel like nobody was really talking about the intricacies of parenting and pregnancy and there wasn't enough information out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's interesting to talk about it now because I feel like people are like, well, there's so much information. I'm like, yeah, but I started doing this when there wasn't, and so I remember reading what you Expect when You're Expecting and the Mayo Clinic Guide to Pregnancy, which are perfectly reasonable general purpose books about pregnancy.
Speaker 2:But they didn't have the answers and explanations that I wanted, and then there wasn't this kind of extensive ability to figure this stuff out from the internet. So for me it really like, when I went to ask these questions, what was available was the academic literature. It was like, okay, that's something I know how to engage with because it's my job and that was my way into it. But there wasn't this atmosphere that I think we have arrived in now, where people are like of course, this is the way I'm going to interact with my private. I'm going to look for data.
Speaker 3:I'm going to look for evidence.
Speaker 2:We love this. That was not the way it was in 2010.
Speaker 1:Well, and then the other thing too now people take the data and they kind of twist it and they're like, well, here it probably makes your job hard right, because you're like, well, audience of people.
Speaker 2:And it is also true that you there's sort of so much democratization of studies and results that you can very easily get into while study, you know, study say, study say, study say and like, yeah, but not the best studies. And as this has gotten more accessible, I think it has gotten easier for people to kind of pick out the pieces that support the things they're saying and in many cases with people maybe aren't as equipped to evaluate how good is this piece of evidence. So, yeah, sometimes that's very frustrating, I guess. Yeah, I will say, though, your work.
Speaker 1:when I was pregnant, it kind of and I've heard this from other women too is it kind of gave us agency to be, though your, your work when I was pregnant? It kind of and I've heard this from other women too is it it kind of gave us agency to be like, okay, I can make my own decisions about my health and about my self and my my you know, like it it did give more. It has given so much more power. I feel like back, because I, when I got pregnant, it was like no, no this, no that, no that. And then one of my girlfriends sent me the book and was like read this before you start freaking out. And I have health anxiety, and so it was super helpful for me to be like oh, ok, this is OK, I'm not going to do anything awful. I could be doing much worse.
Speaker 2:I think the big issue in a lot of these spaces is that it is very people feel very unempowered and it's kind of like in pregnancy can be a bit infantilizing, and I think that experience is not actually something a lot of people are familiar with. So you expect to come into this like as an adult and then all of a sudden it is just a list of things not to do and with no explanation of why, which is not the way we typically interact about other adult things and so I think, some of what the book hits is that nerve of like.
Speaker 2:Actually, I want to interact with this experience in a way that prioritizes my ability to make adult decisions and make my own choices, and I'm trying to give you the information to make those choices make those choices for yourself as opposed to telling you do this, don't do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you think we've moved over to a place where people have too much access to information and it's sort of getting in their heads and making them put so much pressure on themselves as parents? I?
Speaker 2:think the issue is less that there's so much information and more that the information is arriving in a way where we're not ready to process it, so that you know when you are thinking about a decision like you're going to decide like should I breastfeed and you're in a position to evaluate that actually more information is good.
Speaker 2:You know you want to go, you read some book, you read like you're looking for an answer and you're looking to engage with the decision in a thoughtful way and you're able to look for sources that you trust, evaluate, think about it, et cetera. The problem with a lot of the information we get is that the way it's being fed to us is like I'm just trying to, you know, watch I don't know cooking videos on Instagram and all of a sudden there's somebody in there being like if you don't breastfeed your kid, they're a loser, and you are too, and that's kind of not a good way to process. That's not a good way to process information and it's not a good way to receive information. So I sort of feel it's it feels like too much information. But the problem is the delivery mechanism, not the amount.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's a great point.
Speaker 1:They also say that they come directly into your hospital room after you give birth and they're like you need to breastfeed right now. I remember that being like oh, I what? Okay, cause I hadn't really thought we'll figure this out, but it was very much. If you don't breastfeed here, these bad things could happen.
Speaker 2:I was like okay, yeah, the messaging around breastfeeding is is very extreme in a way that I don't like. I mean, I think there's a lot of many people love breastfeeding and there are a lot of great reasons to do it and there are some small benefits to health and so on, but we're pitching people a kind of promise about this behavior that is so far beyond what's supported by the data and it feels like we're just going to tell you anything to get you to do this activity at any cost to you know your preferences or mental health. And I think we almost I feel like we're telling people this is the most important thing to do, but actually also making it quite difficult.
Speaker 2:And so sort of like simultaneously, like okay, but if this is so important, like why can't I take my boobs out in public? Because it's really annoying to do it under a blanket. So the whole rhetoric around breastfeeding is a little it's frustrating.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great analogy for modern day motherhood in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So. You had two vaginal natural births unmedicated and we heard this on another podcast that you did because you were curious about the experience and I know curiosity drives everything you do, obviously. But what was it about that experience that you were curious about and what did you learn from it?
Speaker 2:I think that it was really that I wanted to see if I could do it. So the curiosity was less about what will this feel like, because I did have a sense that it wasn't going to feel amazing, but sort of this. It's like the same thing that made me want to run a marathon.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like sort of like, could I like, is this something that I could, that I could, that I could do, and what, and sort of what would that experience of? Like pushing yourself isn't quite the right word for this, because it's not active in the same way, but just what would that experience be? It's a challenge, though. Yeah, it's a different kind of challenge?
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was a thing where I felt very strongly I would like to try this out and see what happens. And then for the second one, there wasn't even like we got to the hospital. Even if I had changed my mind in the middle of that, like when we arrived at the hospital, like 15 minutes before the baby was born, so like there was no time, we pushed a little far, did you?
Speaker 2:and you labored at home for both of them and then went in, yeah, and then with my, my first I, we arrived at the hospital and I was at the hospital for a very long time, like maybe 10 hours, not very long, but like sort of 10 hours.
Speaker 2:So we had gotten pretty far at home, but then it just took a long time at the hospital. The second one, as is true in the data, the kind of like the active labor part of it was much faster and by the time I had like taken a nap and then I woke up at home and then I woke up from the nap and our doula was there and I was like I went and used the bathroom and then I was like I see they had told her something like I see, why people don't you know they, why they end up just having their baby at home, and she was like, okay, it's time to go. And then we went to the hospital and like by the time we got there it was like nine centimeters and they were like, okay, get upstairs, because this baby is coming any second.
Speaker 1:So that's incredible. That happened to some people in my life Not me, but home birth. You mentioned home birth and you didn't want a home birth. It sounds like I didn't want a home birth.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think there are people in my life who have had a home birth and I see why you know reasonable people could make that choice. You know, with particular like, there are some things I would say you know you want to have a certified nurse, midwife, you want to have a plan, like all this kind of stuff. But I can see why some people would make that choice, particularly for a second kid after you'd already had enough, you know.
Speaker 1:But I am.
Speaker 2:I wanted to have a baby in hospital.
Speaker 3:I want the backup. Yeah, yeah, was that a data-driven decision or was that more of a personal emotional choice?
Speaker 2:I think basically my view about data always is that it is not bossy and that there's an input to our decisions. And I have looked at the data about home birth and thought about what's the chance of a last minute emergency move to the hospital and what are some of the risks. But I think then that is layered on top of that, I am layering preferences on top of that and the reality is the preference for me was to have the backup of the hospital if you know something, something went wrong.
Speaker 1:Zara had a question that she was asking me earlier about how often you use data and like. How has it changed how you, if at all, like? Do you use a lot of data in your day-to-day life for parenting?
Speaker 2:My kids are big. So I will say, when they were little and when I was pregnant, if you sort of read like Expecting Better or Cribsheet, they're kind of a story of my parenting and I really did we really use those. We used a lot of data in the decisions that we that we made about about parenting and and there were some things actually were even writing the book. Like I, when I wrote Cribsheet, I put in a chapter on discipline, which is not something we had like engaged because of the ages of my kids at the time, like we hadn't really engaged with that data yet, and then I we like engaged with it to write the chapter and then I was like, okay, here's what we're doing differently now, now that I have read this. So when they were little, there was a lot of data.
Speaker 2:Kids are 10 and 14. There's a lot less data on older kids and it is also so much. There's so much more heterogeneity across kids and so when we're looking at large scale evidence, it's usually about the average. But when there's more differences across kids, more differences in how they would respond to things, it is much harder to sort of look at a piece of evidence and say, ok, this is really important to this decision. So I try to think about evidence always, but I would say that the tools from my work that we use more now are just organizational tools, like trying to be really sort of keep things structured and organized, because we have like two kids and two jobs and that's like a lot of logistics.
Speaker 1:I mean, you kind of have more than two jobs, right, you have parent data. I have nine jobs. Yeah, you're an author.
Speaker 2:I have several jobs and we have two children.
Speaker 1:Okay. So then how do you split the mental load? I know you have your framework and you talk about that in the family firm, but the mental part of it, did you all ever struggle in your relationship to kind of get there Because you're yeah, kind of get there Because you're you're yeah, I want to hear about that.
Speaker 2:So you know like I will say first, like many people, the first year of my kid's life was really hard and you know, I think for different reasons than splitting the mental load.
Speaker 2:actually, I mean it was it was hard because there was more work, but I think it was also hard because we didn't know what to do. And then that first year it's like there's a thing neither of you know anything about it. It's the most important thing you've ever done. You couldn't care about anything more and like you're just totally lost. And so a lot of our like most significant relationship conflicts came about. You know topics which now, when I look back, I'm like how are you even, how do we get so exercised about that Like, can we transition her out of the rock and play sleeper? Which, about that Like can we transition her out of the rock and play sleeper? Which wasn't just to be clear, was not banned at the time. You know, like she really liked to sleep in it. Like when are we going to move? Like. But I think one of our biggest fights ever was about, like, the timing of the transition out of the rock and play sleeper and it's just like that was.
Speaker 2:it's just like that first year is so raw and you're tired, and so on. Now we have less of that, but, and so on. Now we have less of that, but it is still true that there is a lot of stuff to do and it is true that I am the default parent. Even with your nine jobs, even with my nine jobs, I'm the default parent. Interesting, I think.
Speaker 2:One thing is my husband works. I'd say a couple of things. My husband commutes to his job and we live here and so if there's something needed at school, like I, would be the person who does that. The other thing is we have a lot of help. So we have like a very, very good house manager, nanny, who is pretty much the. I think people understate how this is such a complicated thing for so many people to talk about, because it's like you know, I both want to acknowledge the privilege of having this and also acknowledge that, like having two high intensity jobs and working in the way that I do is would be very difficult to do without this person who makes my life happen and who is absolutely amazing. So we sort of one of the ways that for us, we manage the mental load is that we outsource a lot of it or we outsource a fair amount of the ways that, for us, we manage the mental load is that we outsource a lot of it or we outsource a fair amount of the work there.
Speaker 2:But it's still a thing which occasionally we will struggle with. And part of the issue is my husband is not very flexible Like things which I'm like a good. It's like a little bit of a gender thing, but like I'm a pretty good multitasker. Like if you tell me at the last minute like you got to pick something up at the store on the way home, like that's fine, that doesn't stress me out, like I'll just okay, I'll leave 10 minutes early, I'll pick something at the store, it's fine. This is like for him, very challenging. If I said, like at the train station, can you grab X, it's like no, that like ruins his day. And I think some of this is realizing like what are the things that he finds very hard and what are the things I find very hard? And trying to be efficient about how we allocate.
Speaker 2:So, if something needs to be picked up at the last minute, I do it. On the flip side, I cannot believe how many emails come from my kid's school and I do not read them. I can't make it through the emails. They're so long. I love the school. Why are there so many emails? He reads every email. Okay, he reads every email and he sends me. He forwards the email to me and says here are the two points that you need to know from this email. That's cool and like. For me that's. There's a sort of feeling, when we talk about mental load, of like wanting to split things, and I do think that's a good goal and people should split things more. But sometimes there's also the recognition of how expensive is each of these things for people and figuring out when we split things, is there like what economists would call like an efficiency gain?
Speaker 2:right, Like he doesn't keep reading these emails and writing these, like he thinks this is very easy, whereas I think it's very expensive, and I think stopping for a gift card on the way home at CVS is really easy and he finds it really expensive. And so one reaction to that is to be like why do you find this so hard? You can't just stop at the store? And another reaction is to be like I don't know why you find this very hard, but I love you and I know you're trying very hard.
Speaker 1:And let's like figure out the way to split this. So we are happy. I think that's really hard to do, like in the first couple of years for me and our marriage, the first few years I've talked about the story before, so people listening might have heard it. But our therapist we went to a couple's therapist cause I didn't want to have kids and she said my life wouldn't change, so we had a kid and that was not true and so I mean that's not the only reason we had a kid. That is putting a lot of onus on her, but I trusted the therapist.
Speaker 1:And when you're in the thick of it like we went back to therapy because we got in a fight about Elmo music in the bath at night, like you're getting into these ridiculous fights because you haven't slept your body's recovering Nobody understands what you're going through. If you're the first of your friends to have kids, there might not be support. I don't know, emily, do you have family around who helps? I know you have a house manager, but or when they were young, did you? When they were little?
Speaker 2:not so much. We live in Chicago and everybody was a plane ride away. They're now like a drive away, but we don't have family where, like you could call your parents and say, like come over and help. So we don't have. We never had that kind of support.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's where, and you probably know the data on this a lot better than I do, but I've and I've probably read it wrong, but have you seen the data where it talks about people who go to college tend to not have family near them because they stay where they go to college? They tend to be more affluent, so they're paying for their village rather than having the village near them? Is that? Did I read the data right on that you?
Speaker 2:did read the data right on that. Yeah, absolutely. So, for a bunch of reasons, people who have people who have attended college are more mobile in terms of like, not living the place that they grew up in.
Speaker 2:Some of that is they stay where they went to college and some of that is they have jobs that are just more likely to be, you know, require them to be in particular locations, and so, yes, you end up with you do end up with not having the family support that was more traditional in earlier generations and is still true in some communities now.
Speaker 3:I'm curious are there any stances that you had before having kids, based on your access to information and your ability to interpret information right, that you completely changed after experiencing parenthood?
Speaker 2:An interesting question. I don't think like not anything important. I mean in the sense that I don't think that we thought. I don't think I'm a person who came into parenthood with like a lot of preconceived notions about how I was going to do things.
Speaker 2:You know, I had like all people, sort of various views about when I, when I was a child, I am going to buy peanut butter with sugar in it because I don't like that. My mom's peanut butter is like the natural mixing kind and as a parent, I purchased the natural mixing peanut butter, obviously.
Speaker 2:And so you know there are things like that, but I don't think that there are I don't think I had an image of myself as a parent that has turned out to be very different than I am than, in fact, how things have happened.
Speaker 3:Do you ever feel like there is just like a lack of compartmentalization, because you are a parent and then you work in the parenting space? Do you ever feel like I just need to draw a line between work and family and it's hard to do that because they kind of bleed into one another?
Speaker 2:I think it is awkward to be parenting in public sort of, but also like we're actually pretty. I'm pretty private about specific things about my family, particularly as my kids have gotten older, and then to also be like at home. You know at home, like, yeah, doing the parenting, and you know, as I tell my kids I'm a parenting expert frequently, but it doesn't ring true.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think, there's a realization of just I'm trying to tell people maybe here's the tension I feel most frequently, which is I often know what the data says about consistency. So consistency is like my hardest personal parenting thing. It's just like you set a rule and you need to follow through, and that is like one of the most true things about parenting. Kids are super responsive to consistency and that is the key to, like any successful discipline routine. I am not that great at it. I'm okay, like I've improved over time.
Speaker 2:My husband is amazing, but I like this is the thing I really struggle with, and there's this moment of sort of like I'm telling you what I, what I think you should do, and I'm telling you what the data says works. But I also want to make clear that, like that's very difficult and it's not like I am doing everything that I say perfectly, but I'm still trying to tell you this is what the evidence says you should do and there's that sort of tension of kind of I feel my job is to tell people what is the best, but also to acknowledge sometimes those things are very, are very difficult. Many times they're very difficult.
Speaker 1:That's kind of like another example of how you're leaning on your strengths and and less strengths. Like your husband's not very flexible, so it's probably really easy for him to hold that boundary Totally.
Speaker 2:He has no trouble holding any boundary, he's just like he'll just tell. You know, it's like the other day my daughter and I were struggling with how to respond to some text. She wanted my help in responding to some text message and had some like sort of a need to set a boundary, and she and I were just like I don't know what to do. And he was just like, oh, here's what you say. And he was just like say thank you, this doesn't. That's so interesting. It must be so interesting to be a person who has no trouble with consistency and drawing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wouldn't that be nice. I would love that I have stricter boundaries with our son, or I'm more of the disciplinary with our son. My husband, he's like a very soft, mushy guy with our son. He can do no wrong where I'm like no, what are you doing? You're being a crazy person right now, but in life he has more boundaries. So are you the disciplinary in your household? I feel like you're not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, we're both kind of bad at that.
Speaker 2:I'm not good at it and I am not it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so your house manager. I know we talked about this a minute ago, but I I'm curious about does she do pick up, drop off, order your groceries?
Speaker 2:all of that kind of stuff Is that, yeah, she does, uh, my kids walk to school so she does, but she does, yeah, pick up, drop off, she does groceries, she does like kind of figuring out how how things should operate in the house. She, yeah, she does like a lot, she does a lot, she does laundry.
Speaker 1:She's the man. You just proved that being a stay at home mom. I mean, we already knew this is a full-time job, because that's she's not being a mom. But you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:All those managing a house I do, and I actually think it's really like there's this sort of moment where, when I was a kid, I my mom was very clear, my mom had a job and she was very clear when you have an event at school, you need to sign up for plates.
Speaker 2:Don't sign up for something baking oriented, like sign up for plates or drinks, and like I also have sign up for plates or drinks because, like you know, but there was this, this kid in my class who will like sign up for plates or drinks. Because, like you know, but there was this, this kid in my class, mikey Bright, and his mom, grace, always made these cupcakes and they were like, like they're still in my head as like the best cup, because she would like dig out the middle of the cupcake and put whipped cream in it.
Speaker 2:And then like put the cupcake top back on.
Speaker 2:No, I've never even thought of it. And like they, I mean there is like chocolate cupcakes. It was just like this is like chocolate cupcakes. It was just like this is like the platonic idea and I always want to be like why? Like Mikey Bright's mom like makes these cupcakes, you know, and I sort of had this feeling of like I'm going to be this mom who makes the cupcakes. And then the thing is I realized you become parents, like I don't have time to make, like there isn't time to make cupcakes always, and like that's a job. Being a making the cupcakes for the bake sale is like that's a full-time job. And now Claire makes the cupcakes for the bake sale and I get to bring cupcakes, but it's only because another person is doing that job, and I think we sort of. It's quite important to acknowledge that being a stay-at-home parent is a job in which you are doing all of the things all day, and it is a job that, in a different organization of a household somewhat, is painful.
Speaker 3:Speaking of stay-at-home parents, can we talk a little bit about all these ideas about attachment that are coming out right now, about ruining your child's attachment if you send them to daycare, about you know ruining your child's attachment if you send them to daycare.
Speaker 2:So there's a couple of different flavors of this particular set of claims and I think one is just sort of I think in some ways a much lighter. Is it different? Is it like a sort of less extremist view on this which is just, you know, kids do worse if they are sent to daycare they have more behavior problems they have.
Speaker 2:you know sort of there are small differences in this and that and this is a thing I've spent a bunch of time in the data on, and when you look at the best data on this, it basically says that the outcomes for kids going to like high quality daycare and the outcomes for kids as a stay-at-home parent are extremely similar. As maybe a little bit of benefit in terms of academics to attending, you know, childcare is maybe a little bit of benefit in terms of behavior for more time at home. These all fade out by sort of early in elementary school.
Speaker 2:It's just like they're all much smaller than any differences you see are much too small to outweigh other things that would be part of that consideration, like does the parent want to work, and what kind of financial arrangements do you need? All kinds of other stuff that is like part of that decision. So I think that's one almost academic-y kind of discussion which comes up sometimes. I think it's important to have.
Speaker 2:Then there's this other like very extreme claim that you're I mean, the best version of which is this person whose Instagram reel that's constantly being fed to me, in which this psychologist says you know, when you drop your baby at daycare, they think you die and that's like they think you're dead. And and it's sort of like that's that's different from saying, you know, there's a point, oh two standard deviation difference in behavioral issues Like OK, this is like they think you die. Behavioral issues, like okay, this is like they think you die. And so I actually at some point got curious about like what does that mean? Because I'm not sure that your three month old has a sort of like deeply ingrained concept of death. And also, like what do they think when you return? You know, okay.
Speaker 1:Wow, they think you're an angel. They think you're amazing.
Speaker 2:They think you're amazing, and so I think it turns out that that's. That's like a quite weird sort of bastardization of of this, the fact that that kids have a this sort of there's like an idea of object permanence which is like until about six months. If you like, leave the room at all, forget about daycare or anything else. If you leave the room at all, the baby has no concept that you're like in the other room. So it's not that they think you died, it's not that they're sad about it. It's just like they don't understand that if an object disappears, it still exists in the world.
Speaker 1:I think there's a game about that called peekaboo.
Speaker 2:There's a game about that called peekaboo, and at some point your kid becomes less responsive to peekaboo because they realize that you're still there behind your hands.
Speaker 2:But there's an age range at which they don't know that and that's why they think that's fun, and so I think that that message is like sort of like they think you're dead Well, I don't know what that means Like they don't think you exist anymore, just like they don't think the rabbit exists.
Speaker 2:But this isn't about daycare, this is just about attachment theory, and it's an example for me of where, you know, people use kind of things that are a little bit like science but are also like way overstated, basically just to I don't even know what the incentive is for that, but like to sort of support whatever prior they have or whatever they you know they think is true, and I think that really does not serve, does not serve people well, because if, in fact, daycare was terrible for your kid, that's something we would want people to know and to think about in their choices. But if it's not, that's what we want them to know and think about in their choices, and we want people to be able to make the choices that work for their family not the choices that work for somebody else's family.
Speaker 1:So I am a recent stay-at-home mom, kind of because I couldn't handle, handle working and I was working in tech and I'm like this is too much, I can't do all of it and my child's very sensitive and I was like I'm done, I'm taking a break, and the thing that I have noticed the most is my nervous system being regulated and me being more patient because I am not in meetings from 6 am to 6 pm. That has had the biggest impact on me and my child's relationship and my ability to be a good parent. And I could see how people are conflating daycare being bad with parents being stressed being bad and not having patience and not having that. But stay-at-home parents also have that short my child's in daycare regardless, so I have time during the day to do all those things. So if you're a stay-at-home parent and your kid's there, I don't know, I don't do you know what I'm trying to say? I'm trying to say something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think part of what you're trying to say is that different things are going to work for different people.
Speaker 2:You know, I think in some ways to just acknowledge like this is the structure that works for you and your family and I think we spend a lot of time, particularly in the childcare sort of daycare, like family structure discussion trying to defend is maybe too strong a word, but trying to like, explain, like why this is good, why do it? And you see it even and I don't mean this in a negative way, but even in the way you sort of like this is what, like this is what it was doing, that was like this is what like.
Speaker 2:This is what it was doing that was like this is why it's good and why it's like better. But I think we I almost want people to be able to say like this is really working for me, it's working for me, I like it, and that should be enough. And I think that's a way to say, because I think that was what worked for our family I liked that structure. I'm going to start using that.
Speaker 1:I think that's better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's really hard for women to do that right. I think it's really hard for women, especially when we become mothers, to just say I am doing this because I want to do it, and you don't have to justify it by spouting off data about how it's better for your kids or whatever. Yeah, and I mean I've talked at various times about how like I think I'm, you know.
Speaker 2:I think that like how, that part of the reason I work or a lot of the reason I work and why I worked when they were little, was that like I liked it and I liked my job and you know, eight hours a day of my job works for me, relative to eight hours a day with my kids.
Speaker 2:I love my kids. I love them way more than I love my job. But the marginal time at my job, like that's how I want to spend my time. And you know, when I've said that publicly, people, some people are like okay, I hear that. And then some people are like you know you're, you're a bad parent, like I something. I read something the other day where somebody was talking about my choice to work and they said literally in this blog post like this person's a bad, like.
Speaker 2:I'll just say it this person's a bad mom because she doesn't have to work, because her husband has a job and like she chooses to work and I think that's. I don't think that's a very nice thing to say, but I also think it's. It is a cop, it's. It's what people are afraid other people are. It's, in some ways, it. It was very refreshing, because you always think people are saying they're alluding around. This person was just like she's a bad mom.
Speaker 1:I was like no, okay, At least you're saying it directly, I mean, but couldn't it be said on the other side? Why is your husband working? You have nine jobs. Why does he need to work? Yeah, I tell him that all the time?
Speaker 2:Why don't you just stay home? You know, why are you going to your take all this time on the train, all this econometrics? Forget it, just stay home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're a bad dad, you're going to work and you don't have to. Like, geez, people are so weird, it's and and all of the I just I don't understand why. Also, why she must be into yeah, anyway, I'm just not going to go down that tangent. Is there a piece of data that you are kind of like? I wish everyone knew this as a parent where you're like, if I could instill this into everyone. I wish this could be it.
Speaker 2:I don't have a piece of data as much as I would like to instill the message that a huge share of choices are fine and that, while people often say the first like three years of life are the most important for setting your kid up for like a good, like a successful life and in some vague sense that's true, but what we mean by like setting them up is like by the first three years of life being important is like it's important for them to have a stable place to sleep and someone who loves them and enough to eat.
Speaker 2:And those are, those are the things and that when we talk about kind of the best start in life, we really mean stuff that's pretty basic not that everybody has that, but that those that's like what we're really focused on. I would like people to hear that, because I think when they, when we say the first three years are most important, they sort of think about like toy rotation or some other like thing, which sort of adding on so much pressure, as opposed to being like yeah, let me get, let me make sure I have the basics, and I bet you do and then think about what pieces, what other pieces work, work for you, but don't put so much. Think about what pieces, what other pieces work, work for you but don't put so much.
Speaker 1:People are put too much pressure on themselves. Yeah, did you, you pro? I mean, I'm sure you heard about this, but you're. Do you remember that marshmallow study I don't know if it was Stanford where they had the marshmallow and they're like wait for it. And people who wait, kids who waited for it, had a better outcome in life and they just redid it and realized like no, those are the people who had a stable home environment, enough food to eat and the other kids were just hungry and that, like I feel like so much of what we're basing our parenting and life in general is on these things, where it's like you follow the thread a little bit more and it's saying something completely different.
Speaker 2:Totally. That study was completely over-interpreted and exactly. It's exactly. You say it was picking up. It was picking up something, but it wasn't picking up the thing that you thought. It was picking up something much more big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's yeah, and probably what I just did too, being like, well, I stopped working and so you know it's funny. We all come to all these conclusions.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think some of this is really just, you know, like once you are thinking, once you are a person who's like thinking a lot about like how to operate your life, to work for your kids and so on, you're already doing it. You know, it's like the process. It's almost like just being the person who really wants to engage in this and like that's the whole thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, are there any things that you think modern day parents stress out way too much about Most things?
Speaker 2:Most individual, tiny choices. I mean, I guess I think one one way to say it is you know, with your first kid you worry about everything. With my first baby I was like we got really engaged in this question of whether she should wear mittens. Like my mom told me, if I put mittens on her when she was like an infant.
Speaker 2:She would never learn to use her hands, which is an overstatement. But you know, everything is sort of high stress and I think there is a lot of when you get to a later kid, you kind of like dial down the number of decisions. And there are a bunch of decisions where I do think people should think about them carefully, Like are you going to breastfeed, how are you going to introduce solids? What kind of sleep arrangement are you going to have? What you know, what kind of I don't know like what kind of potty training?
Speaker 2:Eventually there's a sort of a bunch of sort of key, key decisions and I think that it's not so much I think people should worry about them, I just think they should plan for them. But I think we worry probably too much about the tiny things in between and we spend like too much time on little tiny things that we're worried about and not enough time like making a plan for some of the sort of big key things. Not that they're so important because they matter for whether your kid becomes a successful adult, but they are important because they matter for how you will experience the experience of parenting, which is like a thing that you want to have a good experience with.
Speaker 1:So you're clearly very type A, I would say it sounds like, but I am guessing there have been challenges for you throughout. Maybe, I don't know, getting pregnant, giving birth, being pregnant, whatever it is. What has been the most challenging part of parenthood for you throughout? You know, I know you have a 14 year old.
Speaker 2:So in these four 15 years, so I think the first most challenging thing was the sleep, and this is like very in the weeds but like breastfeeding and then sleeping with my young, with my first kid the experience of breastfeeding my daughter was awful.
Speaker 2:I like I did not have enough supply basically ever, and so I was like constantly trying to figure out should I nurse and then pump? And then like what if I pump too early? And then I like I, then she there's no milk when she wants to nurse, and then we would like have to give her, we have to like supplement. I felt so terrible about that. We're like I can't believe we're giving formula, even though, like I, I knew all the things which I eventually wrote in crib sheet at at the time. I even knew all that stuff and I just was like killing myself to make this work. She would only nurse on one side and then, and then to try to her nurse on the other side, the only thing you could do was like bounce her and bounce her and bounce her and bounce her and like eventually she would get it.
Speaker 2:It's just like I remember just like walking around for hours and hours and hours in like some hotel, just screaming and screaming and screaming, like walking the halls of the hotel, like trying to get her to latch on, I mean the experience like and I just killed myself for this.
Speaker 2:Eventually it sort of never worked great and I wish I had not done that ex post, but it was so hard to turn off that internal pressure at the time, and so I think that was probably the hardest early part of parenting. Now I think it is much Parent parenting an older kid is harder because I'm always worried about messing it up and like it seems like things feel much more important. I don't want to, I don't know, say the wrong thing and like ruin my kid's mental health forever, even though I know that's not really realistic but it's. You feel much more like that when you have a 14 year old because if you say the wrong thing, they're like you've ruined my mental health.
Speaker 1:Because they have the words now where they can. Yeah, very direct feedback.
Speaker 2:It's really direct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I thought it was going to be easier. Wait, is your daughter older or is your son? Who's older?
Speaker 2:My daughter is older and she's wonderful and this is like an age of parenting I absolutely love and occasionally think I'm very good at. But it does feel high, like, in some ways, higher stakes than with a little kid, because it feels like you're sort of shaping, you're balancing, you know how much freedom you want to give someone and how you need them to be able to set their own boundaries, while you are still kind of the most fully developed frontal lobe in the household. And that transition from like I'm telling you what to do to like I'm hoping you will do it on your own, but I'm there to catch if you don't, is like it requires so much thought and patience and patience and like my best parenting strategy is basically like sitting in the hallway when people are going to bed and like hoping they'll come talk to me. Does it work? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I would highly recommend the like.
Speaker 2:Sit with your computer outside of people's rooms and just be like hey, I'm here, you know, if you have some time to chat, I'm just here. That's cool, I'm just, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 1:I'm not. I'm going to have to like mark that in my brain for to come back to at a later date, cause my son will talk to me now, but he's four, so it's different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're still not there yet. My kid will, like, chase me no matter where I go in the house at this point, so not quite ready to employ.
Speaker 1:One day you will want that I know.
Speaker 1:That's what I've been thinking about lately, where I'm like my son used to sleep on his own until he got COVID at two and a half and now he's almost five and he does not sleep on his own anymore. And we also have an 18-year-old cat who meows, starting at like four in the morning, and so she's like has cancer, she's very dramatic. So now we like fight to sleep with him because we're like okay, somebody has to sleep with the cat and get woken up, and the other person has to sleep with the, with the kids, so they get to sleep through the night. Um, but I was thinking about that last night where I'm like oh, pretty soon he's going to be like get out of my room, mom, I don't, I won't want you here.
Speaker 2:Maybe or maybe he's going to be like 11.
Speaker 1:He's going to be like 11. Don't tell me that. He's going to be like the weird kid at school who's like I can't sleep over, I need my mom there. And he's like 14. He, so he's going to school. Uh, he starts kindergarten in the fall and he thought he had to move out to go to kindergarten. He has had this whole thought that he was going to be moving out and he's like so you guys are dropping me off and I'm going, and I'm like what? My husband went to boarding school for high school, so he just assumed that he's just this, is it? He's like well, will you guys visit? Oh God, poor guy.
Speaker 2:I like that. He's so relaxed about it. It's like you know he's like well, you get to five years and then you're done. Yeah, like so weird.
Speaker 3:My kids thought when we went to day camp last summer they thought it was sleepaway camp and we had to be like no, we're literally just going to walk you through the backyard.
Speaker 2:It's right there, not sleepaway camp yet how old are your?
Speaker 3:kids. I have twins who are six and a half, so you have like another year before sleepaway camp.
Speaker 2:Sleepaway camp is great, though I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:They don't really do sleepaway camps out here in California. It's like not a thing.
Speaker 3:We don't have many near us either.
Speaker 2:No, it's like the most in New England. It's like New England, it's like that's it. You got to send your kid to Maine.
Speaker 1:Maine is exclusively. The entire state of Maine is just a series of sleepaway camps and a small number of people who live in Portland. We're actually going to Maine next month to visit my brother-in-law lives there in some unincorporated place in Maine, so we'll send my son there once he's older. Now I know that it's like the sleepaway haven.
Speaker 2:Sleepaway camp haven. There's a lake. You go to the lake, do whatever Sleepaway camp.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited to go to the thrift stores over there and find some vintage LL Bean. That's what I have. I know it's like it's so dumb, but I'm like, yes, we're going to Maine, I get to go to Goodwill, I just like the idea that, like the Maine, thrift stores are just exclusively like LL Bean.
Speaker 2:It's just like it's like an LL Bean outlet. So that's what she said.
Speaker 1:My sister-in-law was like, yeah, well, I guess they do have LOB in outlets. It's so funny because I have the smallest closet I don't actually wear any of this anyway.
Speaker 2:Do you, do you thrift, emily? No, but my daughter likes to go to there's like a there's like a not bad thrift store in a church nearby, so occasionally she will, she will go there, but I am, I just wear a lot of athletic clothes and so yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:You're running from job to job throughout the day. I'm really sad that your podcast ended, but I totally understand why. But I really enjoyed it and I like this is. I just wanted to tell you that.
Speaker 2:Thank you it was. It was fun and I really liked what we did, but it was I don't know, it was a lot of work. Maybe there's another.
Speaker 1:we'll see One day. One day you have to go write your next book right To help with teenage kids and like middle school Maybe.
Speaker 2:We'll see Teenage kids is. I'm not sure it's a book. It's a series of essays, perhaps, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of. I was the kid who was disciplined very hard and just learned how to sneak out and get away with it all the time. So the discipline part, I think, is like the main book. There is like how do you build trust in the younger years and then discipline through those years? Because that is the key.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is very, very hard.
Speaker 3:And prepare them for adulthood? Is that something you're thinking about a lot now, preparing them to sort of fend for themselves and be on their own out in the world?
Speaker 2:Yes, isn't that the weirdest aspect of parenting? That you're basically like preparing someone to leave you? But yeah, I mean, I think a lot about the again sort of when you think about setting, sort of the relative role of like setting boundaries and letting someone else set their boundaries. You know how are, how am I, how am I making it possible for those like that ability to to develop and you know boundaries, and then like responsibilities, like I don't know, they're going to go to college maybe, and then you know they're going to have to wake up in the morning and have to do their own homework.
Speaker 2:And yes, so yes, I think a lot about training adults.
Speaker 3:Oh man Any tips.
Speaker 2:No, no, I have many tips, but I think part of it is I think there's so much of this is about your own, what your particular kid is like.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think one thing I think a lot about I think a lot of people in this age range think a lot about is like screens and phones and sort of how am I helping my kid figure out their relationship with the phone? And I actually think that frame of the discussion is not often enough. What we are having, you know, we're sort of having a lot of the discussion of like our phones bad? Are they really bad, just mostly bad, actually amazing, and like sort of somehow thinking about the way that we're structuring our kids' relationship with phones. As you know, wait until some age and then they get them. Or, you know, as opposed to like, yeah, there's a part of it that's wait until some age and then there's a part of it that, even once you give them the phone, how do you help them navigate their relationship with it and how are you monitoring how that's going? And, you know, is the phone making them feel bad?
Speaker 2:You know, are there things that are there ways that you want to help them learn to set their own limits. I think that's the piece I'm not sure we're really engaging enough with in the screens is the idea that it's not just we set a rule and then eventually we relax the rule and then we let them go crazy. It's actually it actually like teaching them to drive right. It's sort of like we're approaching phones in a way. We do not approach cars. We're taking it like you know it used to be like until 16, you can't drive, and then we're going to give you the key and be like see you enjoy, right, that's not how we do cars. We do like we're going to teach you, we're going to slowly ramp into it with phones.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes the current rhetoric is like let's just wait until they're 14 and then they get it and goodbye, and that feels. That feels all right. You were talking with, I think, the author of um, what is the book? The anxious generation is that? And um, yes, and so you all were talking about, like, social media and phones and all of that, and so I have a very different thought on that than what he does.
Speaker 1:Like that it's social media and all of that, and I wanted to kind of get your perspective on it. So I feel like the loss of community in real life has made parents and kids rely on their phones, and so, instead of going to our real life communities and having people come over for dinner and help over here and help with that, parents are so stressed out, they're kind of checked out, right, everyone most people have dual income jobs what is it like? 70 something percent in the U S and so people are relying on their like emotional support and their physicals. I mean I even recently just went to Tik TOK for advice because I didn't have that in my real life. And so for me, because that that feels more like what it is, because you look at places like India and they're all on their phones, they have social media, but they're not having the same issues that we're having in the Western world, and I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure the data is sufficient to sort of separate those things out and I'm not sure that they're actually that separable, in the sense that there's kind of, if we don't have as many community relationships, we rely on our phones more, but then we rely on our phones more and that causes us to be less interested in investing in community relationships, and so I think there's a sort of ratcheting there. I think what the John Haidt set might say is there are places where we see less of a mental health decline, which is like religious communities. Actually kids in religious communities, they've seen less of that, and one interpretation of that is that has something to do with community. There's a lot of other interpretations of that. I'm not sure I put too much on that, but yeah, I mean I have also shared your view that in-person community is missing and is very, very important, and I think we learned during COVID that there is not a lot of good substitutes for seeing other people in person.
Speaker 2:And to the extent that phones have kind of taken away from that and replaced it. It feels like it's not a good replacement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, your phone can't come over and hold your baby while you need to take a shower, right?
Speaker 2:So far, we have not developed the AI to the point where it can take over your parenting.
Speaker 1:I do ask AI, I ask ChatGPT a lot of stuff about parenting though I'm like am I overreacting? What is the best route? And do you do that in your parenting or in your work?
Speaker 2:Because I know it hallucinates a lot, but Parent data has a chatbot which is trained on the parent data content and you can ask PD, which is the name of the chat bot, your parenting questions, if you want. Um, really, yeah, and it's. And it will give you an answer based on the based on the like corpus of Emily information.
Speaker 1:So it's all researched and it has all the data, because chat GPT, I know just like, sometimes makes up things that you want to hear. That's cool. I'm going to try that out because me and chat GPT have deep conversations.
Speaker 2:I mean chat GPT is great. It makes, it does, it does hallucinate?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So I know we don't have a lot of time with you and before we get to our two typical questions that we ask at the end, I wanted to ask you a question about you know it's really important for I think you say this all the time data to be neutral and I do think you look at things neutrally. There has, there have been criticisms of you know you're with free press and that's run by Barry Weiss, who is on the right hand side, from what I understand, according to people. I haven't done as much research, but do you want to take any time to address that and your stance, because I know people criticize you for a lot, I'm sure? Yes, I am not immune to criticism, sure.
Speaker 2:So I worked with Free Press for a limited series podcast called Raising Parents and I think that the quality of that podcast was incredibly good. I think that we brought together a lot of people who don't always talk to each other and sort of had managed to put together content that I think would hit many different viewpoints. So we did an episode on discipline that featured both Dr Becky who's kind of traditionally a little bit in I think she would call it this way, but I think many people would sort of say is like the gentle parenting space but then also included a guy who is spanks his kids. And I want to be clear like I don't agree with that approach to parenting. But it is something that is happening out in the world and I think engaging with those, having people hear different perspectives and think about what's going on in people's parenting, is really important. And I was proud, very proud of the range of guests and the range of topics that we managed to cover and the quality of the podcast.
Speaker 2:When you know there are things that I so Barry, the free press is, I would say, on the center right and I am on the center left, and when we sort of got together to talk about doing this podcast. It was very clear there are some things that we agree on and some things we really don't agree on, and I think that's I was very clear, very clear in the podcast. Like, we're not going to, I'm not going to just say the things that you think, and in fact the whole point is to have complicated conversations across the aisle and I think if we sort of have a very siloed view about who we're going to work with and I'm only going to talk to people and work with people who are exactly aligned with my political views on all topics we will end up having no interesting conversations and not reaching across the aisle at all, and that's some of, I think, the problem with our current discourse.
Speaker 2:So that is what I will say about that.
Speaker 1:I fully agree with you. I mean it's like how Gavin Newsom, who I love, I know people have thoughts on him. I love Gavin Having Charlie Kirk and platforming people who have different views. And I know something that I want to do is talk to people who have different views because a lot of times there are things that you do connect with people on.
Speaker 1:One of my best mom friends is conservative and religious and like I couldn't like I grew up in a commune that was religious but like I could not be further from that and she is my closest confidant and I I credit her with partially like saving me during postpartum, and so I do think there's so much we can learn from each other and we all kind of want similar things, we want our families to be happy and all of that, and so I feel like it just kind of drives us further apart when we don't, when we don't allow people who are, we don't allow people to like talk to each other without labeling them as like well, now she's conservative, so I'm going to I'm not going to listen to her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that we we do ourselves a great disservice with that, and I also think there is a sort of illustration of when we do that in person. It's even worse so when we shut off our opportunities for in-person relationships because of some perceived differences in some opinion about something we lose the opportunity to see the commonalities which I think generally are much greater than our differences particularly in parenting.
Speaker 2:We all want to do a good job with our kids. We may not all agree with exactly the way that we're doing it, but like the fundamental goal. I once asked people what is your long-term goal for your kid? I did the survey at, like you know, 15,000 people and they all said the same thing, which is like I want to raise a kid who is kind and stable and wants to come home and eat my cooking. That was like basically like a hundred percent of people have the same goal.
Speaker 1:And I think, if we kind of back up and recognize that it's helpful in seeing past some of the differences. Yeah, as humans, I wish my kid would eat my cooking. That'd be amazing, that's not a goal for a four-year-old. I mean we. When my husband Are you cooking mac and cheese? Are you cooking?
Speaker 2:enough. Mac and cheese. Sam is the question.
Speaker 1:He doesn't like my mac and cheese. Are you cooking enough mac and cheese, sam? You know he doesn't like my mac and cheese. He only likes my husband's mac and cheese. I am. Now I like try to. I didn't measure it before, I didn't know you're like, I just figured I could eyeball it and so I was like, well, this feels about right. And so now I've, I tried my husband's and I was like, oh, this is, this is how it's supposed to taste. Like I haven't been doing it right, like I'm I'm not the best at follow up, like you're very type A. I could not be more further type B if I like I'm I'm trying on. This is why we need people like you because people like me exist To tell you to measure like milk and mac and cheese, so it's not watery.
Speaker 1:My husband's always like you and our son are both like two toddlers who can't follow directions because we're like running around like crazy.
Speaker 3:Is there any research on why kids love mac and cheese so much?
Speaker 2:No, although I suspect it's, because it's salty and full of fat and carbs, which are all delicious and simple items, but I'm not sure it's probably salt, acid fat ratio.
Speaker 1:They probably like that. All right, so we have two questions we like to wrap up with. You kind of already covered this, but if there is, if you had a best friend right now coming to you who asked for advice, what advice? Parenting, pregnancy, fertility, whatever what did they? They're saying I want to get pregnant right now. I'm about to have a baby. What is the advice you'd give them?
Speaker 2:Try not to think about it, it's like try not to try not to sweat small stuff. So much of this is just being panicked about things that are tiny and don't matter. And if people could just take a breath when they get freaked out and be like, oh, is this something I actually need to freak out about? I think that they would do better. The best advice our pediatrician ever gave me was try not to think about that.
Speaker 3:That's good advice. And then what's a part of parenthood that has brought you unexpected joy?
Speaker 2:The time I feel most like a parent is when my kids have the stomach flu and I think joy is like a little strong. But the feeling of this person really needs me right now and I can help. I can like hold the bucket or lay outside their room, be there in the middle of the night, when they're vomiting, even though it is like the, it's like the worst moment of parenting.
Speaker 2:But it also is a point where I always feel like, okay, I am, I am in it in a way that I am. I am like serving them like I should be, and I think that that is its own weird joy.
Speaker 1:I get that. They're also very sweet when they're sick.
Speaker 2:They're so snuggly.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I remember my son was sick one time, so I very much resonate with what you just said. My son was sick one time and I was cuddling with him on the couch watching a movie and I was like I thought this is what parenthood would be, because they're not having tantrums, they're not freaking out, they want to be touched.
Speaker 3:It's not usually like that, yeah, although my daughter went through a phase where she would get so mad at me for making her miss school that she would sit on the opposite end of the couch from me and like wag her finger if I tried to come near her, so that was fun. That's not good, my son also doesn't like school.
Speaker 1:Wait, I didn't ask either of you this. Do you measure mac and cheese? Do you guys make mac and cheese? Do you measure the ingredients?
Speaker 2:Of course you don't measure the ingredients.
Speaker 1:Of course you don't measure the ingredients, okay, so I think my yeah. So I don't think most people measure, because I even, yeah, I don't think they do, Come on.
Speaker 2:But if you don't measure, it ends up all. You put in too much milk and it ends up all watery and then it's not good. And that is true too.
Speaker 3:I don't measure when I cook in general. I mean, I also grew up with an Indian mom whose version of cooking was just like you know frantically throwing everything into the pot and somehow ending up with perfection every time.
Speaker 1:So I don't. I'm curious, zara will you try to measure next time and see if your kids like it better?
Speaker 3:I'll try. I usually like additionally butter theirs because you know my kids are on the small side and not that that really matters for what they're eating.
Speaker 1:My kids like double cheese.
Speaker 2:My kids like double cheese in their like. They like to have one box of pasta but two boxes worth of cheese.
Speaker 1:Do you put the two? Do you double the milk and the butter too? Yes, you got to double. It's like double the topping, basically.
Speaker 2:And then you save the pasta to eat plain.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to try that. My husband puts in one extra tablespoon, so he doesn't exactly follow the recipe. He puts in one extra tablespoon of milk and I think that's what puts it over the edge, but I'm going to try your double recipe. I know you have so many things to get back to. So, emily, thank you so much for joining us and it's. I've learned so much today already, and it's only 11 here.
Speaker 2:This was a delight. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but this was great.
