Raising Parents with Emily Oster
Poseidon is the god of the sea, Dionysus of wine and merrymaking, and Emily Oster? She?s the god of parenting.
An economics professor at Brown University, Oster has built a massive and loyal audience by providing overwhelmed parents with the information and data they need to make solid and sound parenting decisions in a very confusing world. Her first book, Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong?and What You Really Need to Know, sold over a million copies and was translated into 19 languages, unseating the classic What to Expect When You?re Expecting as a fixture on many pregnant mothers? bedtime tables.
In this new series with The Free Press, Oster tackles the deep, difficult, existential, and often controversial questions facing parents today: Are we too soft on kids these days? How do I raise an independent child in an era of overprotection and helicopter parenting? Why are so many teen girls unhappy and anxious, and how can we make them happy again? Why are boys being left behind? Are kids overdiagnosed? What to do about the phones!? Is marriage important for raising kids? Should you even have kids at all?
These questions are more urgent than ever. That?s because, by many measures, kids are worse off today than 30 years ago. They are more anxious than ever. They?re more depressed. They have more diagnoses than ever before. They?re more medicated. More kids are being raised without two parents in the home today. Kids? reading and math scores haven?t recovered since their decline during the Covid pandemic. Childhood obesity has risen to 19.7 percent. Kids spend on average 7.5 hours in front of a screen for entertainment each day, and the average teen spends around 9 hours a day on their phone.
What?s going on with kids today? How worried should we be about our kids? And what should we be doing, as parents, to change course, before it?s too late? How do we raise good people?which starts with raising good, informed parents?in this strange, new world?
Over eight episodes, Oster speaks with over 50 of the world?s best parenting experts, journalists, doctors, psychologists, researchers, and more including: Dr. Becky, Jonathan Haidt, Pamela Druckerman, Richard Reeves, Hanna Rosin, Abigail Shrier, Bryan Caplan, Christine Emba, Johann Hari, Sami Timimi, Melissa Kearney, Ross Douthat, and many, many more. Oster brings her trusted voice?with its sobriety, wisdom, and humor?to the most challenging parenting questions of the day.
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Ep 5: Are Boys Being Left Behind?
Across the board in most advanced countries, girls and women are outpacing boys and men. Nowhere is this more stark than in education. When Title IX was passed in the U.S., the share of students enrolled in a bachelor?s degree program was about two-thirds men and one-third women. Just 50 years later, the numbers have reversed: Bachelor?s enrollment is now 58 percent women and 42 percent men. So, not only is the gender inequality we see in college today wider than it was 50 years ago, it?s the other way around, with men on the bottom. The difference in master?s degrees is even more striking. In the 1970s, women earned only 11 percent of them. Today, women earn over 60 percent of master?s degrees. Women are awarded 53 percent of PhDs, and they make up the majority of law students. These disparities also continue after school ends. Young men are out of the labor force at an unprecedented rate. Nearly half (47 percent) of prime-age men not in the workforce cite obsolete skills, lack of education, or poor work history as barriers to employment. And most American men earn less today (adjusted for inflation) than most men did in 1979.
Today: Are boys and men falling behind? Why are some experts so worried about this, and what is at stake for the economy, our society, our families, and the future of boys everywhere?
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Resources from the episode:
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Amazon) by Richard Reeves
Hanna Rosin The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (Amazon) by Hanna Rosin
Erica Komisar
?Men are lost. Here?s a map out of the wilderness? by Christine Emba
American Institute for Boys and Men
2024-10-16Link to episode
Ep 4: Are We Overmedicating Kids?
Kids and teens today are more diagnosed than ever, across the board, whether it?s a disorder like ADHD or a mental health condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Say you?re 15 and you?re worried about that upcoming algebra test? Anxiety. You?re 12 and you weren?t invited to that birthday party? Depression. Scared to ride your bike again after that little fall last summer? PTSD. And with these diagnoses come a menu of medications that purport to fix your child.
Today: What?s behind the rise in diagnoses?both for ADHD, mostly among young boys, and for anxiety and depression, mostly among teen girls? Are they really the most distracted, anxious, and depressed generation ever to exist? Or are we, perhaps, pathologizing what used to be considered normal feelings and behaviors?and as a result, diagnosing and overmedicating kids for. . . acting like kids? And what are the long-term effects of having millions of boys on speed and millions of girls on SSRIs?
Resources from this episode:
Abigail Shrier Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren?t Growing Up (Bookshop)
Jennifer Wallace Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic?and What We Can Do About It (Bookshop)
Sami Timimi Naughty Boys: Anti-Social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture (Bookshop)
Erica Komisar Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (Bookshop)
If you liked what you heard in this episode, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.
2024-10-09Link to episode
Ep 3: Are We Feeding Kids the Wrong Foods?
In January 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics surprised doctors and parents by changing its guidelines on treating childhood obesity to include the use of popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, also known as semaglutide, for children ages 12 years or older. And parents all over the country were faced with yet another difficult decision: Should I consider a lifelong weight-loss drug for my 12-year-old?
The fact that this is even on the table at all is a pretty shocking indictment of the state of our kids? health. Nearly 20 percent of American children and adolescents are obese, a 300 percent increase since the 1970s. Meanwhile, a little over 42 percent of American adults are obese, a 180 percent increase since the 1970s. The United States ranks 12th worldwide in obesity prevalence. This places the U.S. among the countries with the highest obesity rates in the world.
The question is: Why? And why haven?t we been able to reduce childhood obesity rates?
As obesity rates have skyrocketed, we as a society have also changed the way we talk about weight and obesity. Yes, there is less stigma today about weight?which is good. But people?including health experts?have stopped speaking out loud about the real health risks of obesity. Take, for example, how during the pandemic our health leaders wouldn?t tell the public that obesity is a high risk factor for contracting Covid, out of a presumed fear of stigmatizing obese people.
In the end, all of this has led to confusion about the real health risks of obesity. Parents, in particular, are left to struggle with how to navigate food and health for their children. They may be left wondering whether the entire idea of a link between weight and health may simply be misinformation. So today, we?re setting the table: Why Is childhood obesity such a big problem in the U.S.? Why is obesity problematic in the first place? What will it take to change the way Americans feed our children? And what?s at stake if we don?t?
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Resources from this episode:
Pamela Druckerman: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
Robert Lustig: ?The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains?
Robert J. Davis: ?Supersized Lies: How Myths about Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat ? and the Truth about What Really Works?
FoodCorps
Sam Kass
Curt Ellis
2024-10-02Link to episode
Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?
There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they?ve changed wildly in America over the decades. On one end of the spectrum, there?s the old school, 1950s approach: spanking. Then, there are middle-ground approaches: time-outs, warning systems, consequences, and punishments. And then, there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. These are the kind of approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they?re frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. ?Gentle parenting??sometimes called ?respectful parenting? or ?attentive parenting??has become really popular in the last few years, and if your social media feeds are anything like ours, you?ve heard all about it and been told you need to do it.
The question many parents are asking is: We have been told that spanking was bad, and we shouldn?t go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting, where kids are learning that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids, but what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Today: How should we be disciplining the next generation of kids? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way?
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Resources from this episode:
Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren?t Growing Up
Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way
2024-09-25Link to episode
Ep 1: Are We Over-Parenting Our Kids?
When Emily was a kid in the 1980s in New Haven, Connecticut, she grew up on a block with a lot of other children. Every day after dinner, around 6:30, everyone emptied out of their houses and went down to the church parking lot where they engaged in all kinds of unsupervised activities?throwing balls at each other in front of the church wall, climbing up trees and sometimes falling out of them, riding Hot Wheels until people skinned their knees. There was street hockey and there were scrapes. There were a few broken arms.
That experience of playing outside unsupervised in the dark?or walking a mile home from school in kindergarten?is very different from her own children?s experiences, even though they?re growing up in a very similar environment, with very similar parents. They aren?t leaving the house every day after dinner. If Emily had suggested that they walk home from school in kindergarten, even though it?s only a couple of blocks, there?s no chance that would have been met with the school?s acceptance.
Since 1955, there has been a continuous decline in children?s opportunities to engage in free play, away from adult intervention and control. In 1969, 47 percent of kids walked or biked to school, whereas in 2009 that number had plummeted to 12 percent.
How did we get here? What are the consequences of hypervigilant parenting? On kids? happiness? On their well-being? Their mental health? And on their ability to grow into independent, self-sufficient, and successful adults? And, maybe most importantly, how can we alter this trajectory before it?s too late?
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Resources from this episode:
Timothy Carney: Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be (Bookshop))
Jonathan Haidt: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Bookshop)
Lenore Skenazy: Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow (Bookshop)
Let Grow
Free Range Kids
Jonathan Haidt in The FP https://www.thefp.com/t/jonathan-haidt
2024-09-18Link to episode