Cribsheet

I enjoyed this book. It’s written in a fun easy to read format. I feel like it made me think about how things I really hadn’t considered yet. I loved all the data. Maybe not the most thorough but very good. I’d recommend

I love this book and Expecting Better! I genuinely feel like I've learned so much and been able to develop opinions on topics that would have otherwise taken me days to research and try to parse information together. I love the way Emily writes! I think this book is extremely useful for all expecting parents and will be recommending it to friends and family in the future.

I want to give this 5 stars - there is a real need for more evidence-based parenting advice. As a parent (and an academic scientist), I keep hearing various rules and recommendations and find myself wondering... where do the data for THAT come from? This book is a really accessible guide to navigating the parenting literature with an eye for research methods. The author also does a wonderful job at discussing how sometimes what parents care about is not what research measures. I also found it quite freeing to know that there is not a lot of evidence for a whole host of things. I'm drawn to attachment parenting practices, and I chose to breastfeed- it felt nice to realize I was doing these things because I WANT to, not because I HAVE to because "the evidence says". The big takeaway, then, is "just do you" - with a few caveats: please vaccinate, do not spank your children. My one criticism is toward the parts that were not grounded in data. The postpartum recovery section seemed to be based on personal experience and anecdotes, and repeated some potentially harmful myths (e.g. about how "capacious" one's vagina is after childbirth). These are admittedly more medical questions than the others dealt with in the book, but I would have liked this section too to be more in the spirit of a critical view of existing evidence. Similarly, the how-to section on breastfeeding strayed too much into the realm of personal experience and unscientific sampling of anecdotes. Overall, though, this is a really wonderful book and I plan on getting it for all future baby showers.

Much better book than the others I had ordered. This is data driven and far better explained.

Emily Oster uses the same data-centered approach in Cribsheet that she did in Expecting Better. (You can read my review of that here.) That’s why I loved Expecting Better so I knew I’d love Cribsheet too. Oster wrote Expecting Better after she had her first child and drew on her own experience of pregnancy for that book. She would present the data and explain why she made the choice she did but was never judgmental about it. The choice was ultimately left up to the reader. Cribsheet is the same, only Oster wrote it after the birth of her second child. She knows from personal experience that all children are different and what works for one may not work for another – even if they have the same parents. Cribsheet covers the most heated topics related to a baby’s first year – sleep training, breast vs. bottle, vaccinations, working vs. staying home, etc. The section on toddlers includes walking, talking, potty training, discipline, education and more. Like in Expecting Better, she presents the various approaches to each topic and then her analysis of the available data, without judgment. My oldest child is 16 years old and my youngest is 18 months old. A lot has changed in 16 years. One example is that it’s now recommended that children sleep in the parents’ bedroom for their first year. This blew me away! My older kids were in their own room within weeks of birth and this was pretty much standard at the time. After reading Oster’s section on sleep, I understood why the recommendation had been put into place and was able to decide how long I thought it was appropriate for my new baby to sleep in my bedroom given the available data. I hope that Oster continues to write books as her children grow. I’ll be first in line for all of them!

One of the most overwhelming things as a parent is making decisions about what will be best for your child and your family. I’ve definitely had my preferences about sleep training, baby feeding, and discipline, but I think every mom doubts herself sometimes and wonders if she’s really doing things the “right” way or if she’s completely screwing up her child. This is why we needed Emily Oster’s book. Her pregnancy book Expecting Better was like a guidebook for me during pregnancy, and although I had to wait 2 years for this parenting book, it was definitely worth the wait. Oster simply outlines the research behind many of the big parenting decisions, including how and what to feed our children, vaccinations, discipline, education, screen time and potty training. Just like in Expecting Better, she doesn’t give advice but simply outlines the research, allowing the reader to use that information to guide their own decision making. As a mom, I’ve loved reading about which decisions don’t really seem to matter much in the long run, and which I should take a little more seriously. This book helps me feel like an informed parent, which allows me to feel more confident as a mother. But my favorite part of this book is that in almost every chapter, Oster doesn’t just discuss how parenting decisions affect the children, but the parents as well. Almost all parenting advice that you read only talks about the children, but what about us? We are also impacted by our parenting choices, and we should consider our own well- being when making any decisions about our family. I hope that this sparks a new trend in parenting advice, where parents are allowed to think about themselves also.

Es un libro que si buscas ser madre en EUA te ayuda pero te sirven pocos capítulos si no vives allá. Aún así, es interesante aprender las dinámicas y estadísticas del proceso de criar hijos desde el embarazo hasta que son infantes.

I loved!! I recomend to all my friends This book fare perfect for new parents! Easy to understand And read!!

Highly recommended. It's no "in my opinion" or "my grandma told me" nonsense you read elsewhere. This is evidence-based talk deeply grounded in science. Cheery on the cake, it's very well written, easy to digest, and very hard to put down once you start chewing through the pages.

Un libro che fornisce moltissime informazioni soprattutto basate su raccolta dati! Alcune cose sono molto basate sulla popolazione degli USA ma questo non toglie che i dati rimangono validi anche per certi aspetti. Consiglio questo libro anche per iniziare a leggere qualcosa di strutturato.

A well written book that breaks down common topics around parenting and caring for your newborn/infant. There’s a lot of chatter and anecdotal information that gets thrown at you and it’s overwhelming. This summarises and presents facts using statistics in a way that’s digestible, less biased and easy to understand.