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1.22k reviews for:
Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
Emily Oster
4.08 AVERAGE
1.22k reviews for:
Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
Emily Oster
4.08 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
Another good look at actual data for parenting.
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Very informative, dispels common thoughts about parenting and gives the data behind different parenting choices. Doesn’t tell you what decision to make either way, just presents the research.
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This is a fantastic book and its greatest strength is what it is not: Cribsheet is not trying to convince you of anything. So many parenting ‘resources’ are built around convincing you to adopt a particular strategy. Either they are trying to sell you a product or the philosophy represents the author’s life’s work; in either case, the resource is heavily laced with “you should” or “you must”. This book is premised on one simple question: what does the data say?
I really appreciated Oster’s approach in this book. It acknowledges the lack of strong, causal relationships between parenting strategies and child outcomes. Cribsheet aims to cover the most popular topics of parenting discussions and brings it back to what the data says or does not say on the topic. Oster also acknowledges that many readers already have strong opinions before they pick up this book. She recognizes that attempting to convince someone their pre-conceived ideas about parenting are wrong is a losing game; the reader is far more likely to simply put down the book than they are to be convinced.
I am no exception: my wife and I were generally opposed to sleep-training our daughter. In her chapter on sleeping, Oster presented the data showing that parents who sleep-train tend to be happier and less prone to depression than parents who do not and that, in general, sleep training is not correlated with negative outcomes for children. So, while this did not convince me that sleep-training was the right choice for my family, it did help me feel that I could leave the door open to it if my daughter did not learn to self-soothe at an appropriate age (she did).
The main criticism that I saw of Cribsheet is that it wasn’t as good as Oster’s previous book — Expecting Better, which I did not read — and specifically that Cribsheet isn’t sufficiently definitive or prescriptive. Personally, I don’t see this as a negative because it’s pretty clear why a book on pregnancy might be more prescriptive: pregnancy is time-limited and has clear, definitive outcomes. Parenting does not.
On the whole, I would strongly recommend this book to any current or prospective parent. It is a valuable resources that shares information, aims to trigger self-reflection, and can be of great value to anyone who wants to know what the data says about parenting.
informative
I literally brought this book to the hospital with me when I had my son. It really kept me from diving off the deep end into anxiety land for the first three days. Knowing and “knowing” are two different things, but this data driven approach really helped me keep my calm and has helped with keeping me good to go since. A lot of the sections but have to come to as he ages… but she is awesome
informative
slow-paced