My wife and I are having a baby. He is due in a little over a month. So before we start this journey, I’d like to write down some of my thoughts, beliefs, and opinions about parenting. Since I’m not yet a parent, these thoughts are primarily influenced by books, intuition, and my observations of friends with small children. I plan on looking back on this post in a year or two to see how the actual experience of parenting changes my views.
There are three books that have had a large impact on my views on parenting, and I’d like to mention them upfront. The first is Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. In this book, Bryan uses evidence from twin and adoption studies to argue that parenting is less important to children’s adult outcomes than most people believe. His conclusion is that parents can give themselves permission to not stress out about raising a little future CEO. Instead, parents can focus on doing things that make life more enjoyable for themselves and their kids right now.
The second book that influenced me is Emily Oster’s Cribsheet. This is a data-driven look at many different aspects of parenting. Unlike Caplan, Oster isn’t pushing a specific point. Instead, she gives a broad overview of what the science says about many different areas of parenting, from breastfeeding, to sleep training, to daycare.
The third book I want to mention is not by an economist: Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman. This book presents an autobiographical narrative about the American author’s experience raising her kids in France. What’s so interesting about this book is that it illustrates a lot of cultural differences in parenting styles and outcomes. When every kid in your culture is raised in a certain way, it’s hard to distinguish what is and isn’t a human universal, so an intense case study of just one other culture is enough to dispel a lot of false assumptions.
I’ll share my thoughts about parenting, starting general and getting more specific.
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