Emily Oster

20 min Read Emily Oster

Emily Oster

It’s a Podcast Anniversary Q&A!

You asked, Emily answered

Emily Oster

20 min Read

We relaunched the new and improved ParentData podcast one year ago today, and to celebrate, I’m answering all of your burning questions.

If you follow my Instagram, @profemilyoster, you’re familiar with my Wednesday Q&As. On those, I post a question box, people ask their questions, and I choose which one to answer. I usually try to choose things that are entertaining or interesting or something that it seems like everyone is asking. 

So over the past couple of weeks, we asked readers, listeners, and Instagram followers alike to submit their questions. And on today’s episode, I answer them in real time.

Here are three highlights from the episode:

QUESTION 1

Is it okay to take melatonin while pregnant to combat that pesky pregnancy insomnia?

Emily: 

This falls in the category of things during pregnancy where I wish we had better data and we don’t, because it absolutely is the case that many people have insomnia during pregnancy. And melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone, so it would not be crazy to imagine this was safe. Indeed, we have a reasonable amount of reassuring evidence, and in fact, there are actually some complications in pregnancy that are associated with problematic melatonin. So some people have suggested that supplementation with melatonin might actually improve some things like preterm birth or preeclampsia. That’s not something that has shown up in the trials yet but that could be true in theory.

But we also know that melatonin is transmitted to the fetus. Many people do take low doses of melatonin during pregnancy. If there were significant risks, we would obviously know about that. And so that, for me, I think is pretty reassuring, and sleep is important for your health. 

But I guess my more general point here is, sometimes the reason for conflicting advice is that the answer is: we don’t have perfect evidence. And so the conflict is, how do you read the limited evidence that we have, not that people have different evidence, and that’s probably useful to keep in mind when you read these conflicting recommendations.

QUESTION 2

I registered for a marathon before I found out I was pregnant. Is this doable, or is running a marathon at six months pregnant the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard?

Emily:

I fully support this, but let’s talk about whether it’s realistic. Most people feel better after their first trimester, most people are less tired. So if you had to pick an optimal time to train for a marathon within pregnancy, it probably is the second trimester. You are going to be more tired than you would be otherwise, non-pregnant, because you’re making a person. Is it doable to run a marathon at six months pregnant? Absolutely, you can do it. If the worry is, is this dangerous? Am I putting the baby at risk? No. From your own personal standpoint, the injury risk is actually going to be a bit higher just because your ligaments loosen up a little bit. So you want to be more cautious about the twinges that occur as you run.

I would not discourage someone from doing this, as long as you feel like it is making you happy and not stressed-out. If it’s a thing where it’s like “I can’t believe I have to go do this. I’m not ready to run 22 miles today,” then you may want to rethink it. But if it’s like “That would be great. I’d love to get away from my toddler for three hours and just enjoy myself out on the trails,” then you should do that.

QUESTION 3

I’ve heard, especially from my mother-in-law, that I can’t give my baby honey. Is this true?

Emily:

So, the concern with honey is the possible link with botulism, which is exposure to botulism spores can give you an illness for adults, and for older people it’s not typically a problem because it doesn’t cause any issues. But for infants it can be associated with illness and sort of short-term paralysis that it’s quite scary although recoverable from.

And there was at some point a kind of idea that this was linked to honey. Actually, over time it seems like that’s not true. The telling people not to give their babies honey basically has had no impact on the very small number of babies that get botulism over time. 

So now, does that mean that you should give your kid honey or they need to enjoy honey? No, honey’s not a central food group for people. But I think it’s an important thing for people to know because, for whatever reason, a lot of parents freak out about this when accidentally their kid got a honey graham cracker or they had some Honey Nut Cheerios or somebody put honey in the bread. This is just fine. It’s fine.

Full transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain small errors.

Emily Oster:

I’m Emily Oster. This is ParentData. And today, well, today is a special day. Today is our pod-versary pod-anniversary pod-versary. Let’s go with that. We relaunched the new and improved ParentData podcast a year ago.

Callers:

Hey, Emily. Hi, Emily. Hey, Emily. Hi, Emily.

Trailer:

“I’m Emily Oster and today, ParentData the podcast. I’ll be interviewing experts to parse out fact from anecdote, causality from correlation…”

Emily Oster:

And it has been a great year. We have had some incredibly smart, educational guests.

Eve Rodsky:

Once you realize that we have to have unpaid labor done by women for society to function, you start to understand everything that surrounds it.

Emily Nagoski:

Talking about sex is not correlated with a bad sex life. Talking about sex is correlated with a spectacular, magnificent, optimal sexual experience.

Richard Reeves:

One of the criticisms of this developmental story that we’re talking about here is, oh, so you’re blaming the boys. Actually, it’s the opposite, that the education system has inadvertently kind of defaulted to more of the kind of female standard.

Emily Oster:

Could you please tell me how to salt my baby?

Jennifer Traig:

Well, salting and swaddling were part of an idea that sway for quite a while, that a baby would not acquire human form unless it was imposed on that baby.

Emily Oster:

We’ve had fun. Late night panic Googles. Hello, Mandy Moore. Hello, Ezra Klein. Hello, Abby Phillip. Jackie Oshry, thank you for joining me.

Late Night Panic Googlers:

Hello, Emily Oster.

Emily Oster:

And here’s what I’ve learned. It’s hard to interview other people, but it’s also really fun, and it’s a really interesting way to get more intimate about what exactly is going on and to really connect with people who are going through the same things that I’m going through or different things, and where our shared experiences come out more than I would sometimes expect. So today, we’re going to see how much I actually learned and how much I already know. If you follow my Instagram, @profemilyoster, you’re familiar with my Wednesday Q&A’s. On those, I post a question box, people ask their questions, and I choose which one to answer. People sometimes ask me how do I choose and I try to choose things that are entertaining or interesting or if everyone is already asking them. So in the last couple of weeks we asked you for your questions. And today, I’ve got some answers and some help. I’ve invited my producer Tamar to give me a hand. Hi, Tamar.

Tamar:

Hi, Emily.

Emily Oster:

So how are we doing this?

Tamar:

Okay, so as you said, we solicited questions from all over the place, from your readers, your listeners, your Instagram followers. Not unexpectedly, they really delivered. So have taken the questions that I think… I’ve tried to borrow your model and pick the ones that are interesting and different and actually very common.

Emily Oster:

You follow the part of the model where I pick the ones I know the answers to?

Tamar:

Well, that’s the thing about somebody else picking them for you. So put a pin in that for a second.

Emily Oster:

Okay.

Tamar:

So in true Who Wants to be a Millionaire Fashion, we have a couple different options for any help that you may need. We have searched the internet and of course, not Google, but actually diving in-

Emily Oster:

ParentData.

Tamar:

Yeah, ParentData. We diving into those Ivy League economist research papers that will help give you the answer.

Emily Oster:

That’s not where I’m looking for help, but okay.

Tamar:

You can phone a friend and you can pull the audience. So that will be some members of your ParentData team who might be able to help out with answers that might be a little bit, maybe more anecdotal, but enough anecdotes become data.

Emily Oster:

It’s not how it works, but okay. I like the idea. I like the concept.

Tamar:

You can only pick each one once, so you have to be strategic.

Emily Oster:

Oh, dear. Okay. This seems hard. Okay, I’m ready.

Tamar:

You’re ready. Okay.

Emily Oster:

I’m ready-ish.

Tamar:

All right, let’s get started.

Emily Oster:

Let’s do it.

Tamar:

After the break.

Tamar:

So the first category is pregnancy and birth. So let’s start with the first question.

Caller 1:

Hi, Emily. I am currently 21 weeks pregnant and I live in Canada, access to great health care. Very lucky for that. I live in a big city. One thing that I’m just really noticing and have a question about is how far the pendulum really has swung toward non-intervention “natural birth” or just non-intervention birth. And it really just to seem that the system has built in assumptions now that nobody is trying to avoid interventions, be it avoiding pain meds, be it avoiding induction, avoiding C-section, all of the above. I am wondering where it comes from that this assumption is so strong and if there is a data basis.

I know that there are obviously risks inherent in C-sections specifically, but just a bit of, I am trying to understand why my care providers seem to just really assume at every turn that everything that I’m going to prefer is to avoid interventions at all costs. Frankly, I just want to have my baby out safely. So I don’t have any opinion about not having a C-section or having one if it’s the right thing being induced. And I certainly would like pain meds. So trying to understand this system that we’re in a little bit better. Thank you.

Emily Oster:

So I think this question I would really separate in a couple of different parts. So one kind of intervention we would talk about is a C-section. And there are of course, very good reasons for a C-section and it can be very life-saving. But it’s also true that that is not the default method of birth that most providers are hoping for because the recovery is more significant because that is a major abdominal surgery. And for most people it is more likely to lead to complications if you want a later child.

Again, sort of super safe, not something to worry about, but also something we’re not hoping will be the default, which is why most providers will not offer an elective C-section unless there is a reason to do that. I would pull out that as sort of separate from the question of pain medication, and to some extent induction where I do feel like we have sometimes gotten into this idea of late that less is better, that we would all be ideal if we were giving birth alone under a tree with no help and-

Tamar:

Pulling the baby out yourself?

Emily Oster:

Yeah, certainly that’s not what we’d recommend. But if you look at something like an epidural and you ask are there any significant downsides to pain relief? Absolutely, that is a very safe and effective method of pain relief with tremendous benefits. Namely, that it’s quite painful to have a baby. So I think this is, again, if you asked why do people talk about this? It would be better to not do anything. I’m not really sure. I think it’s part of this general culture of the more suffering we have as parents, the better. And it’s again, one of the things I would say, you have to decide, we should be open to people deciding whatever space they want. Do you want an induction? Do you want an epidural? Do you not want those things? And I think very reasonable people could choose both, but I would separate that from the C-section question.

Tamar:

Yeah, I think too, I found going through my own pregnancies that it’s something that feels like it should be very natural and right off the bat feels like it becomes medicalized. As soon as as you find out you’re pregnant, you book a doctor’s appointment, and it’s like one thing after another where you’re continually putting something that “your body is built to do” in the hands of doctors. And I think that there is this trend now to kind of take the medicalization out, but it does seem like a trend.

Emily Oster:

It’s interesting. It’s part of what I like about midwifery care, which has grown in the US. And when you talk about that in the context for the US, people think about home births, but actually most midwife births are in hospitals. But there is a model associated with midwifery care different from care with an OB where it is a little bit more coming at it from the default idea of this is something where it is expected, that is a normal part of a thing that happens in life. And that of course, there are reasons why we might need medical intervention at a more serious level, but that the default is your body is sort of going to do this. And that’s in talking to midwives about this, you will get a picture that’s somewhere in the middle I would say, which I kind of like.

Tamar:

Okay, so speaking of C-sections…

Caller 2:

Hi, my name is Kristen and my question is related to trying to conceive over 40. This would be a fifth scheduled and I’ve been told I have a thin uterus already due to the prior C-sections. So I was wondering the concern once you go beyond four C-sections, obviously this being the fifth, and the thin uterus combined, and the age of 44 as well. Thank you for any advice. Bye.

Emily Oster:

Tamar, I think we’re going to phone a friend on this.

Tamar:

Yeah?

Emily Oster:

Let’s call Nate.

Tamar:

Okay, so this is Dr. Nate Fox, OB/GYN, friend of the podcast, and your co-author for The Unexpected, and we’ve got him queued up.

Emily Oster:

Hi, Nate.

Dr. Nate Fox:

Hello, Emily. How you doing?

Emily Oster:

Nate, I’m calling you. I’m phoning a friend on this because you’re a doctor, and I trust you, and I think you’re the best doctor.

Dr. Nate Fox:

Oh, God, that’s so nice.

Emily Oster:

Can you help answer this person’s question?

Dr. Nate Fox:

Sure. Anything for a friend.

Emily Oster:

So what’s the answer?

Dr. Nate Fox:

So, yeah, great question. It’s a long answer for her specifically, and this is something I usually see people and talk to them for at least an hour about, but in terms of the high points of the question, it seems to be there’s three. Number one is getting pregnant over the age of 40. Number two is getting pregnant with having four prior cesareans. And number three, getting pregnant with having a thin, lower uterine segment or a thin wall of the uterus. And so high level in terms of getting pregnant after 40, I definitely do not discourage people from getting pregnant after 40. I encourage it, but there are some things that can sometimes be challenging for people. The likelihood of infertility goes up, the likelihood of miscarriage goes up. But assuming that doesn’t happen, either you get pregnant on your own or you do IVF and you get pregnant and there’s no miscarriage, the pregnancy itself tends to go well. There’s an increased risk of some complications at the end of pregnancy like preeclampsia or gestational diabetes.

And that’s something where I typically would watch someone closer for those things. But, again, most of the complications tend to be on the front end of pregnancy. One of the complications that, not complications, but one of the things that’s more likely as you get older is the risk of cesarean, which is true for anyone who’s getting pregnant over 40 but certainly for your follower specifically, who’s already had four C-sections. So that’s number two. So getting pregnant after four C-sections does not tend to be an issue, again, with getting pregnant or the pregnancy itself. That’s really just related to delivery because you’re going to need a C-section for your fifth delivery. As far as we know, it’s not safe to labor after four prior C-sections. And so you’re going to have to be scheduled for a C-section. And then there’s some questions about the timing of it.

When should that be done? Is it going to be complicated? Is it not? And one of the biggest variables on that is whether you end up having a placenta previa or not, where the placenta covers the cervix, which seems to be pure luck. It’s about a 5% chance. And if you are someone who has four prior C-sections and you also coincidentally have a placenta previa, then there’s a very high chance of something called placenta accreta where the placenta gets stuck to the uterus and likely you would need a hysterectomy at the time of delivery. That’s a conversation that needs to be had for anyone who’s getting pregnant with several prior C-sections that this is a possibility for you. It doesn’t mean it’ll happen obviously, but that is a possibility.

The third thing which is more unique, and this is something we’re seeing more and more of nowadays, is this idea of a thin lower part of the uterus. So what is that? Basically when we do a C-section, we open the uterus and then we close it obviously, and that scar on the uterus has to heal. And then if you look at an ultrasound or you look at it maybe at the time of the next C-section, that scar could heal, and the muscle can be very thick like it healed perfectly, it looks like a normal muscle. Or sometimes it heals, but it’s very, very thin and there isn’t a lot of muscle attached to the other part of the muscle anymore. So it’s not that it’s open, it’s not that it’s ruptured, but it just seems to be thin. And there’s two concerns with that. One concern is that if you have that and you’re pregnant and you go into labor, you have a higher risk potentially of that thin, lower segment rupturing as opposed to a nice and thick, which just makes sense to people for the physics of it.

So that’s one problem. So when people do have a history of a thin, lower uterine segment, we tend to deliver them earlier because we don’t want them to go into labor. So instead of delivering them let’s say at 39 weeks or 38 sometimes, we do it at 37 or 36 prior to them going into labor. The second issue potentially with a thin, lower uterine segment is if the pregnancy early on implants in that scar where it’s supposed to be a nice thick muscle, but instead it’s thin in this area that’s chewed out, we sometimes call that a niche. If the pregnancy happens to implant in there, that could be a very, very dangerous pregnancy.

So ultimately, to go back to the original question, if I were to meet with someone who’s over 40 and has four prior C-sections and has a thin lower segment, it does not mean I would tell the person not to get pregnant. There are some who would. There’s definitely doctors who say, “Enough is enough, no more babies don’t get pregnant, too high risk.” That’s not how I typically address these. I usually go over each of these individually, try to personalize it and individualize it and just explain what are the risks, what are the things we’re looking for, and how might we follow for those. Best of luck.

Emily Oster:

That’s a good answer, Nate.

Tamar:

Wow, great answer. Okay, so with that we say goodbye to Dr. Nate and hello to the next question.

Caller 3:

Hey, Emily Oster, I’ve got a question for you. Is it okay to take melatonin while pregnant to combat that pesky pregnancy insomnia? The internet is opposed because of the lack of data, but my pregnancy app says I can, and I have horrible insomnia. Let me know.

Emily Oster:

So this falls in the category of things during pregnancy where I wish we had better data and we don’t, because it absolutely is the case that many people have insomnia during pregnancy. And melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone so it would not be crazy to imagine this was safe. Indeed we have a reasonable amount of reassuring evidence, and in fact, there are actually some complications in pregnancy, which are associated with problematic melatonin. So actually some people have suggested that supplementation with melatonin might actually improve some things like preterm birth or preeclampsia. That’s not something that has shown up in the trials yet, but that could be true in theory.

But we also know that melatonin is transmitted to the fetus. Melatonin from supplements, melatonin then occurs naturally, and it’s like you land in this complicated space, which is basically like there’s really absolutely no reason to think that we would be concerned. But also nothing where you can say, “Here’s a large randomized trial that is going to prove to you that there’s no possible issue.” Many people do take low doses of melatonin during pregnancy. If there were significant risks we would obviously know about that. And so that, for me, I think is pretty reassuring, and sleep is important for your health. But I mean, I guess my more general point here is sometimes the reason for conflicting advice is that the answer is we don’t have perfect evidence. And so the conflict is how do you read the limited evidence that we have, not that people have different evidence, and that’s probably useful to keep in mind when you read these conflicting recommendations.

Tamar:

Yeah, I read a thing that said that your baby will sleep better if you’ve taken melatonin during pregnancy. So that’s reason enough for me.

Emily Oster:

Definitely no evidence of that, Tamar, you know.

Tamar:

Oh, well. Oh, well. You got to cling to what you can.

Emily Oster:

Give it some bourbon, too. That’s old. That’s a no, don’t do that.

Tamar:

A little bourbon sop. Okay, well you just mentioned preeclampsia, so let’s click on the next question.

Caller 4:

Hi, my name is Abby. I’m 30 years old and I had my first baby in June and it was a little bit eventful. I lost about 1200 CCs of blood after delivery, and then I also developed postpartum preeclampsia about four days after getting home. And I have two sisters, one of them experienced postpartum hemorrhage, and another one experienced preeclampsia and preterm birth. And so my question is, what is the likelihood of either or both of these events happening again in a future pregnancy and a future birth? Should I be worried about getting pregnant again? My doctors think it’s fine if I just wait a year, but I’d love to know what the data says. Thank you so much.

Emily Oster:

So for preeclampsia in particular, we have a fair amount of very good data on recurrence risk because it’s actually a fairly common complication. And it’s not that hard in the data to learn about the risk of recurrence of something like that because you can use these very large data sets from Europe where you can see link people over time. So what we see out of that is that the recurrence risk varies quite a lot based on when the preeclampsia appeared. And so if your preeclampsia appeared early in pregnancy, which is often associated with preterm birth, the recurrence risk is very high. As it gets later in pregnancy, we get to lower recurrence risk. So people who develop preeclampsia at term or in this case after term, the recurrence risk is only in the range of 10%.

So higher than the chance that you would have it kind of at baseline, but certainly not 100% and still actually fairly low. Preeclampsia is also something where we have some treatment options. In particular, dosing with baby aspirin is actually quite effective at reducing the risk of preeclampsia. So surely that is an intervention your doctor would encourage in a second pregnancy. And because you know about this risk, and because it was post-birth, it’s something where the monitoring would likely be much better in a later pregnancy. So there’s a lot of reasons to think that the experience of this might be both there’s a lower risk than you would’ve had before and that the experience would be different because it’s a risk.

For postpartum hemorrhage again, some of the reasons for that are things which could recur, but it’s also true that it’s not anywhere near 100%. And in fact, because there again, are treatments, higher doses of Pitocin after birth that can lock up the uterus. That’s not a technical term but can sort of reduce the risk of bleeding. That’s something that they can do that they probably didn’t know to do before but they would know to do in a repeat pregnancy. So I think the short answer is you’re going to want to be careful about all of these things in a later pregnancy, but there’s tremendous reason to think that the outcome would be better in a second time around.

Tamar:

It’s amazing how psychological it is. You have one pregnancy and you think the next one is just going to be exactly the same because that’s how you know pregnancy to be. And then any change is just I don’t know, it’s an earthquake.

Emily Oster:

It’s an earthquake.

Tamar:

Although I guess in this case it would be a better…it would be sunshine. Okay, this next question is tailor-made for you. Not for me, but for you.

Caller 5:

Several months ago I registered for a marathon. It’s in December, but since then I have found out that I’m pregnant, I’ll be about six months pregnant at the time of the marathon. I just started training a few weeks ago and I’m also getting towards the end of my first trimester. I’ve been more exhausted this trimester than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life, probably because I also have a toddler at home, and starting to train has just made me even more tired. Will it get better in the second trimester? With my first it did, but it’s hard to see the light at the ends of the tunnel at the moment, and I want to know if this is doable or if running a marathon at six months pregnant is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard.

Emily Oster:

Definitely nothing. I fully support this, but let’s talk about whether it’s realistic. So most people feel better after their first trimester, so most people are less tired. So if you had to pick an optimal time to train for a marathon within pregnancy, it probably it is the second trimester. You are going to be more tired than you would be otherwise non-pregnant because you’re making a person. Is it doable to run a marathon at six months pregnant? Absolutely, you can do it. And in fact it’s not… If the worry is like is this dangerous? Am I putting the baby at risk? No. From your own personal standpoint, the injury risk is actually going to be a bit higher just because your ligaments loosen up a little bit. So you want to be more cautious about the twinges that occur as you run.

This is unlikely to be the source of your PR. So if that’s what you were hoping for, this is probably not your race, but I would not discourage someone from doing this, to be honest, as long as you feel like it is making you happy and not stressed out. If it’s a thing where it’s like, “I can’t believe I have to go do this. I’m not ready to run 22 miles today,” then you may want to rethink it. But if it’s like, “That would be great. I’d love to get away from my toddler for three hours, and just enjoy myself out on the trails,” then you should do that. Tamar, the look on your face.

Tamar:

Oh, my God. Well, pack some extra gels, I guess. I mean, I am so impressed by anybody who’s able to run a marathon. I was going to say sober-

Emily Oster:

One of my friends-

Tamar:

… not pregnant.

Emily Oster:

So one of my friends asked, somebody messaged me on Instagram who’s now become a friend after. So the context is she had run the Boston Marathon, and she had failed to qualify for the next Boston because she was four months pregnant. And the message was like, “I know I can do it, should I run another marathon three weeks so I can try to get a BQ time?” And there I wrote back and I was like, “Definitely not. This is a stupid idea.” And then it worked out great because then she had her baby and after that, she ran her hair BQ time and everything went great. But I would say two marathons, three weeks apart when you’re six months pregnant, I am going to call a no on that one.

Tamar:

I had a personal trainer years ago, like a decade ago, and she was pregnant and just got cuter and cuter, more and more like she had a basketball under her shirt that kind of look. And she was doing, at eight months pregnant, she was doing one-armed pushups. And here I was not pregnant at all, not able to do one-armed, not able to do two-armed pushups quite with the same gusto.

Emily Oster:

Yeah, with my second kid I ran until the very end, and then I got a hamstring injury that I’ve never recovered from actually, even though he’s now nine. So anyway, be careful of your hamstrings.

Tamar:

Good luck to this person. I’m incredibly impressed.

Emily Oster:

I think you’re going to do great.

Tamar:

Okay, this last question in this theme, I save the best for last. Yeah, go for it.

Caller 6:

My question has to do with restless leg syndrome during pregnancy. Everything that my OB-GYN recommended to me to help with the symptoms didn’t work. By accident, I found that the only thing that made the symptoms go away was orgasm. I did a little research and it looks like that there is a study that says that potentially that is the key question mark. Wondering what your thoughts are and if you know of any research or connection between orgasm and restless leg syndrome. Thanks.

Emily Oster:

Tamar, I need the internet for this one.

Tamar:

Okay.

Emily Oster:

I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to this one. Although I do love the framing of by accident I found out that this worked.

Tamar:

Oops.

Emily Oster:

Oops.

Tamar:

Okay, we’ll wait, you go use the internet.

Emily Oster:

All right, thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend some time on the internet thinking about this and researching it. I want to be clear that even though through the magic of podcasting, this answer is coming immediately. I actually spent a fair bit of time on this trying very hard to find the data.

Tamar:

Oh, it’s like God’s work.

Emily Oster:

Restless leg syndrome is not super well understood, and the set of treatments for it are also not super codified. I can find, however, nothing in the literature that suggests that having orgasms would be helpful or not helpful with this problem. Because it’s related to your brain and because it might be related to dopamine, I don’t think it’s an insane idea that this might be related, but it isn’t something where, say, there’s a systematic randomized trial where half the group gets a vibrator, half the group doesn’t get a vibrator, and we see how their legs do.

Having said that, this is an example of something where who cares because this is a problem that’s difficult to treat, and you found a solution which has all these other positive benefits. So I would be loathe to suggest that just because there’s no systematic data that you not enjoy orgasms and calm legs, which seems like a total win to me.

Tamar:

So what are the chances of an actual systematic double-blind randomized trial being conducted, and can I sign up for it?

Emily Oster:

Such a great question. I’m not optimistic, and I’m going to tell you why. It’s because I don’t see how to monetize it. So it’s expensive, somewhat expensive, to run a randomized trial, and it takes some time and work. And let’s say you learned this was a really good treatment. How can you get money from that? You cannot. The market for orgasms is very competitive. There’s many different ways to get it. And because one needs money to finance research, usually we have a harder time financing research if we cannot get money from it I’m sorry to report.

Tamar:

Okay. But as you said, still a win all around.

Emily Oster:

It’s still, yeah. I feel just don’t look for the evidence, look for the orgasm. That’s what we should say, a tagline.

Tamar:

It’s my new bumper sticker. Okay, so moving on. Now that the legs are calm by any means necessary and the baby is out of the womb and into the world, people have questions about the first year.

Caller 7:

My question is about just general risks with premature babies because I’m reading all over the place about increased risk for preemies. For example, the risk of SIDS is increased if your baby’s premature. And I’m wondering when that stops applying. So my baby was six-and-a-half weeks early, but now he is four weeks past his due date and he’s totally fine. He has no concerns relating to his prematurity, but does that mean he’s no longer a preemie or does he stay a preemie forever? When does that stop applying?

Emily Oster:

So your baby will stay in the premature category forever. So it’s something that will be part of his medical history and will mean particularly for the first couple of years, they’re likely to think about that when they’re evaluating developmental milestones or thinking about say, risks for something like RSV. So a baby who was preterm is going to have longer eligibility for RSV monoclonal immunization than another. So some of this is just, there’s a category of premature, which we’re sort of never going to leave. But when we talk about there’s an elevated risk of a whole host of things, that’s a really complicated question because it lumps together a huge number of babies with very, very different risk profiles.

So six-and-a-half weeks early so that’s something around say 34 weeks is quite different than 30 weeks is also quite different from 36-and-a-half weeks, which would be lower risk. And so there’s really a continuum, and in the literature there isn’t as much differentiation there as one might hope nor is there much differentiation that would have to do with the fact that you’re not seeing any complications with your baby and things are looking really great now four weeks after the due date. So all of these things kind of come together to say that your individual situation is so much more important than this one kind of definition. But in terms of the definition, in terms of extra services, you would get anything like that, your baby is going to be considered premature forever.

Tamar:

It can become a badge of honor after a while.

Emily Oster:

It is. And then the one thing people often ask in this space is what do you expect about developmental milestones? Because you’ll sort of talk about adjusted age for preterm babies. You’re four weeks after your due date. So if the baby was six-and-a-half weeks early, he’s 10 weeks old, but really an adjusted age, he’s only four weeks old. And that influences when we expect developmental milestones to happen. That crunches down and becomes less important over time as we think about just the range of heterogeneity across kids and the fact that basically a four-month old and a two-month old are really different. But a kid who’s four years and two months versus four years and four months, those are actually not very different. And so some of this importance of this stuff gets just smaller over time.

Tamar:

My brother was born premature. He was about four weeks premature, and he was born in an Israeli hospital in 1973. And my mom was adjusting to this very, very tiny baby who wasn’t big enough to latch, and this large barrel chested Israeli male nurse came in and pointed to his chest and said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. I was a preemie, too.” And that was very comforting to her at the time.

Emily Oster:

This is a space that has changed so much over time. One of John Kennedy’s kids was born, they had a baby born at 36 weeks that died. And that gestational age, the survival now is close to what you’d see, very close to what you see at full term. That’s like we sort of know how to deal with a baby at 36 weeks. They might even not end up in the NICU. So the whole range of what is possible and the outcomes for preterm babies have gotten so much better over the past decades and even over the past 10 years. So that’s very encouraging.

Tamar:

Okay, so speaking of conventional wisdom changing, next question.

Caller 8:

Hey, Emily. I’ve heard that I can’t give my baby honey, especially from my mother-in-law. Is this true?

Emily Oster:

I feel like honey and mother-in-law is just a total aside, but most of the questions I get about honey are about people’s mother-in-laws, and they’re either, “My mother-in-law told me not to do this,” or it’s like, “My mother-in-law gave my kid Honey Nut Cheerio and I’m considering disowning her. My husband says I’m overreacting. Like, am I?” So the concern with honey is the possible link with botulism, which is exposure to botulism spores can give you an illness for adults, and older people it’s not typically a problem because it doesn’t cause any issues. But for infants it can be associated with illness and sort of short-term paralysis that it’s quite scary although recoverable from.

And there was at some point a kind of idea that this was linked to honey. Actually over time it seems like that’s not true. The kind of telling people not to give their babies honey basically has had no impact on the very small number of babies that get botulism over time. So it just doesn’t look like this was actually an important source of botulism, and it’s not something that you can measure directly because if this happens, you are trying to just figure out what are the range of things that could have caused it. And honey is one that had come up, but it just turns, exposed not to be an especially important or really a factor at all.

So now does that mean that you should give your kid honey or they need to enjoy honey? No, honey’s not a central food group for people, but I think it’s an important thing for people to know because for whatever reason, a lot of parents freak out about this when it’s accidentally their kid got a honey graham crack or they had some Honey Nut Cheerios or somebody put honey in the bread, this is just fine. It’s fine.

Tamar:

Is there any value to exposing them to honey, like going out of your way to?

Emily Oster:

It’s not a common… No. I mean, there are a bunch of foods that are common allergens where you do want to be careful to expose babies early like peanuts and eggs and dairy, wheat. But honey is not a common allergen. So it’s not that you need to expose them to it. It’s just, it’s like okay if it happens.

Tamar:

Okay. Well, if it does happen and those two teeth are exposed to honey, click on the next question.

Emily Oster:

Oh, dear.

Caller 9:

Hi, Emily. How important is it really that I brush my 15-month-old’s teeth twice a day? They’re going to fall out anyway, right?

Emily Oster:

They are going to fall out anyway, although your baby does keep those teeth for a pretty long time. So keeping them up to snuff is not of no value. Generally, the links between tooth brushing and tooth health are reasonably good, but also it’s hard to know how much of that is people who brush their kids’ teeth also do other kinds of dental things and have other characteristics that are important. One thing we do know pretty consistently is that as kids get a little older, having a lot of…

A thing that is strongly associated with cavities is drinking a lot of milk before sleep and then not brushing teeth because the milk sugars stick around on the teeth and they erode the enamel. So it’s worth thinking about the kind of brushing of teeth right before bed. Would it be okay to do it twice a day? Sure, you could try to do it. Doing it once a day would be great. It’s important to develop a habit. I feel this is such a hard thing because it’s so challenging to brush your kids teeth, they hate it. And then you will get sold these things like stick this mouth guard thing in, it’ll brush your kids’ teeth for you.

Tamar:

Oh, I’ve seen those.

Emily Oster:

Yeah, those don’t work at all. Actually, there’s pretty good evidence they do it on fake teeth and it just doesn’t remove anything. So those things-

Tamar:

Instagram, you’ve lied to me again.

Emily Oster:

Those are just a scam. So you really do need to brush your kid’s teeth, but of course, there’s a trade-off between some small risk of additional cavities and the fact that your kid is screaming bloody murder and you’re holding them down trying to get a toothbrush in their mouth, which isn’t good for your relationship. So look, do your best. It’s worth a try. Don’t die on this hill. Try TV.

Tamar:

Can I actually ask a follow-up on that? When do you start taking your kid to the dentist regularly? Because the dentist near us has a little blurb that says as soon as you see that first tooth, it’s time to go to the dentist, which seems insane to me.

Emily Oster:

Well, not to get too deep into the economics here, but you can imagine that their incentives would be in the direction of see more dental time. At some point in the first few years, your kid should see a dentist once they have teeth. We don’t actually have a lot of good evidence in general about the value of dental visits. Clearly to have X-rays and figure out cavities, yes. But in terms of what’s the value of the cleaning is actually not something that’s super well established in general. And there’s not anything in the data that would say convincingly your kid has to go at one or has to go at two.

Tamar:

The only thing our dentist office has accomplished so far is introducing my son to Cocomelon, which I’m not happy about, so.

Emily Oster:

Cocomelon is great. I mean, I think you’re wrong there.

Tamar:

All right, we’ll talk about this-

Emily Oster:

We can discuss that another time.

Tamar:

… off mic. Just going back actually to the marathon running pregnant woman, we had a write-in that asked about exercise and I think it’s pretty clear that this is pretty high-intensity exercise. Does that, in any way, deplete or interfere with one’s milk supply when you’re breastfeeding?

Emily Oster:

I don’t know of any systematic evidence that would point to this. I would say one of our most poorly understood things in this space is just what determines breast milk supply other than the fact that we know if you pump more, you nurse more, you get more supply. There’s this clear sort of supply-demand relationship. But there’s also a billion other things like out in the literature, hydration, pineapple, this kind of cookie, that kind of cookie, this shake, that shake, do this and that.

Tamar:

Fenugreek.

Emily Oster:

Yeah, fenugreek, right, where the data is just really either it’s not really there. It’s quite poor generally. It’s not super encouraging. I wouldn’t say there’s no concrete evidence that oatmeal and cookies cause you to have more breast milk supply. One thing we do know, which I think relates to this question is that supply responds negatively to stress experiences. And I think this is something breastfeeding people would reflect on, will remember if you’re having a very stressful almost moment or a stressful incident, your supply drops. The thing that always comes to mind is when my son was like three months old, I was nursing him all the time, so I was pumping all the time.

And my daughter got very sick and we were in the ER with her and she was getting IV fluids. She ended up being fine. She just had some virus, but she had gotten super dehydrated and they were very worried. She was vomiting, it was horrible. Hold her down and get a needle in her arm. And then as we’re sitting there I was like, “Oh, I have to pump.” And I was trying to pump and nothing. It was just like there was nothing coming out. And I think that is a very typical sort of stress response that your body’s just like, you know what? We’re not putting resources into this right now.

Obviously we’re trying to run from a tiger and put away the pump because the tiger is coming and we can deal with the breast milk later. I can imagine high-intensity exercise having some of that short-term effect. If you said, “I did huge workout and then I tried to pump right after, would you have less supply?” I can certainly imagine that being true. I’m not sure that we have a lot of good evidence, and I do know many professional marathon runners who have said, “I pumped before and I pumped after, and there was still milk.”

Emily Oster:

More ParentData, including your questions about older kids, including the role of grandparents, nakedness – not the same question – and a rousing ask-the-audience comprised of members of my own team, after the break.

Tamar:

Okay. So that has exhausted our baby theme. And the last segment here is older kids. And it’s interesting the way that the texture of these kinds of questions change because they become a little bit more abstract, which I thought was interesting. So please go ahead.

Caller 10:

Hi, Emily. I have a five-year-old son who can sometimes act very wild and distracted. How much should I attribute to him being five? How much should I attribute to him being a boy? And how much should I get someone involved to see if it’s an issue?

Emily Oster:

So to say, set the stage first. Five-year-olds tend to be kind of wild and distractible. On average, boys have a harder time sitting still than girls, particularly in this age group. And those things are just true. It’s not that every five-year-old is one way or another, or every boy is want more one way or the other but there’s overlap in the distributions. But those things are true on average. And there is a wide range of what we would consider normal behaviors or sort of typical behaviors that you would see in kids, in boys, in girls, in kids of different ages. Just the world is a rich tapestry of everything and people’s behavior differs.

There are of course, situations in which you want to talk someone about whether your kid is going to struggle to operate in school or whether there’s something that you could be doing to help scaffold and make their experience of the world easier. But the way that I would ask yourself the question of should I get someone involved, which is a very common question that I get. I actually answered this question for someone in person literally yesterday, is what are you going to accomplish with that? What is the possible set of decisions you would make differently?

And so in particular, one of the things that comes up in this space is well, what do we think about medication? And a five-year-old is too young basically for really most people to consider medication. We talk about medicating kids for ADHD tends to be starting in older ages in which there’s maybe more of an expectation in the systems that they’re in that they need to be able to sit still for longer periods of time and less. And it is also more atypical to be unable to do that. At five, very few people would recommend that kids be medicated for this.

And so then the question is, well, okay, so what are you hoping for? If you went to talk to somebody, is there actually anything you would get out of that other than somebody else’s opinion about where your kid falls in the distribution? Which is probably not that useful at this point. If you’re worried, it’s always useful to talk to your pediatrician about things and bring that up. But I really would focus on the question of what would I get out of this? What would I learn from this? What we actually would do differently? Rather than on just the question of where is my kid in the distribution? Which could be something of interest to you but is actually not decision-relevant.

Tamar:

Okay, next question.

Caller 11:

Hey, Emily. I’ve been hearing a lot of conversations lately about child care and how the US child care system is very broken and messed up as we all know. But one thing I feel like I never hear about is the role of grandparents when it comes to child care. Because I feel like I know so many parents with young kids where grandparents play a pretty major role in their child care set up. And then I also know many people who don’t have grandparents or active grandparents to help. So how many people are actually relying on grandparents for their child care needs? And is this something that’s sort of invisible when we look at the labor and economic implications of child care? Thank you.

Emily Oster:

So this is super interesting question. So there is some data on this. So the AARP surveys old people, older, excuse me, older people, and about 60% of them say that they provide some care for their grandchildren, and about 40, 35% say that they provide some regular child care and something like sort of other data, like a quarter of kids under the age of five have grandparents as a core source of child care. So usually this is quite an important part of the child care market. It is also a place where I think people’s experiences can be amazing, they can be complicated. There are a lot of good ways to have child care of which this is one of them. So I’d actually be curious, I like to pull the audience on this one and see what people are actually doing with their grandparent time.

Tamar:

Okay, so we’ve got a quorum of your own team here at Parent Data to help you out. Everyone say hi to Emily.

Team ParentData:

Hi Emily.

Emily Oster:

All right guys, I need some help. I put out some numbers. We have some numbers on the share of grandparents who are helpful, but I would love to know how you guys use your grandparents or don’t use them if the case may be. So let’s go.

PD Team Member:

Yeah, so we have used our grandparents a few different ways. The first was before I went back to work and my husband went back to work. We used grandparents to bridge the gap before our nanny share began. So my parents came for a few weeks and then my husband’s parents watched her for a few weeks also. But on a more regular basis, she goes every week on Wednesdays to her grandparents, once a week, which helps us offset the cost a bit of our nanny share, and then also gives her time and them time to get to know each other.

PD Team Member:

So my grandparents’ situation is a little different because we don’t live in the same states as either sets of grandparents, so my dad has actually never met the girls and my mom comes every few months to visit. My husband’s parents live in a different state, and so we don’t really have that option. Though it would be really nice to have that to offset the cost of child care, it’s just not something that’s available to us.

PD Team Member:

We do virtual and travel. My mom lives across the country, but we go to weddings a lot and recently went to California, and we flew her out. She’s never been to California, so we flew her out to watch Ivy while we went to a wedding. It was like a family vacation, so it’s a treat for her, and it’s also a little bit of a relief for us. But virtually if I need a second to myself, I set up the iPad, and she just talks to her grandma, which helps tremendously. That’s every day, sometimes three times a day. It’s nice.

Emily Oster:

Can I just interject and say this is exactly what my son does with his grandfather? He will get on the iPad, FaceTime grandpa, also his cousin, and so it’s the two cousins and grandpa. And they’ll just sit there for 45 minutes just chatting. They play Roblox, it’s amazing.

PD Team Member:

So my parents are an hour and a half away, and my husband’s parents are three hours away, so we don’t have any regular child care help from them, but where they really come in handy is if we’re going on any sort of trip, they will either come and stay at our house or we will take our one-year-old to them for the duration for the weekend or for the week. And that’s been super helpful.

PD Team Member:

We love our grandparents. My mother-in-law, she’s only about 15 minutes away, and we don’t rely on her for regular child care, but she’s there if we need anything. So if the nanny’s sick, she’ll pitch in. She was there when I had my second son. She watched the oldest for a couple nights, so it’s great to have that support. And then my parents are unfortunately in California, but we do lots of virtual FaceTimes, and I know my mom would hop on a plane in a second if I needed her. So the support is great, although not regular child care.

PD Team Member:

So we actually have a unique situation that I feel like is not very typical where both sets of grandparents live 15 minutes from us. But, unfortunately, due to a number of different factors including some health issues, none of our parents can help with child care. So it’s a bittersweet situation where, in theory, it would be really great to have them so close, but they actually can’t really help a lot. I will say when we do need something in a pinch, if there’s something going on and we don’t have our regular child care, certainly all parents would offer to help, but it’s not something that we can safely rely on.

PD Team Member:

So my husband is an orphan and does not bring any grandparents to our situation, but my parents more than make up for it. My mom drives from New York City to Philadelphia every week. She arrives Tuesday morning in time for breakfast and spends the night and leaves Wednesday around four o’clock. She would fault me if I did not clarify that she has not missed a week since Liana was born. My dad also recently retired and is more than willing to hop on a train and be here whenever we need him. In fact, this week our nanny is going away and my parents are tag teaming days of coverage. So while we do not live in the same place, they are really rock stars.

Tamar:

What do you feel like grandparents bring to the mix in terms of taking care of your kids that you can’t necessarily offer yourself?

Emily Oster:

Chaos. Oh, sorry, it wasn’t a question to me. Brenna?

PD Team Member:

That is a good answer. I would say a lightness and silliness honestly. I also have FaceTime up a lot during dinnertime. Especially when my husband’s working nights, I’m getting dinner ready and my daughter is FaceTiming with my parents, and she’s very playful with them even through a screen and they aren’t worried about all of the things that could go wrong or trying to check a box of all of the to-do lists that I have that day. Yeah, it’s fun.

PD Team Member:

My mom is Puerto Rican. So Spanish, she’s more fluent in it than I am. My husband is a Jewish white guy, plus he tries, but we are trying so hard. We have books and stuff, but my mom is so fluent and teaches her so much. She is teaching her how to roll her R’s and stuff, so that’s clutch for me.

PD Team Member:

This will be more developed as my child gets older, but my parents live on a farm with horses and 12 cats, and they just acquired chickens. Everything they get they say it’s in anticipation of my son spending more time there. We live in a small city, so that’s just a whole different lifestyle for him to be able to go up there and be in the grass and play with the chickens and the horses.

PD Team Member:

I think my parents bring an attention span that I lack. They are both retired and they don’t have distractions. They’re just entirely focused on her, and I do not have that level of capacity that they have. Should I say that again without a toddler?

Emily Oster:

No, that’s perfect.

PD Team Member:

So good.

Emily Oster:

Okay, great. Thanks team. Amazing.

Tamar:

They’re so great. Next question.

Caller 12:

Hi, this is Jessica. I’m curious about what age is inappropriate to have children of mixed genders bathing together. I’m also curious about when parents should stop showering with their children of same gender and different genders. Thanks so much.

Emily Oster:

This isn’t something that is amenable to data. This is really a very culturally-oriented question. There are cultures where everyone is naked together a lot. There are cultures where people don’t like to be naked. So in the U.S. people tend to be less naked. In Europe, they’re more naked. I have a friend where he went to live with a family… Whatever, I’m not going to tell the story. It’s totally insane. Scratch that. So there are cultures, there’s a huge amounts of variation in this. The general advice is like it is being naked is fine as long as everyone is comfortable with it.

And that means as long as you are comfortable with it, as long as your kids are comfortable with it, most people will find, as their kids age into puberty, they will become uncomfortable being naked around their parents, maybe more one parent than another. Some parents will tell me, “I don’t want to be naked around my kids.” And even in my household, my husband would never be naked around our kids and I have no problem being naked around anyone. But I also try to be sensitive to whether my kids are comfortable with it and so on. But it’s totally personal. In some ways, totally personal preference and just making sure that you’re respecting your kids and your own boundaries.

Tamar:

Yeah, I wish you told me that this was going to be a topless podcast recording.

Emily Oster:

Well, look, Tamar, I can’t tell you everything.

Tamar:

Okay, last question. And I saved this for last because I feel like this caller really understands what you do, and I think this is a really good question to ask on.

Emily Oster:

About being naked? Is it about being naked in podcasting?

Tamar:

No, none of us knew about that.

Emily Oster:

That’s a surprise. Okay.

Caller 13:

Hi, there. I’m Catherine, a mama from Canada. I have a toddler who is joyfully exploring the world. She loves to run and jump and climb. I think of myself as being a little bit anxious, and I know that, Emily, you’ve talked about risk that’s really evident and visible, like physical risk and then all the other risks that are harder to see. So if I’m helicoptering my kiddo and will let her climb anything at the park because I’m scared of the physical risk, there’s other risks to say her independence and her self-confidence. So my question is about how do we as parents go about making those decisions about what is healthy, developmental, risky play, where we talk about water and heights and distance from parents, things like that versus what is straight up dangerous?

I don’t even know if this is answerable really, because there’s so many different situations to think of, but I find myself grappling with that all the time. What is a healthy risk that I should allow my kiddo to engage in and what is just straight up dangerous? And how do I start to determine that so I can give her the opportunity to engage in risky play but also not be, what’s the word, negligent maybe? Thank you so much for all the work that you do. You’ve been such a guiding light in preconception and conception and pregnancy and my kiddo and beyond, so thank you.

Emily Oster:

So I want to start with a couple of things which when people ask what are you worried about? What is dangerous or probably worth saying? So there are things in the world that are dangerous for kids, cars and pools being kind of two central ones. It’s very difficult to think about the car risk because so much of the risks we have with vehicles are just when you’re driving in a vehicle, it’s risky. But I would say making sure your kid is not playing in a street full of fast cars is a sort of baseline, not negligent. Pools are, I think actually something where people or lakes or whatever is a place where we probably in some ways under-supervised.

Actually even for a kid who can swim, they should be another person. And certainly for a small child there should be supervision all the time around sources of water because drowning actually is very scary. So I think those are places where I’d kind of put the guard rails and say, I definitely wouldn’t say the way to introduce independence for your kid is to have them swim alone. That’s not it. On these other things, it’s very hard because the first step always is going to feel risky. So what I would tell people is if you are at the playground and you feel like I am overdoing it on how much I’m in it with my…

Which I think we can, you can be like, “I think maybe I want to dial it back.” Just try dialing it back once, try dialing it back a little bit. Do whatever is the equivalent of stepping three steps back. Don’t assume that your first step here is going to be telling your kid, “Hey, hang out at the park for a few minutes. I’m going to get an ice cream over here.” That’s not going to be the first thing you can do. Maybe the first thing you can do is sit on the bench a little more. Maybe the second thing you can do is bring a book and read a book on the bench. Maybe the third thing you can do is step a little bit further away, whatever it is.

Because so much of giving our kids this more independence and being comfortable with it is the experience of doing it. And this comes up when we talk about giving bigger kids more independence. Almost everyone you talk to who is like, “I wanted my kid to walk home from school or go to walk to school themselves,” they will tell you the first time they did it, “I was terrified.” Even people who are very much on the forefront of pushing this out, even the public conversation will tell you, “The first time I had my kid do this, I was panicked the entire time until I heard they were okay. But by the third time it was fine.”

And I think that’s part of this adaptation that our kind of emotional selves need. Even no matter how much data I can give you, humans like experience and emotion, we learn from that more than we can learn from data. And if you step three steps back and your kid goes down the slide by themselves or climbs up the rock wall by themselves and nothing happens, which is the vast, vast, vast, vast likelihood that’s going to give you more confidence next time to step a little bit further back. So I would say just holding yourself to the standard of small changes and giving yourself a little time is going to help think about this. And then also always supervise them around pools.

Tamar:

We stop thinking that we can learn from our own discomfort, that if we’re uncomfortable then as parents, then that must be telling us something really important. And I think we take the wrong message away that that discomfort is a part of that whole process of separating.

Emily Oster:

Totally. And it’s like the hardest part. I mean it’s really, I don’t know. I don’t want my kid to be sad. I don’t want them to be scared. I don’t want anything to happen. I think part of this is part of the realizing the invisible risk is like something is happening if you’re not doing this and I think you can’t see it. It’s hard to see.

Tamar:

Throughout this whole conversation, I’ve been thinking about podcast episodes that we’ve done. I mean, this is our year pod-versary look back. And the one that always comes to mind actually to me is your conversation with Nate Fox about risk. I think that that’s something that is worthwhile for any parent to go back and listen to and think about just how poorly as human beings we can actually process risk. I mean, that’s what economists are for and I think… Well, to non-economists, yeah. And I think that that taking a step back and kind of letting data calm you down and fill in that missing part of our brain that is really good at processing risk. I mean, I think that’s why you have the audience you do.

Emily Oster:

Thanks for being here, Tamar.

Tamar:

Thanks for having me, Emily.

Emily Oster:

Yeah, I love answering questions. This is great fun. And thanks everybody for asking such good questions.

Tamar:

Yeah.

Emily Oster:

‘Til next time, Tamar.

Tamar:

‘Til next time, Emily.

Emily Oster:

I think we should do this before another year has passed. So hopefully we got some more questions and we’ll do some more fun talking.

Tamar:

Sounds great. Bye.

Emily Oster:

Bye.

Emily Oster:

ParentData is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from the ParentData team and PRX. If you have thoughts on this episode, please join the conversation on my Instagram, @profemilyoster. And if you want to support the show, become a subscriber to the ParentData newsletter at parentdata.org, where I write weekly posts on everything to do with parents and data to help you make better, more informed parenting decisions.

And a reminder: I do one of these Q&As every Wednesday on my Instagram feed, so if you asked a question that didn’t get answered today, or if this episode inspired you to ask a question, please join me, again @profemilyoster.

There are a lot of ways you can help people find out about us. Leave a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. Text your friend about something you learned from this episode. Debate your mother-in-law about the merits of something parents do now that is totally different from what she did. Post a story to your Instagram, debunking a panic headline of your own. Just remember to mention the podcast too. Right, Penelope?

Penelope:

Right, Mom.

Emily Oster:

We’ll see you next time.

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When Should I Talk to My Kid About Sex?

My 5-year-old daughter is asking how the dad’s DNA gets into the mom to grow the baby. My main concern Read more