I know Emily Oster is controversial here. I don’t necessarily agree with all of her takes nor do I think (unfortunately) she’s necessarily great at assessing the state of the field on every topic she writes on, and I don’t always agree with how she presents the data she does share.
However - I find her framework for decision making and way of presenting it incredibly accessible and useful. I think she’s an engaging writer and she often adds nuance to a discussion.
I liked her latest newsletter, about (effectively) harm reduction. Many times, major medical bodies (or evidence based spaces) focus on “best” without necessarily a nuanced discussion of what tradeoffs you might make if best is not an option for you. Instead it’s best or (as she frames it) “outer darkness” for all sorts of parenting decisions — ABC sleep, forward facing early, child nutrition, etc etc.
It’s helpful for me to think about how best scientifically does not necessarily mean best for me and then assess how much additional risk I’m comfortable taking on. Thought this community might enjoy the read!
@follow_the_word I think this nuance is missing in nearly every aspect of parenting. I'm lucky that I'm an engineer and have completed risk based assessments on many many things professionally. I apply that risk framework to the rest of my life. (But with less math and documentation).
It's basically why I have no patience for Redditors on their high horses because they never co-slept, kept their kids rear-facing till they were 5 and have never done everything wrong ever. Some people can do the "best" and others make different choices. Saying don't do that is not helpful.
The world is filled with risk, and parents need to know how to assess risk, mitigate risks when practical, and know their personal risk threshold. We cannot eliminate all risks, and trying to live like you can is lying to yourself. And stressful.
@grace4nan This 1000%. I’ve taken “breaks” from a lot of parenting subs with all of these parents who apparently have perfect kids who eat perfect meals and face backwards until they’re 5 and have slept independently since 6 months with never a night of bedsharing. Life is messy and happens in the grey area. The absolute view on “shoulds” massively contributes to parent anxiety IMO and is detrimental to day to day mental health and satisfaction.
@grace4nan Erasing this nuance also weirdly pushes people who choose the less beneficial behaviour to excuse it by pretending there’s no risk. Many bed-sharing/ free-birthing/ whatever advocates promote their worldview by saying it is perfectly safe, rather than acknowledging that, yes, there are increased risks, and we can be aware of that and still choose to do something a certain way.
You don’t hear anti-vaxxers say hey I know my kid is more likely to die of meningitis or pertussis but I still make this choice. Instead it’s nitpicking stories or data to support your worldview and pretending the others don’t exist, which is a bit batshit.
(Note I’m by no means trying to suggest that these examples are at all comparable in terms of risk/ benefit!)
@junebug72 Yes so true. I have a friend, also an engineer, who turned her child forward facing as soon as she could. Another friend has a baby 1 month older and couldn't believe she made such a reckless decision. But it was great to see my intelligent friends talk it out. Neither claimed to be right, both just said they were doing the best for their families with the cards they were dealt.
@follow_the_word If you give the general public even the slightest excuse to do the convenient-but-more-dangerous thing, then they will absolutely do it. So yes, there's a reason health officials leave out those details, they know that fools will use it, cause something bad to happen then point the finger that they were told WELL ACTUALLY THEY SAID THE SAFEST WAY TO COSLEEP IS....
@wemchud Isn’t that analogous to abstinence only education? Abstinence is absolutely the only fool proof way to prevent teen pregnancies or STIs and teaching only abstinence is also a fairly clear way to fail at preventing teen pregnancies and STIs versus teaching safe sex practices (harm reduction).
@wemchud This kind of idea - stems from "risk compensation" theory and has been shown time and again to be flawed in studies of human behavior. I first became aware of this theory and how its influenced American policy for decades when I was pregnant alongside having a chronic health issue and, in working with my MFM and reading about the standard care with my relatives abroad in England, realized that American health officials adhere heavily to the risk compensation fallacy. Like "no Advil at all" instead of "no Advil after 20 weeks," or "no hot baths or hot tubs" instead of "hot baths for the first 6 weeks might pose a risk, as of yet unconfirmed, to neural tube development, but after that, the risk to the fetus goes away as the neural tubes close. However, be careful not to dehydrate," as my MFM said, and as the NHS in England says (though the NHS does its own mild risk compensation and says first 12 weeks). Risk compensation largely does the opposite - leads to less safe choices as people are left without guidance, and/or become cynical and stop trusting in expertise when they realize they've been mislead by officials.
@brianball Yes, this! Plus it's massively patronising, the idea that people are a general mass of stupid, immoral people who are out for their own destruction.
I mean, yeah, people have varying levels of reading comprehension and messaging should not be too complex. But the destroying trust issue is a serious problem and I feel like that is just becoming more and more clear since covid and the whole polarisation effect, but people still want to write off those who mistrust authority as being fringe conspiracy lunatics instead of looking into what might have happened to inform that mistrust.
@brianball I'd really hoped the pandemic had changed some minds about this. "People are too stupid for nuance in instructions" has an enormous body count thanks to covid.
