This is NPR's life kit, and I'm Elise Hugh.

Parenting is full of decisions.

Things like, should I get my kid a phone?

And if so, when should I get that phone?

How many after school activities should my daughter's be doing?

The best we can hope for with the decision structure of any sort

is to feel like we made the decision in the right way,

but it's not really possible to know we made the right decision

and sometimes recognizing that I think is helpful

for sort of actually making a decision and moving on.

This is economist Emily Oster.

She is the author of a new parenting book

called the Family Firm, a data-driven guide

to better decision making in the early school years.

And the idea of having a family operate

a little bit like a business or a family firm, as she calls it,

can help parents slow down and make rational decisions.

I think really at the court

means taking seriously the decisions we make in our family,

the motivation for me here was thinking about the kinds of choices

that we are making as our kids are older,

and that actually realizing that many of the tools

...