This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 24th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Economist Emily Oster argues that there is no single optimal set of child-rearing decisions. In her new book Crip Sheet, she applies economic

thinking to help parents evaluate the available choices for themselves. She shows that

many widely held views and official government recommendations for parents are not backed up by evidence.

She spoke at the Cato Institute in September.

So I want you to picture this. You have a three week old. It's three o'clock in the morning.

You're sitting in bed and your baby is falling asleep eating, you know, they're there.

And you kind of know if you just sort of edge down a little bit and kind of put them next to you

they'll stay asleep and then they'll sleep and you'll sleep and everybody will feel much

better in the morning but of course course you're conflicted, there's this

bassinet next to you, you're fairly sure that you're supposed to put them in the

bassinet, but you know if you do that there is a very good chance that you that they will that they will wake up

So what do you do well your partner this is entirely their fault it was their idea and you'll discuss it with them later

They're snoring next to you so they're not available for discussion it anybody have any thoughts on co-slee. People have thoughts, many thoughts, and you get a lot

of conflicting views. On the one hand you have the people who are like, absolutely, not only

is it fine to do that, you should do that because that is the way people have absolutely not and they may never love you. Also they might not love anyone else.

Then there are the other people who are like,

if you do this, your baby will die for sure.

Okay, that also, okay, so those both seem very, very extreme.

The question is, you know, within those conflicting views,

how are you going to make a decision?

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