Emily Oster – Cribsheet: Book Review & Audio Summary

Book Info

• Book name: Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
• Author: Emily Oster
• Genre: Parenting, Non-fiction, Data-driven Guide
• Pages: 322
• Published Year: 2019
• Publisher: Penguin Press (US edition), Profile Books Ltd (UK edition)
• Language: English
• Awards: New York Times bestseller; widely praised for its data-driven approach to parenting; notable endorsements from NPR, LA Times, Bloomberg, and The Economist

Audio Summary

Synopsis

Here’s the deal: you just had a baby and suddenly everyone-your mother, your pediatrician, that random lady at Target-has opinions about what you’re doing wrong. Breastfeeding or formula? Co-sleeping or crib? Circumcision? Screen time? Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, got sick of the guilt-laden, contradictory advice and did what economists do: she looked at the actual data. Cribsheet isn’t about telling you what to do. It’s about giving you the research so YOU can make decisions that work for your family. Revolutionary concept, I know.

Key Takeaways

• The Big Idea: Most parenting decisions matter way less than the internet wants you to believe-the data often shows tiny or no differences between choices
• The Controversial Point: Breastfeeding benefits are real but massively overstated in Western countries, and formula is fine
• The Actionable Part: Oster provides a decision-making framework-weigh the evidence, consider your family’s constraints, then stop second-guessing yourself
• The Hidden Gem: The book quietly validates that parental mental health and family functioning matter more than optimizing every single choice

My Summary

Look, I don’t have kids. (I have a cat named Fitzgerald who judges my life choices, but that’s different.) So why’d I pick up a parenting book? Because I’m fascinated by how we make decisions under pressure-and nothing creates pressure like a screaming infant at 3 AM while the internet tells you you’re ruining them forever.

The Pitch: An Economist Walks Into a Nursery

Emily Oster is not a pediatrician. She’s not a child psychologist. She’s an economist at Brown University who got pregnant and realized that most parenting advice is either based on flimsy evidence, cherry-picked studies, or straight-up vibes dressed up as science. So she did what any self-respecting academic would do-she went full data nerd on the whole thing.

The result is Cribsheet, which covers everything from birth to preschool. Circumcision. Breastfeeding. Sleep training. Screen time. Vaccines. (Yes, she goes there, and no, she doesn’t coddle the anti-vax crowd.) Each chapter follows a similar structure: here’s what people claim, here’s what the research actually shows, and here’s how to think about it for YOUR family.

And honestly? It’s kind of brilliant.

The Writing: Clear But-Let’s Be Honest-A Bit Textbook-y

Here’s where I gotta be straight with you. Oster writes clearly. She explains statistical concepts without making you want to claw your eyes out. She’s got a dry sense of humor that pops up occasionally. But this isn’t a page-turner. It’s not gonna make you laugh out loud or cry. It reads like… well, like a very well-organized research paper written by someone who genuinely wants to help you.

Which is fine! That’s what it’s supposed to be. But if you’re sleep-deprived and looking for something that’ll hold your attention like a thriller, this ain’t it. It’s more of a reference book you’ll flip through when you’re facing a specific decision.

(I did appreciate that she uses actual tables and charts. As a former novelist, I normally hate that stuff in books. But here? It works. Shows the data clearly instead of burying it in paragraphs.)

The Good Stuff: Permission to Chill Out

The best thing about Cribsheet is its underlying message: most of these decisions matter way less than the parenting-industrial complex wants you to believe.

Take breastfeeding. The internet will have you believing that formula is basically poison and breast milk is liquid gold that’ll give your kid a 50-point IQ boost. Oster looks at the studies-including the randomized controlled trials, not just the observational stuff that confuses correlation with causation-and concludes that while breastfeeding has some benefits, they’re modest in developed countries with clean water and good healthcare. The kid’s gonna be fine either way.

Same with sleep training. Co-sleeping. Organic baby food. Over and over, Oster shows that the data just doesn’t support the extreme anxiety parents are encouraged to feel about these choices.

That’s… actually kind of radical? In a culture that profits from parental guilt, telling people to calm down is almost subversive.

The Not-So-Good Stuff: The Limits of Data

But here’s my beef. And it’s a philosophical one more than a practical one.

Oster’s framework is great for decisions where data exists. But parenting is full of moments where there IS no data-or where the data can’t capture what actually matters. How do you quantify the warmth of a family ritual? The gut feeling that something’s off with your kid? The weight of cultural expectations that might not be “rational” but still mean something to you?

To be fair, Oster acknowledges this. She repeatedly says her role is to present data, not make decisions for you. But the book does sometimes feel like it reduces parenting to a series of optimization problems. And I dunno-maybe some things shouldn’t be optimized?

Also, the book is dense. 322 pages of data-driven analysis. Some chapters dragged for me-particularly the early stuff about birth interventions, which felt like it should’ve been in her previous book, Expecting Better. By chapter 5, I was kinda ready for her to just tell me the answers instead of walking through every study.

Real Talk: Who’s This Actually For?

If you’re the type of person who responds to anxiety by wanting MORE information, this book is perfect. It’s for the parent who lies awake googling “is screen time really bad” and wants someone to actually parse the research instead of just scaring them.

If you’re the type who trusts their gut and doesn’t want to overthink things? Skip it. You’ll find it exhausting and probably won’t change how you parent anyway.

And if you’re looking for the emotional, psychological, spiritual dimensions of parenting? Look elsewhere. This book is about data. It’s not gonna help you process your childhood trauma or figure out how to stay connected to your partner while raising a toddler.

The Verdict

Cribsheet is exactly what it promises to be: a data-driven guide that cuts through the noise and guilt. It’s not perfect-it’s dry in places, and the data-first approach has its blind spots. But for overwhelmed parents drowning in contradictory advice, it’s a lifeline. Oster basically gives you permission to make decisions that work for your family and stop apologizing for them.

That alone might be worth the price of admission.