Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Book 2)

by Emily Oster

Reggio Emilia–inspired schools put more emphasis on play, with typically little formal letter or number exposure at preschool ages. (One Reggio Emilia–style preschool I visited told me they explicitly do not spend any time on letters for the three- and four-year-old class, and wouldn’...

The Waldorf schools have a heavy outdoor component and, similar to Reggio Emilia, are largely play-based. The Waldorf principles focus on learning through play and art, and tend to also have some dom...

There is adaptation for parents individually, and adaptation together. How does this baby fit into the plans I have for myself, for my career, for my leisure time? And how does it fit into our marriage? For the most part, data and evidence will probably not help with these transitions, as they are different for everyone. The goal of this part of the book is not so much to tell you what to do (indeed, I will have no advice at all), but rather to acknowledge that we should be talking about what works for the family, not just what works for the baby.

Being a good parent isn’t about completely subsuming your entire personhood into your children. In fact, if you let your kids rule, it can have the opposite effect.

Introducing a child into your life will, similarly, lead to some increase in tension for most people. Less charitably, people will tell you that children will “ruin your marriage.” It is easy to see why this might be. You and your partner both want the best thing for your child—indeed, you want this more than anything you’ve ever wanted. However, most of the time you have no idea what this “best thing” is. And you’ll sometimes disagree, either due to deep underlying differences or simply because you both have no idea and your best guesses differ.

The answer to the first question is yes, things are, on average, systematically worse in marriages after kids. It is probably an exaggeration to say you’ll “hate your spouse,” but people (women in particular) do seem less happy after kids. We can see this in a variety of studies that look at the relationship between parenthood and marital satisfaction. These go back as early as 1970, with a paper showing that between the pre-childbearing period and the period of having school-aged children, the share of mothers reporting low marital satisfaction rises gradually from 12 percent to 30 percent, with an abrupt jump in the first year of the child’s life. The marriage does not recover until parents become grandparents.3 Meta-analyses of more recent data show similar things—parents are less happy with their marriages than nonparents. The changes seem to be most abrupt in the first year, and then there is some recovery, although not complete.4 As one study helpfully notes, “In sum, parenthood hastens marital decline. . . .”5

It is worth noting that these studies do tend to find that people who are happier before they have kids recover better, and that planned pregnancies are less impactful than unplanned ones. And the effects are not enormously large. Many people are still, on net, happy with their spouse. Just, you know, slightly less.

One issue may simply be the lack of time to focus on the relationship. Before you have children, your relationship is just about the two of you—you have the luxury of sleeping late together, going out, just spending hours talking about what is going on, big and small. Once you have kids, it is almost impossible to replicate this, and if you are not careful, you can find that you virtually never talk about anything other than the children. The relationship falls by the wayside, and not usually for the better. You’re connected through your children, but it can feel like you’ve lost the connection to your partner. Being aware of this may be helpful, and in this chapter I talk about some proposed solutions to the marital-happiness problems.

The second thing to say is that, as is a common refrain in this book, sleep is a key issue.15 Drops in marital satisfaction are higher in couples with kids who sleep less. Lack of parental sleep contributes to depression (in both parents) and correspondingly to less-happy marriages. You need sleep to function, and sleep deprivation affects your mood. If you are cranky, you’re cranky with your partner. If they are also tired, they are also cranky. Cranky, cranky, sad, angry.

Even if this particular approach isn’t for you, thinking carefully about ways you might improve the adult sleep in the house is worth some time. Beyond the role of sleep—and pushing out of infancy—we do not have a lot of evidence on what works to improve marriages. Indeed, if I had better evidence on that, I could write another book on it. Some small-scale randomized interventions do show some effectiveness. One is the “marriage checkup.”16 The idea behind this is to have an annual meeting—possibly facilitated by some professional—to actually discuss your marriage. What do you feel is working? What isn’t working? Are there particular areas of concern or unhappiness? These checkups seem to result in improvements in intimacy (i.e., sex) and marital satisfaction. This makes sense in the abstract; it’s helpful to talk things through methodically with a neutral third party.

Is there an “optimal” number of children? Or an ideal spacing between them? Spoiler alert: There isn’t much of a science-based answer to these questions. Any small impacts are likely to be dramatically outweighed by the most important consideration, which is what works for your family.

a 2017 study of almost 200,000 births in Canada, researchers found that there was an 83 percent increase in the risk of preterm birth for women who got pregnant within six months of their last birth.5

To the extent that you have no preferences at all about this, I think the bulk of the evidence suggests there are some small risks—both short and possibly long term—to very short birth intervals. So waiting until the first child is at least a year old to get pregnant again may be a good idea. It also just may be easier on you as a parent, given the intensity of the infant stage.

“Just try not to think about that.” She was right, obviously. I had built up this elaborate and incredibly unlikely scenario in my head. Yes, this could all happen. But so could a million other things. Parenting cannot be about thinking about every possible eventuality, every possible misstep. Sometimes, you just need to let it go. So, yes, it makes sense to take parenting seriously, and to want to make the best choices for your kid and the best choices for you. But there will be many times that you need to just trust that if you’re doing your best, that’s all you can do. Being present and happy with your kids is more important than, say, worrying about bees.