November 6, 2024 • 47 mins
Here on the podcast we don’t shy away from the fact that we’re big fans of having kids- Joel has three, Matt has four. But that is not typical here in the United States where the average is 1.6 births per woman… but why? We think the costly nature of having kids is one of the reasons. Depending on which study you’re looking at and the cost of living cited, we’ve seen upwards of $400,000 per kid! But even still, should it be all about the numbers? Should that data drive all of our decisions? Luckily we’re joined by someone who is a parent and knows all about the data- Emily Oster. Emily is a professor of economics at Brown University, the author of books like Expecting Better, Cribsheet, and Family Firm, and now host of the new podcast Raising Parents. And while you might know her as the lady who says it’s ok to have wine and coffee in moderation while pregnant, or as the health economist who shared unpopular opinions on Covid policies during the pandemic, we’re excited to share our conversation that’s all about our money and kids: making career breaks and staying home with the kids, why we need to approach family decisions the way a business would, Emily’s take on allowances, and more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking about the high cost of kids
with Emily Oster. Yeah, Joel, we don't shy away from
(00:28):
the fact that you and I we're big fans of
having kids. You've got three kids, I've got four. Actually,
recently at a personal finance conference, I mentioned that to
someone that I had just met, that I've got four kids,
and she literally did a spit take when I told
her that. But I think there's multiple reasons for that,
I'm sure, but the costly nature of having kids is
a big reason. For sure. It's not what most folks
(00:49):
are doing these days. And depending on which study you're
looking at, depends on where in the country you live
as well. I've seen upwards of like four hundred thousand
dollars per kid. So we're hoping to set the record
straight today with Emily Auster. Emily is a professor of
economics at Brown University. She's the author of books like
Expecting Better, Cribsheet, Family Firm, all relating to the different
(01:11):
stages of parenting or soon to be parenting that you're in.
And now she's host of the new podcast Raising Parents
and You might know her as the lady who says
it's okay to have wine in coffee in moderation while
you're pregnant, or who shared unpopular opinions on COVID policies
during the pandemic. She's not afraid to dive into the controversial.
(01:31):
But we're excited to talk about all things that are
going to be kids and money related with you today, Emily.
Thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Thank you guys so much for having me excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, we're glad to have you, Emily. The first question
we ask everyone who comes on the show. Matt and
I like to drink craft beer. Sometimes it can get expensive,
but we're splurging on stuff that matter in the here
and now while we're doing the smart thing and saving
and investing for our future as well. What's that thing
you like to spoor? John?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Running shoes? I have like a disturbing number expensive running shoes.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, so Joel just recently told me about you called
them like pro something shoes, super shoes you call super shoes.
But I just realize when you mentioned it, that's the
same it's the same thing as like the carbon plate shoes.
Or whatever you told me about them, Emily, how many
of How many of those do you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I don't think it's good to get into numbers, really,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Just it's the data driven.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
It's more than one. Let's just ranges. It's more than one.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Do they really make that big of an impact on
your time? Because when you look at the numbers from
some of the marathon runners, what I heard times were
going down by three or four percent by wearing those fancy.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It's about four percent on average, and there's some range
across people.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Okay, holy cow, I might just just to like show
my wife up when we're out for a while. But uh, Emily,
we appreciate you joining us. You are an economists, Like
I mentioned, what was the impetus to apply data to
something that has often been viewed as more intuitive, you know,
this being parenting and family decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So I am an economist, and I'm a person who
loves data and has always thought that it is appropriate
to think about data as a way to make decisions
about your everyday life, not just about your finances, but
about all kinds of other stuff. And so when I
got pregnant now fourteen years ago, it was kind of
natural to take that data lens into pregnancy and then
(03:23):
into parenting, and that's where the books came from. But
it was for me a very natural, like data is
the way that you make decisions, and so it didn't
seem as weird as I think it does to other
people when I explain.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It, is that partly because you come from a long
line of economists, you're married to an economist? Is I'm curious,
like what Thanksgiving dinner is like at your house? I
would love to be on a fly on the wall
to know what, like a bunch of economists do. I mean,
it sounds like a joke, almost like five economists go
to a Thanksgiving dinner? Like what is that? Like? Wow?
Is that part of it?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
A little bit?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I mean, now we have a lot of small children,
and only one of the nine grandchildren is actually interested
in economics, and so we've had to dial it down
a bit. But certainly, growing up with two economist parents
gave me a way to think about the world that
was rooted in data, in evidence, in decision making. And
they may marry to another economist and makes it a
(04:20):
bit easier to operate your house like that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
For sure. I believe it. I believe it. Okay, what
is it about data that it seems that folks have
a tough time taking data that is out in the
world and then applying it to their lives. Like I
feel like oftentimes we have a difficult time assessing risk
when it comes to Okay, you just told me x,
Now take that piece of knowledge and I don't know,
put it to use in your own life. Like, I
guess this is more of like an informed decision question.
(04:43):
Can you speak to that?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, I think it's very hard.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
So one of the one of the issues is that
I think often, even for people who like data, we're
often expecting data to kind of tell us the answer,
and that's rarely true. You really do need to have
the data and the decision making combine, so you can
kind of frame the data inside some trade off, some
costs and benefits. But there's a second thing to what
(05:07):
you're saying is really really important, which is that people
are very very bad at understanding risk. And many of
the decisions that we make as parents, as people do
involve needing to understand something about risks and something about
small probabilities and risks. And that's something that just the
human brain is not very well suited to process.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Almost like we need some interpretive help after the data,
after we like organize some of the data, which it
seems like it is like a big part of your
mission too. And I've heard you say that the evidence
is severely lacking in a lot of the parenting tips
that end up kind of taking on this air of
gospel truth that a lot of people they tend to
subscribe to something just because it feels like common knowledge.
(05:50):
Was there like this treasure trove of helpful data that
just wasn't being used properly. Was there a bunch of
stuff that would have helped inform us that we just
were completely unaware of?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not both?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And I guess, I mean there's more data out in
the world than people are probably using. I think the
reality is when you dig into the data, particularly around
a lot of these parenting topics, it turns out there's
a lot of good ways to do it. And so
some of what's happening is people are saying this is
the only way to do it, and then when you
look in the data, it's like, actually, it's not really
clear that's any better than any other way, or if
(06:22):
it is it's only a tiny amount, like a tiny
effect on one random outcome. So I think some of
this is that people just overinterpret their own experiences or
they want to be they want their parenting style to
be so right that it's right for everybody, and that
kind of leads to over overstatement of the value of
(06:43):
certain behaviors. But there are also a lot of things
in parenting where we don't have as much data as
we would like, as many people would like, and that's
frustrating in its own way.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That makes sense, Yes, it seems like most folks are
looking for objective truth when oftentimes maybe it's a little
more or subjective when it comes to some of these
I guess gray sort of stickier questions and that we
ask ourselves. But like, how much do you think personal
preference should actually play into in factor into some of
the parenting decisions that we make as opposed to kind
(07:14):
of like the one size fits all advice.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, I think almost every parenting decision should involve your preferences.
I think the key for me is saying, look, let
me figure out what's the question I'm asking, let me
get the data that's relevant for that question, and then
let me ask the question with my preferences in mind,
and with the data as a way to support how
I think about the trade offs.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And so rather than saying.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
There's a right choice or there's a wrong choice, there's
a right choice for you, and you could make that
decision in a better or worse way for you. But
it is your preferences that should influence that, not what
somebody else down the street is doing.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So part of the reason you kind of started this
endeavor fourteen years ago was one because you were interested
in data, right, but also because you're becoming a mom,
and I'm curious you were studying, checking out these studies,
digging into the research. What did you find that impacted
the way you parented, whether in those early years or
(08:11):
now that your kids have gotten to be a little
bit older.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
So my first book is about pregnancy, and I would
say that so many of the decisions that I made
while it was pregnant were influenced by the research I
did for the book. So you know, there's a whole
portion of the book about prenatal testing, which I really
kind of effectively wrote while I was doing it. So
it was like my own exploration of the data while
I was trying to serve my own parenting. They are
(08:35):
my own pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
When I then had a kid.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I didn't write the book about early parenting until my
second kid because with the first kid, it was just
like do whatever mess things up? All the time? Panic constantly? Yes,
And I don't know if this sounds familiar from your first.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Kid, Oh for sure indeed, but it was.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It's interesting because I think it was very hard to
have the perspective from the standpoint of a first kid
to be like, okay, let me dial down to what
are the important decisions, Like what do I really want
to think about?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It was just like every day was another crazy fear.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And when I had a second kid, and then I
was like, oh, now I can write this book because
now that I like, I've like dialed down to the
you know, eleven things I really want to make decisions about,
and that was much easier with kid.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
With kid number two, I.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Like it, all right, let's dive into the dataly because
birth rates they are declining in the US, like in
a lot of the you know, most developed countries around
the world as well. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
That is a sixty four thousand dollars question. It's a
really fascinating upsetting whatever it's the word, but it's a
it's this phenomenon is true everywhere. So it's not just
the US, it's not just developed countries. It's literally a global.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Decline in fertility rates.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And so a lot of the explanations that people might
come up with about you know, social supports or those
kinds of things in the US, they only go so far,
because you know, a place like Sweden has even lower
fertility rates even though their social support for parents is
far better. So that's probably not the answer. And you know,
I'm not sure how much we really know what the
(10:15):
answer is beyond just people are saying, well, I don't
want to know. Oh, I don't want to have kids,
which isn't isn't really an answer to That's not really
an answer. That's just a kind of an expression of
what's happening such that we are getting fewer kids.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
What do you guys think you have a lot of kids?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, I mean I've got to think that, like you
keep seeing these headlines right like, like I think is
like a self fulfilling prophecy. Well, I don't I feel
like a lot of folks oftentimes are scared. Like I
have to think that the personal cost to us as
parents of having kids in modern life, the expense does
feel like it's gotten. I feel like that's got to
impact it, you know. I think there's more than that.
I think there's cultural elements at play too, And I
(10:54):
do think, yeah, like when you think about the decline
in religious observance and decline in the amount of people
having more character, that's going to be part of it too.
Like Israel like the one of the only countries where
there's actually like an increase when it comes to replacement rate.
But I'm curious, smily, like, how accurate do you think
some of those numbers are? I guess when it comes
to some of those headline numbers, you know, like I
mentioned in the intro, like there's a few that you
(11:17):
can fight that will say it's going to be over
four hundred thousand, But I feel like across the board,
you're looking at at least corn Yeah, at least two
hundred and fifty thousand. Do you think that those numbers
are kind of firm and fast? How flexible do you
think those numbers are? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I mean I think those numbers are are more flexible
than there are different ways to raise to raise a kid,
and you know, one of the things that has happened
is is we've gotten into a lot more intensive parenting.
There are a lot of things that are very expensive
that I actually think are not really the things that
our kids need the most. You know, so people ask,
like what's really important. It's like, you know, a safe
place to sleep, like enough to eat of like loving adults,
(11:53):
of some nature, supporting you like some books. These are
kind of the core things that we really need to
provide to every kid. But you know, travel, soccer and
like seventeen balle classes like that may be something that
you want to provide for your kid, but I'm not
sure that it is something we have to say, like
that's the way that you have your kid be successful,
(12:14):
and that's the only way to raise a kid. And
so there's more flexibility in that in terms of accomplishing
some of our goals of you know, raising adults than
there might be. But there is no question that kids
are expensive.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You just use the term intensive parenting, which I think
actually highlights probably goes back to the question you were asking,
And I do think maybe it feels like the stakes
are higher as parentcy stays. I don't know my mom.
We'll ask questions sometimes like why do you guys feel
the need to do all of these things for your kids?
She's like, we never did that stuff for you guys
back in the day. And do you think maybe that's
(12:49):
part of it too, that we feel like parenting requires
more than it actually does.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I think the way in which that interacts with the
fertility stuff is very interesting because I think we do
give people the impression that like the sort of only
way to parent, certainly in some sociodemographic groups, like the
only way to parent is in this way that kind
of totally almost raises you, but sort of where your
whole outlook is kind of very focused around kids and
(13:14):
there isn't really time the Surgeon General is talking about,
you know, parental stress is like a you know, public
health emergency. I think some of that comes from this
idea that we expect parents to be one hundred percent
of the time very focused on their kids. And then
if you look at that from the outside, like, why
would I sign up for that? And yeah, I can,
I can sort of understand that. I think the piece
(13:35):
that's missing and I always try to like convey to people,
is it's actually really hard to explain how much you
like your kids, Like, you know, it's like easy to
explain how hard they are, but like that, I mean,
do you remember, like when your kid was first born,
Like the just the love that you have is so
different than the experience that one has with any other relationship.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and you can't convey it in.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Language, and so outside other experience, how would you you know,
how would you explain? Well, it's not it's not like
it's not like saying, like a tuna sandwich is kind
of like a chicken sandwich, but tuna. You know, it's
like just a totally different.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Experience, like one vacation as opposed to a different kind
of vacation. Yeah, it's yeah, I remember. So it's funny.
You don't know Joel or I personally, but like we've
gone through life for the past fifteen years together essentially,
and we knew each other pre kids, but once we
we both had our first kids around the same time,
and I remember one of the conversations you know, I
had Joel was just like it's almost like I didn't
know how to love. Yeah, like to the extent that
(14:30):
I do now, and it's it's not something like and
your heart grew like six sizes kind of thing. Yeah,
it's like there's new rooms in my heart for this
child in my mind. That's completely dependent on you as
opposed to you know, your spouse, And even that is
insufficient language, right from a macro perspective if we're talking
about and we want to get more into microdata too
with you, Emily, but when we're talking about this decline
in birth rates, there are society wide impacts, right, and
(14:53):
economic realities that we we stare down. I mean, think
think about like extreme cases like Japan of having a
lower population rate. Can you speak to that, like what
sorts of things happen when we choose as a society
or as a bunch of individuals essentially to have fewer
kids overall?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So yeah, I mean there's a sort of basic answer
to that, which is the sort of structure of the
age pyramid will change. And generally the way we have
operated societies is we're kind of relying on the younger
people in the society to support both the even younger
people but then also the older people. I mean, that's
how that's how most economies work, and economic growth tends
(15:29):
to rely on population growth, and so when we think
about both population decline and a population that is more
heavily weighted towards older people, it looks really different in
terms of what are the services people need, in terms
of what are the jobs people doing, and in terms
of the growth, and exactly what that will look like
(15:50):
is actually really hard to predict because there hasn't really
been a time in human history in which that the
society has been organized quite like that. We can look
to a place like Japan and say, you know, what's
what's happening there. You can see, you know, there are
a lot of particularly more rural areas that have you know,
mostly elderly people, and that's not been great for some
(16:11):
aspects of I think that not every people would say
that there have been some issues associated with that.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
But again, like predicting how would the US look like
with that? How much is immigration matter? There's a lot
of open questions.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, it's true, all right, Emily, We've got much more
to get to all things kids and money. We're going
to talk about too, just how having kids, how that
can impact your career and more. We'll get to all
that right after this, I we're back from the break
still talking with Emily Auster about having kids and the
(16:45):
financial reality that comes along with that. Emily released a
book called The Family Firm. Let's talk about that one
for just a second. Your main premise in that book
is that a family should be run more like a business.
And I guess maybe this is kind of the data
intensities of you coming out, but in some ways that
seems a little counterintuitive running my family like a business.
(17:05):
Should I be charging my kids rent? I mean, what
does that look like?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So this is mostly about sort of thinking about how
we make decisions. And I think that the core insight
of the book, or the core idea in the book,
is that you know, when we are, particularly you know,
having a family with multiple adults and multiple kids and
a lot of different constraints on our time, that we
would do well to bring in some of the tools
(17:29):
from small businesses, which involve like how do you organize
your time?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
How do you decide what's.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Important to you, how do you decide you know what
to do with the limited resources, be that time or
budget by and how do you optimize for the things
you most care about. I think that we even people
who really think about those things in their job are
often reluctant to do it at home, and it actually
can lead you to outcomes that you think are less
(17:57):
are less good than they would be if you had
thought more about them. So in some ways, the main
message of that book is just be a little bit
more deliberate about your decisions, like think more.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Mm hmm yeah. Why, Like, why do you think that's
even necessary? I guess, Like, I mean, it clearly is necessary,
But it used to be sort of like we're saying
before that this was more of an intuitive sort of
thing that you kind of came together as a family,
or it's something that you had identified as someone who's
running the household. I mean, what is it about our
lives today that requires us to be, like, I guess,
a bit more proactive when it comes to how it
(18:27):
is we run our families.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I think at the core of real issue is that
people are busier. You know, it's more common to have
to working parents. Kids' lives are more busier and structured
than they were, you know, thirty years ago. And you
could say that's a mistake or not a mistake, but anyway,
it's what's true, and so what that means. And I
think this is where the deliberate decision making sort of
falls apart and then people are on iron unhappy. So
a lot of people will tell me like, you know, well,
(18:50):
we decided to do this activity, but actually it's like
ruined our lives because you know, it's four nights a
week and like we never have dinner together, and like
you know, it's like, well, what can you do?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And the answer is like, we could have just not
You could just said no. So I said no.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And I think actually, if you would step back from
that and been like, well, you know, what's really important
to our family is like getting to sleep at the
right time and having dinner together, you wouldn't have said
yes to that activity in the first place. And that's
that's the idea that we really have to decide what's important,
and then that's going to constrain our choices and like
that's okay.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I have some friends who came up with like a
family motto, like a.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Love a family mission, family mission statement.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean that can kind of help be the
guiding light too, right, Actually write it down, put some
thought behind it, and then say these four or five
sentences represent us as a family, and then you might
say in the moment, oh, hey, this family wants to
have us over for dinner. It's a Friday night. Well, hey,
guess what. Our core motto's fun, let's go do it.
Or hey, our core motto is like togetherness and not
being busy. So actually maybe we're going to say no
to that. Do you think that's like that's probably a
(19:46):
really good way to help provide some of that guidance.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Absolutely, And I think there's a bunch of different ways.
There's like family mission statements, there's you know, write down
the four most important things for you. There's a bunch
of ways to do that that can work. Different families
are going to react friendly. But I think yes, getting
those core ideas now and then using them to kind
of come back to and be like, Okay, you know,
here's here's how we're going to operationalize this because we've
all agreed this is what's important to us.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, So you are talking about being overly busy and overscheduling.
The first episode of your podcast is about overparenting. Can
you share the lessons that you were highlighting there?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
What really came about?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So the first episode is about kind of giving kids
sort of physical freedom having maybe we just need to
be less involved. And one of the things that came
out of the reactions to that I thought was really
interesting was people saying, you know, hey, like this really
resonates with me, but what you're describing would work in.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
A society where everybody was doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So rather than saying like we need to change something
in an individual level, I think there's a little bit
of a push for saying like, how can we organize
the way that our neighborhoods or even our sort of
small like local kid friend groups are structured to allow
for more of this kind of unscheduled boredom time or
(21:03):
kids playing together without adults, which is really a lot
of what those a lot of what we were pushing for,
at least talking about in that episode.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So you mentioned a second of kids activities, how they
can run us ragged, which is so true even if
you try to limit it, it can feel. I know
this from first and experience, like two soccer practices a week,
two soccer games a week, that's just one kid, two
kids each having one sport they're participating in, and those
activities have become more expensive too. Is there any is
there any data I guess that can help us maybe
(21:32):
make a decision about how much of those organized sports
to put into our lives or not.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
So there's a little bit of data on the benefits
of extracurriculars, and it comes out it comes out of Europe,
I think mostly, and it is based on kind of
extracurricular organizations inside schools and asking like how you know,
what are the kind of benefits to kids of participating
and in extracurriculars, And there are some They seem to
(21:57):
basically surround kids having a sort of social environment or
another setting in which they can excel or connect to
different kids outside of say school. So I think one
way I often think about this is, you know, if
your kid is like struggling at school, but they really
love soccer, then soccer is like a place for them
(22:19):
to sort of feel confident, to have a sense of belonging,
which is something that we know is very core for
kids for kids' mental health. When we look at the data, though,
it isn't clear that having more of that is better,
right that like that, like you know, ten hours a
week of soccer is okay, but thirty hours a week
of soccer, like your kid's going to be super happy.
Like that doesn't scale like that, This is sort of
(22:40):
about a smaller amount, And I think what that does
illustrate is some of the some of the key to
picking these activities is that they should be things your
kid likes and that your kid is like connected to,
because that's really where the benefit comes, not from, you know,
picking the activity that is going to you know, get
your kid into college because you've decided there's a shortage
(23:00):
of like tuba players and Yale this year.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So that is that does sound smart? What instrument are
no kids playing? Like? I'm going to pay strategy? That's right,
That's right. Why suck it up? You're going to play
that short? So this makes me think, Emily, like, I
feel like one of the things that I wrestle with
is I'm wrestling between spending money in the here and
now on something like activities or like enriching activities or
(23:24):
experiences that might broaden my kid's horizons versus let's just
say soccer money away into a five twenty nine account
where I'm saving for their future. How would you recommend
to parents to start to think through or to approach
that sort of decision making process right between the here
now or and I'm not even talking about generational wealth
right like that's I'm not even talking about that. But
(23:45):
even just like I guess saving for college that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I mean, I think that's really hard and it's not
not a thing with an obvious answer. I think there's
a sort of simple way to think about money in
general as economists, which is, you know, like, what what
is the opportunity cost of this money? So like what
if I spent this money this way, what would I
be giving up in the future. And sometimes when you
do that exercise, it's like, well, if I didn't buy
(24:09):
this United spend money on this extracurricular now, it would
cost me you know, would be like less vacation time,
or it would be you know, less like savings when
I'm very old, and you can sort of think about
that trade off.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I think one one sort.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Of interesting caveat I would put to the way you're
thinking about it is you're framing this like I have
an envelope of money for my kids, and it's going
to be spent on the five twenty nine, and it's
going to be spent on extracurriculars. And so if I
take money out of the out of the extracurriculars, you know,
it goes into the five twenty nine And that's kind
of like keeping everything in one bucket. But actually, from
(24:44):
an optimization standpoint, you want to think about all of
your money being interchangeable. And so it's not necessarily that
extracurricular money substitutes for five twenty nine money. But maybe
extracurricular money substitutes for vacation money, or for new car money,
or for you know, like later retirement saving money.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So I think being a little bit.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Thoughtful about kind of what's the next thing I would
do with this money, what's the what's the sort of
marginal use of it as opposed to like, what is
something else in this category that it was substituted away from.
I think that's a that's a sort of important part
of financial.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Deal that makes sense. The fungible funds approach my personal
finances exactly one of the I feel like one of
the biggest decisions that parents have to make. Married parents,
like whether or not they are going to go back
to work, stay at home, whether they're going to be
a two income household, and like what if folks need
to think through on that front. There has to be
(25:37):
a lot of data about not just reduced income, but
the impact on the budget, the impact on the children
from one of the one of the parents being at
home during those early years. Like, there's got to be
a bunch of things we're having to think through on that, right.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
So I think the first place people often come with
this is they say, well, what's better for my kid?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And I think the sort.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Of reassuring news there is, actually everything is fine. So
impact send kids of having working parents not working parents,
they're very small.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
They go in a variety of.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Directions, this is not the thing that should decide what
you do, and so they're sort of putting that aside.
There's actually like two relevant things. One is what people
want to do, and one is the financial implications. And
the financial implications are something you can you can calculate.
It's not like an easy calculation, but people can get
a sense of, you know, both in the short term,
(26:25):
like how one person chooses not to work, what are
the implications for our budget, how does it change our
text burden? You can do a spreadsheet? And then the
other thing I think people don't always think about is
the future. So you know, what's the plan, Like, are
we talking about staying somebody staying home for five years,
for ten years, for two years forever.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That's going to have some implications.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And if you take time off, it has implications for
your you know, for your career path, for your kind
of how your income will grow over time. So those
are hard but very tractable things to calculate. And then
this is really important, like people you should people should
think about like both adults in the household or all
three adults or five. However, many adults you're experiencing should
(27:10):
think about what they want to do, like do you
want to work? What do you want to do with
your day? Going back to like being deliberate and thoughtful
about how you want to spend your day.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yes, that's a really important question.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, what do you what do you want?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do you want?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It's an important question and just to like own it, yeah,
you know, because I feel like oftentimes we justify it
with like, well it seems foolish to turn down this
opportunity or to not pursue this path of higher Eduica,
oh I got this. These are all things to consider,
but like, you don't have to say yes or no
to any of those things if it's not truly what
you want to do, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
No, and you can just say, I mean, I think
would be so much better. You know, this comes up
much more for women, although I think it hits for
men too. Like to be able to be like I,
you know, I choose to stay home with my kids
because that's what I want to do and because we were,
you know, able to make it work. Is should be
totally like reasonable, just like it should be reasonable today.
I chose to work outside the home because that's what
I wanted to do and because we were able to
make it work.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like, those are perfectly valid choices.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And the economic trade offs can be significant. One of
my one of my male friends, he stayed home with
his baby for the first couple of years, and head
Hunter finally contacted him, was like, hey, we got this
job for you, and now he's going back to work
kind of like, I mean, I think he's making the
right movement. I think he's happy about it, but in
some ways he's like, he's he's going to miss so
I'd be having that time at home with his child.
So I think he's glad he had those couple of years.
(28:23):
What is the typical economic impact though, Emily, of like
taking a couple of years off of work at home? Like,
is it Is it a significant not just in lifetime earnings,
but in the amount that you're going to get paid
at that next job back.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
It's very hard.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
That's a very hard thing to answer, because it depends
a lot on what your job is. You know, there
are some there are some kinds of jobs where like
there's really a ladder and when you get off the ladder,
you never get back on. And we do see you know,
for women in particular, kind of the interruptions associated with
childbirth are are long standing.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
There are other kinds of jobs where you can.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Hop back in and and you know, be able to
get back on a different on different path.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Nice. Okay, Well, we talked about pricey kid activities and
how we're oftentimes overscheduled, Emily. When the kids are old
enough to go to school, some folks I think they're
going to immediately default to just pricey private school. But
even if you can afford it, it might not even
be worth it. What factors would you encourage folks to
look at to focus on instead of just like, oh,
(29:22):
it's private, it's got to be better.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I mean, in general, when we summarize school quality actually
either private versus public, or like comparing different public schools
in different public school districts, we tend to focus on
test scores, right, That's like the thing you can measure.
And so the first thing I would tell people is
just when you think about quality, people are going to
tell you their test scores, and like that's one measure
of quality. But there are other things you might care about,
(29:44):
And it's worth kind of trying to write down, like
what's important to you in the school.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
How much do you care.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
About the diversity of kids your kid is interacting with,
How much do you care about the location of the school,
like what else is important? The other piece of this
is is the impact on your child of the quality
of the school is much less important than the impact
of you.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And that's just like, that's just true.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
So if you said, like there's a difference in test
scores between these two schools of like twenty points twenty
testing points, the expected difference for your kid going.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
To those two schools is way way way smaller than that,
because you are really important.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So in some sense, like people can overstate I think
the difference for their kid in the in what they're
going to get out of these different kinds of schools.
We do have a fair amount of evidence that class
size impacts achievement. That's like the one really strong causal link.
So one of the features of private schools you do
have tend to have smaller class sizes. That's something that
(30:46):
people probably want to think about. But at the end
of the day, there's a pretty important fit aspect of this, and.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
There are a lot of good choices.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. But when
you say that it's going to have a bigger impact
because of how you feel about it, is that just
because of the nuts and bolts aspects of let's say
a private private school and we're talking about your budget,
or are we talking about kind of the parents' emotions
and how they feel about the fact that their kid
is receiving this nominally slightly better education. Are you just
(31:19):
talking about like reading to your kids at night and
how that means more.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of that talking about reading, I think a lot of
this is just like what you are scaffolding at home matters.
A lot are their books in the house are there.
You know, you even look at something like what happened
to kids during the pandemic, like the kind of losses
for kids who are higher income, even within a within
a school, within a school district, we're much smaller, probably
because there are more supports at home to do things
(31:42):
like read.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Gosh, reading, that makes sense. Oh man, don't even make
me think back to the pandemic, learning the.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Zoo schools not. Let's just alide right past that for spirit.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And lighting stuff on fire on zoom calls, good times. Yep,
so many stories we could tell you.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I like the things where people like put a sticky
note over their camera and then relabel their name as
Connecting and then just that's it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Was that something you saw a lot of with the
university students.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Yeah, yeah, you know they just they just turn their
camera off and they're like, I'm my cot.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I'm out. Still so much PTSD from that are We
got just a few more questions we're going to get
want to get to with you, Emily, including allowances, screen time, smartphones.
We'll get to a few questions about that stuff right
after this. We are back for the break, talking about
(32:34):
the high cost or maybe the not so high cost
of kids with Emily Oster so cheap, so easy, so easy.
Not gonna say it's easy, but maybe it's not as
expensive as folks are making it out to be. Before
the break, Emily, we're talking about like elementary school, maybe
private education. Let's jump to college, I guess before before
we move on, how would you encourage families out there,
(32:56):
or even younger listeners who are looking to go off
to college, how you talk to them about the price
that they might pay for higher education, for college, or
even the debt that they might take on as they're
looking at maybe different degrees. Because I will say, like
one of the things we talk about fairly regularly on
the show is just hey, maybe it's worth looking at
the average income of what that degree holder might be
(33:19):
able to earn and keeping that debt in check. Is
that Is it as simple as that that piece of data.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think that that piece of data is important and
is certainly like one piece of data you could look at,
you know, major in this major in that, like what's
the average what's the average income? I think the other
thing is, you know, thinking broadly about the range.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Of schools that you that you look at.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You know, there are a lot of places where the
state schools are really good and are often quite a
bit less expensive than the like that a sort of
comparably good private institution, And you know, just parents and
kids kind of being open to a range of possible
choices is important.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
In episode three of Raising Parents, you took on the
topic of crummy food, which, my goodness, that's going to
get you in trouble with some executives certain food companies.
And it's a touchy subject. I feel like it's one
we're talking about more as a society right now. But
the highly processed foods, they can be more expensive and
eating too much of them can be really bad for
our kids' health. And I know, I think in the
(34:23):
beginning of the episode you talk about chicken nuggets maybe
and how or I don't know, maybe I heard somebody
else talking about this recently, but just how that's like
to everyone's shame, Like you don't talk about how many
chicken nuggets your kids eat because you just feel bad
about it. What was eye opening to you when you
were creating that episode.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So a lot of my academic research is about food,
and so this was an episode that I knew like
a tremendous amount about coming in, although it is still
always very surprising to me to think about the kind
of average diet that people are consuming, which is not
very good. You know, the share of people's calories that
(34:59):
are coming from ultra processed foods is very high. And
you know, I think, exactly what is the problem with
the ultra process foods?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Is it literally the ultra process nature.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Or more likely is the fact that these foods make
you eat more, and that that's itself an issue that's
really complicated. But the just the volume of the diet
that is this category and the low volume of the
diet that's like apples or anything.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
With fiber recognizable food.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, and I think that's that's a shame. The other
thing and I you know, this didn't get as much
in the episode as I would have done if if
I were the dictator. But we talked to the guy,
a guy who runs food for a school district outside Sacramento,
and he talked with sort of incredible love about like
(35:49):
how he is trying to like get these kids a
very poor school district, how he's trying to like introduce
them to blood oranges and like other interesting foods and
how he's trying to engage them in the process of
making the foods and deciding what they should what they
should serve, and this I found this very inspiring. I mean,
I think unfortunately not everybody can have like a Vince
running their school lunch program. But it gave me a
(36:11):
little bit of hope, which was good as an antidote
to the other things.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, I mean, it isn't amazing how much priority we
put on test scores and what are kids learning in
schools and then we feed them. I've been shocked. Like, actually,
we moved school district a couple of years ago, and
the school my kids used to go to, an elementary school.
They literally grew food at the school, like and they
would go outside and tend to the crops and it
was awesome and the food was delicious and healthy for
the public school. Yeah, that had a chef, Like his
(36:38):
name was Chef Bradley. Yeah, that's what all the kids
called him because he was into it. And then we
moved up here and the things that are available for
my kids to buy for lunch is just insane. I
didn't know what a yogurt boat was until I kind
of like the kind of stuff that the kids can
eat for lunch, and then they're supposed to sit there
and like learn without behavior or issues. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
No, I think you know, the idea that that kind
of these things are separable, I think is pretty problematic.
I mean, definitely kids learn better if they have eaten better.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, yeah, yes, not taking a holistic look at the child.
And I think I think was it that episode two
maybe I think you may have mentioned that seventy five
percent of money spent at grocery stores actually happens to
be on these processed foods, empty calories, as opposed to
the real food that you might find around the periphery.
But maybe a last quick question here for Jale. For
(37:25):
the kids, that's what I say, more yeah, oh yeah,
k more meat, more vegetables. Emily, what is your take
on allowance for kids? Do you think that there are
best practices out there? Because I will say personally, I
kind of fell off the allowance train. I want my
kids to earn like they don't. There's no preset dollar
amount for anything. They only receive commission when they're actually
out there out there working. But is that a good taker? Yeah?
(37:48):
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
So there's no real data. So I looked into this.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
There's no real data on you know, whether it's good
to give them allowance or not give them an allowance.
And people make very different choices about this. Will make
the choice you've described, which is kind of I'm gonna like,
you know, you can earn there are jobs, you can
earn some money. I think I do give I will
say personally, I do give my kids an allowance. And
the reason it is valuable is then they understand that
(38:14):
things cost money that they want. And so like my
son now understands that that like things in rowblocks cost money,
and like you, and he has a very small allowance
that he can spend on that stuff. And it has
sort of pushed a little bit of kind of monetary understanding.
But this is a place where as sort of getting
(38:35):
back to some of the stuff we said at the beginning,
I think very reasonable people will make different choices depending
on what works for their family.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
All right, for real, last question, we were talking about ultraprocessed foods,
and that's one thing, but then I think the other
thing that parents feel guilty about these days is screen
time smartphones. My daughter's eleven, The smartphone conversation surprisingly has
not come up to the extent I thought it would
at this point in time. How much screen time is
reasonable for kids? Yeah, where do you weigh in on
(39:01):
the when a child should get a smartphone debate?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So first let's start with screen time, because I think
there's a pretty simple way for parents to think about this,
which is, rather than focusing on the idea that screen
time is good or screen time is bad, or like
more is good or whatever it is, think about it
as opportunity cost. So when your kid is doing screens
they're not doing something else. What else would they be
doing with that time? And when you think about it
like that, it's clear, like some screen time is fine.
(39:25):
You know your kid would be like dragging on your
leg while you try to cook dinner and screaming.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
About how hungry they are.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Maybe it's better if they watch a half an hour
of television while you cook dinner. Like that's that's not
substituting for quality time.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
If your kid's watching.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Eight hours of TV a day and they're not sleeping
and they're not spending time on their homework, that is
substituting for something important. So thinking about screen time in
this like where does it fit in my life?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Is a good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Smartphones are so complicated and I you know, it's almost
impossible to say, you know, this is the right age
or the right because what is a smartphone? Is it
a smartphone with Instagram? Is it a smartphone without Instagram?
You know, I think this is a place where there's
no substitute for talking to your kid about managing.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Their relationship with the phone. I have a thirteen year old, so.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
This does come up, okay on that Does she have one? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Okay, but she does not have social media?
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah? See that's I feel like that's the key thing.
Think so too. You didn't get that one sentence this
is what I should do with my daughter out of Emily.
But that's why folks should go and listen to Emily's podcast,
Raising Parents. I really do feel like it should be
like required listening because the way that you're approaching all
these difficult Topicssemily is it's so incredibly helpful. It hits
close to home and certainly resonates with us with my
(40:45):
family for sure. But where can folks go to hear
that and learn more about you, what you're up to?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
So you can find Raising Parents on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
any place you get your podcasts, and you can find
me at parent Data, where I write about parenting and data.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Good stuff coming out all the time there. Emily Osler,
thank you so much for joining us today. We really
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
We all right. Joel has a fun conversation with guest
Emily Oster. This was not a typical topic or not
a typical kind of episode that we we do a
lot more. I don't know. It's a judgment call as
to whether or not you want to have kids, and
I think she aptly was able to identify that that
there's a whole lot of personal factors that go into
whether or not you want to have kids. Yeah. Yeah,
she's an economist, so I always love talking to people
(41:28):
who think about money and data in terms of like
life and now we live life, cause that's just it's
really hard, I think, to mirror one for one, Like
she was saying at the beginning, the data says this,
so clearly my reaction should be this, And there's a
lot of interpretation that's needed inside of this subject. But
she does a good job. I think interpreting that data. Yeah,
but did you have a big, a big takeaway from
(41:50):
our conversation today? I did? I think, I really like
think what she said, optimized for what you care about most?
And she talked about, you know, especially the fact that
we all have limited resources, and so when we're talking
about what our family's going to do, whether or not
one spouse is going to stay at home, how many
extracurricular activities we are or are not going to participate in,
(42:10):
what our family dynamic is going to look like. What
do we care about the most? Right? And that's what
we talked about on this show a lot. Right, is
the why behind your money? What are you optimizing for?
And if you're optimizing for the biggest bank account, you
might be twenty thirty years down the line be a
little bummed maybe that you have eight million dollars instead
of four million dollars, because you could have made other
(42:30):
decisions in the here and now that would allow you
to enjoy your life to the fullest. So unless having
the biggest bank account possible was what you're optimizing pastor hey,
congratulations you did it. Yeah, but they might have like
tired of listening to this podcast at the one time,
if that was what they were really going for. So
I don't know. I guess I just appreciate that that's
how Emily thinks about this, and I think it's a
good way for everyone to say, Yeah, what is our
(42:52):
family all about? What do we want out of our
existence together on this earth under this single roof to
look like? And once optimized for that, all those other
things are going to fall into place, and you're gonna
be able to make your trade offs. Accordingly, it's just
a much more thoughtful approach to live in your life.
When I was asking her about like why, I guess
when we're talking about the family Firm, which is her
more sort of businesslike approach towards running her family, and
(43:15):
what she pointed to was the fact that we're so busy,
And I think that's I think that's totally the case.
It's the fact that we've got other things that are
preoccupying our time. Like essentially, there are these other treadmills
in our life that we get on and then we're
going really really hard on those things, and I think
the net result is the fact that stuff at home
tends to fall through the cracks, and so what we
find ourselves is like we then get pulled onto these
(43:35):
other treadmills, whether it be a soccer like a travel
league or with sports that also happens to cost a
lot of money, but more than that, it costs a
lot of time, a lot of energy. And instead, maybe
what should have happened was just just a hey, maybe
we need to sit down and think through what is
this going to require of us financially? What does this
require of us? From a time standpoint? What does require
what are we teaching our kids by the fact that
(43:56):
we're going to be joining this for the next semester,
for the next season. You're talking about counting the cost
ahead of time, right, And you're right. I've known people
who say, and this honestly, this is my momo to
say opportunity, that sounds like fun, let's do it. And
I haven't thought about how much it's going to take
from me, how much it's going to require for me
to participate in that thing. I've gotten better at it
over the years because I've burned myself too many times.
(44:18):
But this is a good proactive question to ask yourself,
is like, what is this going to require me? What's
this going to require of our family. And while this
might sound like fun, is it the best re use
of our resources? It the best use of our time?
What do we actually want out of life? And I
think when you're asking those hard questions, it's going to
lead you to some of those decisions saying, hey, soccer
is great, but maybe three nights a week is too
much and we need to join the league where it's
(44:38):
one night a week something like that. Yeah, exactly, Like
a good economist, she said the word opportunity cost a lot,
which is I think it's something that we need to
hear more often, because there are opportunity costs to everything
that we choose to do or to not do. And
like you said, the ability to kind of forecast until
like look off into the future a little bit and
try to identify what it is that you're going to like,
how are you going to feel about this thing off
(44:59):
in the future from a financial standpoint or from a
life energy time standpoint as well. But yeah, really fun
conversation with somebody who's much smarter than we are. Almost
felt like shouldn't have had a statement during this episode
just to be like, oh, yeah, we should be. We're
drinking tea to stimulate our brain as opposed to enjoying
(45:20):
our craft beer, we're actually not so craft beer in
this case. We got to enjoy an Octoberfest Marzen, which
is a beer by how do you say that, enter
ironger or anger. But this is like an old school
kind of classic German lagger fall fest kind of beer.
What we were thoughts, it's one of them octoberfests, Matt,
(45:40):
which this is This is still the time of year
for Octoberfest right here. Yeah, and this was like sweet
caramel vibes perfect for fall. Honestly, it looks like the
colors of a lot of the leaves that are on
the ground around our smells like fall leaves. Yeah. Like
even the smell of it made me think of kind
of like the dry crisp leaves outside kind of tastes
exactly like it smells like a combination of just classic
(46:01):
beer but also some of those some of those fall
vibes going on a lot of bready malts as well.
Perfectly enjoyable for a beautiful fall day like today. I
think a lot of people who don't like craft beer
would be well suited by trying an Octoberfest because it's
got a little bit of that sweetness. It's it's not too heavy,
it's but it's also not so light that it tastes
like the kind of cram. If you're turned off by
(46:22):
your uncle's beer, this might be like a good one
to tip your toes in taking an Octoberfest or a
Marzen is like a gateway craft beer. Maybe because it
kept the this week caramel vibes. I think a lot
of people would be into that, even if they have
had trouble acclimating to craft beer in the past. I agree, Yes,
this is a good one. But we'll make sure to
link to Emily's site as well as her podcast up
in the show notes at howtomoney dot com. But that's
(46:44):
gonna be a buddy. So until next time, best friends
Out and best Friends Out.
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking about the high cost of kids
with Emily Oster. Yeah, Joel, we don't shy away from
(00:28):
the fact that you and I we're big fans of
having kids. You've got three kids, I've got four. Actually,
recently at a personal finance conference, I mentioned that to
someone that I had just met, that I've got four kids,
and she literally did a spit take when I told
her that. But I think there's multiple reasons for that,
I'm sure, but the costly nature of having kids is
a big reason. For sure. It's not what most folks
(00:49):
are doing these days. And depending on which study you're
looking at, depends on where in the country you live
as well. I've seen upwards of like four hundred thousand
dollars per kid. So we're hoping to set the record
straight today with Emily Auster. Emily is a professor of
economics at Brown University. She's the author of books like
Expecting Better, Cribsheet, Family Firm, all relating to the different
(01:11):
stages of parenting or soon to be parenting that you're in.
And now she's host of the new podcast Raising Parents
and You might know her as the lady who says
it's okay to have wine in coffee in moderation while
you're pregnant, or who shared unpopular opinions on COVID policies
during the pandemic. She's not afraid to dive into the controversial.
(01:31):
But we're excited to talk about all things that are
going to be kids and money related with you today, Emily.
Thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Thank you guys so much for having me excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, we're glad to have you, Emily. The first question
we ask everyone who comes on the show. Matt and
I like to drink craft beer. Sometimes it can get expensive,
but we're splurging on stuff that matter in the here
and now while we're doing the smart thing and saving
and investing for our future as well. What's that thing
you like to spoor? John?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Running shoes? I have like a disturbing number expensive running shoes.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, so Joel just recently told me about you called
them like pro something shoes, super shoes you call super shoes.
But I just realize when you mentioned it, that's the
same it's the same thing as like the carbon plate shoes.
Or whatever you told me about them, Emily, how many
of How many of those do you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I don't think it's good to get into numbers, really,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Just it's the data driven.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
It's more than one. Let's just ranges. It's more than one.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Do they really make that big of an impact on
your time? Because when you look at the numbers from
some of the marathon runners, what I heard times were
going down by three or four percent by wearing those fancy.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It's about four percent on average, and there's some range
across people.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Okay, holy cow, I might just just to like show
my wife up when we're out for a while. But uh, Emily,
we appreciate you joining us. You are an economists, Like
I mentioned, what was the impetus to apply data to
something that has often been viewed as more intuitive, you know,
this being parenting and family decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So I am an economist, and I'm a person who
loves data and has always thought that it is appropriate
to think about data as a way to make decisions
about your everyday life, not just about your finances, but
about all kinds of other stuff. And so when I
got pregnant now fourteen years ago, it was kind of
natural to take that data lens into pregnancy and then
(03:23):
into parenting, and that's where the books came from. But
it was for me a very natural, like data is
the way that you make decisions, and so it didn't
seem as weird as I think it does to other
people when I explain.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It, is that partly because you come from a long
line of economists, you're married to an economist? Is I'm curious,
like what Thanksgiving dinner is like at your house? I
would love to be on a fly on the wall
to know what, like a bunch of economists do. I mean,
it sounds like a joke, almost like five economists go
to a Thanksgiving dinner? Like what is that? Like? Wow?
Is that part of it?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
A little bit?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I mean, now we have a lot of small children,
and only one of the nine grandchildren is actually interested
in economics, and so we've had to dial it down
a bit. But certainly, growing up with two economist parents
gave me a way to think about the world that
was rooted in data, in evidence, in decision making. And
they may marry to another economist and makes it a
(04:20):
bit easier to operate your house like that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
For sure. I believe it. I believe it. Okay, what
is it about data that it seems that folks have
a tough time taking data that is out in the
world and then applying it to their lives. Like I
feel like oftentimes we have a difficult time assessing risk
when it comes to Okay, you just told me x,
Now take that piece of knowledge and I don't know,
put it to use in your own life. Like, I
guess this is more of like an informed decision question.
(04:43):
Can you speak to that?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, I think it's very hard.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
So one of the one of the issues is that
I think often, even for people who like data, we're
often expecting data to kind of tell us the answer,
and that's rarely true. You really do need to have
the data and the decision making combine, so you can
kind of frame the data inside some trade off, some
costs and benefits. But there's a second thing to what
(05:07):
you're saying is really really important, which is that people
are very very bad at understanding risk. And many of
the decisions that we make as parents, as people do
involve needing to understand something about risks and something about
small probabilities and risks. And that's something that just the
human brain is not very well suited to process.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Almost like we need some interpretive help after the data,
after we like organize some of the data, which it
seems like it is like a big part of your
mission too. And I've heard you say that the evidence
is severely lacking in a lot of the parenting tips
that end up kind of taking on this air of
gospel truth that a lot of people they tend to
subscribe to something just because it feels like common knowledge.
(05:50):
Was there like this treasure trove of helpful data that
just wasn't being used properly. Was there a bunch of
stuff that would have helped inform us that we just
were completely unaware of?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not both?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And I guess, I mean there's more data out in
the world than people are probably using. I think the
reality is when you dig into the data, particularly around
a lot of these parenting topics, it turns out there's
a lot of good ways to do it. And so
some of what's happening is people are saying this is
the only way to do it, and then when you
look in the data, it's like, actually, it's not really
clear that's any better than any other way, or if
(06:22):
it is it's only a tiny amount, like a tiny
effect on one random outcome. So I think some of
this is that people just overinterpret their own experiences or
they want to be they want their parenting style to
be so right that it's right for everybody, and that
kind of leads to over overstatement of the value of
(06:43):
certain behaviors. But there are also a lot of things
in parenting where we don't have as much data as
we would like, as many people would like, and that's
frustrating in its own way.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That makes sense, Yes, it seems like most folks are
looking for objective truth when oftentimes maybe it's a little
more or subjective when it comes to some of these
I guess gray sort of stickier questions and that we
ask ourselves. But like, how much do you think personal
preference should actually play into in factor into some of
the parenting decisions that we make as opposed to kind
(07:14):
of like the one size fits all advice.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, I think almost every parenting decision should involve your preferences.
I think the key for me is saying, look, let
me figure out what's the question I'm asking, let me
get the data that's relevant for that question, and then
let me ask the question with my preferences in mind,
and with the data as a way to support how
I think about the trade offs.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And so rather than saying.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
There's a right choice or there's a wrong choice, there's
a right choice for you, and you could make that
decision in a better or worse way for you. But
it is your preferences that should influence that, not what
somebody else down the street is doing.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So part of the reason you kind of started this
endeavor fourteen years ago was one because you were interested
in data, right, but also because you're becoming a mom,
and I'm curious you were studying, checking out these studies,
digging into the research. What did you find that impacted
the way you parented, whether in those early years or
(08:11):
now that your kids have gotten to be a little
bit older.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
So my first book is about pregnancy, and I would
say that so many of the decisions that I made
while it was pregnant were influenced by the research I
did for the book. So you know, there's a whole
portion of the book about prenatal testing, which I really
kind of effectively wrote while I was doing it. So
it was like my own exploration of the data while
I was trying to serve my own parenting. They are
(08:35):
my own pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
When I then had a kid.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I didn't write the book about early parenting until my
second kid because with the first kid, it was just
like do whatever mess things up? All the time? Panic constantly? Yes,
And I don't know if this sounds familiar from your first.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Kid, Oh for sure indeed, but it was.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It's interesting because I think it was very hard to
have the perspective from the standpoint of a first kid
to be like, okay, let me dial down to what
are the important decisions, Like what do I really want
to think about?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It was just like every day was another crazy fear.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And when I had a second kid, and then I
was like, oh, now I can write this book because
now that I like, I've like dialed down to the
you know, eleven things I really want to make decisions about,
and that was much easier with kid.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
With kid number two, I.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Like it, all right, let's dive into the dataly because
birth rates they are declining in the US, like in
a lot of the you know, most developed countries around
the world as well. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
That is a sixty four thousand dollars question. It's a
really fascinating upsetting whatever it's the word, but it's a
it's this phenomenon is true everywhere. So it's not just
the US, it's not just developed countries. It's literally a global.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Decline in fertility rates.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And so a lot of the explanations that people might
come up with about you know, social supports or those
kinds of things in the US, they only go so far,
because you know, a place like Sweden has even lower
fertility rates even though their social support for parents is
far better. So that's probably not the answer. And you know,
I'm not sure how much we really know what the
(10:15):
answer is beyond just people are saying, well, I don't
want to know. Oh, I don't want to have kids,
which isn't isn't really an answer to That's not really
an answer. That's just a kind of an expression of
what's happening such that we are getting fewer kids.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
What do you guys think you have a lot of kids?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, I mean I've got to think that, like you
keep seeing these headlines right like, like I think is
like a self fulfilling prophecy. Well, I don't I feel
like a lot of folks oftentimes are scared. Like I
have to think that the personal cost to us as
parents of having kids in modern life, the expense does
feel like it's gotten. I feel like that's got to
impact it, you know. I think there's more than that.
I think there's cultural elements at play too, And I
(10:54):
do think, yeah, like when you think about the decline
in religious observance and decline in the amount of people
having more character, that's going to be part of it too.
Like Israel like the one of the only countries where
there's actually like an increase when it comes to replacement rate.
But I'm curious, smily, like, how accurate do you think
some of those numbers are? I guess when it comes
to some of those headline numbers, you know, like I
mentioned in the intro, like there's a few that you
(11:17):
can fight that will say it's going to be over
four hundred thousand, But I feel like across the board,
you're looking at at least corn Yeah, at least two
hundred and fifty thousand. Do you think that those numbers
are kind of firm and fast? How flexible do you
think those numbers are? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I mean I think those numbers are are more flexible
than there are different ways to raise to raise a kid,
and you know, one of the things that has happened
is is we've gotten into a lot more intensive parenting.
There are a lot of things that are very expensive
that I actually think are not really the things that
our kids need the most. You know, so people ask,
like what's really important. It's like, you know, a safe
place to sleep, like enough to eat of like loving adults,
(11:53):
of some nature, supporting you like some books. These are
kind of the core things that we really need to
provide to every kid. But you know, travel, soccer and
like seventeen balle classes like that may be something that
you want to provide for your kid, but I'm not
sure that it is something we have to say, like
that's the way that you have your kid be successful,
(12:14):
and that's the only way to raise a kid. And
so there's more flexibility in that in terms of accomplishing
some of our goals of you know, raising adults than
there might be. But there is no question that kids
are expensive.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You just use the term intensive parenting, which I think
actually highlights probably goes back to the question you were asking,
And I do think maybe it feels like the stakes
are higher as parentcy stays. I don't know my mom.
We'll ask questions sometimes like why do you guys feel
the need to do all of these things for your kids?
She's like, we never did that stuff for you guys
back in the day. And do you think maybe that's
(12:49):
part of it too, that we feel like parenting requires
more than it actually does.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I think the way in which that interacts with the
fertility stuff is very interesting because I think we do
give people the impression that like the sort of only
way to parent, certainly in some sociodemographic groups, like the
only way to parent is in this way that kind
of totally almost raises you, but sort of where your
whole outlook is kind of very focused around kids and
(13:14):
there isn't really time the Surgeon General is talking about,
you know, parental stress is like a you know, public
health emergency. I think some of that comes from this
idea that we expect parents to be one hundred percent
of the time very focused on their kids. And then
if you look at that from the outside, like, why
would I sign up for that? And yeah, I can,
I can sort of understand that. I think the piece
(13:35):
that's missing and I always try to like convey to people,
is it's actually really hard to explain how much you
like your kids, Like, you know, it's like easy to
explain how hard they are, but like that, I mean,
do you remember, like when your kid was first born,
Like the just the love that you have is so
different than the experience that one has with any other relationship.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and you can't convey it in.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Language, and so outside other experience, how would you you know,
how would you explain? Well, it's not it's not like
it's not like saying, like a tuna sandwich is kind
of like a chicken sandwich, but tuna. You know, it's
like just a totally different.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Experience, like one vacation as opposed to a different kind
of vacation. Yeah, it's yeah, I remember. So it's funny.
You don't know Joel or I personally, but like we've
gone through life for the past fifteen years together essentially,
and we knew each other pre kids, but once we
we both had our first kids around the same time,
and I remember one of the conversations you know, I
had Joel was just like it's almost like I didn't
know how to love. Yeah, like to the extent that
(14:30):
I do now, and it's it's not something like and
your heart grew like six sizes kind of thing. Yeah,
it's like there's new rooms in my heart for this
child in my mind. That's completely dependent on you as
opposed to you know, your spouse, And even that is
insufficient language, right from a macro perspective if we're talking
about and we want to get more into microdata too
with you, Emily, but when we're talking about this decline
in birth rates, there are society wide impacts, right, and
(14:53):
economic realities that we we stare down. I mean, think
think about like extreme cases like Japan of having a
lower population rate. Can you speak to that, like what
sorts of things happen when we choose as a society
or as a bunch of individuals essentially to have fewer
kids overall?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So yeah, I mean there's a sort of basic answer
to that, which is the sort of structure of the
age pyramid will change. And generally the way we have
operated societies is we're kind of relying on the younger
people in the society to support both the even younger
people but then also the older people. I mean, that's
how that's how most economies work, and economic growth tends
(15:29):
to rely on population growth, and so when we think
about both population decline and a population that is more
heavily weighted towards older people, it looks really different in
terms of what are the services people need, in terms
of what are the jobs people doing, and in terms
of the growth, and exactly what that will look like
(15:50):
is actually really hard to predict because there hasn't really
been a time in human history in which that the
society has been organized quite like that. We can look
to a place like Japan and say, you know, what's
what's happening there. You can see, you know, there are
a lot of particularly more rural areas that have you know,
mostly elderly people, and that's not been great for some
(16:11):
aspects of I think that not every people would say
that there have been some issues associated with that.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
But again, like predicting how would the US look like
with that? How much is immigration matter? There's a lot
of open questions.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, it's true, all right, Emily, We've got much more
to get to all things kids and money. We're going
to talk about too, just how having kids, how that
can impact your career and more. We'll get to all
that right after this, I we're back from the break
still talking with Emily Auster about having kids and the
(16:45):
financial reality that comes along with that. Emily released a
book called The Family Firm. Let's talk about that one
for just a second. Your main premise in that book
is that a family should be run more like a business.
And I guess maybe this is kind of the data
intensities of you coming out, but in some ways that
seems a little counterintuitive running my family like a business.
(17:05):
Should I be charging my kids rent? I mean, what
does that look like?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So this is mostly about sort of thinking about how
we make decisions. And I think that the core insight
of the book, or the core idea in the book,
is that you know, when we are, particularly you know,
having a family with multiple adults and multiple kids and
a lot of different constraints on our time, that we
would do well to bring in some of the tools
(17:29):
from small businesses, which involve like how do you organize
your time?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
How do you decide what's.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Important to you, how do you decide you know what
to do with the limited resources, be that time or
budget by and how do you optimize for the things
you most care about. I think that we even people
who really think about those things in their job are
often reluctant to do it at home, and it actually
can lead you to outcomes that you think are less
(17:57):
are less good than they would be if you had
thought more about them. So in some ways, the main
message of that book is just be a little bit
more deliberate about your decisions, like think more.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Mm hmm yeah. Why, Like, why do you think that's
even necessary? I guess, Like, I mean, it clearly is necessary,
But it used to be sort of like we're saying
before that this was more of an intuitive sort of
thing that you kind of came together as a family,
or it's something that you had identified as someone who's
running the household. I mean, what is it about our
lives today that requires us to be, like, I guess,
a bit more proactive when it comes to how it
(18:27):
is we run our families.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I think at the core of real issue is that
people are busier. You know, it's more common to have
to working parents. Kids' lives are more busier and structured
than they were, you know, thirty years ago. And you
could say that's a mistake or not a mistake, but anyway,
it's what's true, and so what that means. And I
think this is where the deliberate decision making sort of
falls apart and then people are on iron unhappy. So
a lot of people will tell me like, you know, well,
(18:50):
we decided to do this activity, but actually it's like
ruined our lives because you know, it's four nights a
week and like we never have dinner together, and like
you know, it's like, well, what can you do?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And the answer is like, we could have just not
You could just said no. So I said no.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And I think actually, if you would step back from
that and been like, well, you know, what's really important
to our family is like getting to sleep at the
right time and having dinner together, you wouldn't have said
yes to that activity in the first place. And that's
that's the idea that we really have to decide what's important,
and then that's going to constrain our choices and like
that's okay.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I have some friends who came up with like a
family motto, like a.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Love a family mission, family mission statement.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean that can kind of help be the
guiding light too, right, Actually write it down, put some
thought behind it, and then say these four or five
sentences represent us as a family, and then you might
say in the moment, oh, hey, this family wants to
have us over for dinner. It's a Friday night. Well, hey,
guess what. Our core motto's fun, let's go do it.
Or hey, our core motto is like togetherness and not
being busy. So actually maybe we're going to say no
to that. Do you think that's like that's probably a
(19:46):
really good way to help provide some of that guidance.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Absolutely, And I think there's a bunch of different ways.
There's like family mission statements, there's you know, write down
the four most important things for you. There's a bunch
of ways to do that that can work. Different families
are going to react friendly. But I think yes, getting
those core ideas now and then using them to kind
of come back to and be like, Okay, you know,
here's here's how we're going to operationalize this because we've
all agreed this is what's important to us.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, So you are talking about being overly busy and overscheduling.
The first episode of your podcast is about overparenting. Can
you share the lessons that you were highlighting there?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
What really came about?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So the first episode is about kind of giving kids
sort of physical freedom having maybe we just need to
be less involved. And one of the things that came
out of the reactions to that I thought was really
interesting was people saying, you know, hey, like this really
resonates with me, but what you're describing would work in.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
A society where everybody was doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So rather than saying like we need to change something
in an individual level, I think there's a little bit
of a push for saying like, how can we organize
the way that our neighborhoods or even our sort of
small like local kid friend groups are structured to allow
for more of this kind of unscheduled boredom time or
(21:03):
kids playing together without adults, which is really a lot
of what those a lot of what we were pushing for,
at least talking about in that episode.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So you mentioned a second of kids activities, how they
can run us ragged, which is so true even if
you try to limit it, it can feel. I know
this from first and experience, like two soccer practices a week,
two soccer games a week, that's just one kid, two
kids each having one sport they're participating in, and those
activities have become more expensive too. Is there any is
there any data I guess that can help us maybe
(21:32):
make a decision about how much of those organized sports
to put into our lives or not.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
So there's a little bit of data on the benefits
of extracurriculars, and it comes out it comes out of Europe,
I think mostly, and it is based on kind of
extracurricular organizations inside schools and asking like how you know,
what are the kind of benefits to kids of participating
and in extracurriculars, And there are some They seem to
(21:57):
basically surround kids having a sort of social environment or
another setting in which they can excel or connect to
different kids outside of say school. So I think one
way I often think about this is, you know, if
your kid is like struggling at school, but they really
love soccer, then soccer is like a place for them
(22:19):
to sort of feel confident, to have a sense of belonging,
which is something that we know is very core for
kids for kids' mental health. When we look at the data, though,
it isn't clear that having more of that is better,
right that like that, like you know, ten hours a
week of soccer is okay, but thirty hours a week
of soccer, like your kid's going to be super happy.
Like that doesn't scale like that, This is sort of
(22:40):
about a smaller amount, And I think what that does
illustrate is some of the some of the key to
picking these activities is that they should be things your
kid likes and that your kid is like connected to,
because that's really where the benefit comes, not from, you know,
picking the activity that is going to you know, get
your kid into college because you've decided there's a shortage
(23:00):
of like tuba players and Yale this year.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So that is that does sound smart? What instrument are
no kids playing? Like? I'm going to pay strategy? That's right,
That's right. Why suck it up? You're going to play
that short? So this makes me think, Emily, like, I
feel like one of the things that I wrestle with
is I'm wrestling between spending money in the here and
now on something like activities or like enriching activities or
(23:24):
experiences that might broaden my kid's horizons versus let's just
say soccer money away into a five twenty nine account
where I'm saving for their future. How would you recommend
to parents to start to think through or to approach
that sort of decision making process right between the here
now or and I'm not even talking about generational wealth
right like that's I'm not even talking about that. But
(23:45):
even just like I guess saving for college that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I mean, I think that's really hard and it's not
not a thing with an obvious answer. I think there's
a sort of simple way to think about money in
general as economists, which is, you know, like, what what
is the opportunity cost of this money? So like what
if I spent this money this way, what would I
be giving up in the future. And sometimes when you
do that exercise, it's like, well, if I didn't buy
(24:09):
this United spend money on this extracurricular now, it would
cost me you know, would be like less vacation time,
or it would be you know, less like savings when
I'm very old, and you can sort of think about
that trade off.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I think one one sort.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Of interesting caveat I would put to the way you're
thinking about it is you're framing this like I have
an envelope of money for my kids, and it's going
to be spent on the five twenty nine, and it's
going to be spent on extracurriculars. And so if I
take money out of the out of the extracurriculars, you know,
it goes into the five twenty nine And that's kind
of like keeping everything in one bucket. But actually, from
(24:44):
an optimization standpoint, you want to think about all of
your money being interchangeable. And so it's not necessarily that
extracurricular money substitutes for five twenty nine money. But maybe
extracurricular money substitutes for vacation money, or for new car money,
or for you know, like later retirement saving money.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So I think being a little bit.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Thoughtful about kind of what's the next thing I would
do with this money, what's the what's the sort of
marginal use of it as opposed to like, what is
something else in this category that it was substituted away from.
I think that's a that's a sort of important part
of financial.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Deal that makes sense. The fungible funds approach my personal
finances exactly one of the I feel like one of
the biggest decisions that parents have to make. Married parents,
like whether or not they are going to go back
to work, stay at home, whether they're going to be
a two income household, and like what if folks need
to think through on that front. There has to be
(25:37):
a lot of data about not just reduced income, but
the impact on the budget, the impact on the children
from one of the one of the parents being at
home during those early years. Like, there's got to be
a bunch of things we're having to think through on that, right.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
So I think the first place people often come with
this is they say, well, what's better for my kid?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And I think the sort.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Of reassuring news there is, actually everything is fine. So
impact send kids of having working parents not working parents,
they're very small.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
They go in a variety of.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Directions, this is not the thing that should decide what
you do, and so they're sort of putting that aside.
There's actually like two relevant things. One is what people
want to do, and one is the financial implications. And
the financial implications are something you can you can calculate.
It's not like an easy calculation, but people can get
a sense of, you know, both in the short term,
(26:25):
like how one person chooses not to work, what are
the implications for our budget, how does it change our
text burden? You can do a spreadsheet? And then the
other thing I think people don't always think about is
the future. So you know, what's the plan, Like, are
we talking about staying somebody staying home for five years,
for ten years, for two years forever.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That's going to have some implications.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And if you take time off, it has implications for
your you know, for your career path, for your kind
of how your income will grow over time. So those
are hard but very tractable things to calculate. And then
this is really important, like people you should people should
think about like both adults in the household or all
three adults or five. However, many adults you're experiencing should
(27:10):
think about what they want to do, like do you
want to work? What do you want to do with
your day? Going back to like being deliberate and thoughtful
about how you want to spend your day.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yes, that's a really important question.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, what do you what do you want?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do you want?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It's an important question and just to like own it, yeah,
you know, because I feel like oftentimes we justify it
with like, well it seems foolish to turn down this
opportunity or to not pursue this path of higher Eduica,
oh I got this. These are all things to consider,
but like, you don't have to say yes or no
to any of those things if it's not truly what
you want to do, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
No, and you can just say, I mean, I think
would be so much better. You know, this comes up
much more for women, although I think it hits for
men too. Like to be able to be like I,
you know, I choose to stay home with my kids
because that's what I want to do and because we were,
you know, able to make it work. Is should be
totally like reasonable, just like it should be reasonable today.
I chose to work outside the home because that's what
I wanted to do and because we were able to
make it work.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like, those are perfectly valid choices.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And the economic trade offs can be significant. One of
my one of my male friends, he stayed home with
his baby for the first couple of years, and head
Hunter finally contacted him, was like, hey, we got this
job for you, and now he's going back to work
kind of like, I mean, I think he's making the
right movement. I think he's happy about it, but in
some ways he's like, he's he's going to miss so
I'd be having that time at home with his child.
So I think he's glad he had those couple of years.
(28:23):
What is the typical economic impact though, Emily, of like
taking a couple of years off of work at home? Like,
is it Is it a significant not just in lifetime earnings,
but in the amount that you're going to get paid
at that next job back.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
It's very hard.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
That's a very hard thing to answer, because it depends
a lot on what your job is. You know, there
are some there are some kinds of jobs where like
there's really a ladder and when you get off the ladder,
you never get back on. And we do see you know,
for women in particular, kind of the interruptions associated with
childbirth are are long standing.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
There are other kinds of jobs where you can.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Hop back in and and you know, be able to
get back on a different on different path.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Nice. Okay, Well, we talked about pricey kid activities and
how we're oftentimes overscheduled, Emily. When the kids are old
enough to go to school, some folks I think they're
going to immediately default to just pricey private school. But
even if you can afford it, it might not even
be worth it. What factors would you encourage folks to
look at to focus on instead of just like, oh,
(29:22):
it's private, it's got to be better.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I mean, in general, when we summarize school quality actually
either private versus public, or like comparing different public schools
in different public school districts, we tend to focus on
test scores, right, That's like the thing you can measure.
And so the first thing I would tell people is
just when you think about quality, people are going to
tell you their test scores, and like that's one measure
of quality. But there are other things you might care about,
(29:44):
And it's worth kind of trying to write down, like
what's important to you in the school.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
How much do you care.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
About the diversity of kids your kid is interacting with,
How much do you care about the location of the school,
like what else is important? The other piece of this
is is the impact on your child of the quality
of the school is much less important than the impact
of you.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And that's just like, that's just true.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
So if you said, like there's a difference in test
scores between these two schools of like twenty points twenty
testing points, the expected difference for your kid going.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
To those two schools is way way way smaller than that,
because you are really important.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So in some sense, like people can overstate I think
the difference for their kid in the in what they're
going to get out of these different kinds of schools.
We do have a fair amount of evidence that class
size impacts achievement. That's like the one really strong causal link.
So one of the features of private schools you do
have tend to have smaller class sizes. That's something that
(30:46):
people probably want to think about. But at the end
of the day, there's a pretty important fit aspect of this, and.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
There are a lot of good choices.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. But when
you say that it's going to have a bigger impact
because of how you feel about it, is that just
because of the nuts and bolts aspects of let's say
a private private school and we're talking about your budget,
or are we talking about kind of the parents' emotions
and how they feel about the fact that their kid
is receiving this nominally slightly better education. Are you just
(31:19):
talking about like reading to your kids at night and
how that means more.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of that talking about reading, I think a lot of
this is just like what you are scaffolding at home matters.
A lot are their books in the house are there.
You know, you even look at something like what happened
to kids during the pandemic, like the kind of losses
for kids who are higher income, even within a within
a school, within a school district, we're much smaller, probably
because there are more supports at home to do things
(31:42):
like read.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Gosh, reading, that makes sense. Oh man, don't even make
me think back to the pandemic, learning the.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Zoo schools not. Let's just alide right past that for spirit.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And lighting stuff on fire on zoom calls, good times. Yep,
so many stories we could tell you.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I like the things where people like put a sticky
note over their camera and then relabel their name as
Connecting and then just that's it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Was that something you saw a lot of with the
university students.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Yeah, yeah, you know they just they just turn their
camera off and they're like, I'm my cot.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I'm out. Still so much PTSD from that are We
got just a few more questions we're going to get
want to get to with you, Emily, including allowances, screen time, smartphones.
We'll get to a few questions about that stuff right
after this. We are back for the break, talking about
(32:34):
the high cost or maybe the not so high cost
of kids with Emily Oster so cheap, so easy, so easy.
Not gonna say it's easy, but maybe it's not as
expensive as folks are making it out to be. Before
the break, Emily, we're talking about like elementary school, maybe
private education. Let's jump to college, I guess before before
we move on, how would you encourage families out there,
(32:56):
or even younger listeners who are looking to go off
to college, how you talk to them about the price
that they might pay for higher education, for college, or
even the debt that they might take on as they're
looking at maybe different degrees. Because I will say, like
one of the things we talk about fairly regularly on
the show is just hey, maybe it's worth looking at
the average income of what that degree holder might be
(33:19):
able to earn and keeping that debt in check. Is
that Is it as simple as that that piece of data.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think that that piece of data is important and
is certainly like one piece of data you could look at,
you know, major in this major in that, like what's
the average what's the average income? I think the other
thing is, you know, thinking broadly about the range.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Of schools that you that you look at.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You know, there are a lot of places where the
state schools are really good and are often quite a
bit less expensive than the like that a sort of
comparably good private institution, And you know, just parents and
kids kind of being open to a range of possible
choices is important.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
In episode three of Raising Parents, you took on the
topic of crummy food, which, my goodness, that's going to
get you in trouble with some executives certain food companies.
And it's a touchy subject. I feel like it's one
we're talking about more as a society right now. But
the highly processed foods, they can be more expensive and
eating too much of them can be really bad for
our kids' health. And I know, I think in the
(34:23):
beginning of the episode you talk about chicken nuggets maybe
and how or I don't know, maybe I heard somebody
else talking about this recently, but just how that's like
to everyone's shame, Like you don't talk about how many
chicken nuggets your kids eat because you just feel bad
about it. What was eye opening to you when you
were creating that episode.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So a lot of my academic research is about food,
and so this was an episode that I knew like
a tremendous amount about coming in, although it is still
always very surprising to me to think about the kind
of average diet that people are consuming, which is not
very good. You know, the share of people's calories that
(34:59):
are coming from ultra processed foods is very high. And
you know, I think, exactly what is the problem with
the ultra process foods?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Is it literally the ultra process nature.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Or more likely is the fact that these foods make
you eat more, and that that's itself an issue that's
really complicated. But the just the volume of the diet
that is this category and the low volume of the
diet that's like apples or anything.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
With fiber recognizable food.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, and I think that's that's a shame. The other
thing and I you know, this didn't get as much
in the episode as I would have done if if
I were the dictator. But we talked to the guy,
a guy who runs food for a school district outside Sacramento,
and he talked with sort of incredible love about like
(35:49):
how he is trying to like get these kids a
very poor school district, how he's trying to like introduce
them to blood oranges and like other interesting foods and
how he's trying to engage them in the process of
making the foods and deciding what they should what they
should serve, and this I found this very inspiring. I mean,
I think unfortunately not everybody can have like a Vince
running their school lunch program. But it gave me a
(36:11):
little bit of hope, which was good as an antidote
to the other things.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, I mean, it isn't amazing how much priority we
put on test scores and what are kids learning in
schools and then we feed them. I've been shocked. Like, actually,
we moved school district a couple of years ago, and
the school my kids used to go to, an elementary school.
They literally grew food at the school, like and they
would go outside and tend to the crops and it
was awesome and the food was delicious and healthy for
the public school. Yeah, that had a chef, Like his
(36:38):
name was Chef Bradley. Yeah, that's what all the kids
called him because he was into it. And then we
moved up here and the things that are available for
my kids to buy for lunch is just insane. I
didn't know what a yogurt boat was until I kind
of like the kind of stuff that the kids can
eat for lunch, and then they're supposed to sit there
and like learn without behavior or issues. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
No, I think you know, the idea that that kind
of these things are separable, I think is pretty problematic.
I mean, definitely kids learn better if they have eaten better.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, yeah, yes, not taking a holistic look at the child.
And I think I think was it that episode two
maybe I think you may have mentioned that seventy five
percent of money spent at grocery stores actually happens to
be on these processed foods, empty calories, as opposed to
the real food that you might find around the periphery.
But maybe a last quick question here for Jale. For
(37:25):
the kids, that's what I say, more yeah, oh yeah,
k more meat, more vegetables. Emily, what is your take
on allowance for kids? Do you think that there are
best practices out there? Because I will say personally, I
kind of fell off the allowance train. I want my
kids to earn like they don't. There's no preset dollar
amount for anything. They only receive commission when they're actually
out there out there working. But is that a good taker? Yeah?
(37:48):
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
So there's no real data. So I looked into this.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
There's no real data on you know, whether it's good
to give them allowance or not give them an allowance.
And people make very different choices about this. Will make
the choice you've described, which is kind of I'm gonna like,
you know, you can earn there are jobs, you can
earn some money. I think I do give I will
say personally, I do give my kids an allowance. And
the reason it is valuable is then they understand that
(38:14):
things cost money that they want. And so like my
son now understands that that like things in rowblocks cost money,
and like you, and he has a very small allowance
that he can spend on that stuff. And it has
sort of pushed a little bit of kind of monetary understanding.
But this is a place where as sort of getting
(38:35):
back to some of the stuff we said at the beginning,
I think very reasonable people will make different choices depending
on what works for their family.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
All right, for real, last question, we were talking about ultraprocessed foods,
and that's one thing, but then I think the other
thing that parents feel guilty about these days is screen
time smartphones. My daughter's eleven, The smartphone conversation surprisingly has
not come up to the extent I thought it would
at this point in time. How much screen time is
reasonable for kids? Yeah, where do you weigh in on
(39:01):
the when a child should get a smartphone debate?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So first let's start with screen time, because I think
there's a pretty simple way for parents to think about this,
which is, rather than focusing on the idea that screen
time is good or screen time is bad, or like
more is good or whatever it is, think about it
as opportunity cost. So when your kid is doing screens
they're not doing something else. What else would they be
doing with that time? And when you think about it
like that, it's clear, like some screen time is fine.
(39:25):
You know your kid would be like dragging on your
leg while you try to cook dinner and screaming.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
About how hungry they are.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Maybe it's better if they watch a half an hour
of television while you cook dinner. Like that's that's not
substituting for quality time.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
If your kid's watching.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Eight hours of TV a day and they're not sleeping
and they're not spending time on their homework, that is
substituting for something important. So thinking about screen time in
this like where does it fit in my life?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Is a good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Smartphones are so complicated and I you know, it's almost
impossible to say, you know, this is the right age
or the right because what is a smartphone? Is it
a smartphone with Instagram? Is it a smartphone without Instagram?
You know, I think this is a place where there's
no substitute for talking to your kid about managing.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Their relationship with the phone. I have a thirteen year old, so.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
This does come up, okay on that Does she have one? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Okay, but she does not have social media?
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah? See that's I feel like that's the key thing.
Think so too. You didn't get that one sentence this
is what I should do with my daughter out of Emily.
But that's why folks should go and listen to Emily's podcast,
Raising Parents. I really do feel like it should be
like required listening because the way that you're approaching all
these difficult Topicssemily is it's so incredibly helpful. It hits
close to home and certainly resonates with us with my
(40:45):
family for sure. But where can folks go to hear
that and learn more about you, what you're up to?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
So you can find Raising Parents on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
any place you get your podcasts, and you can find
me at parent Data, where I write about parenting and data.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Good stuff coming out all the time there. Emily Osler,
thank you so much for joining us today. We really
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
We all right. Joel has a fun conversation with guest
Emily Oster. This was not a typical topic or not
a typical kind of episode that we we do a
lot more. I don't know. It's a judgment call as
to whether or not you want to have kids, and
I think she aptly was able to identify that that
there's a whole lot of personal factors that go into
whether or not you want to have kids. Yeah. Yeah,
she's an economist, so I always love talking to people
(41:28):
who think about money and data in terms of like
life and now we live life, cause that's just it's
really hard, I think, to mirror one for one, Like
she was saying at the beginning, the data says this,
so clearly my reaction should be this, And there's a
lot of interpretation that's needed inside of this subject. But
she does a good job. I think interpreting that data. Yeah,
but did you have a big, a big takeaway from
(41:50):
our conversation today? I did? I think, I really like
think what she said, optimized for what you care about most?
And she talked about, you know, especially the fact that
we all have limited resources, and so when we're talking
about what our family's going to do, whether or not
one spouse is going to stay at home, how many
extracurricular activities we are or are not going to participate in,
(42:10):
what our family dynamic is going to look like. What
do we care about the most? Right? And that's what
we talked about on this show a lot. Right, is
the why behind your money? What are you optimizing for?
And if you're optimizing for the biggest bank account, you
might be twenty thirty years down the line be a
little bummed maybe that you have eight million dollars instead
of four million dollars, because you could have made other
(42:30):
decisions in the here and now that would allow you
to enjoy your life to the fullest. So unless having
the biggest bank account possible was what you're optimizing pastor hey,
congratulations you did it. Yeah, but they might have like
tired of listening to this podcast at the one time,
if that was what they were really going for. So
I don't know. I guess I just appreciate that that's
how Emily thinks about this, and I think it's a
good way for everyone to say, Yeah, what is our
(42:52):
family all about? What do we want out of our
existence together on this earth under this single roof to
look like? And once optimized for that, all those other
things are going to fall into place, and you're gonna
be able to make your trade offs. Accordingly, it's just
a much more thoughtful approach to live in your life.
When I was asking her about like why, I guess
when we're talking about the family Firm, which is her
more sort of businesslike approach towards running her family, and
(43:15):
what she pointed to was the fact that we're so busy,
And I think that's I think that's totally the case.
It's the fact that we've got other things that are
preoccupying our time. Like essentially, there are these other treadmills
in our life that we get on and then we're
going really really hard on those things, and I think
the net result is the fact that stuff at home
tends to fall through the cracks, and so what we
find ourselves is like we then get pulled onto these
(43:35):
other treadmills, whether it be a soccer like a travel
league or with sports that also happens to cost a
lot of money, but more than that, it costs a
lot of time, a lot of energy. And instead, maybe
what should have happened was just just a hey, maybe
we need to sit down and think through what is
this going to require of us financially? What does this
require of us? From a time standpoint? What does require
what are we teaching our kids by the fact that
(43:56):
we're going to be joining this for the next semester,
for the next season. You're talking about counting the cost
ahead of time, right, And you're right. I've known people
who say, and this honestly, this is my momo to
say opportunity, that sounds like fun, let's do it. And
I haven't thought about how much it's going to take
from me, how much it's going to require for me
to participate in that thing. I've gotten better at it
over the years because I've burned myself too many times.
(44:18):
But this is a good proactive question to ask yourself,
is like, what is this going to require me? What's
this going to require of our family. And while this
might sound like fun, is it the best re use
of our resources? It the best use of our time?
What do we actually want out of life? And I
think when you're asking those hard questions, it's going to
lead you to some of those decisions saying, hey, soccer
is great, but maybe three nights a week is too
much and we need to join the league where it's
(44:38):
one night a week something like that. Yeah, exactly, Like
a good economist, she said the word opportunity cost a lot,
which is I think it's something that we need to
hear more often, because there are opportunity costs to everything
that we choose to do or to not do. And
like you said, the ability to kind of forecast until
like look off into the future a little bit and
try to identify what it is that you're going to like,
how are you going to feel about this thing off
(44:59):
in the future from a financial standpoint or from a
life energy time standpoint as well. But yeah, really fun
conversation with somebody who's much smarter than we are. Almost
felt like shouldn't have had a statement during this episode
just to be like, oh, yeah, we should be. We're
drinking tea to stimulate our brain as opposed to enjoying
(45:20):
our craft beer, we're actually not so craft beer in
this case. We got to enjoy an Octoberfest Marzen, which
is a beer by how do you say that, enter
ironger or anger. But this is like an old school
kind of classic German lagger fall fest kind of beer.
What we were thoughts, it's one of them octoberfests, Matt,
(45:40):
which this is This is still the time of year
for Octoberfest right here. Yeah, and this was like sweet
caramel vibes perfect for fall. Honestly, it looks like the
colors of a lot of the leaves that are on
the ground around our smells like fall leaves. Yeah. Like
even the smell of it made me think of kind
of like the dry crisp leaves outside kind of tastes
exactly like it smells like a combination of just classic
(46:01):
beer but also some of those some of those fall
vibes going on a lot of bready malts as well.
Perfectly enjoyable for a beautiful fall day like today. I
think a lot of people who don't like craft beer
would be well suited by trying an Octoberfest because it's
got a little bit of that sweetness. It's it's not too heavy,
it's but it's also not so light that it tastes
like the kind of cram. If you're turned off by
(46:22):
your uncle's beer, this might be like a good one
to tip your toes in taking an Octoberfest or a
Marzen is like a gateway craft beer. Maybe because it
kept the this week caramel vibes. I think a lot
of people would be into that, even if they have
had trouble acclimating to craft beer in the past. I agree, Yes,
this is a good one. But we'll make sure to
link to Emily's site as well as her podcast up
in the show notes at howtomoney dot com. But that's
(46:44):
gonna be a buddy. So until next time, best friends
Out and best Friends Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com