Raising Parents with Emily Oster
Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University and bestselling author of 'Expecting Better,' hosts a new series from The Free Press. She tackles deep, existential questions facing modern parents, such as overprotection, helicopter parenting, teen anxiety, boys being left behind, overdiagnosis, screen time, and the importance of marriage. The podcast aims to provide data-driven insights to help parents navigate a confusing world.
Episodes
Episode Feature: How Camp Teaches Kids to Ditch Their Phones
Hi Raising Parents listeners—we’ve got a special bonus episode I’m excited to share with you from Emily Oster’s feed, ParentData. It’s all about the greatness—and importance—of summer camp. Especially in 2025.
Camp is one of the few places where kids get a permission slip to be off their phones. Where the kids—who don’t quite fit in at school—get a fresh start, and maybe even find their people. (
Episode Feature: ‘My So-Called Midlife’
We have a special bonus episode for the Raising Parents feed. It’s an episode of “My So-Called Midlife” by Reshma Saujani and Lemonada Media.
Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code. She’s written several books, including Girls Who Code, Pay Up, and Brave, Not Perfect. And now she is sharing her insights from midlife on mic.
Reshma Saujani sits down with Emily Oster to discuss midlife,
Ep 8: Should You Have Kids?
For most of human history, having kids wasn’t much of a choice. Social expectations, lack of birth control, and limited autonomy for women presented a couple of options: Have children, or join a convent. But the 1960s ushered in a big change. With better options for birth control and expanded career opportunities for women, many people for the first time could choose how many children to have, and
Ep 7: How Important is Marriage?
The share of children in America growing up in single-parent families has tripled since 1950—from 10 percent to 30 percent. Children in single-parent families are three times as likely to live below the poverty level and, on average, they have a higher likelihood of poor academic performance and higher dropout rates from high school. Those translate into lower earnings in adulthood. And although i
Ep 6: Are Smartphones Stealing Childhood?
In today’s world, many parents feel like we need our kids to have phones. We tell ourselves it’s for their safety—they may need it while walking to a friend’s house or when going on a school field trip. And then there’s the fact that for many parents, the idea of not giving your kid a phone—when everyone else has one—just doesn’t even seem like a possibility. By age 10, 42 percent of kids in the U
Ep 5: Are Boys Being Left Behind?
Across the board in most advanced countries, girls and women are outpacing boys and men. Nowhere is this more stark than in education. When Title IX was passed in the U.S., the share of students enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program was about two-thirds men and one-third women. Just 50 years later, the numbers have reversed: Bachelor’s enrollment is now 58 percent women and 42 percent men. So, n
Ep 4: Are We Overmedicating Kids?
Kids and teens today are more diagnosed than ever, across the board, whether it’s a disorder like ADHD or a mental health condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Say you’re 15 and you’re worried about that upcoming algebra test? Anxiety. You’re 12 and you weren’t invited to that birthday party? Depression. Scared to ride your bike again after that little fall last summer? PTSD. And with thes
Ep 3: Are We Feeding Kids the Wrong Foods?
In January 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics surprised doctors and parents by changing its guidelines on treating childhood obesity to include the use of popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, also known as semaglutide, for children ages 12 years or older. And parents all over the country were faced with yet another difficult decision: Should I consider a lifelong weight-loss dr
Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?
There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they’ve changed wildly in America over the decades. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the old school, 1950s approach: spanking. Then, there are middle-ground approaches: time-outs, warning systems, consequences, and punishments. And then, there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. These are the kind of appr
Ep 1: Are We Over-Parenting Our Kids?
When Emily was a kid in the 1980s in New Haven, Connecticut, she grew up on a block with a lot of other children. Every day after dinner, around 6:30, everyone emptied out of their houses and went down to the church parking lot where they engaged in all kinds of unsupervised activities—throwing balls at each other in front of the church wall, climbing up trees and sometimes falling out of them, ri
Introducing: Raising Parents
Raising Parents with Emily Oster premiers Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
