Raising Parents with Emily Oster

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 approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they’re frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. “Gentle parenting”—sometimes called “respectful parenting” or “attentive parenting”—has become really popular in the last few years, and if your social media feeds are anything like ours, you’ve heard all about it and been told you need to do it.

The question many parents are asking is: We have been told that spanking was bad, and we shouldn’t go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting, where kids are learning that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids, but what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Today: How should we be disciplining the next generation of kids? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way?

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Resources from this episode:

• Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
• Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting
• Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
• Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way

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 these diagnoses come a menu of medications that purport to fix your child.

Today: What’s behind the rise in diagnoses—both for ADHD, mostly among young boys, and for anxiety and depression, mostly among teen girls? Are they really the most distracted, anxious, and depressed generation ever to exist? Or are we, perhaps, pathologizing what used to be considered normal feelings and behaviors—and as a result, diagnosing and overmedicating kids for. . . acting like kids? And what are the long-term effects of having millions of boys on speed and millions of girls on SSRIs?

Resources from this episode:

• Abigail Shrier Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Bookshop)
• Jennifer Wallace Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It (Bookshop)
• Sami Timimi Naughty Boys: Anti-Social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture (Bookshop)
• Erica Komisar Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (Bookshop)

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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 drug for my 12-year-old?

The fact that this is even on the table at all is a pretty shocking indictment of the state of our kids’ health. Nearly 20 percent of American children and adolescents are obese, a 300 percent increase since the 1970s. Meanwhile, a little over 42 percent of American adults are obese, a 180 percent increase since the 1970s. The United States ranks 12th worldwide in obesity prevalence. This places the U.S. among the countries with the highest obesity rates in the world.

The question is: Why? And why haven’t we been able to reduce childhood obesity rates?

As obesity rates have skyrocketed, we as a society have also changed the way we talk about weight and obesity. Yes, there is less stigma today about weight—which is good. But people—including health experts—have stopped speaking out loud about the real health risks of obesity. Take, for example, how during the pandemic our health leaders wouldn’t tell the public that obesity is a high risk factor for contracting Covid, out of a presumed fear of stigmatizing obese people.

In the end, all of this has led to confusion about the real health risks of obesity. Parents, in particular, are left to struggle with how to navigate food and health for their children. They may be left wondering whether the entire idea of a link between weight and health may simply be misinformation. So today, we’re setting the table: Why Is childhood obesity such a big problem in the U.S.? Why is obesity problematic in the first place? What will it take to change the way Americans feed our children? And what’s at stake if we don’t?

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Resources from this episode:

• Pamela Druckerman: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
• Robert Lustig: “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains”
• Robert J. Davis: “Supersized Lies: How Myths about Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat — and the Truth about What Really Works”
• FoodCorps
• Sam Kass
• Curt Ellis

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 whether they should have any at all.

Fast-forward to today: More people are choosing not to have children for a wide range of reasons. Having children, of course, is a personal choice. But it’s a choice that has broader implications. Everywhere across the globe—the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa—fewer children are being born. And strangely enough, having kids has become part of the culture wars. There are pro-natalist public figures like Elon Musk on one side saying everyone needs to have more kids now in order to save humanity. And on the other side, people like climate activist Greta Thunberg say rising sea levels are so catastrophic that having kids in this era is akin to genocide.

But there’s no debate that the fertility rate is plummeting in America and around the world. Presently, American women, on average, have 1.8 kids. In the 1950s, it was 3. The replacement rate in the United States, which is the fertility rate needed for a generation to replace itself without considering immigration, is approximately 2.1 births per woman. Around the world, the fertility rate fell by more than half between 1950 and 2021, as many countries became wealthier and women chose to have fewer children.

For economists like Emily, the speed with which the fertility rate is falling is cause for alarm. Economic growth depends, at least in part, on population growth. Retired people rely on generations of younger workers for support, through contributions to Social Security and taxes. With fertility rates in free fall, the math doesn’t add up.

That’s the big picture. Now back to our own families. Our series so far has focused on the state of our children. Today, we cap things off with a fundamental question: Should we even have kids in the first place, and what happens if we don’t?

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Resources from this episode:

• Bryan Caplan: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids (Bookshop)
• Gina Rushton The Parenthood Dilemma: Procreation in the Age of Uncertainty (Bookshop)
• Leah Libresco Sargeant
• Helena de Groot
• Ross Douthat