Parenting Data -> Parent Politics

Emily Oster, a Professor of Economics at Brown University and Mother of two, just announced that her third book on data-driven parenting will be out soon. Her first two, and this illustrative New York Times article lay out the case for my interest in defining the space of parent politics or Pro-Family Feminism…

…[The} disconnect between the debates parents have and the data on child outcomes has societal implications. Policies in the United States that focus on helping less well-off families and children have a much greater impact. Many families live with limited access to health coverage and are forced to make choices between, say, food and medicine…..

What we do in day-to-day parenting may matter less than we think, but what we do over all to serve the nation’s children may matter quite a bit more.”

The point is, that we the upper middle class mothers who are concerned about the choice between Montessori preschool or bi-lingual preschool are making decisions on the margins. If we want to most help our kids, we would push for a policy agenda that helps all mothers and families so they can think about which preschool to send their kids too and not how to afford dinner. The more we Moms can change the systems and policies to ones that support all families, the better our lives will be and the more hope we can have for our children’s shared future.