FREAKONOMICS meets WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING in this groundbreaking guidebook. Award-winning Emily Oster debunks myths about pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting.

Pregnancy is full of rules. Pregnant women are often treated as if they were children, given long lists of items to avoid-alcohol, caffeine, sushi- without any real explanation from their doctors about why. They hear frightening and contradictory myths about everything from weight gain to sleeping on your back to bed rest from friends and pregnancy books. In EXPECTING BETTER, Oster shows that the information given to pregnant women is sometimes wrong and almost always oversimplified.

When Oster was expecting her first child, she felt powerless to make the right decisions for her pregnancy so Oster drew on her own experience and went in search of the real facts about pregnancy using an economist's tools. Economics is the science of determining value and making informed decisions. To make a good decision, you need to understand the information available to you and to know what it means to you as an individual.

EXPECTING BETTER overturns standard recommendations for alcohol, caffeine, sushi, bed rest, and induction while putting in context the blanket guidelines for fetal testing, weight gain, risks of pregnancy over the age of thirty-five, and nausea, among others.

Oster offers the real-world advice one would never get at the doctor's office. Knowing that the health of your baby is paramount, readers can know more and worry less. Having the numbers is a tremendous relief-and so is the occasional glass of wine.

This groundbreaking guidebook is as fascinating as it is practical.

'Emily Oster is the non-judgemental girlfriend holding our hand and guiding us through pregnancy and motherhood. She has done the work to get us the hard facts in a soft, understandable way' Amy Schumer

Parenting is full of decisions, nearly all of which can be agonized over. There is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision?

Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths and offers non-judgemental ways to consider our options in light of the facts. Cribsheet is a thinking parent's guide that empowers us to make better, less fraught decisions - and stay sane in the years before preschool.

*Now you can navigate the primary school years with Emily Oster too, in her new book The Family Firm, out now*

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'Chart a child's path with less stress and more optimization for healthy habits and future success' Time

From age 5 to 12, parenting decisions get more complicated and have lasting consequences. What's the right kind of school? Should they play a sport? When's the right time for a phone?

Making these decisions is less about finding the specific answer and more about taking the right approach. Along with these bigger questions, Oster investigates how to navigate the complexity of day-to-day family logistics. The Family Firm is a smart and winning guide to how to think more clearly - and with less ambient stress - about the key decisions of these early years.

Frischgebackenen Eltern werden mit einer Vielzahl von gut gemeinten Ratschlägen bombardiert, sei es von Ärzten, Freunden oder im Netz. Von Anfang an müssen sie die richtigen Entscheidungen treffen rund um Füttern, Schlaf und Timing – sonst ist das Kind direkt verloren … Doch wie soll man dazu trotz chronischen Schlafmangels in der Lage sein? Mit den neuesten Zahlen und Daten zu allen wichtigen Fragen der ersten vier Lebensjahre zeigt Emily Oster, dass die gängigen Weisheiten nicht immer wahr sind. Sie entlarvt Mythen über Stillen, Schlaftraining und Spracherwerb und zeigt, was wirklich gilt.

Während ihrer ersten Schwangerschaft erhielt Emily Oster immer wieder Ratschläge, die einander zwar widersprachen, aber alle mit beeindruckender Vehemenz vorgebracht wurden. Also ging sie das Problem systematisch an. Sie sammelte Daten, sie analysierte und wog ab. So ist dieses Buch entstanden: der erste große Schwangerschafts-Ratgeber aus der Feder einer Ökonomin. Emily Oster räumt auf mit zahlreichen weit verbreitete Mythen zu Ernährung während der Schwangerschaft, Alkohol und Bettruhe. Auf Basis aktuellster Studien erhalten werdende Mütter so das Wissen, das sie wirklich brauchen.