Cribsheet

by Emily Oster

  The fact that Finland performs better than the US is not a helpful observation, in my view, since many places perform better than the US on these tests. This includes many countries in Asia with much more rigorous early-life instruction.

  And the actual evidence on the relative value of this approach is thin. There are a couple of non-randomized studies from outside the US showing that children who learn to read later do catch up in terms of reading within a few years and that teaching the alphabet early doesn’t necessarily impact reading.13 But on the other hand, we know that programs like Head Start, which focus on early literacy, do improve school performance early on.

  All this is to say that, again, we simply do not have a lot of concrete data to guide you. Further complicating both research and decision-making, it is possible—even likely—that the best type of preschool will vary by individual child. If your kid struggles to sit still, they may find an environment focused on fine motor skills to be taxing; on the other hand, it may be good for them. So it may really be useless to try to learn what is best for your kid from a study—even a good one—that estimates the effect of a type of preschool for the average child.

  The Bottom Line

  There is some support for the value of reading to your children starting in infancy.

  Your baby cannot learn to read. Whether your two- or three-year-old can is unclear, but it would be very unusual for them to be a fluent reader.

  Evidence on the value of different preschool philosophies is limited.

  PART FOUR

  The Home Front

  This is a book about babies and small children. But it cannot escape our notice that when a baby arrives it also magically creates parents. This is not always easy. Indeed, there are books written about the “transition to parenthood,” and they are not all filled with the adorable pictures you see on your friends’ Facebook feeds.

  Becoming a parent is challenging. I think in some ways it is more challenging for this generation than the last. On one hand, we have a lot of stuff they didn’t (disposable diapers, Amazon Prime). On the other hand, as people have children later, when their careers and lifestyles are already more established, the challenge of adaptation is harder.

  There is adaptation for parents individually, and adaptation together. How does this baby fit into the plans I have for myself, for my career, for my leisure time? And how does it fit into our marriage?

  For the most part, data and evidence will probably not help with these transitions, as they are different for everyone. The goal of this part of the book is not so much to tell you what to do (indeed, I will have no advice at all), but rather to acknowledge that we should be talking about what works for the family, not just what works for the baby.

  The bottom line—perhaps the most important in this book—is that parents are people, too. Having a kid doesn’t make you stop being a person with needs and desires and ambitions. It almost certainly changes those, but it doesn’t eliminate them. Being a good parent isn’t about completely subsuming your entire personhood into your children. In fact, if you let your kids rule, it can have the opposite effect.

  We talked some about these issues when we covered the choice about parental work outside of the home in part 2 of the book. Here I’ll pick that back up and talk about at least some of the challenges with the transition to parenthood, and with thinking about growing your family.

  19

  Internal Politics

  When you change something substantial about your relationship with your partner, there is bound to be some conflict. For example, the first time you live together—at least for most couples—has its moments of tension.

  When I first moved in with Jesse, I recall a deep and lasting conflict over kitchen sponge etiquette. He believes you should wring out the sponge and place it next to the sink when done using it. I take a more laissez-faire approach to the sponge, preferring to let it lie where it falls in the sink. It drove him crazy when he’d come to the sink hours after I’d been there to find a still wet and now smelly sponge soaking in its own juices.

  Ultimately, we fixed this by some combination of my attempts to improve (although before I sat down to write this chapter, I noticed I had left the sponge in the sink, soaking wet, the night before, so obviously I have not improved much in fifteen years) and his attempts to let it go (even though he is objectively correct about the right thing to do in this case). The most important change was probably the decision to have him do the dishes. I am proud to say it has been years since we have had any sponge-related conflict.

  Introducing a child into your life will, similarly, lead to some increase in tension for most people. Less charitably, people will tell you that children will “ruin your marriage.”

  It is easy to see why this might be. You and your partner both want the best thing for your child—indeed, you want this more than anything you’ve ever wanted. However, most of the time you have no idea what this “best thing” is. And you’ll sometimes disagree, either due to deep underlying differences or simply because you both have no idea and your best guesses differ.

  Obviously, you’ve disagreed about things before (sponges, for example). But on the whole, these disagreements were not as important, and there were not as many of them. The worst thing that happens with a wet sponge is you have to replace it. But if you mess up your kid, that’s forever! The stakes seem infinitely high.

  And at the same time, you’re exhausted and you have less money and less time. Jesse and I dated, and lived together, for almost a decade before Penelope arrived. We were used to having control of our own time, to spending the weekends in some combination of working (him), writing (me), sewing (me), going to brunch, seeing friends. Now, all of a sudden, the weekend was a haze of feeding, dealing with poop, attempting to shower, holding a screaming baby at brunch with friends, not sleeping, waiting anxiously for the nanny to arrive Monday morning. It was great, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything—even at the time—but there is no question that nerves fray more quickly and conflicts can worsen fast in this situation.

  So it does seem like—based on logic—kids could stress your marriage. And if you look on the internet, you’ll definitely find some people who think it does. They write articles with titles like “You Will Hate Your Husband After Your Kid Is Born (Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise).”1 But these are just examples—anecdotes. Some people clearly do hate their partner after their kids arrive. Of course, some people also hate their partner before kids. Are things systematically worse after kids arrive? And is there anything you can do about it?2

  The answer to the first question is yes, things are, on average, systematically worse in marriages after kids. It is probably an exaggeration to say you’ll “hate your spouse,” but people (women in particular) do seem less happy after kids.

  We can see this in a variety of studies that look at the relationship between parenthood and marital satisfaction. These go back as early as 1970, with a paper showing that between the pre-childbearing period and the period of having school-aged children, the share of mothers reporting low marital satisfaction rises gradually from 12 percent to 30 percent, with an abrupt jump in the first year of the child’s life. The marriage does not recover until parents become grandparents.3

  Meta-analyses of more recent data show similar things—parents are less happy with their marriages than nonparents. The changes seem to be most abrupt in the first year, and then there is some recovery, although not complete.4 As one study helpfully notes, “In sum, parenthood hastens marital decline. . . .”5

  It is worth noting that these studies do tend to find that people who are happier before they have kids recover better, and that planned pregnancies are less impactful than unplanned ones. And the effects are not enormously large. Many people are still, on net, happy with their spouse. Just, you know, slightly less.

  Why is this? It is, of cours
e, hard to know, and probably varies across couples. One issue may simply be the lack of time to focus on the relationship. Before you have children, your relationship is just about the two of you—you have the luxury of sleeping late together, going out, just spending hours talking about what is going on, big and small. Once you have kids, it is almost impossible to replicate this, and if you are not careful, you can find that you virtually never talk about anything other than the children. The relationship falls by the wayside, and not usually for the better. You’re connected through your children, but it can feel like you’ve lost the connection to your partner.

  Being aware of this may be helpful, and in this chapter I talk about some proposed solutions to the marital-happiness problems. But before doing that, it’s useful to look at two specific things that researchers have speculated play a role in the marital-happiness decline. The first is unequal chore allocation: women tend to do the bulk of household work, even if they also work outside the home. The second is a decline in sex: parents have less sex, and sex makes people happy.

  Is there evidence for either of these? Broadly, yes.

  Beginning with the basic facts: If we look at time-use data—that is, people’s reports of how much time they spend on various activities—we see that, on average, women spend more time than men on housework and child-rearing-related activities. Even if we compare women who work full time with men who work full time, the women spend about an hour and a half more during the day caring for kids, doing housework, and shopping.6

  The amount of time women spend on these activities has declined a lot over time (thanks, washing machines/dishwashers/microwaves!), but it is still unequal.7 And it’s notable that women do more housework even if they also make more money. When women bring in more than 90 percent of the household income, they still do almost as much housework as the men in these households. In contrast, when men bring in more than 90 percent of household income, they do much less housework.8

  An interesting question (at least for an economist) is whether this lack of equality is unavoidable. One theory is that many household tasks cannot be divided up, so one person has to do more of them, and it ends up being the female partner due to some small underlying skill differences. For example, maybe women are inherently better at cooking as adults because they are more likely to have been taught to cook as children.

  This would be a version of an economic theory of comparative advantage. This explanation would rely, among other things, on the assumption that it is not possible or efficient to divide the tasks equally.

  That doesn’t seem to be the case. One piece of data comes from comparisons across countries and over time; in Sweden, for example, the household work is split more evenly.9 And over time, even in the US, it has gotten more equal, as we’ve moved away (to some extent) from traditional gender roles.

  Also within the US, we have some (limited) evidence from same-sex couples, which shows that they share household work more equally than different-sex couples.10 These samples tend to be small, so any results should be taken with a grain of salt, but they are suggestive.

  Of course, the basic fact of lack of equality doesn’t translate to dissatisfaction, but there is yet more data—again, from surveys—suggesting that this lack of equality is a source of unhappiness and tension for women.11 Indeed, we certainly see a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that women resent the idea of a “second shift,” and that it crowds out leisure time, which men end up with more of. Indeed, there are whole books written on this dynamic and the problems it creates.12

  So chores are one problem. What about lack of sex?

  Again, it is well documented that parents have less sex.13 This is especially true in the first months or year after childbirth, but generally, data shows that couples have less sex after they have children than before. It is easy to see why this might be—less time, more exhaustion, other people (i.e., the children) in your bed.

  As with household-work time, the fact that this is true isn’t necessarily a problem. If both partners want to have sex less frequently, then this change may be fine. This doesn’t seem to be the case for many couples, but we do not have a lot of systematic data beyond anecdote. Certainly, anecdotes would suggest that people on both sides of the relationship, although more men than women, would like to have more sex, and find the reduction in sex frequency to be difficult for the relationship.

  Although it may be surprising, there is speculation (at least on the internet) that these sources of unhappiness are linked. If men do more chores, do you have more sex?

  You may be surprised to learn that there is robust, if not especially good, academic literature on this relationship. In fact, the effects go both ways. Some studies suggest that if men do more chores, the couple has less sex. Some suggest the opposite—that the couple has more sex.14 Generally, these findings come from surveys in which people are asked about what share of chores they do and about the frequency with which they have sex.

  Theories for why these links would occur abound. On the “more chores, less sex” side, people argue that seeing a man wash the dishes is emasculating and a turnoff for women. On the “more chores, more sex” side, people argue that seeing a man wash the dishes is a turn-on—plus, if men do more work, it frees up more time for women, meaning more time for sex!

  In fact, I think a much better theory is that these are not causally linked in either direction, and research that finds a link is confused by missing variables. People in happier marriages probably have more sex, but also may share chores more equally. This would lead to a positive sex–chore relationship, but it’s really just marital happiness overall. On the other hand, when both people work, they may have less sex because they have less time, but they also may share chores more equally. This would lead to a negative sex–chore relationship, but it’s really just about working.

  Since these biases go in both directions, it’s virtually impossible to learn anything.

  It may be good to get your spouse to do the dishes, but the value of that is that the dishes get done, not that you’re going to be inspired to start ripping their clothes off in a haze of soap suds and flying plates.

  SOLUTIONS

  It’s all well and good to say the data says kids ruin your marriage. But are there solutions other than waiting until you have grandchildren to be happy again?

  Although it is not a solution, it is worth noting that couples who are happier in their marriage before kids and who planned their pregnancies tend to have smaller declines and faster rebounds in their happiness.

  The second thing to say is that, as is a common refrain in this book, sleep is a key issue.15 Drops in marital satisfaction are higher in couples with kids who sleep less. Lack of parental sleep contributes to depression (in both parents) and correspondingly to less-happy marriages. You need sleep to function, and sleep deprivation affects your mood. If you are cranky, you’re cranky with your partner. If they are also tired, they are also cranky. Cranky, cranky, sad, angry.

  Can you fix this? It’s hard early on, but see the earlier chapter on sleep training as one solution. Even if this particular approach isn’t for you, thinking carefully about ways you might improve the adult sleep in the house is worth some time.

  Beyond the role of sleep—and pushing out of infancy—we do not have a lot of evidence on what works to improve marriages. Indeed, if I had better evidence on that, I could write another book on it.

  Some small-scale randomized interventions do show some effectiveness. One is the “marriage checkup.”16 The idea behind this is to have an annual meeting—possibly facilitated by some professional—to actually discuss your marriage. What do you feel is working? What isn’t working? Are there particular areas of concern or unhappiness? These checkups seem to result in improvements in intimacy (i.e., sex) and marital satisfaction. This makes sense in the abstract; it’s helpful to talk things through methodically with a neutral third
party.

  Beyond this particular intervention, there is other evidence in favor of therapy more generally—group couples therapy, counseling programs beginning before birth and continuing after—to improve relationships.17 Speaking in broad generalizations, these focus on communication and positive solutions to conflict.

  Part of the reason these work may simply be that they force both people in the household to reflect on what the other person is doing for the family. You can see the things you are doing clearly, and you probably have some sense of what your partner does, but you do not always see it so obviously.

  One of Jesse’s jobs in our house is taking out the trash—both collecting and taking it from the house and, especially, taking it to the curb on Mondays. I had always thought of this as a relatively simple task that didn’t deserve much credit. Then one day he was gone on a Monday, and he sent me this email.

  From: Jesse

  To: Emily

  Subject: Trash Instructions

  Taking trash out

  Tie up bin liner in trash

  Roll trash out to street, make sure to leave room for recycling

  Roll recycling out to street

  Make sure there is room between the two bins so they can lift them separately