A good friend of mine that’s a bit slow on the life train recently told me that he and his wife are expecting their first child. Usually I’m the one that’s a little slow to these things, so it made me reflect as the last train car may do before giving advice to the caboose.

Almost all parenting advice is total crap

Parenting is high stakes and extremely personal. There is no way to avoid having an immense amount of impact on your children, and it’s probably the most impact you will have in the world in your life.

This causes everybody to go insane. Everybody wants to see you succeed, but, unfortunately, nobody has figured out the formula yet.

• Most people extrapolate off of way too few data points (ie their own kids)
• Most “studies” are poorly designed and don’t properly account for externalities. This includes meta studies which just average the garbage in to give you average garbage out.
• Most traditions are arbitrary. If you dig deep enough, most of the parenting traditions passed down through the generations have no clear origin, but the kids aren’t too bad off so it keeps on going.

FWIW this point applies to this post as well. It’s bad advice all the way down, folks.

Most advice isn’t actively harmful

Since high quality studies are very challenging to conduct, most parenting knowledge is basically superstition. Kids are resilient though… most stuff won’t mess them up too bad.

So, try what seems right. It helps to have an exit strategy… how long are you going to give this experiment, and how will you decide if it’s working or not?

Emily Oster is the one true Parent

There is one consistent voice and and advocate for rational parental decision making, and it’s Emily Oster.

This doesn’t mean she has all the answers. She makes a strong case for things that are found in the data, she does a great job of helping parents learn how to think about data, and when the data doesn’t have a clear perspective, she just goes with her gut just like everybody else.

The outsized effects on kids’ wellbeing is time and money

Even with high quality studies that show positive outcomes for children, the effects are almost always smaller than making enough money to give your children a happy, dynamic, stress-free childhood and spending time with them. So focus on those things before you stress about the latest baby-led feeding trend.

Nobody poops their pants in college

Most techniques for accelerating children’s development is for the parents, not for the kids. The kids are going to figure it out eventually. It just sucks to change poopy diapers for years on end. Don’t worry about your kid not getting it… they will someday.

It’s nbd, but your free time is over

Bask in this time before the kids arrive. It is the ultimate luxury. To wake up, sniff the air, check the vibes, and do something that matches how you feel will soon be a thing of the past.

It’s not that big of a deal, you’ll get used to it. You’re not using that time all that wisely anyway.

When people say “parenting is hard” they typically mean two things (at the same time):

• They are tired
• The kid isn’t doing what the parent expects for the amount of effort that the parent is putting in.

It’s just life after having a kid, and you can either wish the journey was different (eg “it’s hard”), or you can accept that your time is gone and you’re tired and the kid isn’t doing what you want.

It’s about the journey, after all.

If I find more of that precious free time, perhaps I’ll post a less meta grab bag of things that have worked for me (and probably won’t for you).

Good luck!