The Family Firm
A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years
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3.8 • 12 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The instant New York Times bestseller!
“Emily Oster dives into the data on parenting issues, cuts through the clutter, and gives families the bottom line to help them make better decisions.” –Good Morning America
“A targeted mini-MBA program designed to help moms and dads establish best practices for day-to-day operations." -The Washington Post
From the bestselling author of Expecting Better, Cribsheet, and The Family Firm, the next step in data driven parenting from economist Emily Oster.
In The Family Firm, Brown professor of economics and mom of two Emily Oster offers a classic business school framework for data-driven parents to think more deliberately about the key issues of the elementary years: school, health, extracurricular activities, and more.
Unlike the hourly challenges of infant parenting, the big questions in this age come up less frequently. But we live with the consequences of our decisions for much longer. What's the right kind of school and at what age should a particular kid start? How do you encourage a healthy diet? Should kids play a sport and how seriously? How do you think smartly about encouraging children's independence? Along with these bigger questions, Oster investigates how to navigate the complexity of day-to-day family logistics.
Making these decisions is less about finding the specific answer and more about taking the right approach. Parents of this age are often still working in baby mode, which is to say, under stress and on the fly. That is a classic management problem, and Oster takes a page from her time as a business school professor at the University of Chicago to show us that thoughtful business process can help smooth out tough family decisions.
The Family Firm is a smart and winning guide to how to think clearly--and with less ambient stress--about the key decisions of the elementary school years.
Parenting is a full-time job. It's time we start treating it like one.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Economics professor Oster (Cribsheet) offers a plethora of rational guidance for parents of kids between pre-K and middle school in this eminently practical guide. Logistics, she writes, are "the hallmark of this period of parenting," and to that end, she applies organizational tools from the business world to family life. Offering charts, graphs, and hard data, Oster covers such topics as the right age to start kindergarten (she discusses "redshirting," in which parents delay their start), public versus private school (consider feasibility above all), and nutrition (with a chart that estimates how different foods will impact a child's body mass index). For big choices, her recommendations come down to her four F's: "Frame the Question, Fact-Find, Final Decision, and Follow-Up." While Oster's methods aren't for everyone—in one anecdote, she uses Google Calendar to schedule a meeting with her eight-year-old daughter about her school schedule, presenting "an agenda and draft schedule in advance"—those who persevere are likely to find the structure to be a useful framework. Business-minded parents willing to stick with the no-kidding-around approach will find this a handy resource for the preteen years.
Customer Reviews
Great book
Love Prof Oster and her framework and data driven approach to parental decision making