Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know

Emily Oster’s background as an economist specializing in health data lends strong credibility to Expecting Better. A professor of economics at Brown University, Oster has built her academic career on using empirical methods to analyze real-world health behaviors, decision-making, and risk assessment. Her peer-reviewed research has appeared in top-tier journals such as The Journal of Political Economy and The New England Journal of Medicine, and she has been recognized for her ability to distill complex statistical findings into clear, accessible conclusions. Expecting Better, her first book for a mass audience, emerged from her personal experience during pregnancy, when she grew frustrated with vague medical guidelines and decided to investigate the data behind them.

Oster’s authorial voice blends statistical rigor with practical reasoning, a style she continues in her later works, Cribsheet (on early childhood) and The Family Firm (on parenting school-age children), which expand her data-driven approach to parenting decisions. While her expertise in economics means that she writes as a data analyst rather than a clinician, this outsider perspective is precisely what gives her work its distinct value. She encourages readers to ask, “What is the evidence?” rather than rely on default advice, though her framework largely reflects the experience of educated families with access to resources and therefore may not fully address systemic disparities.