Prenatal testing is a complicated decision for many women, forcing us to confront concerns about a disabled child and risks of miscarriage.
The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information - the data - and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses. As an economist, I do this every day.
For many women - myself included - pregnancy brings on tremendous anxiety and confusion, along with the joy.
The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows.
There is some risk to increase birth defects if you do a lot of outdoor gardening when you are pregnant. That can increase rates of toxoplasmosis.
The most active period of the witchcraft trials coincides with a period of lower than average temperature known to climatologists as the "little ice age"...In a time period when the reasons for changes in weather were largely a mystery, people would have searched for a scapegoat in the face of deadly changes in weather patterns. 'Witches' became target for blame because there was an existing cultural framework that both allowed their persecution and suggested that they could control the weather.
Good household decision-making often relies on thinking about your household like a firm.
Economists typically think that your happiness goes up as you get more money, but the more you have, the less each additional dollar matters. This means that you value money most in times when you have less income and more expenses.
In short, humans are programmed to get bored.
Education campaigns ... may not be enough, at least not alone. If people have no incentive to avoid AIDS on their own, even if they know everything about the disease, they still may not change their behavior.
Talking to women about birth can be polarizing.
Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exactly half the time.
As people do a task, they improve at it.
Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximise your happiness.
All's fair in love and purchasing.
One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.
I think we've moved to thinking of parenting and pregnancy as something in which you should lose yourself.
Being pregnant was a lot like being a child again. There was always someone telling you what to do.
