Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting [Hardcover]

Joshua Gans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2009

What every parent needs to know about negotiating, incentives, outsourcing, and other strategies to solve the economic management problem that is parenting.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A delightful read that shows how being a parent changed one economist, and how being an economist provided insight on being a parent. Now if only I could get my two-year-old to eat her peas." Susan Athey, Harvard University, winner of 2007 John Bates Clark Medal

Like any new parent, Joshua Gans felt joy mixed with anxiety upon the birth of his first child. Who was this blanket-swaddled small person and what did she want? Unlike most parents, however, Gans is an economist, and he began to apply the tools of his trade to raising his children. He saw his new life as one big economic management problem-- and if economics helped him think about parenting, parenting illuminated certain economic principles. Parentonomics is the entertaining, enlightening, and often hilarious fruit of his "research." Incentives, Gans shows us, are as risky in parenting as in business. An older sister who is recruited to help toilet train her younger brother for a share in the reward given for each successful visit to the bathroom, for example, could give the trainee drinks of water to make the rewards more frequent. (Economics later offered another, better toilet training solution: outsourcing. For their third child, Gans and his wife put it in the hands of professionals--the day care providers.) Gans gives us the parentonomic view of delivery (if the mother shares her pain by yelling at the father, doesn't it really create more aggregate pain?), sleep (the screams of a baby are like an offer: "I'll stop screaming if you give me attention"), food (a question of marketing), travel ("the best thing you can say about traveling with children is that they are worse than baggage"), punishment (and threat credibility), birthday party time management, and more. Parents: if you're reading Parentonomics in the presence of other people, you'll be unable to keep yourself from reading the funny parts out loud. And if you're reading it late at night and wake a child with your laughter--well, you'll have some guidelines for negotiating a return to bed.

About the Author

"Dr. Spock meets Freakonomics. Parenting will never be the same. Forget about inflation and unemployment. Here Gans uses economics and game theory to tackle really important topics, such as toilet training and fussy eaters. Parentonomics lays bare what most sleep-deprived parents only dream about. Gans may not help you become a better parent, but he will help you to stay one step ahead of your kids." Barry Nalebuff , Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School of Management, coauthor of Co-Opetition

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (January 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262012782
• ISBN-13: 978-0262012782
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #592,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not enough Economics or Parenting for my taste, but an amusing read, March 9, 2009

By 

Matthew T. Weflen "Matthew Weflen" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

When a book is titled "Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting", what should a consumer reasonably expect from a book for their $23 (list price)?

I am not yet a parent, but may be taking that plunge soon. So I was looking for a primer. Not easy answers, but a fresh take on looking at the problems of parenting. I suppose I got this from the book in some respects, but I was still left wanting.

My main beef is that when the author uses an economic term, such as game theory, option value, or the like, I expected a bit more in the way of a definition of the term and an explanation of how it works, so that I could compare it to the specific parenting anecdote in the way that Gans (presumably) does himself. Instead, he rushes past the "learning" moment for the reader and gets back to whatever story of poopy diapers or sharing toys he had started. This may make for an amusing and quick read, but after I had finished the book (in about 4 hours - it is not the densest 200 pages you'll come across) I had felt like I had not really learned anything. I had enjoyed my time with Gans and his kids, and I may have seen some evidence of his differing take on parenting, but I was not made to understand the mechanics of that different view in any meaningful way.

In the end, this book reads either like a blog (I gather this was the genesis of much of the material) or like a sort of less-funny Dave Barry column (a comparison that Gans invites in the text). Do I like blogs? Sure, if they're well written. Do I like Dave Barry? Certainly. But were these the things that I wanted from a book called "Parentonomics?" Not really.

In the end, this book is not worth its list price in my opinion. There is plenty of material online which approximates its value, while charging either nothing or merely placing ads on the screen. In paying for a book like this, I would want something expert and which can't be replicated by anyone but the author - a layperson's guide to economic concepts, and their application to problems of parenting. Instead, I got something like the "making of" or the "deleted scenes" from such a production. Amusing, perhaps. But intellectually nourishing, no.

This book is all sizzle, no steak. I give it three stars for being an enjoyable read, but cannot give it five stars since it did not meet my expectations for the purpose of the book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, Informative, & Painless, February 28, 2009

By 

Dr. Peter H. Huang "lawprof" (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting (Hardcover)

I started this book as bedtime reading Friday night & finished it Saturday afternoon. I'm not a parent, but an uncle who learned much from it & was LOL at numerous times. His Child #1 is very much like my niece. I'm a law professor who has a background in economics also. I'll require this book in Business Basics for Lawyers next academic year because of it's being a great, fun introduction to incentives, strategic thinking, externalities, agency problems, public goods, optimal punishment, real option value, property rights, reputation, & credible threats among other fundamental notions in microeconomics. There's even some macroeconomics in a discussion of structural versus frictional messes. Any aunt, parent, or uncle will find much insight & humor in this book's vignettes. Anyone that has taken economics will also find many familiar ideas & concepts. But what is best about Parentonomics are the universal stories that every human being can relate to, having been a former child.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mostly entertaining memoir with occasional universal insight, March 20, 2009

By 

A. Reid (NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I love to read books that present subjects with which I'm familiar (i.e. parenting) from perspectives with which I'm not (i.e. economics, aside from Macroeconomics 101). Because of that, I was eagerly looking forward to receiving and reading this book. I found the experience overall satisfactory, but the insights were not quite as striking or universal as I would have liked. The book, I think would be much better served by fewer professional reviewers implying it's some kind of parenting manual. It's not. Gans himself does not pretend it is. It isn't an economist's take on parenting as much as it is an economist's take on his own parenting, with a few generally applicable ideas.

Take it as memoir rather than a manual, and it's a fun read. Gans has an easy, conversational tone that works well with his topic. You get a sense of him and his family as people--particularly his children, whom he presents insightfully. The book is often amusing, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, once in a while slightly preachy...for the most part, it was a pleasure, but of a modest sort. It's not a bad way to pass a few hours, but it's not a particularly compelling one (to my own experience), either.