Data for the people: Emily Oster in the NY Times

The NY Times writes about Emily Oster, who has pioneered a new way for an economist to be a public intellectual, by bringing to a general audience her skills at assembling and interpreting data on a wide variety of subjects, including parenting (is it ok to drink a glass of wine while pregnant?) and the Covid pandemic (how to decide when schools should reopen?)

She Fought to Reopen Schools, Becoming a Hero and a Villain. The economist Emily Oster offers loads of data-driven advice about children and Covid-19. Many parents live by her words. Others say she’s dangerous. By Dana Goldstein

"This steady stream of counterintuitive advice has made Dr. Oster a lodestar for a certain set of parents, generally college-educated, liberal and affluent. Many had first latched onto her data-driven child-rearing books. Her popularity grew during the pandemic, as she collected case counts of Covid-19 in schools and advanced her own strongly held views on the importance of returning to in-person learning.

"Some parents said, half-seriously, “Emily Oster is my C.D.C.”

"But others — teachers, epidemiologists and labor activists — criticized her, pointing out that she was not an infectious disease expert, nor did she have any deep personal or professional experience with public education. "

Parents in Dutch surrogacy (proposal: as many as four...)

An English language idiom refers to "Dutch uncles," but now there is something new in Dutch parentage, aimed at regularizing parental rights in surrogacy.

Here's the story from a blog for expatriate residents of the Netherlands:

Agreement reached: Dutch children can have four parents

"According to RTL Nieuws, which viewed a draft letter to parliament, the coalition parties have finally reached an agreement, after months of negotiations, on surrogacy and how to arrange custody for families that have more than two parents. The Council of Ministers will discuss the proposal on Friday.

Four parents possible in the Netherlands

Soon, Dutch children will be allowed to have four legally recognised parents. However, not all parents will be afforded the same rights. Non-biological parents will only be granted “partial custody”, meaning that they have more input than at present and can, for example, attend the child’s doctor’s appointments and be involved in choosing the school the child will go to, amongst other things. But should the official parents (the biological ones) die, the child will still become an orphan.

...

"At this moment in time, if a child is born via surrogacy, a judge determines who the parents are after birth. The government wants the parents to be registered before birth in the future. Before conception, agreements will need to be made, which will then be looked at by a judge to decide whether all conditions for surrogacy are met. One of these being that the surrogate mother and at least one of the to-be parents have the Dutch nationality and live in the Netherlands.

Moreover, a surrogacy register will be introduced to enable children born from surrogacy to find out whom their biological parents are, as their birth certificate will only contain the names of the “adoptive” parents. The surrogate mother is also allowed to terminate the surrogacy agreement via a judge up until the birth and shortly thereafter.

Commercial surrogacy in the Netherlands is illegal. Providing surrogate mothers with extra compensation on top of compensation for actual incurred costs is punishable. This measure has been taken to prevent “child-buying”.

Ontario's new surrogacy law (and other laws regarding who is the parent of a child)

In Canada, Ontario has just (last month) amended some of its laws regarding the definitions of who are the parents of a child, with implications for surrogacy, among other things.
Bill 28 Projet de loi 28
An Act to amend the
Children’s Law Reform Act,
the Vital Statistics Act
and various other Acts
respecting parentage and
related registrations

Here's the part on surrogacy, which seems to imply that surrogacy in Canada will be subject to legal risk about who the parents are until the child is seven days old.

"7. Where a surrogate and one or more intended parents of
a child to be carried by the surrogate enter into a surrogacy
agreement and a child contemplated by the
agreement is born, the intended parents become the
parents of the child and the surrogate ceases to be a
parent of the child if specified conditions are met.
These conditions include that there are no more than
four intended parents under the agreement, that each of
the parties to the agreement received independent legal
advice before signing, and that the child is conceived
through assisted reproduction. The change in parentage
is also contingent on the surrogate giving written consent
relinquishing the surrogate’s entitlement to parentage
of the child, but the consent may not be given
before the child is seven days old. Until that time, after
the child is born the surrogate and the intended parents
share parental rights and responsibilities respecting the
child, unless the surrogacy agreement provides otherwise.
If the surrogate does not or cannot give consent,
an application may be made to the court for a declaration
of parentage respecting the child. Although a surrogacy
agreement may be used as evidence of parental
intent, it is unenforceable in law. (Section 10)"
**********

Here is some commentary on that and other parts of the law, from the blog Above the Law:
Ontario’s New Surrogacy And Sperm Donation Law Is Both Awesome And Terrible

Father's day

Father's Day is a great academic holiday, if you think of academics as being concerned not just with ideas and institutions, but with their whole history and earliest conception. Other kinds of coauthors sometimes have difficulty figuring out who did what. But my wife agrees that my contributions were seminal. She was the biggest contributor in the subsequent, germinal stages. The division of labor has been less clear in the happy, fast decades since.

Happy Fathers' Day to all you fathers and children out there.