“Respect children because they’re human beings and they deserve respect, and they’ll grow up to be better people,” Dr. Benjamin Spock advised Americans in his Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. “ Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity. Without creativity, there is no life.” First published in June 1946, on the front end of the baby boom, Spock’s Baby and Child Care sold 4 million copies by the time Dwight Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, and annual sales remained over one million for eighteen straight years. When the first of the baby boomers reached thirty-years old themselves during the bicentennial year of 1976, Spock’s virtual bible of parenting had sold 28 million copies over fifty-eight printings and several editions, making it America’s second best-selling book in the 20th century behind only that actual sacred text.
So, grab a Pepsi all you Spock babies. I’m Joel Rhodes “Telling History.”
In writing what is effectively the owner’s manual for baby boom children, the Yale and Columbia educated pediatrician followed in the psychological, educational, and anthropological traditions of Freud, John Dewey, and Margaret Mead which were already driving long-term liberalizing trends in child-rearing practices. But the real genius of Benjamin Spock rests in his ability to translate the developmental language of the Freudian into a chatty and constantly reassuring guide that any new parent could understand. Essentially, from the simple encouragement which opens the book – “Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do” – Spock inspired postwar parents to have faith in their instincts and love their babies. With gentle good humor, and not a little irony, he presented a compassionate case against the parental detachment and inflexible regimentation handed down from the Victorian era. Old-fashioned parents who remained emotionally distant disciplinarians, imposing strict scheduling, ignoring infant crying, and generally refraining from rocking, tickling, or playing were bound to raise, as Spock warned, “fussy finicky people – the kind who’s afraid to enjoy himself or try anything new….” Real liabilities in the Cold War’s competitive atmosphere.
Instead, Spock revolutionized parenting by recommending a more permissive approach. Baby and Child Care instructed parents to worry less about spoiling them and instead rely on common sense informed by their unique relationship with the child to determine such things as feeding times (when they’re hungry), at what age to potty train (once they’re ready), or how to discipline (without physical punishment). Moreover, Spock advocated a kinder, gentler style which broke down the psychic distance between parent and child, allowing moms and dads to be affectionate and fully vested in the lives of their children. By holding crying babies and engaging them in conversation and play, parents could get to know their kids as the reasonable, friendly little human beings they were.
Compared to the authoritarian methods, the more attentive and hands-on care of “Spock babies” actually required unprecedented investments of time, thought, diligence – and hugging – especially for mothers, in order to relentlessly monitor and nurture your child’s development. This more labor-intensive parental commitment to the baby boomers lent the 1950s family its distinctive “child-centered” quality.
And, moreover, in the Cold War’s grander scheme, Spock’s promise of generations reared to instinctively neither submit to authority, nor dominate others, would ultimately buttress a cooperative, consensus-oriented, and more stable America.
