Almanac of Story Tellers: Benjamin Spock

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of  May 2nd

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    It is the 122nd day of the year, leaving 243 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1903, the pediatrician and author of numerous child-care books, Benjamin Spock, was born in New Haven, Conn.

    Spock single-handedly changed how stories were told between parents and their children. His first and most famous book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, radically altered how American parents raised their kids.

    For instance, in the time before Spock, pediatricians told parents their children should be seen and not heard. They should be on a rigid feeding schedule. Parents should not pick up their children when they cry, lest they learn to cry more often. And hugging and kissing and snuggling with one's child had been discouraged; Spock inspired more of it.

 

  Children should be heard and treated as individuals, Spock wrote. He said parents should be flexible and understanding.

    His treatise hit home with generations of World War II veterans who were raising the children of the Baby Boom. But critics roared that Spock and the parents who followed his advice were raising a nation of spoiled brats. Indeed, some even said Spock was responsible for the hippies, the anti-war protests, and the changing culture of the 1960s.

    Spock, in fact, joined the protests himself. As he aged, he grew increasingly liberal. He once was charged and convicted of counseling people to avoid the draft. (The conviction was overturned.) In 1972, Spock ran for president as the candidate of the pacifist People's Party.

    Spock gradutated  Columbia University's medical school in 1929. He was a practicing pediatrian in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, while he was also a professor at the Cornell University medical school. He published his first book in 1946.

    Afterward, he wrote several other books on child care, including Dr. Spock Talks With Mothers, and Raising Children in a Difficult Time. He also wrote a memoir, edited by his second wife, Spock on Spock: Growing Up With the Century.

    Spock died in 1998 in San Diego.