Bringing Up Baby

Ed Ayers: One of the big changes of our time has been the way in which Americans bring up our children. In little more than a century, the American child has gone from being seen and not heard, barely tolerated in some instances, to being listened to, cherished, and placed right at the center of 21st century family life.

Joanne Freeman: Much of that seat change is down to one man, pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose bestselling series of parenting books transformed the way generations of Americans potty trained, fed, and burped their little ones.

Brian Balogh: In a new segment for Back Story, Spock’s biographer argues that the publication day of one of America’s most successful parenting manuals is a day that changed America.

Speaker 10: Dr. Benjamin Spock from the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care:
“Soon, you’re going to have a baby. Maybe you have one already. You’re happy and excited, but if you haven’t had much experience, you wonder whether you are going to know how to do a good job. Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

Thomas Maier: I’m Thomas Maier, and for me, the day that changed America was July 14th, 1946: the day that the first edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care appeared in book stores. It was a book devoted to child rearing, and it revolutionized the way that families would raise their children.
Dr. Spock’s book arrived right at the end of World War II, as World War II was finished, and a lot of GIs were coming home looking to start families, and looking to Dr. Spock’s book as a guide to how best to raise their children. This was the beginning of America’s suburbs. A lot of people moved out of the cities out to suburban homes, and they were starting families. So Spock’s book was almost like a guide or map. Virtually any type of question that you would have, that book had some practical advice for, but it also provided an emotional framework for raising children.

Speaker 10: “Don’t be afraid of your baby.”

Speaker 12: Mama! Moo.

Thomas Maier: Parents before Dr. Spock came along relied on child rearing advice that was much stricter, and it was much also emotionally cooler. It was more what they called behaviorist. A strict set of rules would be employed, and a lot of it was based upon religious views, that if you spare the rod, you spoil the child.

Speaker 10: “All parents expect to influence their children, but many are surprised to find it’s a two way street, and they learn from their parenting, and their children. In other words, parenting is an enormously influential developmental step for adults in their own lives.”

Thomas Maier: The first line of Spock’s book is “You know more than you think you do,” and that was a line that was terribly reassuring to parents. That was something that was the perceived wisdom that Spock had had as a pediatrician, but also as somebody who had been trained in Freudian psychology as well. And so I don’t think American had any idea how much this famous baby book that sounded like it was the perceived wisdom of a country doctor was actually the translation of Freud’s theories of infantile sexuality.

Speaker 10: “If a boy around the age of three sees a girl undressed, he’s apt to say, ‘Where is her wee wee?’ If he doesn’t receive a satisfactory answer right away, he may come to the conclusion that some accident has happened to her. Next comes the anxious thought ‘That might happen to me, too.'”

Brian Balogh: But it wasn’t sex, rather war that got Spock into trouble. Specifically, protests about the Vietnam war, which turned the wholesome family pediatrician into a political activist, and eventually, a prisoner.

Dr. Benjamin S.: I was just trying to stop the war in Vietnam by telling the American people work against it. Tell the president, tell your senators, tell your congressmen. We were tried, we were convicted, we were sentenced to two years in jail. Fortunately, a year later, the Federal Court of Appeals reversed the decision, so I didn’t have to serve any time on that rap, though I did, for the first time in my life, experience the inside of a jail. I spent a night in jail six or eight times as a result of civil disobedient demonstrations.

Thomas Maier: He had raised a whole generation of children, and he was not going to stand idly by while so many of this generation was being killed in what he considered to be a foolhardy war.
So I think what’s really interesting to see by today’s standards is how much Spock put on the line. The sales of his baby book suffered considerably. I think went down by about a third, but he did it all for the sense of principle, and it was something that I think is quite admirable when you look back on it.
Spock’s book had a number of different editions, and his book was kind of a living document. It was something that changed as America changed, and it did reflect some of the changes in America with each different edition.
When he got married to his second wife, Mary Morgan, she was very much of that hippie type of culture. Vegan diets, and I think his book became more and more progressive. Some might say politically correct.

Speaker 10: “Is gun play good or bad for children? For many years, I emphasized its harmlessness, but nowadays, I’d give parents much more encouragement in their inclination to guide their children away from violence. Americans have often been tolerant of harshness, lawlessness, and violence. We were ruthless in dealing with the Indians. I believe that the survival of the world now depends on a much greater awareness of the need to avoid war.”

Thomas Maier: Of course, his approach at home was different than the advice that he was actually giving to America. He felt that he was repeating kind of the strict, emotionally cool disciplinarian approach of his parents, and he carried it onto his two sons. And later on in life, he became aware of this dichotomy, and realized how difficult it can be for parents to be more emotionally responsive to their children. Particularly, if you grew up in a strict household, that it was a dramatic, revolutionary change to treat children more amiably with a balance of discipline and love.
When we look at America, Spock’s book is a really good example, emblematic of the American spirit of that time. That can-do type of approach. It was a time of abundance. It was a time of great optimism, and Dr. Spock’s book really reflects all of that optimism. The optimism of new parents starting a new family.

Joanne Freeman: Thomas Maier is the author of Dr. Spock: An American Life.