Benjamin McLane Spock (1903–98,) byname Dr. Spock, was an American pediatrician and author. His books on child-rearing, particularly Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, influenced generations of parents.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Spock studied at Yale and Columbia. At Yale, he was a star oarsman and won a gold medal for rowing in the 1924 Paris Olympics.) He trained in both pediatrics and psychiatry and started a practice in New York City in 1933.
Spock’s seminal book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) transformed the attitudes to postwar Americans’ parenthood. The book challenged the stern and repressive traditional ideas in child-rearing in favor of a psychological approach and made his name a household word. Baby and Child Care sold over 50 million copies worldwide and was translated into 39 languages during his lifetime. Later works include A Better World for Our Children (1994.)
Spock was also an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and published Dr. Spock on Vietnam (1968) and Decent and Indecent: Our Personal Political Behavior (1970.) He helped establish the pacifist People’s Party and ran as its presidential candidate in 1972 and the vice-presidency in 1976.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Benjamin Spock
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
—Benjamin Spock
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
—Benjamin Spock
The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Parents
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Happiness
The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Children
I would say that the surest measure of a man’s or a woman’s maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Maturity, Harmony
There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its mother’s age.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Children
A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Satisfaction
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
—Benjamin Spock
Topics: Knowledge, Trust, Intuition
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