Benjamin Spock, World's Pediatrician, Dies at 94 Benjamin Spock, World's Pediatrician, Dies at 94 By ERIC PACE Dr. Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician who gently coached anxious postwar parents to trust their ''own common sense,'' only to be blamed by some critics for the self-indulgence of those parents' children, the 60's generation, died on Sunday at his home in San Diego. He was 94. Over half a century, Dr. Spock's homey handbook on child care, now titled ''Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care,'' became one of the best sellers of all time. Therese Zazycki, a spokeswoman for Pocket Books, its main publisher, said yesterday that almost 50 million copies have been sold around the world, translated into 42 languages. Dr. Spock also became well known as an antiwar demonstrator in the 1960's, as he campaigned for nuclear disarmament and against the war in Vietnam and was arrested in protest demonstrations. ''There's no point in raising children if they're going to be burned alive,'' was how he made the connection between parents, pediatricians and politics.

Dr. Spock had already broken with authority in his child-rearing handbook, which he saw as giving ''practical application'' to the ideas propounded by two early 20th-century sages, Sigmund Freud and John Dewey, the American philosopher and educator. ''John Dewey and Freud said that kids don't have to be disciplined into adulthood but can direct themselves toward adulthood by following their own will,'' he observed in 1972. And so in the opening chapter of the book, first published in hardcover in 1946 with the title ''The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,'' Dr. Spock counseled his readers not to ''take too seriously all that the neighbors say.'' ''Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense,'' he wrote. ''What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best.'' Such relaxed advice, given in the easy, practical, reassuring way that he had with parents, was light-years from the stern dictums of earlier standard works, like the 1928 book ''Psychological Care of Infant and Child'' by Dr. John B. Watson. ''Never, never kiss your child,'' Dr. Watson commanded.

''Never hold it in your lap. Never rock its carriage.'' Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of the Harvard Medical School, another noted pediatrician-author, once said of Dr. Spock: ''Before he came along, advice to parents was very didactic. He opened the whole area of empowered parenting. He gave parents choices and encouraged them to think things out for themselves.'' Dr. Spock repeatedly revised his own book over the years, and, for the fifth and sixth editions, which appeared in 1985 and 1992 respectively, he had a co-author: Dr. Michael B. Rothenberg, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Washington's medical school. Dr. Spock said in an interview in early 1992, when he was 88, that he planned to stay involved in updating the book ''as long as I live.'' Ms. Zazycki of Pocket Books said that, as scheduled, the seventh edition of the book will be published, in mass market paperback and trade paperback versions, on May 2, which would have been the doctor's 95th birthday.

Tracey Guest, a spokeswoman for the publishing house Dutton, said yesterday that Dutton will publish a hard-cover version of the seventh edition of Dr. Spock's book on July 1. That new edition is by Dr. Spock and a new co-author, Dr. Steven J. Parker, who is a Boston pediatrician. He was the lead author of a study, published in 1992 in the journal Pediatrics, which found that women with one aspect of the Type A personality -- loosely identified as a hard-driving nature -- tend to have babies who exhibit Type A temperaments. Dr. Spock's literary agent, Robert Lescher, said late in 1997 that Dr. Spock was ''very deeply involved'' in preparing the seventh edition. Altogether, the doctor was the author or a co-author of 13 books. He was also a prolific author of magazine columns for more than 30 years. He wrote columns about raising children for Redbook and Ladies Home Journal and, more recently, for Parenting magazine. From Pediatrics To Politics In the 1960's and 1970's, Dr.

Spock's views on child-rearing were sometimes blamed for the disorderliness of young people, many of whose parents had been devotees of his book. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew blamed the doctor for what Mr. Agnew called the undue permissiveness abroad in the land. It was in the 1960's that Dr. Spock became an antiwar activist and opponent of the draft, nuclear armaments and the United States's involvement in Vietnam. He was a co-chairman of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, known as SANE, from 1962 to 1967. He also underwent what he called a ''conversion to socialism.'' The doctor was arrested at various protest demonstrations. In 1968 a Boston court convicted him of conspiring to counsel evasion of the draft. He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $5,000, but the conviction was reversed in 1969 by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on the ground of insufficient evidence. In 1972 Dr. Spock was the Presidential candidate of the People's Party, a coalition of left-wing organizations.

His platform called for free medical care, the legalization of abortion and marijuana, a guaranteed minimum income for families and the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from foreign countries. In 1976 he was the party's candidate for Vice President, and in the late 1970's he was also prominent in anti-nuclear demonstrations. By the time he turned 80, in 1985, he had been arrested a dozen times for civil disobedience, but he did not stop. In 1987, he and others were arrested and charged with trespassing after demonstrating at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station against the test launching of a Trident 2 missile. The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of ''The Power of Positive Thinking'' and a critic of Dr. Spock, saw it differently. He said the doctor had gone ''out in the streets with these babies raised according to his books, demonstrating with them for things they claim we should not deny them.'' Dr. Peale said the doctor's views amounted to: ''Feed 'em whenever they want, never let them cry, satisfy their every desire.'' Spock Interprets Spock on Babies Dr. Spock said that Dr.

Peale, Mr. Agnew and other critics had distorted what he had written. ''I didn't want to encourage permissiveness, but rather to relax rigidity,'' he once observed. ''Every once in a while, somebody would say to me, 'There's a perfectly horrible child down the block whose mother tells everybody that he's being brought up entirely by your book.' But my own children were raised strictly, to be polite and considerate. I guess people read into the book what they wanted to.'' On another occasion, striking a different note, he said: ''Maybe my book helped a generation not to be intimidated by adulthood. When I was young, I was always made to assume that I was wrong. Now young people think they might be right and stand up to authority.'' The doctor's own political activism deterred some people from buying his book. In an interview in 1992, he reported: ''The sale of the book was depressed a great deal during the Vietnam period. It has gradually crept back up.'' And Dr. Edward F.

Zigler, a child psychologist on the Yale University faculty, said in the same year that there were still ''people today who mistrust his book because of his position on social issues.'' Dr. Spock also came in for criticism from the women's movement. He was denounced for what were called sexist passages in his writing, one of which objected to women ''acting more and more like men.'' Gloria Steinem once told him that she hoped he understood that he was considered a symbol of repression, like Freud and other male supremacists. In 1971, noting the feminist criticism, he wrote: ''I agree today that a man has no business trying to tell women what their characteristics are, which ones are inborn, which are more admirable, which will be best utilized by what occupations.'' In talking about himself, Dr. Spock understandably referred now and then to his own starchy upbringing in New Haven. Once, in the 1960's, he said that in his life he had ''tried hard to rebel, to be pleasure-seeking,'' but that his political dissent had been based on stern moral considerations that his Yankee parents would have approved of.

From Need to Help, An Urge to Doctor Benjamin McLane Spock was born May 2, 1903 in New Haven. He was the eldest of the six children -- four girls and two boys -- of Benjamin Ives Spock, a railroad lawyer who was conservative in his politics, and Mildred Louise Stoughton Spock. The Spocks were descended from early Dutch settlers in the Hudson Valley; the family name was originally Spaak. After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., Dr. Spock entered Yale College, where he majored in English, minored in history and, as he recalled years later, ''gravitated toward medical school without any real decision.'' Six feet 4 inches tall and broad-shouldered, he was, literally and figuratively, a big man on campus, a member of the Yale crew that won in the Paris Olympics in 1924. ''I had an awfully good time at college,'' he recalled years later. He also worked summers in a home for crippled children. ''I guess that's why I became a baby doctor, thinking of those kids,'' he said later. ''My doctoring was always vaguely humanitarian.'' After earning a B.A.

in 1925, he studied at the Yale Medical School from 1925 to 1927, and then transferred to Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and earned his M.D. in 1929, after being at the head of his class at the end of the last two years. He interned at Presbyterian Hospital in New York and was a resident in pediatrics at the New York Nursery and Child's Hospital. ''Sometime during the pediatric residency years (1931-1932)'' Dr. Spock wrote years later, ''I conceived the idea that someone going into pediatrics should have psychological training.'' And so he also spent 10 months as a resident in psychiatry at New York Hospital, and he went on to part-time training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1933 to 1938. A Warm Charmer With Children In 1933 he also opened his pediatric practice and after a couple of lean years it began to flourish. His success was partly the result of his charm, warmth and vitality. ''All the young mothers had a great crush on him,'' a former patient said years later.

''He was a gay and charming man.'' Another reason he did well was that, as the product of a large and happy family, he took great pleasure in being with his little patients. He once said, ''One of my faults as a pediatrician has always been that I whoop it up too much with children.'' His success was also the result in part of his concern for the feelings of his patients and their parents. He wore ordinary business suits, rather than white doctor's coats, to make his visitors feel more relaxed. Describing Dr. Spock's child-side manner, another writer on child care, Dr. Milton Levine, recalled later, ''I used to hear parents and even doctors talk about him as 'the man with the gentle face and eyes.' '' In addition to his private practice, Dr. Spock served, early in his career, as an instructor in pediatrics at Cornell Medical College, an assistant attending pediatrician at New York Hospital and a consultant to the New York City Health Department. He also was the part-time school doctor at the Brearley School on East 83d Street, a private school for girls from kindergarten through the 12th grade. At the school, Lynn Z.

Bloom wrote in her 1972 book, ''Dr. Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical'': ''He realized that the perceptive teachers could see each child in the context of the whole class and so understand her in a way the pediatrician never could. The perspective he gained at Brearley was to be drawn upon at length in his later writings for parents.'' In 1943, ten years after the birth of his first son, Michael, Dr. Spock began three years of writing ''The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.'' He spent countless evenings dictating it to his first wife, the former Jane Davenport Cheney, who typed it up as he went along and assisted in many other ways. Dictating the book helped to give it the conversational tone that was one of its great attractions. Dr. Spock joined the Navy in 1944 and kept on writing in his spare time while working as a psychiatrist in military hospitals in New York and California. He left the Navy, with the rank of lieutenant commander, in 1946. The doctor took enormous pains with the book and even worked on its original index during a slow troop-train journey from New York to California.

To make things as convenient as possible for readers, he made sure the index included such common-sensical entries as ''Bedtime -- keeping it happy.'' In the 1972 interview, Dr. Spock said he had undertaken the book ''as a departure from conventional wisdom.'' ''It wasn't radical, though it struck out in new directions,'' he said. A New Perspective On Raising Children Taking a longer look backward, in the 1992 interview, the doctor ascribed much of his professional success to his own psychoanalytic training in the 1930's. In that period, he said, it was highly unusual for an American pediatrician to have that kind of training. ''For the first 10 years I was in practice, before I wrote the book,'' he said, ''I was trying desperately to reconcile Freudian concepts with what mothers told me about their babies.'' In the book, Dr. Spock wrote that it was unnecessary for a mother to stick to a rigid feeding schedule for her baby and that it hurt a mother emotionally to have to wait for a fixed feeding time while her baby wailed. But he also stipulated: ''This is not an argument against reasonable regularity.

I do not think it is harmful for a baby or a mother to work toward a schedule. The mother has to run the rest of her household and when the baby is ready to fit in, it will help everybody.'' On the question of how to cope with crying, Dr. Spock took a balanced view: ''I don't think it's good to let a baby cry miserably for long periods if there's a way to comfort him, not because it will do him any physical harm but because of what it might do to his and his mother's spirits. ''The child, he wrote, ''needs to feel that his mother and father, however agreeable, still have their own rights, know how to be firm, won't let him be unreasonable or rude.'' And he added, ''The spoiled child is not a happy creature even in his own home.'' From Book's Success, A Frightened Author In retrospect, it seemed almost inevitable that the book would become an enormous success, appearing as it did when the post-World War II baby boom was under way, and the winds of change were stirring in the baby and child care field. Even Dr.

Spock's flinty Yankee mother is said to have observed, after reading the book, ''Why Benny, it's really quite sensible.'' But the doctor said in the 1992 interview that he was frightened when 750,000 copies were sold in its first year. ''I was scared that the book would be misunderstood,'' he said, ''that somebody, thinking she was following my advice, would do something that would make a child worse, or even kill a child.'' In its first six years the book sold more than four million copies, and the languages it was eventually translated into included Urdu, Thai and Tamil. Duell, Sloan & Pearce published the original hard-cover edition. Pocket Books, which had persuaded Dr. Spock to write the book, brought it out in paperback with the title, ''The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care,'' which later became simply ''Baby and Child Care'' and then ''Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care.'' That is the title of the hard-cover and paperback versions of the current, sixth edition, which came out in 1992. Dr. Spock's earnings from the book were widely thought to have made him a millionaire.

In the early 1990's, they were about $150,000 a year. As time passed, he watched for new developments and insights that might require him to revise parts of his book. He recalled years later that when he returned briefly to his private pediatric practice in New York after the war, ''I began to see examples of a going-to-bed sleep problem in infants that I had never seen before: a baby would object to being put to bed in the evening, and his mother would keep picking him up. ''If she was a type who could be progressively intimidated, her baby could turn into a tyrant in six months. He could not only learn to stay awake until 10 or 11 o'clock at night but demand that his exhausted mother carry him around in her arms.'' Dr. Spock took that problem into account in 1954, when he began to prepare revisions. As he put it later, ''I wrote that more mothers got into difficulty from being afraid to give firm leadership than from being too rigid.

And I put more emphasis on the rights of parents, on the need for firm parental leadership, and on my conviction that firmness makes for not only better-behaved children but for happier ones.'' Changing of Guard In Child Authorities After giving up his New York practice in 1947, Dr. Spock was affiliated with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and went on to serve as professor of child development at the University of Pittsburgh from 1951 to 1955 and at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland from 1955 to 1967, when he retired from teaching.

Over the next years, he kept active ''writing articles and books, keeping up with correspondence, going out on frequent speaking tours,'' he wrote in a 1989 volume of memoirs, ''Spock on Spock.'' He continued to make changes in his baby and child care book, and the fourth edition in 1976 was revised largely, as he said in a preface, ''to eliminate the sexist biases of the sort that help to create and perpetuate discrimination against girls and women.'' One change was to refer to the baby and child as ''she'' as well as ''he.'' Another was in descriptions of the parents' roles. ''I always assumed that the parent taking the greater share of young children (and of the home) would be the mother, whether or not she wanted an outside career,'' he said in the preface. ''Yet it's this almost universal assumption that leads to women feeling a much greater compulsion than men to sacrifice a part of their careers in order that the children will be well cared for,'' he went on. ''Now I recognize that the father's responsibility is as great as the mother's.'' By early 1990, when Dr.

Spock was 86, the 71-year-old Dr. Brazelton, who tirelessly addressed parents' groups, had become the country's most visible contemporary authority on raising babies and young children. And Dr. Penelope Leach, a British psychologist-author, had also joined the top echelon of experts to whom new parents were turning for advice. But Dr. Spock remained one of the most widely read authorities on child-rearing. In 1976, the year that the fourth edition of his baby and child care book came out, he was divorced from his first wife, Jane, whom he married in 1927. In an interview shortly before the divorce, she noted that he had dedicated the latest revision of the book to her and that he had acknowledged that she had given him much help in writing it.

''Feminist groups landed on him like a ton of bricks because they thought his book was sexist,'' Jane Spock said, ''So in the process of taking sexism out of his book, he did this dedication to me." She said she should have been considered the co-author of the book, and then, as she put it, ''I would have been asked on television shows, too, and I would have been asked what I thought about things. I might have been more of a somebody. But I don't think he could stand it, sharing the spotlight. You know how people are.'' Later in 1976, Dr. Spock was married to Mary Morgan, whom he met through her work arranging conferences for professionals. ''Spock on Spock,'' subtitled ''a Memoir of Growing Up With the Century,'' was written in collaboration with her. In an interview in 1994, soon after Dr. Spock's 91st birthday, Ms. Morgan said his good health and longevity stemmed from his life style, which still included rowing.

In those days he began each day with an hour's meditation, 30 minutes of yoga, a shiatsu massage, a hot sesame oil massage and a macrobiotic breakfast of brown rice, miso soup and vegetables. Nonetheless, he said at the time, ''It surprised me very much to find I got to be 91.'' In an interview last month, Ms. Morgan said that she and her husband lived on a budget of roughly $100,000 a year, but that their savings had been depleted by 24-hour nursing and by other kinds of care for the doctor, who came down with pneumonia six times last year and had been in declining health. She had decided to appeal for assistance from friends by means of a letter-writing campaign and through fund-raising parties at the time of the publication of the next edition of the baby and child care book. Dr. Spock had two sons from his first marriage, and they did not comment about her appeal. But Ms. Morgan said the family was divided over whether the doctor should enter a nursing home, which would cost less.

His home care in January, 1998 cost over $16,000 -- which was largely not covered by Medicare and private insurance. ''They wanted to put him in a nursing home and I wouldn't do it,'' she said, ''And I said I will stay beside him till the day I die.'' She said their income had dwindled by half because the baby and child care book's sales had fallen off since people were waiting for the next edition. Last month, Gina Centrello, the president of Pocket Books, said they had decided to help pay his medical bills. In addition to his wife, Ms. Morgan, Dr. Spock is survived by two sons, Michael of Illinois and John of California; a stepdaughter, Ginger Davison of Tennessee; four grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; and two sisters, Sally Jordy of Rhode Island and Marjorie Spock of Maine. In 1994 Dr. Spock expressed some very mixed views about child-rearing in his book ''A Better World for Our Children: Rebuilding American Family Values.'' ''When I look at our society and think of the millions of children exposed every day to its harmful effects, I am near despair,'' he wrote.

He bemoaned ''the progressive loss of values in this century'' and ''the fact that our present society is simply not working.'' But he added a hopeful note. ''Of course we cannot return to the 'good old days,' '' he said, ''But we can bring back some of those traditional family values and stability. Our greatest hope is to bring up children inspired by their opportunities for being helpful and loving.'' Books Written By Dr. Spock Baby and Child Care 1946 A Baby's First Year 1954 Feeding Your Baby and Child 1955 Dr. Spock Talks With Mothers 1961 Problems of Parents 1962 Caring for Your Disabled Child 1965 Dr. Spock on Vietnam 1968 Decent and Indecent 1970 A Teenager's Guide to Life and Love 1970 Raising Children in a Difficult Time 1974 Spock on Parenting 1988 Spock on Spock: a Memoir of Growing Up With the Century 1989 A Better World for our Children 1994 Those currently in print are: Dr.

Spock on Parenting (Pocket Books, 1988) Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, sixth edition (Dutton, hardcover edition; Pocket Books, mass market and trade paperback editions, 1992) A Better World for Our Children (National Press Books, hardcover edition; Contemporary Books, trade paperback edition, 1994) The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care - Benjamin Spock - Google Books The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care What people are saying - Write a review We haven't found any reviews in the usual places. Contents Common Sense Baby Child Care - AbeBooks Common Sense Baby Child Care You Searched For: Results (1 - 30) of 46 1 Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York (1957) Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce (1957) Used Hardcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1957. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. 1957. A good hardcover. An occasional smudge or mark, otherwise clean pages. Moderate cover wear. No dust jacket.

Booksavers receives donated books and recycles them in a variety of ways. Proceeds benefit the work of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in the U.S. and around the world. Bookseller Inventory # mon0000188645 Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce (1957) Used Hardcover Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York (1962) Used Hardcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1962. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. Fox, Dorothea (illustrator). This is the new, completely revised edition of Dr. Spock's book on child care. Book is in good condition with school stamp, tanned pages, cover stains, faded spine and foxing to the foredge. 627 indexed pages, 8 x 5.5.

Bookseller Inventory # 407011 Published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, New York, U.S.A. (1962) Used Hardcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, New York, U.S.A., 1962. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 6th Printing. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Clean and tight. Minor shelfwear, mainly on corners and ends of spine; cover has begun to pull away at very top of spine; no Dust Jacket. A very nice, well-maintained copy. Bookseller Inventory # 0099956 ISBN 10: 4871879690 ISBN 13: 9784871879699 Used Softcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Ishi Press, 2013. Book Condition: Used. This Book is in Good Condition. Clean Copy With Light Amount of Wear. 100% Guaranteed. Summary: This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr.

Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care. Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spocks name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed.). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_usedgood_4871879690 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Ishi Press, United States, 2013. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Dorothea Fox (illustrator). 216 x 142 mm. Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****.This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr. Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care.

Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spock s name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed.). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work. Bookseller Inventory # AAV9784871879699 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, New York, New York, U.S.A., 1958. Hardcover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. Fox, Dorothea (illustrator). 8vo - over 7¾", up to 9¾" tall. 2nd printing.

"The new revised and enlarged edition of his famous book." Gray cloth binding with burgundy lettering embossed on spine and front board. Spine ends are lightly bumped, and other extremities are trivially bumped. Binding is lightly shaken, but hinges are sound, and overall the book is actually fairly crisp. Endpapers are trivially age-darkened, and head of text block is lightly dust-soiled, otherwise the book is clean, unmarked, and especially bright inside. Overall, the book is in very good condition, with less wear than average for its age. Dust jacket is lightly rubbed throughout, its rear panel is lightly soiled, its spine is moderately sun-faded (although all text on the spine remains easily legible), and it has moderate to significant edge wear, including creasing, closed tears up to 5/8" long, and chips up to 1/4" x 1/4". On the rear flap, there is a sticker for Hudson's Bookshop in Detroit, otherwise the DJ is unmarked. DJ is unclipped (with original $5.00 price), is now protected in an archival mylar cover, and overall is in fair condition.

Bookseller Inventory # 1254 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Ishi Press, United States, 2013. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Dorothea Fox (illustrator). 216 x 142 mm. Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****. This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr. Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care. Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spock s name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed.). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work.

Bookseller Inventory # AAV9784871879699 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Ishi Press, 2013. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr. Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care. Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spocks name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed.). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_4871879690 Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Ishi Press.

Paperback. Book Condition: New. Dorothea Fox (illustrator). Paperback. 540 pages. Dimensions: 8.5in. x 5.6in. x 1.4in.This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr. Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care. Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spocks name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed. ). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work. This item ships from multiple locations. Your book may arrive from Roseburg,OR, La Vergne,TN. Paperback.

Bookseller Inventory # 9784871879699 The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock, Dorothea Fox |, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® Product Details Overview This is a reprint of the One and Only Original book by Dr. Benjamin Spock on Baby and Child Care. Prior to this reprint, the original book had not been reprinted since 1957. Instead there have been many new books, all bearing Dr. Spock's name, but these have been considerably different books and usually much shorter. No book published after 1957 has been a true reprint of the original book. Starting with Baby and Child Care (2nd ed.). New York: Pocket Books (1957), books have been coming out claiming to be new editions of the original book, but in reality they are different books, not the same book. Poor Dr. Spock has had to cater to the demands of various pressure groups who demanded revisions of his work.

Advertising The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock (1946) The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock (1946) Sign up to vote on this title UsefulNot useful This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue? CANCEL We've moved you to where you read on your other device. Get the full title to continue Get the full title to continue reading from where you left off, or restart the preview. Restart preview Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care at 65 - BBC News BBC News Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care at 65 By Louise Hidalgo BBC World Service 23 August 2011 From the section US & Canada comments Read more about sharing. Close share panel Dr Benjamin Spock's Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care is one of the best-selling books of all time, with overall sales of some 50 million. Sixty-five years since its first publication, what is Dr Spock's contribution to child-rearing today? Image caption Dr Spock rejected the idea that too much affection made children weak The book's title wasn't the most exciting.

But in the austere post-war years its message was revolutionary. "As soon as it hit the market, it was acclaimed," says Professor Lynn Bloom, Dr Benjamin Spock's biographer and friend. "It was so radical and so different from the child-rearing manuals that preceded it. "People wanted the opportunity and the sanction to have children and to love them. And that book did this." It isn't enough to bring up children happy and secure, you need to provide a decent world for them Dr Benjamin Spock Baby and Child Care challenged the child-rearing orthodoxy of the early 20th Century - that babies should be fed according to a tight schedule, and that showing them too much affection made them weak and unprepared for the world. Instead, Dr Spock encouraged a more gentle approach to bringing up children, and told parents to trust their own instincts and common sense. "I urged parents not to be intimidated by the rule that had existed in paediatrics up until that time - you must never feed a baby off schedule, not a minute early, not a minute late," he said. "I was one of the first paediatricians to say that's nonsense. That rule made babies cry.

"It was even harder on mothers, they bit their nails in anguish waiting for the clock to say this is the minute you can feed." The opening sentences of the book are: "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." In 1946, that was a big departure from the prevailing wisdom, that doctors and paediatricians knew best. Dark closet Image caption Spock won a gold medal for rowing at the Paris Olympics in 1924 In the first six months after it was published, Baby and Child Care sold 500,000 copies. Within a decade that had risen to a million a year. It has now been translated into 39 languages, with sales estimated at 50 million. By the 1960s, when Lynn Bloom first met Dr Spock, Baby and Child Care had already become one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time - and every new mother she knew had a copy. "It was at the time the only book in town. "There were some other specialised books on natural childbirth, there were books on breastfeeding, but this was the only game in town, and it was one that people didn't question.

Jennie Bristow, author of Standing Up To Supernanny What's happened since Dr Spock is that parenting advice has gone two ways. Firstly you've got the more prescriptive routines advocated by the likes of Gina Ford, and her emphasis on getting babies to follow a strict timetable of feeding and sleeping, or TV's Supernanny, who promotes particular discipline techniques such as the "naughty step". On the other hand, you've got the "child-centred" approach. The philosophy behind this is that the child knows best, and that you should follow their lead - feeding babies on demand, never shouting at (and certainly not smacking) children, and organising daily life around what the child wants to do. Looking at Dr Spock from today's perspective he didn't fit into either camp. His basic argument was that the parents should trust themselves, that parents know best. Many new parents found this reassuring. Nowadays people feel they can't move without consulting expert advice. Much of this is contradictory, so parents end up feeling nervous and confused. They certainly don't feel that they can or should just trust themselves. "The subtitle of the book was the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.

So if you had half a grain of sense you knew that the advice would be compatible with your own best instincts." Lynn Bloom remembers Benjamin Spock as someone who loved children, who would get down on the floor to play with them - a big man, more than six feet tall, with a booming laugh. And a very humane man. "I never heard him in private or in public utter any comment that was in any way denigrating, demeaning, that pulled rank, that indicated that he thought he was grandiose. I don't think he felt that way." Benjamin Spock was born in 1903 - the eldest son in a family of five children, who would often look after his younger siblings. His mother's own style of parenting was fairly harsh. "One of her punishments was to put children in a dark closet and to simply leave them there until they learnt whatever lesson she was trying to teach them. "Two of Spock's sisters each remember that she put them in a closet and forgot about them, and went off to New York for the day, came back and they were out of their minds practically, with apprehension. "It sounds severe. It was severe.

But it wasn't unusual for that time in which Spock was raised." Jail sentence Image caption Actor Vanessa Redgrave joined a protest in London against Dr Spock's jail sentence Benjamin Spock went to Yale University - where he joined the rowing crew that won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics in 1924 - and studied medicine specialising in paediatrics. In later life, he developed another passion - politics. In 1960, he made an advertisement with Jacqueline Kennedy as part of John F Kennedy's presidential election campaign. He joined the peace movement and by the late 60s was a leading activist in the anti-Vietnam war movement. Explaining why he became more political, he said: "It isn't enough to bring up children happy and secure, you need to provide a decent world for them. And this is why I have expanded my horizon." In 1968, Dr Spock was given a two-year jail sentence, which he never served, for aiding resistance to the draft. He also received death threats and his book was attacked by the war's supporters, who blamed his liberal advice to parents for breeding a permissive, self-indulgent generation.

Image caption Benjamin Spock - pictured here in 1993 - died at the age of 94 in 1998 It was a charge Benjamin Spock tackled head-on in a BBC phone-in in 1971. "I am accused by certain political types like the Vice-President Spiro Agnew, he's been going over all the US saying that the young people are ruined because I gave permissive advice," he said. "Actually, I think anyone who has read Baby and Child Care understands that I am not a permissivist, that I never talked about instant gratification." But the damage was done. Dr Spock would never quite shake off that reputation among the conservatives as a corruptor of the young. Some of his advice was later discredited medically - for example, the idea of putting babies to sleep on their stomachs. He said it reduced the risk of infants choking on their own vomit, but by the 1990s, the practice was being linked to sudden infant death syndrome. Sixty-five years on, however, Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care is still in print - and it continues to influence generations of parents. Witness is the BBC World Service's 10-minute history programme.

You can download a podcast of the programme or browse the archive. Spock at 65: Five Ideas That Changed American Parenting | TIME.com Spock at 65: Five Ideas That Changed American Parenting next Jay Colton / Time & Life Pictures Sixty-five years ago today, one of the most revolutionary books in American history was published. True, Dr. Benjamin Spock's Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care probably didn't look like much when it first came out in 1946 — just in time for the baby boom. But with his conversational tone and his concise, practical tips on everything from toilet-training to calming a colicky baby, Spock helped to usher in a new era of American home life. Spock was, as TIME noted in the doctor's obituary in 1998 , "one of the most famous and controversial figures of his century. He singlehandedly changed the way parents raise their children." By the time of his death, Spock (apparently no inspiration for the Star Trek character by the same name) had sold nearly 50 million copies of his book , translated into 42 languages.

Today the book is still in print, although it now goes by the name Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. It's in its eighth edition and updated with tips for contemporary parenting, including advice for gay and lesbian parents and even notes on international adoption. In honor of the book's 65th birthday, here are five great Spock ideas that helped define America's view of parenthood. Next: Parents should trust their instincts Read Later Sixty-five years ago today, one of the most revolutionary books in American history was published. True, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care probably didn’t look like much when it first came out in 1946 — just in time for the baby boom. But with his conversational tone and his concise, practical tips on everything from toilet-training to calming a colicky baby, Spock helped to usher in a new era of American home life. Spock was, as TIME noted in the doctor’s obituary in 1998, “one of the most famous and controversial figures of his century.

He singlehandedly changed the way parents raise their children.” By the time of his death, Spock (apparently no inspiration for the Star Trek character by the same name) had sold nearly 50 million copies of his book , translated into 42 languages. Today the book is still in print, although it now goes by the name, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. It’s in its eighth edition and updated with tips for contemporary parenting, including advice for gay and lesbian parents and even notes on international adoption. In honor of the book’s 65th birthday, here are five great Spock ideas that helped define America’s view of parenthood. 1) Trust your instincts When Spock’s book came out in 1946, U.S. doctors had already established themselves as voices of authority — experts in the budding, newly productive field of medicine. But Spock, unlike many in his profession, did not command his readers to follow strict doctor’s orders. Instead, from his opening sentences, Spock’s tone was warm and reassuring: “Trust yourself,” he told new parents.

“You know more than you think you do.” Spock gave anxious postwar moms and dads permission to be confident in their own sound parenting — that now-typical American sense that parents know best what’s right for their own kids. There wouldn’t always be a pediatrician on hand when the toddler grew stubborn or the baby was bawling. But if parents would just use some common sense and trust their instincts, Spock believed, they would usually get through it fine. 2) Routines are nice, but babies don’t need strict a regimen Spock broke with conventional wisdom of his day and said it was not really too important for infants to keep a strict, regular feeding and sleeping schedule. The doctor was in no way opposed to giving children some good, solid day-to-day routine, mind you. But if a young baby was wailing with hunger outside of a regular mealtime, Spock felt it was fine for the mother to give her baby (and herself) some peace. Critics balked at the idea that parents would follow the whims of a mere infant, feeding or rocking the child at all hours of the day — or night.

They warned that Spock was too “permissive,” and that coddling babies and children could eventually make them self-indulgent and rebellious. This view became especially popular as the baby boomers came of age in the 1960s, and Spock himself started speaking out in protest of the Vietnam War, critical of the U.S. government. Spock became controversial for his views that parents needed to follow the cues of their babies. Yet modern readers perusing Spock’s earliest editions of Baby and Child Care sometimes find him uncomfortably cold for today’s standards. It shows how much public opinion has shifted in 65 years. 3) Don’t fret if your baby acts funny; Freud can explain it While training as a pediatrician in the early 1930s, the young Dr. Spock is said to have wanted to learn psychology, so that he could better understand child development. Spock trained part-time later that decade at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He became well versed in the theories of Sigmund Freud — the eminent early psychologist, who posited that human behavior is largely the product of unconscious sexual drives, determined in no small part by childhood experience.

As TIME wrote in its obituary of Spock in 1998: What Spock really did in Baby and Child Care, which he started writing in 1943, was to sneak Freudian concepts into the American middle-class mind. Surmising that new parents were not yet ready to hear of their infants’ oral, anal and genital stages, Spock simply advised moms and dads not to get alarmed if baby sometimes behaved, well, oddly. He had learned from Freud that repression could produce catastrophic adult neuroses. Better, he advised, to wait things out. Over the course of Spock’s lifetime, most of those Freudian concepts were debunked or otherwise abandoned by the medical profession. But who knows how many parents were unwittingly influenced by Freud’s somewhat bizarre ideas, without even knowing it. 4) Ideas about good parenting should evolve Spock continued to update Baby and Child Care throughout his life. His first edition, after all, was published in 1946, when “parenting,” at least for infants, meant almost exclusively “mothering.” Over the decades Spock came to view this as wrong.

He embraced an increased role for fathers and adopted a more gender-neutral tone, expunging sexual stereotypes from the book. By the 1990s, he was taking on the fight against childhood obesity, and wanted to include information for gay and lesbian parents. Crucially, he also changed the way he dealt with his own family. Shortly before Spock’s death, journalist and writer Thomas Maier published a biography of the man, Dr. Spock: An American Life. In it, Maier writes writes: [Spock] acknowldeged being too career driven and in recent years made a concerted effort to show more affection to his grown sons in a way they said never happened in their youth. […] [He] recognized the inconsistencies between his public and private lives, the insurmountable gap he had trouble reconciling even in his own mind. His lesson to fathers, Spock now told an interviewer, comes “through my writing, not my example.” 5) Babies need love It seems almost ludicrous today that anyone could ever think otherwise. But this idea was by no means taken for granted just 100 years ago.

Early 20th-century child-rearing guides warned parents not to kiss their babies or cradle them too much, lest the children become spoiled. Spock taught his readers that babies were little people with their own emotional needs, and that they should be cherished, not encouraged to meet the schedules and rules of adult life as quickly as possible. “Children are driven from within themselves to grow, explore, experience, learn, and build relationships with other people,” the latest edition of Baby and Child Care now reads. “So while you are trusting yourself, remember also to trust your child.”

Question: Complete the title of a book by Doctor Benjamin Spock: "The Common Sense Book of ..."?
Answer: Baby and Child Care