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Benjamin Spock

, Physician / Writer
Benjamin Spock
Benjamin Spock
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  • Born: 2 May 1903
  • Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
  • Died: 15 March 1998 (natural causes)
  • Best Known As: The author of Baby and Child Care

Dr. Benjamin Spock's book Baby and Child Care was published in 1946, just in time for the post-World War II baby boom, and became a best-selling guide to child rearing. Pediatrician Spock encouraged new parents to use common sense and to treat children with respect. This led some critics to call him the "Father of Permissiveness," in spite of Spock's protests to the contrary. In the 1960s Spock gained new fame as a pacifist and Vietnam War protester.

Spock rowed on Yale's crew team, and with them won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics... Contrary to popular rumor, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. His grandson Peter did commit suicide in 1983... Spock is occasionally confused with Mr. Spock of the TV show Star Trek.

 
 
Biography: Benjamin Spock

Benjamin Spock (born 1903), pediatrician and political activist, was most noted for his authorship of "Baby and Child Care", which significantly changed predominant attitudes toward the raising of infants and children.

Benjamin McLane Spock was born on May 2, 1903, in New Haven, Connecticut, the oldest child in a large, strict New England family. His family was so strict that in his 82nd year he would still be saying "I love to dance in order to liberate myself from my puritanical upbringing." Educated at private preparatory schools, he attended Yale from 1921 to 1925, majoring in English literature. He was a member of the racing crew that represented the United States in the 1924 Olympic Games at Paris, finishing 300 feet ahead of its nearest rival. He began medical school at Yale in 1925, and transferring to Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1927. He had, by this time, married Jane Davenport Cheney, whom he had met after a Yale-Harvard boat race.

Spock had decided well before starting his medical studies that he would "work with children, who have their whole lives ahead of them" and so, upon taking his M.D. degree in 1929 and serving his general internship at the prestigious Presbyterian Hospital, he specialized in pediatrics at a small hospital crowded with children in New York's Hell's Kitchen area. Believing that pediatricians at that time were focusing too much on the physical side of child development, he took up a residency in psychiatry as well.

Between 1933 and 1944 Spock practiced pediatric medicine while at the same time teaching pediatrics at Cornell Medical College and consulting in pediatric psychiatry for the New York City Health Department. On a summer vacation in 1943 he began to write his most famous book, Baby and Child Care, and he continued to work on it from 1944 to 1946 while serving as a medical officer in the Navy.

The book sharply broke with the authoritarian tone and rigorous instructions found in earlier generations of baby-care books, most of which said to feed infants on a strict schedule and not to pick them up when they cried. Spock, who spent ten years trying to reconcile his psychoanalytic training with what mothers were telling him about their children, told his readers "You know more than you think you do…. Don't be afraid to trust your own commonsense…. Take it easy, trust your own instincts, and follow the directions that your doctor gives you." The response was overwhelming. Baby and Child Care rapidly became America's all-time best-seller except for Shakespeare and the Bible; by 1976 it had also eclipsed Shakespeare.

After his discharge from the Navy, Spock became associated with the famous Mayo Clinic (1947-1951) and then became a professor of child development at the University of Pittsburgh (1951-1955) and at Case Western Reserve (1955-1967). His political activism began during this period, growing logically out of his concern for children. A healthy environment for growing children, he believed, included a radiation-free atmosphere to breathe and so, in 1962, he became co-chairman of SANE, an organization dedicated to stopping nuclear bomb tests in the Earth's atmosphere. The following year, in which the United States did ratify a nuclear test ban treaty, he campaigned for Medicare, incurring the wrath of the American Medical Association, many of whose members were already suspicious of a colleague who wrote advice columns for the Ladies Home Journal and Redbook instead of writing technical monographs for the medical journals.

Spock was an early opponent of the Indo-China war; his view on that subject, Dr. Spock on Vietnam, appeared in 1968. As the war escalated, so did antiwar protest, in which Spock participated vigorously, marching and demonstrating with militant youths who had not yet been born when he began his medical career. Conservatives accused him of having created, in large measure, the youth protest movement of the 1960s. Ignoring his many admonitions to parents in Baby and Child Care that they should "set limits," his political opponents accused Spock of teaching "permissiveness," by which they claimed an entire generation of American youth had been raised and ruined. In vain Spock pointed out that similar student protests were happening in Third World countries where his book enjoyed no circulation and were not happening in Western Europe countries where it sold well.

Because of his own strict personal upbringing and his acute moral sense, Spock may have intended a lot less when he told parents to "relax" than some of them realized. In 1968 he revised Baby and Child Care to make his intentions more clear, now cautioning his readers "Don't be afraid that your children will dislike you" if you set those limits and enforce them. Nevertheless, that 1968 edition showed a 50 percent drop in sales, mainly, Spock thought, because of his stand on Vietnam.

On May 20, 1968, along with several other leading war protesters, Spock was put on trial for conspiracy. The charge was that he had counseled young people to resist the draft. In the superheated political atmosphere of the times he was convicted, but on appeal the verdict was set aside on a technicality. Some indignant readers returned their well-thumbed copies of Baby and Child Care in order to prevent further undermining of their children's patriotism. To many other readers, however, the government's indictment of the baby doctor seemed rather like prosecuting Santa Claus.

Two books published in 1970, Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior and A Teenager's Guide to Life and Love, made it clear that Spock was a good deal more of a traditional moralist than either his friends or his enemies were aware. He had been driven into the antiwar and other reform movements by the same imperious, old-fashioned conscience that propelled some of his opponents in exactly the opposite direction.

At the same time the doctor showed himself capable of growing and changing. His social activism mutated into socialism, and in 1972 he ran for president on the People's Party ticket. He was also capable of admitting a mistake. Badgered for some five years on the lecture platform by feminist objectors to the gender-role stereotypes of fathers and mothers as they appeared in Baby and Child Care, he eventually conceded that much of what they had said had been right. In 1976, 30 years after its initial publication, Spock brought out a third version of the famous book, deleting material he himself termed "sexist" and calling for greater sharing by fathers in the parental role. He also yielded 45 percent of subsequent book royalties in the divorce settlement that year with his wife, who contended she had done much more of the work on Baby and Child Care than he had ever acknowledged. Spock was remarried in the fall of 1976 to Mary Morgan Councille.

Formally retired in 1967, Spock was the kind of person who in spirit never really retires. Contemplating his own death as his health began to fail in the 1980s, he wrote in 1985 (at the age of 82) that he did not want any lugubrious funeral tunes played over him: "My ideal would be the New Orleans black funeral, in which friends snake-dance through the streets to the music of a jazz band." He had chronic bronchitis and suffered a stroke in 1989. His wife, Mary, collaborated with Spock on his autobiography, Spock on Spock, which was published in 1989. His book A Better World for Our Children was published in 1994 and explored the relationship between child-rearing and politics. According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, Spock said "When I look at our society and think of the millions of children exposed every day to its harmful effects, I am near despair."

Further Reading

Lynn Z. Bloom wrote a perceptive study entitled Doctor Spock:Biography of A Conservative Radical (1972). Doctor Spock's own writings, in addition to the famous baby book, included Decent and Indecent and A Teenager's Guide to Life and Love, both published in 1970. An account of the conspiracy trial was Jessica Mitford's The Trial of Dr. Spock, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin (1969). Changes in Spock's thinking after the Bloom book appeared were briefly noted in M.A. Kellogg's "Updating Dr. Spock," Newsweek (March 3, 1976). A mellow valedictory statement by Spock, "A Way To Say Farewell," appeared in Parade Magazine on March 10, 1985.

See also Spock on Parenting (1988); Spock on Spock: A Memoir of Growing Up With the Century (1989); and A Better World for Our Children (National Press Books, 1994).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Benjamin McLane Spock

(born May 2, 1903, New Haven, Conn., U.S. — died March 15, 1998, La Jolla, Calif.) U.S. pediatrician. He received his M.D. from Columbia University and later practiced pediatrics and taught psychiatry and child development. His Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946; 7th ed., 1998, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care), which urged parental flexibility and reliance on common sense and discouraged corporal punishment, influenced generations of parents. Continually revised and updated to address new social and medical issues, it has sold over 50 million copies in 39 languages. In 1967 he ceased his medical practice to devote himself to the anti-Vietnam War movement. His advocacy late in life of a vegan (see vegetarianism) diet for children aroused great controversy.

For more information on Benjamin McLane Spock, visit Britannica.com.

 
US History Companion: Spock, Benjamin

(1903- ), pediatrician, author, and political activist. For decades after its publication in 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock's child-rearing manual, Baby and Child Care, remained a national best-seller. Almost immediately, "Dr. Spock" became a household name, and by 1972 his book had sold 24 million copies--a record exceeded only by Shakespeare and the Bible. His reassuring message to parents--that they should trust themselves as they attend to their children's physical and psychological needs--appealed to a generation of parents who reared the children of the baby boom in the years after World War II.

After graduating from Yale University in 1924, Spock attended medical school at Yale and Columbia. After a one-year pediatric internship in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, he took a year's residency in psychiatry, wanting to apply its principles in his practice of pediatrics, which he began in 1933.

Spock began work on Baby and Child Care in 1943, at the request of Donald Porter Geddes of Pocket Books. He intended the book to combine "sound pediatrics and sound psychology." While serving in the navy as a psychiatrist from 1944 to 1946, he continued work on the manuscript, which he dictated to his wife, Jane Cheney. The first edition, illustrated by Dorothea Fox, was published in 1946, just as the postwar baby boom began.

Spock's book, an ideal guide for a nation preoccupied with children and family life, was written for mothers, who he correctly assumed would be the primary caretakers of children in middle-class homes. Baby and Child Care appeared at a time when the average age at marriage was dropping rapidly, and millions of middle-class women were leaving college and jobs to devote themselves full-time to caring for their homes and children. "Expertise" was in fashion, too, and Spock became one of the most trusted experts in the nation by telling parents to "trust themselves."

At the time of its publication, Baby and Child Care appeared to emphasize permissiveness in child rearing, in striking contrast to earlier child-rearing guides that stressed harsh discipline. His advice fit the mood of the time, which was geared toward a pleasurable domestic life. In the years since his book became a best-seller, he has been lionized for having made child rearing more professional and for providing new parents with self-confidence. On the other hand, critics have blamed him for contributing to an unhealthy child-centeredness that they felt produced guilt-ridden mothers and spoiled children. Since the 1960s, feminists have assailed him for making women believe that they were fully responsible for their children's development and that full-time mothering was essential; conservatives have held him responsible for what they have believed to be the misbehavior of the youth of the sixties who were reared according to his "permissive" formulas.

Spock became politically active because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and to the nuclear bomb. He has been a spokesperson for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (sane). Although he retired in 1967, he has continued to write books and to speak out on political issues that identify him with the youth movements of the 1960s.

In the 1970s, Spock revised his book in response to feminist criticisms: Baby and Child Care now discusses the participation of fathers, sitters, and day-care centers in child rearing and alternates the pronouns he and she when referring to children. That child rearing should be both professional and natural remains central to his message.

Bibliography:

Lynn Z. Bloom, Dr. Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical (1972); Benjamin Spock, Spock on Spock: A Memoir of Growing Up with the Century (1989).

Author:

Elaine Tyler May

See also Childhood; Family.


 
Spotlight: Benjamin Spock

From our Archives: Today's Highlights, July 14, 2006

The book that helped to guide generations of new parents through the stages of child-raising, Dr. Spock's Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, was published 60 years ago today. Author Dr. Benjamin Spock was a pediatrician who advised parents and other child-care givers to use common sense in raising their charges. His book sold nearly a million copies annually from the time it was published, and became the top-selling nonfiction book of all time. Espousing a more affectionate and flexible attitude towards child-rearing, Spock did not believe in using harsh disciplinary tactics with children.
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Spock, Benjamin McLane,
1903–98, American author and pediatrician, b. New Haven, Conn., educ. Yale (B.A., 1925) and Columbia Univ. College of Physicians and Surgeons (M.D., 1929). In 1946, Dr. Spock published The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (later Baby and Child Care), offering parents and child-care personnel authoritative scientific and pediatric information on the care and upbringing of children, while dispelling many of the pejorative and oppressive methods of the past. The book has been a bestseller for years. He was professor of child development at Western Reserve Univ.) from 1955 until 1967, when he resigned to devote himself to the campaign against the Vietnam War. In 1972 he was the presidential candidate of the People's Party, a coalition of pacifists and populists. Among his other writings are A Baby's First Year (1954), Feeding Your Baby and Child (1955), Decent and Indecent (1970), and Raising Children in a Difficult Time (1974, rev. ed. 1985).

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1989); biographies by L. Z. Bloom (1972) and T. Maier (1998).

 
Works: Works by Benjamin Spock
(1903-1998)

1946The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. As the opening event of a publishing and cultural phenomenon, Dr. Spock's book provides a practical approach to child rearing, which fills a need as the postwar baby boom begins. It sells nearly one million copies annually and becomes the top-selling nonfiction book of all time. Spock was a pediatrician in private practice in New York and in 1947 became a consultant in psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic and a professor of child development at the University of Pittsburgh and Western Reserve University.

 
Word Tutor: Spock
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - United States pediatrician whose many books on child care influenced the upbringing of children around the world (1903-1998).

 
Quotes By: Benjamin Spock

Quotes:

"The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mother and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all."

 
Wikipedia: Benjamin Spock
Benjamin Spock
BenjaminSpock1968.jpg
Dr. Spock with his grand-daughter Susannah in 1967
Born May 2 1903(1903--)
New Haven, Connecticut
Died March 15 1998 (aged 95)
La Jolla, California
Nationality American
Field Pediatrics

Benjamin McLane Spock (May 2, 1903 - March 15, 1998) was an American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its revolutionary message to mothers was that "you know more than you think you do." Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand children's needs and family dynamics. His ideas about childcare influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals, whereas the previous conventional wisdom had been that child rearing should focus on building discipline, and that, e.g., babies should not be "spoiled" by picking them up when they cried.

Life

Medal record
Olympic Games
Men's Rowing
Gold 1924 Paris Eight

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Spock was expected by his parents to help with the care of his five younger siblings. Spock's father was a lawyer for a railroad company. Spock received his undergraduate education from Yale University, where he became a member of Scroll and Key and the Zeta Psi fraternity, and was a rower. As member of the American eight crew, he won a gold medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, rowing an all-Yale eight, along with James Stillman Rockefeller, with whom he shared a Scroll and Key membership. (The 1924 Olympic Games were immortalized in the movie "Chariots of Fire", which, however, did not cover rowing)

Dr. Spock attended medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, where he graduated first in his class in 1929. He did residency training in pediatrics at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in Manhattan and then in psychiatry at Cornell's Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic.

He married his first wife, Jane Cheney, and they raised children. Jane also helped him with his books. She later claimed that she received insufficient credit.

During the Second World War, he served as a psychiatrist in the U.S. Navy Reserve Medical Corps, ending with the rank of lieutenant commander. After service, he held professorships at the University of Minnesota Medical School, the University of Pittsburgh, and at Case Western Reserve University.

Spock's baby book was a perennial bestseller. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it outsold all other books in the Nonfiction category except the Bible. The royalties made him a wealthy man.

Spock was an ardent sailor: he kept one sailboat, named "Carapace", in the British Virgin Islands, where he frequently visited the Peter Island Yacht Club; he kept a smaller boat in Maine.

He owned a summer home in Maine and an apartment on Madison Avenue, in Manhattan.

In 1976, Dr. Spock married a second time, to Mary Morgan, who had formerly arranged speeches and workshops for him. They built a home near Rogers, Arkansas, on a lake, where Ben would row his scull early in the morning. Mary, the ex-wife of an Arkansas physician, quickly adapted to Ben's life of travel and political activism, and she was arrested with him several times for civil disobedience. She also introduced Ben to massage, yoga, and a macrobiotic diet, which reportedly improved his health. Mary helped him revise Baby and Child Care in 1976, incorporating non-sexist language and making other substantive changes.

For most of his life, Spock wore Brooks Brothers suits and shirts (with separate collars), but Mary Morgan got him to try blue jeans, at 75, for the first time in his life. She introduced him to Transactional Analysis therapists and other people in the Human Potential Movement. He adapted to her lifestyle, as she did to his.

He learned a great deal about life as a step-parent from Mary's daughter Ginger (Virginia) Councille, who was 11 when they met. Years later, he walked her down the aisle, as illustrated in biographies.

Spock died at his rented home in La Jolla, California after a long battle with cancer. The expenses of his treatment consumed most of his wealth.

Books

In 1946, Spock published his book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which became a bestseller. By 1998 it had sold more than 50 million copies. It has been translated into 39 languages. Later he wrote three more books about parenting.

Spock advocated ideas about parenting that were, at the time, considered out of the mainstream. Over time, his books helped to bring about a major change, if not a reversal, in the opinions of those who considered themselves to be the experts. Previously, experts had told parents that babies needed to learn to sleep on a regular schedule, and that picking them up and holding them whenever they cried would only teach them to cry more and not to sleep through the night (a notion that borrows from behaviorism). They were told to feed their children on a regular schedule, and that they should not pick them up, kiss them, or hug them, because that would not prepare them to be strong and independent individuals in a harsh world. Spock encouraged parents to see their children as individuals, and not to apply a one-size-fits all philosophy to them. The First Edition of Baby and Child Care followed the conventional wisdom on circumcision: he recommended it, although he was not circumcised himself (oddly enough, circumcision of gentile babies had first become fashionable in "Boston Brahmin" families like Spock's). In "The Sixth Edition" (1985) he wrote about circumcising healthy children, "There is no excuse for the operation — except as a religious rite. So I strongly recommend leaving the foreskin alone. Parents should insist on convincing reasons for circumcision — and there are no convincing reasons that I know of."

Later in life Spock wrote a book entitled "Dr. Spock on Vietnam" and co-wrote an autobiography entitled "Spock on Spock" (with Mary Morgan Spock), in which he stated his attitude toward aging: "Delay and Deny".

Other writers, such as Lynn Bloom and Thomas Maier, have written biographies of Dr. Spock.

Claims that Dr. Spock advocated permissiveness


Some have seen Spock as the leader in the move toward more permissive parenting in general, and have blamed him for what they saw as the negative results. Norman Vincent Peale claimed in the late 1960s that "the U.S. was paying the price of two generations that followed the Dr. Spock baby plan of instant gratification of needs."[citation needed] Vice President Spiro Agnew denounced him as the "father of permissiveness," claiming that Dr. Spock's child rearing principles encouraged lawlessness among young people in the 1960s.[citation needed]

Spock's supporters believed that these criticisms betrayed an ignorance of what Spock had actually written, and/or a political bias against Spock's left-wing political activities. Spock himself, in his autobiography, pointed out that he had never advocated permissiveness;[citation needed] also, that the attacks and claims that he had ruined American youth only arose after his public opposition to the Vietnam war. He regarded these claims as ad hominem attacks, whose political motivation and nature was clear. [1]

Sleeping position and sudden infant death syndrome

Spock advocated infants should be placed on their front when sleeping, commenting in his 1958 edition that "if [an infant] vomits, he's more likely to choke on the vomitus." This advice was extremely influential on health-care providers, with nearly unanimous support through to the 1990s.[1] Later empirical studies, however, found that there is a significantly increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) associated with sleeping in this position. Advocates of evidence-based medicine have used this as an example of the importance of basing health-care recommendations on statistical evidence, with one researcher estimating that as many as 50,000 infant deaths in Europe, Australia, and the US could have been prevented had this advice been altered by 1970, when such evidence became available.[2]

Politics

In 1957, Spock was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Spock was politically outspoken and active in the movement to end the Vietnam War. In 1968 he was prosecuted by then Attorney General Ramsey Clark, alongside four other men, on charges of conspiracy to counsel, aid, and abet resistance to the draft. Spock and three of his alleged co-conspirators were convicted although the five had never been in the same room together. His two-year prison sentence was never served, as the case was appealed and in 1969 a federal court set aside his conviction.

In 1967, Spock was to be nominated as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vice-presidential running mate at the National Conference for New Politics over Labor Day weekend in Chicago. However, according to William F. Pepper's Orders to Kill, the conference was broken up by agents provocateurs working for the government.

Spock was the People's Party candidate in the 1972 United States presidential election with a platform that called for free medical care, the repeal of "victimless crime" laws, including the legalization of abortion, homosexuality, and marijuana, a guaranteed minimum income for families and the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from foreign countries. [2] In the 1970s and 1980s, Spock demonstrated and gave lectures against nuclear weapons and cuts in social welfare programs.

Spock embraced women's and girls' equality relatively early. Editions of Baby and Child Care issued in the mid-1970s were edited to refer to babies and children as "she" about half the time. This was a departure from the norm at that time. Especially among established authors of Spock's age, there was still a strong school of thought claiming that the pronoun "he" was correct for all persons unless speaking of a specific female or female matters. Spock's book was the first major/mainstream book to abandon that view and usage.[citation needed]

In 1972, Spock, Julius Hobson (his Vice Presidential candidate), Linda Jenness (Socialist Workers Party Presidential candidate), and Socialist Workers Party Vice Presidential candidate Andrew Pulley wrote to Major General Bert A. David, commanding officer of Fort Dix, asking for permission to distribute campaign literature and to hold an election-related campaign meeting. On the basis of Fort Dix regulations 210-26 and 210-27, General David refused the request. Spock, Hobson, Jenness, Pulley, and others then filed a case that ultimately made its way to the United States Supreme Court (424 U.S. 828 -- Greer, Commander, Fort Dix Military Reservation, et al., v. Spock et al), which ruled against the plaintiffs.

424 U.S. 828: [3]

Election results: [4]

See also an interview in The Libertarian Forum, December 1972. http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1972/1972_12.pdf

Public misconceptions

Contrary to popular rumor, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. Spock had two children: Michael, formerly the director of the Boston Children's Museum and since retired from the museum profession. However, Spock's grandson Peter did commit suicide on December 25 1983 at the age of 22 by jumping from the roof of the Boston Children's Museum. He had long suffered from schizophrenia. The sister of Peter Spock, Susannah Spock, received her Bachelor of Science degree from The Evergreen State College. Susannah has taken part in critical surveys on the Spotted Owl on the Olympic Peninsula, where she currently resides, and continues to be an environmental advocate.

It is common to see "Dr. Spock" confused with the fictional character "Mr. Spock" of Star Trek fame, particularly in references from people unfamiliar with the field of science fiction. Reportedly, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry did not intentionally name the character after Dr. Spock; this was a coincidence.

Dr. Spock in popular culture

  • Several Peanuts comic strips from the 1950s refer to him admiringly.
  • He is mentioned in passing by Kirstie Alley's character in the 1989 film Look Who's Talking (John Travolta's character thinks of Mr. Spock from Star Trek). Coincidentally, Alley played the Vulcan's protégé Saavik in the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  • He is also mentioned in Antonia S. Byatt's 1985 novel Still Life.
  • In the Star Trek novel Strangers from the Sky a time-traveling Mr. Spock is befriended by one of his human mother's ancestors, Dr. Grayson, who wonders if he's related to Benjamin Spock. Spock decides to allow Grayson to call him Ben.
  • The character Dr. Lipschitz in the animated series Rugrats may be a reference to or parody of Dr. Spock.
  • Dr. Spock was mentioned in a Gilmore Girls episode when G.G. (Chris' child) was behaving wildly.
  • His book Baby and Child Care is featured in Raising Arizona, where it is humorously referred to as "the manual".
  • On the "Rock the Cradle" episode of MacGyver, when MacGyver (played by Richard Dean Anderson) and Jack find a baby left at Jack's hangar, and Jack asks MacGyver a question about babies, MacGyver answers with: "Who do I look like? Dr. Spock?"
  • Towards the end of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 Hunter S. Thompson tells ex-presidential candidate George McGovern that he "might have voted for Dr. Spock" had McGovern accepted Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. He actually could have: Spock appeared on the ballot in some states.
  • In the movie Daddy Day Care Steve Zahn's character, "Marvin", has the line, "I read Dr. Spock's book, 'Baby and Child Care'... it's not about Star Trek".
  • In one episode of The Golden Girls, while the women are taking care of a baby, Blanche mentions what Dr. Spock said about, to which Rose replies: "What does he know about kids? Besides, babies are raised in an incubator on Vulcan", a reference to the Star Trek character.
  • In Farscape episode 01x10, "They've got a secret", after the living spaceship on which much of the series is set becomes pregnant, American astronaut John Crichton wonders jokingly: "Is there some kind of What to Expect When You're Expecting Baby Leviathan book? Dr. Spock, Mr. Spock..."
  • In an episode of Alien Nation, George Francisco tells Matthew Sikes: "I don't need to learn about child care from your Mr. Spock." Sikes retorts: "Dr. Spock. Mr. Spock is one of you."
  • In an episode from the fifth season of the BBC Comedy Absolutely Fabulous, Saffy comments that all Eddy knows about child rearing is from Dr. Spock, to which Eddy takes great offense (more to the allusion of her being old rather than a bad mother).
  • In the movie, "Big Momma's House 2", with actor Martin Lawrence playing an undercover detective disguised as a black female nanny, he can be seen reading Dr. Spock's Baby Care Book and his FBI cohorts call him crazy. Lawrence's character is also an expecting father.

Further reading

  • Bloom, Lynn Z. Doctor Spock; biography of a conservative radical. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. 1972.
  • Maier, Thomas Doctor Spock; An American Life. Harcourt Brace, New York. 1998.

References

  1. ^ Ruth Gilbert, Georgia Salanti, Melissa Harden and Sarah See (2005). "Infant sleeping position and the sudden infant death syndrome: systematic review of observational studies and historical review of recommendations from 1940 to 2002", International Journal of Epidemiology, Oxford University Press.
  2. ^ Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Health Report", September 11, 2006. Radio program. Transcript

External links


 
 

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From Today's Highlights
July 14, 2006

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
- Dr. Benjamin Spock

See more quotes