Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care [Paperback]

The book is a guide to the care and development of children from birth to five years. While it is chock full of useful information, such as methods of feeding infants, sleep issues in babies and toddlers and toilet training, the real value of the book is it's discussion of the psychological development of children. At the time the book was published, the prevailing theories of childcare focused almost exclusively on methods of parental control, that is to say discipline. The experts of the day sought to teach parents how to control their children's behavior but not how to understand that behavior. Spock changed all that. By couching his Freudian approach to child development in folksy and simple language, Spock brought the theories of Freud to the entire nation. Certainly parents would have been horrified to read straightforward Freudian ideas about the Oedipal complex and such things. Spock simply asserts that girls learn to be women by imitating their mothers and flirting with their fathers and vice versa. In this manner, Freud's child development theories were accepted into the mainstream.

The first sentence of the book states "Relax. You know more than you think you do." This sums up Spock's common sense approach to the role of parents in caring for and guiding the behavior of their children. This is more true today than when the book was published. So many parents are caught up in trendy ideas and theories that they fail to step back and observe what is really going on. Spock's discussion of child psychology, while Freudian based, is not so narrow. His book is filled with numerous examples of the behavior of babies, toddlers and young children and parents' appropriate or inappropriate responses. Contrary to popular myth, Spock does not ignore the necessity of discipline. Indeed, throughout the book, he urges appropriate discipline. He demonstrates, through example, why young children after the first birthday misbehave. Sometimes, it is an attempt to manipulate the actions of the parents. More importantly, as Spock demonstrates, in the period we call the "terrible twos" and also for children approaching the age of 3 and a half, disobedience is usually an attempt by children to discover the boundaries of their own autonomy. As such it is a vital and necessary part of human development. Spock's great innovation is accepting this as natural. He does not call children who disobey naughty or bad. But at the same time, he urges parents to set appropriate boundaries and enforce them. The failure to enforce the limits of a young child's autonomy is what leads to spoiled children. As Spock points out in his characteristically folksy way, even the children know something is wrong when they are allowed to get away with such actions.

As I stated above, Spock's approach to childcare is virtually universal. No modern child psychologist or pediatrician would argue that the meaning and reason for child behavior is unimportant to the effort to raise healthy adults. Doctors like Stoppard and Brazelton are full fledged Spockians. Even the super-famous Dr. Ferber lifts his complicated method straight out of Spock's simple idea that a little crying will not harm a baby. Indeed, a point Spock often makes is that happy and sane parents are the most important factors in raising happy children.

This book is extremely valuable and makes fascinating reading. It should be read by all parents and parents to be. It should be read first cover to cover and then re-read as one's children approach the various ages covered in the book. It remains one of the signature influential works of the 20th Century and I can't imagine it ever going out of vogue. Read this book!