ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SYRACUSE, N.Y.
SOURCE: WILLIAM KATES ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOW, 50 YEARS after his ``Baby And Child Care'' came out, the sixth rendition of the book is being published. Dr. Spock has added topics people never thought of addressing in 1946
Now regarded as the messiah of modern child-rearing, Dr. Benjamin Spock expected to be just a flash-in-the-pan with his how-to book on babies and children.
Instead, he became the best friend and late-night adviser to generations of parents.
And now, 50 years later, the sixth rendition of ``Baby And Child Care'' is being published to help parents raising children in the 21st century.
``I was afraid that they were going to say there was too much new-fangled stuff in that book,'' Spock said in a telephone interview from his seaside home in Maine. ``I never thought it would catch on like that.''
He assumed the next book published after his would supersede ``Baby And Child Care.''
Not so. Over the last half-century, Spock's book has become a household fixture worldwide, selling 43 million copies in 39 languages.
The book's 50th anniversary was celebrated at a symposium hosted by Syracuse University, which holds Spock's writings and papers among the collections at its Bird Library.
Although Spock did not attend, many leading child-development experts gathered to discuss parenting issues and the impact of Spock's best-selling book.
When Pocket Books first published the advice manual in 1946, Spock said he figured the book might sell 10,000 copies the first year. It sold 750,000 copies.
``The secret of its original success and its continued success was that it was kind to parents,'' said Spock, who turned 93 in May.
``There is a tendency on the part of professional people in medicine and psychology to scold parents. There is a condescension,'' he said. ``I was acutely aware that parents in America are easily made guilty, and the best service I could perform was to tell them, `You know more than you think you do.'''
Spock called that friendly approach the book's secret weapon.
For the first half of the 20th century, the accepted approach to raising children, as espoused by experts like Dr. Luther Emmet Holt and Dr. John B. Watson, was defined by its rigidity.
Babies were to be placed on a fixed feeding schedule; to stop thumb-sucking, parents were urged to restrain their infants spread-eagle in their cribs; there were set times recommended for babies' bowel movements and parents were told to toilet train their youngsters by 3 months and strap them to the toilet seat in a locked room, if necessary. Displays of affection were discouraged.
If a child was particularly well-behaved, it was OK to give him or her a pat on the head, according to Watson, a Johns Hopkins University behavioral psychologist.
``He [Spock] was the first person in the world trained as a pediatrician and a psychoanalyst to publish as a result his child-care advice focuses more on the process of raising children rather than the particulars,'' said James Sullivan, a doctoral student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who recently interviewed Spock for a biography.
``A turn toward emphasizing a positive experience between the parent and the child rather than a strict regime of child care is what made Dr. Spock's book fresh,'' said Sullivan, one of the speakers at the symposium. ``It represented an opening in the field of child care that now everyone else's work has flowed through.''
Spock has reflected the flexibility espoused in his book in his willingness to update it. Subsequent printings have added revisions on gender roles, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and divorce.
Spock was born in New Haven, Conn., the oldest of six children in a conservative, middle-class family. He went to Yale, where in 1924 he was a member of the eight-oar crew team that won a gold medal in rowing at the Paris Olympics.
He earned his medical degree in 1929 from Columbia University and studied Freud's psychoanalysis theories at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
He spent 11 years in private practice as a pediatrician, developing his knack for explaining his ideas in a simple and reassuring manner. During that time, he wrote a handful of articles on ``preventative psychiatry,'' finally bringing his ideas together in ``The Common Sense Book of Baby And Child Care.''
Spock modestly downplays his impact. He said he did not invent the ideas he advocated, nor did he have to brainwash parents into accepting his advice.
``Parents were getting to the point where they dared differ with the professionals,'' said Spock.
``There were many parents who were very unhappy with the ideas like rigid feeding schedules. It was hard on babies, but it was harder still on mothers,'' he said.
``His book is about rearing babies to feel that you cared about them and made them comfortable. Not about either being their slave or them being the slave to your timetable,'' said Alice Honig, a respected child development authority from Syracuse University.
Although Spock later became a controversial figure through his political activism and his ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign, ``Baby And Child Care'' caused only a minor stir when it first came out, said Sullivan.
Because it was not a serious medical text, many doctors paid it little attention at first. If other pediatricians were upset by it, it was not because of the advice Spock gave, but the way in which he did it, said Bettye Caldwell, a University of Arkansas child development professor whose work helped lead to the creation of the Head Start program.
``He kind of bypassed the field and he made his impression directly on parents,'' Caldwell said. ``Most of us who write things, who do empirical research or write theoretical papers, hope it will eventually get to the consumer. Ben would write to the consumer.''
``Spock said to women, `Trust your baby's signals. Trust your own signals.' He validated the feelings of moms,'' said Honig, who credits Spock as an early liberator in the women's rights movement.
Spock still bristles at the suggestion that he preached permissiveness and helped cause the youth rebellion of the 1960s.
It's open to interpretation whether Spock helped or hurt himself by becoming an outspoken frontman for the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements in the 1960s. While many mothers apparently overlooked his politics, others were not forgiving, said Sullivan.
The Spock collection at Syracuse includes hate mail sent to the doctor during his 1972 campaign for president on the left-leaning People's Party ticket. Spock received just 80,000 votes; he was on the ballot in only 10 states.
In 1968, he was sentenced to two years for aiding and abetting draft resisters. The conviction was overturned on appeal.
Spock said he had to be coaxed into his activism. ``At that time, pediatricians didn't get involved in such things. I realized somebody has to urge people to use their political power.''
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Benjamin Spock modestly downplays his impact. KEYWORDS: PROFILEby CNB