”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.”
From The New York Times 1998 obituary of Benjamin Spock, World’s Pediatrician. Dr. Spock was born 107 years ago today.