by Josephine Polifroni

Created on: December 02, 2008   Last Updated: February 24, 2009

An entire generation of baby boomers, if asked when they were teens, would probably respond that their lives were more influenced by Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, than Dr. Spock, pediatrician. Dr. Benjamin Spock, however, had an almost unprecedented influence upon this generation with the publication of his book, "Baby and Child Care."

Originally titled "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" and published in 1946, Dr. Spock's influence on childcare and parenting achieved revolutionary status as he challenged traditional methods of childrearing. With his encouragement an entire generation of parents, particularly mothers as the primary caregiver of the era, had an opportunity to become experts in their own right, as Dr. Spock told them, "Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do."

Benjamin Spock came by his expertise regarding children and child rearing, both by experience and education. As a child he was expected to help care for five younger siblings by parents who were strict and Puritanical. He decided on a life in medicine after spending a summer as a counselor at a camp for crippled children. Before writing his well-known book, he spoke with many parents to obtain a first hand view of parenting.

He received his undergraduate education at Yale, where he was a member of the secret society Scroll and Key and Zeta Psi fraternity. He was also a rower, winning a gold medal as part of an American eight crew in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. He continued rowing through much of his life, at different times keeping a sailboat in the British Virgins Islands, Maine or his lake front home in Arkansas.

He received his medical degree from Columbia University and studied psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Spock served a pediatric residency at Weill Medical College of Cornell and a psychiatric residency at the Cornell Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. These duel degrees gave him a unique combination of education for the time and gave him the knowledge to formulate his own ideas about childrearing.

Dr. Spock served during WWII as a psychiatrist in the U.S. Naval Reserve Medial Corps, achieving a rank of lieutenant commander and went on to hold professorships at The University of Minnesota Medical School, the University of Pittsburgh and Case Western Reserve University.

Before Dr. Spock wrote his revolutionary book, the schedule reigned supreme in infant care. Babies were fed and put down to sleep on a schedule and left to cry until

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