Benjamin Spock (1903 – 1998)
American pediatrician and author.
Biologically and temperamentally, I believe women were made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care and home care.
The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all. All parents do their best job when they have a natural, easy confidence in themselves. Better to make a few mistakes from being natural than to try to do everything letter-perfect out of a feeling of worry.
There are only two things a child will share willingly— communicable diseases and his mother's age.
Some physicians who have called him excessively permissive just didn't understand and gave his understanding approach to child rearing a negative label. He was blamed for the radical behavior of the youth in the '60s. But that didn't emerge from Spock's teachings. It was far more a reflection of the social and political climate.
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.