Benjamin Spock (1903 – 1998)
American pediatrician and author.
Respect children because they're human beings and they deserve respect, and they'll grow up to be better people. But I've always said ask for respect from your children, ask for cooperation, ask for politeness. Give your children firm leadership.
When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.
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.
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.
There are only two things a child will share willingly— communicable diseases and his mother's age.
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.
Biologically and temperamentally, I believe women were made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care and home care.
Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.
You know more than you think you do.
The loving person makes other people feel good, and he is usually a happy person himself. He is able to form strong, long-lasting friendships.
All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.
I wanted to be supportive of parents rather than to scold them. The book set out very deliberately to counteract some of the rigidities of pediatric tradition, particularly in infant feeding. It emphasized the importance of great differences between individual babies, of the need for flexibility and of the lack of necessity to worry constantly about spoiling.
An entire generation grew up unacquainted with the thwack of paddle against bottom.
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.
Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.
Well, at least nobody could accuse me of having brought up Spiro Agnew.
Having a good time together is the essence of lovingness and the best means of increasing it.
People have said, "You've turned your back on pediatrics." I said, "No. It took me until I was in my 60s to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics."