Trust Yourself. You know more than you think you do.
Those are the opening words of "Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care", which, at 65, is essentially a grandparent of a book. In fact, the first mothers to rely on it were the great-grandmothers of those who are having babies today.
To mark the anniversary, the 9th edition was released last week, all 1130 pages of it. While every parent has arguably heard of the book, it's a safe bet that not nearly as many have actually read it. Certainly not all of it.
Which is why I've chosen it as the newest selection of the You-Help-Choose-The-Name-Blog Book Club.
No, I don't expect you'll have the time to read the whole brick-sized thing. Instead I'm hoping we'll look at the tome as a piece of parenting history. I plan to compare the latest edition with the earliest one, looking at what the differences tell us about parenting trends. (Hint: there is no chapter on "The Internet", "The New Brain Science" or "Saving for College" in the original, and the advice about infant sleep is just a smidge different...)I also plan to look at how so many of our assumptions of what "everybody knows" about raising children actually began with this one book. We'll spend some time talking about the thinking it spawned, and also the ones it conflicts with (what, for instance, would Dr. Spock make of Tiger Mom?). And I'll get to introduce you to Mrs. Dr. Spock -- his wife of 26 years, Mary Morgan. (Fun Mary Morgan fact: when she and the doctor were arrested during a protest against the Vietnam War in front of the White House, she was strip searched and he was not. She sued the District of Columbia for sex discrimination. And won.)
We'll delve more into all this content over the next few weeks, once you've had a chance to get a copy and read along.
But for today, let's talk about those first two sentences.
When I told Morgan we would be reading the latest edition of her husband's book here in book club she brought me a copy of the first edition, a hardback with a simple green cover and black type -- The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. (No, she didn't let me keep it...) Turning to the first page, seeing the two lines that have not changed in 65 years, I was struck by the reality that parents back then had doubts too. Sure today's parents are suffused with doubt. That's what modern parenting IS. But we tend to assume that earlier generations, in contrast, were just so darn certain.
We either envy that certainty (things were so simple then; parents didn't have to torture themselves with worry that they weren't doing their best for their kids) or we sneer at it (aren't we lucky we know so much more than they did and can do so much better for our kids.)
But either way we don't think of our grandparents et al as second guessing.
Dr. Spock, apparently, knew otherwise.
Trust Yourself. You know more than you think you do.
Those words, says Dr. Robert Needlman, who revised this 9th edition and the one before it, were revolutionary. They came at the end of a 20 year stretch where the first wave of "parenting experts" were lecturing and hectoring, telling parents exactly what they should and should not do. (In general, the advice was to be less coddling and more stern.)
"Historically, there had been parenting guides before," Needlman says, "but they were all very prescriptive. Spock was the first to be 'on the one hand, on the other hand.' His was not so much of an instruction, as a permission, making judgments of what works for you."
To today's parents, who not only have doubts, but who also think they are the first ever to have them, two thoughts:
First, while the two iconic lines have remained the same through every edition, the name of the chapter of which those sentences are a part has been tweaked, and it now reads: Trust Yourself and Your Children.
"Too much of the advice out there about parenting paints the parent child relationship in an adversarial way," Needlman says. "The message should not be 'you have to control this child and teach them the rules,' but rather 'how can you helo you child to have a better sense of themselves from within.' "
In other words, in books, parenting, and life, a small change of the lens can make a world of difference.
Second, trusting your instincts does not mean you are going to get it right every time -- and certainly not right from the start. Parenting is a process, a journey. You have to get to know yourself as a parent, and you have to get to know your particular child. Think of it as writing a book. Sometimes you aren't certain what you think until you are a good ways into your manuscript.
Which is, as it turns out, what happened to Dr. Spock.
His widow tells me that her husband penned the manuscript in long hand, wrapped it with paper and twine, and took it to the post office. He was about to hand it to the clerk when he had a thought, untied the package, and scribbled the following words at the top of the first page:
Trust Yourself. You know more than you think you do.
DO you?
As a new mother myself in '73 and devoted to the cynicism and distrust so pervasive of those times, I was awestruck when I discovered that only Dr. Spock's book kept me from unloading my newborn on the next stranger who came to my door. I'm still amazed that only he could make me believe that, my son incessantly screaming otherwise, if I simply trust my own best instincts, both baby and I would be just fine. This baby is now a physician himself who still calls me mom.
Spock's legacy has now been handed down to my children where it encourages them to ignore the hoards of modern-day childcare "experts" who can only wish they were as enduringly valuable as Benjamin Spock still is.
I admit that I don't know much more about him beyond those famous opening lines. Looking forward to learning more about him through the Unnamed Book Club. My only fear is, what if the book turns out to have aged poorly? Does that retroactively invalidate my childhood?
Pediatrics and child-rearing is trendy, unbelievably trendy, and it is a big mistake to assume the latest trend is the only right answer. Just look at SIDS recommendations. I had 3 children fairly spread out in age. The first was advised to sleep on his stomach to prevent choking, the second propped onto her side with little bolsters, the third on her back. All of these recommendations were announced with great publicity and warnings. Obviously, they cannot all be correct. I chose to have my babies sleep in a slightly elevated infant seat beside my bed whenever they were sick, to make breathing easier, and keep them closer. (SIDS tends to occur when the baby has a slight illness.) I never read it in any baby books, but it made sense. Parents should trust themselves.
I've often wondered about trusting self in light of discussions of "mommy guilt" -- whether over breastfeeding, birth, working or not, or any other parenting practice. It seems to me that we are the only ones who have the power to make ourselves feel guilty, not some external source. If you know that you are doing your very best, and if you trust yourself and you relationship with your child, then that is all that matters. If you feel guilty about something, then that is a sign that there might be something to feel guilty about.
http://www.amber-hinds.com
What surprised me was how modern the pregnancy nutrition advice was--a lot of it was exactly what I learned during my pregnancy. I can't really speak to the rest of the book, because I use it (and other baby/toddler manuals) very infrequently.