Who Was Dr Spock?

One of the best selling books of all time is Baby And Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. The book was first published in 1946 and has been updated and republished with new editions until recently. This book was considered the ultimate guide to raising children by the parents of the baby boomers, the baby boomers themselves, generation X and continues today. But what was so special about this book? How did it revolutionize the way people thought about children and how they should be raised? And who was the man behind the book?
In this episode of Dirt Nap City, Alex and Kelly dive deep into the life of the author to understand why the book was such a big cultural phenomenon. Dr. Spock may have been one of the biggest influences on the modern world and Dirt Nap City helps you understand why!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Knap City, the show about interesting dead people. And I got a good one for you today, Kelly. Awesome. I'm excited. Well, you know, I think uh we were talking earlier before the episode, and I think uh the kind of people that I like to talk about are kind of taking shape, I think. I like to talk about people from the 20th century. I think it's my favorite century, even though I recognize that I'll probably live more in the 21st century than the 20th century. Uh uh so far, 20th century, 21st century, um, two stars maybe? You it's nostalgia, right? Partially. Yeah. I'm not that impressed with this century so far. With the with the uh newsmakers, deal makers, luminaries, uh artists, uh just whatnot. I think the 20th century was the American century, as they call it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Well, perhaps we can step in and be the change that the world needs, right? Maybe Dirtnap City is just that. It's going to be we'll we'll we'll it'll start off as a podcast, it will become a regular show on Netflix, eventually it will have uh sort of a media empire with um millions of subscribers on YouTube, we'll have our own TikTok channel, and then eventually run for office and change the world. That's the plan.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I have a hunch that we're not going to be appreciated until the 22nd century, you and me.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

When we're living in Dirt Knap City, yeah, yeah. You know, that happens to a lot of people. Would be ironic, but probably uh probably fair.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

The person that I want to talk about today was named in Life magazine in 1990. I don't know why they did it in 1990, but Life magazine listed the 100 most interesting, what was it, the most important people of the 20th century. But like jumped the gun, 1990. In 1999, they issued something about the most important people of the millennium, which is really funny to me. You have to be pretty strong to make that list.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, agreed.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

But you might be surprised to learn this person was on that list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. There were no presidents on that list.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Okay, so it's not a president.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

There were two people that we've talked about in previous episodes on that list. You want to take a guess on who those two people were?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Um, I'm going to guess Eleanor Roosevelt and um thinking of importance here, Chef Boy Ardy.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Uh Eleanor Roosevelt was definitely uh one of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Oh, the other one is the person that you're uh we're about to talk about? No, no, somebody we've already talked about.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Somebody we've already talked about.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Um could it have been Dr. Seuss? You know what? I forgot who that was at first.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

I thought you would guess it. I don't think it was Dr. Seuss, though. Um no. I think I can give you Einstein. It was Einstein. Yeah, yeah, okay. Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, yeah. All right, not Chef Boyer D. Anyhow, uh this person was also on that list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, born in 1903, died in 1998, 85 years old, yeah, and um won an Olympic medal in rowing in 1924, but not an athlete. I mean, not known as an athlete. He got his MD from Columbia in 1929, and I'll give you a little riddle here today. See Everett Coop? No, oh, that would be a good one. I'll give you a little riddle here, you should get it.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

We're gonna talk about babies today, not Star Trek. Oh, Dr. Spock. Dr. Spock, what do you know about Dr. Spock, Kelly?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Um, really just that he wrote a book about raising healthy, happy babies.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, and the thing about that is that book came out in 1946. Okay. So if you think about what was going on in America in 1946, that was right at the beginning of the baby boom, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, well let's see, was World War II over in 46? It was, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

It was over in 45.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

So that was the beginning of the baby boom. So all these old geezers that we know now as baby boomers, they were all being born from 1946 to 19, I don't know, 60 or whatever. I don't know how long that generation was supposed to last. They were the future hippies, counterculturalists, revolutionaries, that type. And our parents, right, exactly. This book came out in 1946, um, taught their parents how to raise them. So a lot of people say that this guy had the biggest influence on that generation, which was the largest generation of people that we've had yet. You know, a lot of people say that he kind of formed these uh this this kind of countercultural um movement as babies. And some people are critical of it, some people um like it, but definitely still has an imprint today. And like to hear your thoughts about, you know, you raised a couple of kids yourself, and like to see if kind of these same thoughts about raising raising babies is is still around today.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Well, isn't a raisin baby called a grape? Ah, good one. Yeah, that's that's that's great. Yeah, yeah. Dad joke, hashtag. Yeah, that's that's great. That's great. So, so wait, wait, let me ask you one other question. Well what before we get too much further. You did say something about the largest generation or you know, most babies born in a generation ever up to that point. Do you think currently we are exceeding that? Like each generation further is a larger generation? In other words, was that just because of the natural progression of more and more babies and more and more humans being born and Americans on this planet? Or was that a particularly big generation of babies, the boom, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Like the law, the raw number is probably not larger than today, but in terms of number of kids per family, I think it was larger than any, it was a it was a concentrated in such a short amount of time because of the war, because men had been away for a while, and and now they were settling down. I think that that was the explosion of everybody having kids at the same time. In terms of raw numbers, just because there are more people now, the raw numbers are probably bigger now, but I'd have to have to check.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Well, I mean, you do you do read these stories about certain countries where the population growth has slowed down and everybody's worried about it. I'll I'll I'll just interject my little thought on that is that honestly, I feel like well, this this could get really political really quickly, but I feel like the planet is just generally overpopulated, and slowing down of population growth is not a bad thing, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Uh my parents did their part. I'm an only child, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Way to go. Um, yeah. They they they got that government from the or they got that stipend from the Chinese government to only have one kid.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

And and you know, if you've ever been to New Mexico or in the uh Arizona Desert, there's plenty of room for everybody. Uh we're not just right. We we just all tend to live on top of each other. That's the that's the thing. True. All right, so let's get into uh um Dr. Spock. Now, the first thing I mentioned Star Trek. Um, a lot of people mistakenly think that uh that Dr. Spock was the guy on Star Trek, and I'm not a trekkie or anything, but that is not true, isn't it? Was Mr. Spock.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, and Leonard Nimoy uh did not write any baby books.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

No, and apparently it was completely coincidental that the uh uh the writer of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, was looking for a five-letter word that started with an S, and uh and uh came up with Spock as kind of a nonsensical word, and it just was a total coincidence that it had to do with uh with this. So I'll take him at his word. You you may or may not know that I'm uh I'm always conversing with uh Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

I I know you're into that, yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah, so I asked it uh earlier today to write me a riddle that I was gonna tell you um about uh about uh Dr. Spock, and it said some and then it was it was really bad, so I told it wasn't funny, and then it said I said write a knock knock joke about Dr. Spock, and then it went like this it said uh knock knock who's there Doctor Doctor Who and said no not Doctor Who, Dr. Spock, live long and prosper, and I and then I said I said uh I said why did you say live long and prosper? And it said, well, it was a play on words, it was a playful attempt to connect uh Dr. Spock with Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and I said, I think that would be confusing to the listener, and it said, I apologize, I didn't mean to confuse anybody. I'm always trying to put Chat GPT in its place.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Quite yeah, yeah, and but but very, very um good manners, very polite, very well behaved, but um not not very funny.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Okay, not very funny at all. It's it tells things that are almost jokes all the time, and I get annoyed with it.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Well, yeah, I mean I think it almost would have been better if it had had Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock confused, at least that would have been a good excuse. But oh no, I know the difference. I just went for it anyway. It's not a great excuse.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Right, yeah, I know it's very AI type excuse, right? I'm never wrong, right? Yeah, exactly. So when this book came out in 1946, it immediately became one of the top-selling books of the 20th century. At one time they said only the Bible had sold, uh, had sold more. It sold 500 copies, 500,000 copies in the first six months. Did Dr.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Spock have a first name?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Benjamin. Benjamin, okay, thank you. Benjamin Spock. By the time he died in 1998, his book had sold 50 million copies. And the last, the previous, I think the latest edition, they're still publishing it. The latest edition came out in 2018. So they just keep adding new things, adding more pediatricians uh to the mix, and it's still a book that you can buy today. Uh yeah, in its first 52 years, it was they said it was the second best-selling book next to the Bible, depending on who you're uh kind of talking to. Uh, he became very political later in life and was a pretty big opponent of the Vietnam War. And um that actually really hurt his his sales because he kind of drew a line there. So um once in the in the set by the time we were kids and our parents were reading this book, um, it wasn't selling as well because he had kind of drawn some political lines.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Kind of like Gilbert cartoons in the future.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah, exactly. Do you know what some of the best-selling all-time books are?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

I'm gonna guess probably uh Holden Caulfield, what was that? A separate piece?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Uh the the the uh catcher and the rye.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Or catcher and the rye, yeah. Um I I would say probably a separate piece. Um The Great Gatsby would be a guess. Is that on there?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Uh it didn't sell more than this book. Um, so the books that have sold more than this are like Don Quixote, I think is the most selling, the biggest selling book of all time, and Tales of Two Cities, Little Prince, old books like that, The Hobbit. The books that have done well since this came out in 1946, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter, all the Harry Potter, seven Harry Potter books, Da Vinci Code, oh yeah, Bridges of Madison County, Bridget Jones Diary. No, no, that didn't sell better than this, and then an Indian book called Vardi Walla Gunda. Do you know that book? No, no. The idea here is that this guy wrote this book. He was a pediatrician. Uh, he had been practicing for you know 15 years or so, and really wanted a uh a good book that that uh all these new mothers were gonna have to to about raising kids uh based on kind of what he's seen in his pediatrician's offices. The criticism of this book is was wasn't super grounded in research, it was mostly drawn from anecdotes and from patients that he had had, which isn't great for a um for a medical kind of how-to book. But up to that time, the old school thought of raising kids was completely different than what he was advising his patients.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Like, how many times a day were you supposed to beat them?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah, exactly. So his book was called Baby and Childcare. That's the famous book that I keep talking about. And he only really wrote this one book, he just kept coming out with different editions of it. He wrote other books uh about politics and old age and things like that. But this one, this baby in childcare, was the one that everybody um was buying. Prior to this, there was a book that came out in 1894 called The Care and Feeding of Children, which makes it sound like a houseplant, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

And and the idea back then at the turn of the century about raising children was completely different than I think you or I would recognize. Um, it would say things like, babies under six months should never be played with, and the less of it at any time, the better for the infant. They're made nervous and irritable, they sleep badly, and they suffer from indigestion. Really? Don't kiss and hug your babies because that would not prepare them to be strong and independent individuals in a harsh world. Only kiss kids on the kiss kids on the forehead and limit hugs and other displays of affections.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

So just not this was the care and feeding of babies, not Dr. Spock.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Right. This was the care and feeding of children. Children, which came out in um 1894. Even in 1930, there was a guy named John Watson that came up with a book that said children should be treated as an adult. I let here's a here's a quote from this book Never, never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they s when you say goodnight, shake hands with them in the morning. Very formal, formal way to raise children. Yeah. So you see, when this is what mothers prior to the baby boomers were were left with in terms of how to raise kids. Yeah. And he just thought this seemed cruel. He thought that um that what he had seen is that, and mostly mothers were coming in at the time, he'd say, you know, you more you know more than you think. Trust your instincts, have confidence in your abilities, uh, show affection to your kids, look at them as individuals. This was revolutionary. This idea, I mean, you know, now we're on our third generation from this. If our parents were the first ones raised by this gener uh this Spock, and then we were the second, and now we raised our kids kind of with the same mentality, I think. Uh some of his critics said that it it uh fostered permissiveness, that it was just kids could do whatever they wanted, but he didn't really say that. He said you got to be firm but gentle and you show them respect, but ask for respect in return. Um he changed the way he thought a lot of times, and he would put that in editions. Uh in the seventh edition, which was published just a few weeks after he died, he recommended that all kids switch to a vegan diet at the age of two. Wow. That was roundly criticized and later found um that not a great idea to suggest that for everybody. It was mocked and criticized even by his co-author uh later on. He and then future version editions of that kind of took that out. But it was kind of a living document that uh went with the times. Um, there was a lot that changed in terms of gender um roles and in the role of uh a dad in raising uh raising kids, that they should be more involved. And he would say, you know, even if you have to play with them for 15 minutes and then tell them, you know, I have to read the paper now, is better than being at the zoo all day disinterested, you know. Yeah so you know, he was opening up that idea that dads could play with kids too, and that playing with kids was good, and that you don't have to just shake their hand in the morning. So the stuff was it seemed second nature now, but it was very revolutionary at the time.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Wow. And and as you said, um probably most revolutionary you know, for that first generation to actually read the thing, right? Because that's not how they were probably raised. And some of those things that you said about the the care and feeding of children, that's just wow. I mean, I I guess from that age when people were less um, I guess they showed their emotions less and they were less affectionate, and hygiene wasn't as good, right? So probably smelled a lot worse. And so I could sort of see where that was coming from, but for a parent to read that and have the urge or the instinct to want to hug or comfort a child and then be told, no, no, no, no, don't do that. That's really weird.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah, you make a great point about the hygiene part. I read I read through a lot of this um care and feeding of children yesterday, and it talks a lot about infectious disease. And I guess there was like typhoid and tuberculosis and polio and things like that going around. Right. So there was a lot going around back then that you didn't want to catch from your kid. Um, and then there's things that we still wrestle with today. You know, it's said that under no circumstances should a baby sleep with a mother, that it could get smothered. One of the big criticisms of of Spock is that he said kids should not sleep on their backs, they might throw up and swallow it or something. Well, it turns out that that thinking probably contributed to a lot of uh SIDs that um it turns out um sleeping on their belly or their side is not as good. We know that now, but he he didn't recommend that. And again, that's because he didn't look at the research, he didn't notice that there were like 50,000 kids that probably there was something in common with them, and that was that they all slept on their stomachs or their sides.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

So that was in the 1930s and 40s, like when he would have been writing this book. I wonder if that sort of research was available then, like if there were studies you could, you know, find.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

It's I think hospitals kept data on that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

We we take so much for granted these days with the internet, right? That that back then would have really required now. Of course, if you're gonna write a book, you need to put in the work, right? But it would have required him to go to a hospital or go to you know the library and kind of look at these studies and see what was done. And it sounds like he didn't do a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, that was kind of in vogue at the time. I mean, he put a lot of Freudian stuff into there, and Freud also was very uh anecdotal in what he would write about. He didn't base his stuff on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

When did Freud live?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Around that same the the 30s and 40s and and 50s, and yeah. Um and so that kind of that anecdotal evidence, uh what we'd call today, you wouldn't get anything published today. It was kind of a sloppy way of writing. That was kind of more popular back then. One of the other things that um even today that people talk about is the idea of whether or not to let a kid cry. Where did you guys, when you were raising your kids, where did you come down on that? When your kid, you're trying to put your kid to sleep and he's crying.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Oh, oh, you mean like infants? Like just you can't be reasonable. Um Well, you know, it's I think babies' cries are designed to hit you, hit your cortex, right? Hit you at your at your very nerve. And so it's very difficult to listen to a baby cry. I think that's why it's so difficult on an airplane or in a public situation when you just hear a baby crying. It's annoying, but it's also just like, oh, it's really getting under my skin.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

And when it's your own, it seems to hit a different frequency.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

We did let them cry. Uh, particularly my daughter, when she was really young, um, you know, she was two years old, one and a half, two. She always wanted us in there until she fell asleep. And when we would leave, she would start crying and she'd stand up and she'd shout out to us, and you know, and that was really hard to take. But eventually she would just fall fall asleep. And and realize that. So I I am okay with letting them cry as long as you know they're safe.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Man, that was the hardest thing for us. It was the hardest thing. Just that idea that I could not reconcile the idea that my kid was crying and I was teaching him that I wasn't here for him when he was upset. That's what went through my mind as I'm just watching TV, listen to him scream bloody murder, you know? And it really did a number on me. It was really hard for us to. Do. So we probably responded to the cries more than we maybe should have. But I still don't think that research is really, I think it's whatever you're comfortable with. I think there's that ferberizing method where you're moving a little bit away from the crib every night. You're taking supposed to take like two or three steps further or further away. What is that called? What we do that method? Ferberizing. It was a Dr. Ferber that popularized that.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

So you're like not further rising.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

You're supposed to start at the crib, and then the next night you're like three steps away, and then the next you're like 50, and then you just keep moving down the hallway. Well, we would do that for a few days, and then he would get sick. So we'd be like, no, he needs us now. And then we it would just keep going back to the beginning. Never really worked. Um, it was really, really difficult. Well, you know, back in the care and feeding of children, they said that crying that was Satan leaving the body, right? They said it was the baby's exercise. The babies needed this, that they it's useful because it expands the lungs and it needs to happen a few times a day for 15 to 30 minutes. It's the baby's exercise.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

15 to 30?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

That's a lot of crying. Yeah. And um, and then at night they said let the baby cry for two to three hours.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah, they didn't play back in back then.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

They were, I mean, you think about it, you know, people were a lot tougher back then. That that is that is that a result?

SPEAKER_00 23:24

No, I think you're right. I think that when you read these books from from back in the day, their main thing that they didn't want was spoiled kids. Yeah, like that was the number one thing that they were trying to prevent. Which I think is funny. I think it's funny that we've made it where I mean, obviously, nobody wants a brat, but I think it's funny where we've made spoiled the worst thing you can be, worse than a hateful person or a mean person or a racist person. We've made spoiled like the the gold standard of what you don't want with a kid, and I don't really get that.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Well, I have a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, it was probably harder to be spoiled back then because there wasn't as much stuff, right? It was, and and by spoiled, I'm talking about just having everything you want. You know, I want a I want a pet, I want a computer, I want a video game system, you know, all that stuff is so easily attainable today that we tend to just give it to our children. Um, and and so there's that trap you can fall into. But also, yeah, I I mean, I I just can't stand spoiled, entitled people. I I don't like that as an adult. I think that that falls into a category of a very uh I don't know, terse and unsympathetic and unempathetic adult if you're spoiled as a child.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

It can be. It also doesn't necessarily mean there's a straight line between um giving kids what you want what they want, particularly when they're infants and they're crying to that kind of behavior when they're older. I don't I think that's we're just trying to draw that line because it makes sense, but I don't know if that's true either.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

There there's also the notion of what are you talking about giving them? Are you talking about giving them a you know every single thing they want because they demand it, or are you talking about giving them your time, your affection, your praise? Those kind of things. I don't think you can spoil somebody by by being loving to them, but you also have to know when to say no and draw a line and say, no, that's not acceptable, or you had that yesterday, so we're not having it again today, but you can do it in a loving way.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

I love the way you put that. That I don't think you can spoil a kid with too much time, attention, or affection, or love. And I think that's what that some of that old school thinking of Holt and Watson were back in the day, is they just thought that if you give them attention, you're spoiling them. And I think we're sophisticated enough now to know that it's probably material things and not knowing the value of hard work and all that that spoils a kid, not coming to coming to their aid when they're in trouble. You know, that's not spoiling a kid. That's my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

But but the other thing, I guess, Alex, that I I'd like to kind of mention on that and explore on that is you're also teaching them that to be less self-reliant in some cases, if you do bail kids out every single time. And by that, I mean like, you know, being afraid of things, like being afraid of a dog, let's say, you know, because I know I know people whose children are just terrified of dogs. They're not, they're not dog, and I'm not saying I'm not value judging dog people versus non-dog people, but I've always kind of felt like that's an easy thing to teach a child to be relaxed around animals, you know, just to show them that you don't have to be scared. And I think that gets passed down, right? If they see their parents being skittish around animals, then they're gonna be skittish around animals. But for me, I've always kind of felt like you'd be doing a disservice by being overprotective in those cases, you know, by by sheltering kids and not letting them have a little bit of struggle, not then letting them make some mistakes, not letting them get a few bruises and bumps, because that's the best way to learn, I think.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, sure. What about pacifiers? That was a very controversial thing back in the day. We never did that. You consciously decided not to do pacifiers?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Uh I don't even think we ever thought of it. So it wasn't like we decided one way or the other. We just didn't. It just wasn't on our radar.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Really?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, there were bottles, but not not pacifiers.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

So you never got one as a gift and said we're not doing that?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Really? No, no. I uh well, yeah, probably said that, but didn't even probably didn't even uh like give it that much thought. It was just set to the side or donated or thrown away or whatever. Did you did you give us a bad pacifier for when our babies were born?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

No, no, no. I uh we um we didn't um I think we we didn't have a problem with it, but our son didn't like him. So it wasn't but I see some kids that like are addicted to their binkies. What did what did Spock have to say about pacifiers? Well, um I know that the old the old uh heads back in the day did not like them. I I don't know if if uh Spock weighed in on on pacifiers. I think he probably would have said, um, you know, it depends on the kid. I think the big thing that he did was he looked at every kid as an individual, and then he said, You got to learn your kid, and some kids like different things and get to know your kid, which I think is great advice and not thinking that they're all gonna be the same. His thing was that natural love and care is the most important thing. If if if you know if you think at that moment that you need to use a pinky, don't feel like he's telling you you can't do it. I don't think I think his overall thing was you can't mess them up that much. And I think research has shown that you really can't mess them up that much. There's a lot of bad parents out there, and kids still turn out as okay adults. They they they and every bad person isn't a result of a bad childhood either. In fact, a lot of times uh lovely people uh are results of bad uh bad parenting. So you can't mess them up too much, but it sure is stressful raising kids and trying to do it the right way, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Well, and and it's funny you mentioned, you know, you started this whole conversation off about with um the 21st century not being getting two stars on your review and not not being your favorite. I I think we have to take some of the blame for what's going on with young people today as their parents, and then our parents have to take some of the blame for what's going on with us and with our, you know, everybody kind of pushes the world in a slightly different direction. And if the next generation doesn't course correct, then it tends to get really askew until someone does make a big major you know shift steering. So so I guess you know, you saying that you weren't a big fan of the 21st century. I wonder if maybe Dr. Spock did us a disservice with this book because that's the criticism.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

That's the criticism that there's a lot of people out there that said he turned out a generation of coddled infants that developed into demanding little tyrants, and that DLTs, baby, they've grown up to be unkempt, irresponsible, destructive, drug addicts, hedonistic.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

I love the word unkempt. Are you kemped? You and I are kemped, but we're not unkempt.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

These were the dirty hippies, man.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Um, and and and grew up in and there are, like you said, there are parents. I always think it's funny when people criticize kids today when they're the generation that raised the kids today. So it wouldn't be right for you and me to criticize kids today, because that's partly our fault if there's anything wrong with kids today, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah, did I hand my kid a uh iPad when he was four? You know, yes, I did. Probably when he was two, you know, and so he looks at his phone a lot. Well, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yeah, and I don't think that's as destructive as the kid trying to get your attention and you looking at your iPad instead, ignoring the kid. You know, that's way worse, I think.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Well, I think what happens in those situations is rather than the the kids rather than looking for positive uh attention, they look for negative attention, right? They start they start acting out and you know they just crave any sort of attention. So even if they have to do something bad to get you to pay attention to them, they do it.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

No, I was gonna say that the one thing that you always hear older generations complaining about is kit with kids is instant gratification, right? That's something you always hear that these kids say they with their instant gratification, and um most of the time they're talking about things that they don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

So like digital pictures.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

If you talk about if you talk to kids, parents or um not parents, people like our parents' age, they'll talk about how video games, you know, and their instant gratification. Well, the funny part about that is if you ever played video games, they're anything but instant gratification. It's all delayed gratification, telling you if you do one more thing, you're gonna level up, and now you got to do this, and it's always pushing the gratification up. So if anything, our kids or that video game generation is not learning instant gratification, they're all constantly delaying gratification.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Well, I I would counter that with uh, like I said, digital pictures, right? Remember, we had to take a picture and get it developed. You remember taking your taking your role of film to Randall's or Safeway or Photo Mat or whatever, Fox Photo, and then you had to wait a week and go pick them up, and then you were so excited and you had no idea what the pictures were because you couldn't see little images of them. Whereas now it that that's pretty instant gratification. And and I love that as an adult. I could never go back to the way it was. I don't think that was better, but it definitely like kids don't have the patience, or sending a letter to somebody versus a text or an email, you know, like that they're not gonna get that message immediately. It's gonna be waiting for that letter to arrive.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

The ride home from the record store can't wait to go home, put your record on, and listen and listen to it, as opposed to just downloading any song you want and it's ever been recorded today. No, sure. I don't think the kids are the ones that have fashioned that though. That's what we've handed to them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Oh no, no, they didn't. I mean, it's been it's just technology, right? But but but ultimately, ultimately, um, you know, having to wait for something and be able to uh even just like reading a map, you know, like not having GPS to be able to tell you where to go, you don't worry about getting lost these days. You just ask, you know, whatever GPS you're using, you look it up on your map and you get turn by turn directions. It it in some ways, those sort of things have become so much easier, but then the more um I guess some of the more tangible human relationship things have become harder.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah. And the kids will tell you that. Kids will tell you that that they they don't know how to communicate with each other as well as they see us doing. Yeah. The other big thing that came out of that generation, I think, was the importance of self-confidence. Um, and if you meet people from other cultures, sometimes they'll talk about how Americans are obsessed with having self-confidence and obsessed with being being told that they're important and being told that and this came right from Spock. I mean, he talked about kids need to um, you know, be appreciated for what they are. This was a quote he said, children need to be appreciated for what they are, even if they are homely, unkempt, or clumsy, or slow, they'll grow up with confidences themselves, happy. They'll have a spirit that makes the best of all the capacities that they do have and all the opportunities that come their way. That happiness and self-confidence was the most important thing to have. Um, and that a reality check and someone telling them you're not all that is not what we need to do. Um that every child has strengths and weaknesses, and and loving means adjusting your expectations to fit your child, not trying to adjust your child to fit your expectations. Oh, I think that's important advice, and I think it's definitely one that's carried its way into our the generation of our generation.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Body positivity, right? That's that's something that, you know, I mean, just even the way that magazines and fashion companies have changed the types of models they hire, for example. You know, they're they're trying to be more inclusive in that area. You know, it's not just all not just all the traditional what we considered a supermodel back in the day. So I I think that's a positive thing to to, but I also think you have to be realistic with kids and you have to be able to tell them, hey, you're not, I mean, you know, did your parents ever tell you you were gonna join the NBA, Alex? Uh probably not, you know. And so, but if they had, would that have been detrimental or would that have been like a more positive thing for you?

SPEAKER_00 36:19

But I'll tell you the, I'll tell you what. My kid used to tell me that he was gonna be the NBA, and I made a point not to go, you know, statistically, you're probably not gonna make the NBA kid. I let him dream that. What's the what's the point of telling an eight-year-old he's not gonna make it? At that point, there's nothing that he can do about that, and other than just bum him out with that information, you know?

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Well, at eight at eight years old, but at let's say at 15, 18 years old, and he's still pursuing that and and you know, like wanting to go to school for it and dedicating his time to it and not not doing the other things he could be doing to further his talents that he that he has, you know, that's where you have to kind of use that judgment and go with your gut. That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Uh Spock said that a child who is fussed over, which you remember in the previous generations was like the worst thing you could do is fuss over a kid. He said, Perhaps a child who's fussed over gets a feeling of destiny. He thinks he's in the world for something important and it gives him drive and confidence. So you may agree or disagree with that notion, but the point is that's what they were teaching moms and dads in the 40s and the 50s, and then later on in the 60s and 70s uh when we were growing up. So imagine one person kind of having such a big influence on the way that children are raised. I don't, you know, we he I checked to see if he and Mr. Rogers had any kind of relationship. Certainly they knew each other and they worked together on some projects here and there, um, kind of tackling the same issues from different directions. We talked about Mr. Rogers and Dr. Seuss tackling things from different directions too. But those three, man, talk about an influence on our generation and you know, people coming up. Fred Rogers, Dr. Seuss, and Dr. Spock, even though we as kids didn't really know who Dr. Spock was, he was kind of pulling the strings of our our moms behind the scenes. I mean, uh, I I guarantee uh our moms have these books.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Fred, Theodore, and Benjamin.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yeah, yeah. I mentioned the gender stereotyping in 1976 in that that edition, he warned against praising girls on their appearance and um and and warned against the household where girls are taught to do housework while the boys played outside. He talked about how fathers had to have an equal share in child raising, and then talked about how the changing world of women at work needed to be you know reflected in the um the amount that the dads were putting in into into raising into raising kids. Um he opposed circumcision um in in 1991. Uh so what was he uh 88 at the time? He said, My own preference, if I had the good fortune to have another son, would to leave his little penis alone.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Well, there you go. Uh yeah, I don't really have any comments on that one.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

He became very politically involved, became a socialist, anti-war. Um, and this was interesting. In 1967, there was actually some talk about him being MLK's running bait in six if MLK had run for president in 1968, it would have been the King Spock ticket um for for president. Um, so I I thought that and then he actually did run for president in 1972.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Wow. So he was he was a medical doctor.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Oh yeah, he's a pediatrician, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Okay, yeah. Wow. Well, no, that's that's something I didn't I mean, I've heard of it, and I think there's even some still some cultural references to it. I mean, it's been a few years since Raising Arizona came out, but aren't they aren't they carrying around his book in Raising Arizona?

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Oh yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, I think they I think they are they have a copy of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

High has a copy of it or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

He's like, you're gonna need this. Yeah, it was the instruction manual on how to raise a kid. Yeah, yeah. I just think he's really a a person that really contributed a lot to the uh 20th century.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

So do you think he's um you know, they don't really have too many kids in Dirt Knap City, and if they do, it's probably a tragic situation. Um what do you think he's doing right now in Dirt Knapp City?

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Yeah, I mean you're right, there's not there's not any reproduction going on in Dirt Knap City um that we that we know of. So he's probably just uh chilling with this. Um I always think it's awkward when people in Dirt Knap City have multiple wives that they have to deal with. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but he got he got he was married for a long time and then got divorced and then married again for he was married uh when he was in his seven, I think when he was 74, he got married to somebody who was like 35, um, and said that um they're both together, they're both 16 when they're around each other.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

So so she might still be alive. She might be, yeah. Second wife of Dr. Spock. Maybe we can get her on as a guest. Yeah, we should.

unknown 41:30

We should.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Well, Alex, that was interesting. Very, very um unexpected. That's not anybody that would have ever been on my radar for the show, but as you said, very much a behind the scenes and and uh even though well known, not well known kind of person that had a big influence on the world.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Yeah, I like to do the ones where you've heard the name, but you don't beyond that, you don't know much about it.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Yeah, well that's that's uh that's exactly the mission of this show, folks.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Well, thanks, Kelly. Thanks for listening to uh Dr. Spock. And thank you, everybody out there uh for listening. Keep sending those emails. We're we're getting tons of those emails.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Uh if you want parenting advice, um just write you know not at dirt nap city and we'll give you the best advice we can. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

All right, everybody. Take care. Take it easy, Kelly. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

All right, thanks, Alex. Adios.