Talk:Benjamin Spock

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 * 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.


 * Biologically and temperamentally, I believe women were made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care and home care.


 * Every child senses, with all the horse sense that's in him, that any parent is angry inside when children misbehave and they dread more the anger that is rarely or never expressed openly, wondering how awful it might be.


 * Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.


 * Having a good time together is the essence of lovingness and the best means of increasing it.


 * 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.


 * I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.


 * If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.


 * 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.


 * '''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.


 * 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.


 * Well, at least nobody could accuse me of having brought up Spiro Agnew.
 * On being criticized by Spiro Agnew and others as having been responsible for parents being too permissive, and the bringing up of a generation full of rebellious radicals.


 * 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?
 * On the war in Vietnam


 * When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.