Personality, Jul. 21, 1952

R. BENJAMIN SPOCK is not a public figure, but he has more leverage on tomorrow than many men who are. In six years his 35¢ Pocket Book on baby care has sold more than 4,000,000 copies, which puts it in a class with the dictionary and the Bible. Millions of mothers regard him as an oracle, parents turn out 5,000 strong to hear him lecture, and other pediatricians joke that their main job is to interpret him. One mother stands a little in awe of her child because he was examined by the doctor in school. "I look at Henry," she told a friend, "and I think, he has seen Dr. Spock!" If their mothers are using as well as buying "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care," one of five newborn babies in the U.S. is a Spock baby.

Thirty years ago the main concern of parents was to keep their babies on schedule (regular on the bottle and on the pot), disciplined, and free of germs. Then the rules changed. Babies were to be treated as individuals from birth, cuddling was to be considered as important as cleanliness, and strong discipline a measure that can usually be avoided. Dr. Spock did not pioneer the new attitude, but he explained it better than anyone else by showing how it applies in a hundred commonplace situations, as when a baby takes up the habit of banging his head against the wall, or when a boy will eat only hamburgers, bananas and soda pop. The basic rule underlying all Spock's advice about children is simple: "Relax — love and enjoy them."

When he began to write his book in 1943, Dr. Spock was 40, a father and successful Manhattan practitioner who had dosed himself with pediatrics, psychology and psychoanalysis while keeping a manner as easy and friendly as a country doctor's. He still has the crew cut, healthy good looks and spontaneous guffaw of a college boy, still manages his 6 ft. 4 in. with the lanky ease that helped send him to the Olympics in 1924 as one of the best oarsmen Yale ever produced. After college he got most of his exercise on the dance floor. With friends, he hired a hall and an orchestra for $1.50 weekly dances in Manhattan (known as Dr. Spock's Dancing Academy or the Don't Tread on Me Club). Once, at the stylish Persian Room, he danced so well with his attractive wife that everyone else edged off the floor to watch them.

He has few inhibitions and no intellectual pretensions. He likes to lecture informally, sitting on the edge of a table, and his earnestness and homely jokes win audiences varying from philanthropists to student doctors. When he wants to press a point with parents, he's a shameless exhibitionist, twisting his face with surprised disgust to imitate a baby spitting out the food crammed into it by a too-resolute mother.