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The Baby Boom was not only characterized by sheer numbers of newborn children, but also a growing ideology that put those children at the center of the family. Reinforced by comics like Peanuts and other fictional characters brought to life through media such, as Leave it to Beaver, the child-centered family dominated life of the 1950s. Children were said to be “the whole point,” and with greater economic prosperity and stability, parents were able to make this ideology a reality by giving their children both material and intangible comfort.
The shift towards domesticity was probably inevitable after the war, but changing theories on childrearing, which made children a number-one priority, can be primarily attributed to the teachings of Dr. Benjamin Spock. As a pediatrician, child psychiatrist and father, Spock had a vast knowledge of child development and parenting. In 1946, he published his revolutionary ideas about childrearing in an easy to read handbook called The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare. Since that year it has been revised multiple times, translated into dozens of languages, and sold more than 46 million copies worldwide. Only the Bible outsold Spock’s Baby and Childcare in the twentieth century!
Prior to the release of Spock’s handbook, the most widely respected references on childcare were Emmett Holt’s The Care and Feeding of Children, published in 1929, John Watson’s Psychological Care of Infant and Child, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Infant Care. These three books mainly focused on the physical well being of children, achieved through strict regimes of feeding, sleeping, and disciplining. Watson encompassed this pre-Baby Boom ideology, saying that children should ‘learn as quickly as possible to do everything for themselves’ and be treated ‘as though they were young adults.’ The Census Bureau advised parents never to hug or kiss their children, and if it was absolutely necessary to only give one kiss on the forehead at bedtime (Bloom 122). Completely opposite of these experts, Spock felt permissiveness was the key to raising a happy and healthy child.
