Silver Spoon, Outdoor School, and Blue Striped Suits: How Nepo Privilege Created the Ultimate Parenting Influencer

Welcome to Spock Talk! The podcast that explores:

• What’s the deal with Dr. Benjamin Spock?
• How did Baby and Child Care become the preeminent parenting guide of the 20th century?
• Who gets to tell parents how to parent?

I’m Deborah

And I’m Katie

We’re talking Spock because we want to understand what it is about Dr. Spock’s work that endures. Why is the Spock brand around, twenty-five years after Dr. Spock died?

Last episode, we covered American parenting advice by authoritarians, hygienists, behaviorists, and child development theorists, who wrote parenting guides before Spock’s seminal work, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, was first published in 1946. We discussed whether or not the sometimes strict, sometimes bad, sometimes just plain weird advice made parents ready for Spock’s guide.

And in this second episode of Spock Talk, we are going to talk about Dr. Benjamin Spock’s propensity for success via his privileged upbringing. 

Did Spock’s advantages set him up for success and celebrity?

To start, let’s go over the Spock family tree, super quickly:

Benjamin Spock’s father, Benjamin Ives Spock was a New Year’s Eve baby, born December 31, 1872, in Connecticut.

Spock’s dad’s dad, the grandfather (can we say Spockfather?) was William Henry Harris Spock, I don’t have an exact birthdate for him. 

But his dad, Stephen Spock, was born around 1775 in or around New York.

His dad, James Spock, that would be Benjamin’s great-great-grandfather, was born in Peekskill New York in 1741. 

The great-great-great-grandparents of Dr. Benjamin Spock were Jonas Spock, born in 1715, and Elizabeth Yeomans, born 1714 in Westchester, New York.

According to Ancestry.com, Spock is an Americanized form of the Dutch surname Spaak.

Sorry, genealogy is so boring. My point is, this is not a family that had a hardscrabble immigrant or enslaved or persecuted origin story, right? By the time Benjamin Spock was born in 1903, his family was well established in the United States. The Spocks were educated, property owners, comfortable members of the professional class. Gentry might be the right word? This is not an “up by their own bootstraps” type of narrative.

When I started down the Spock hole, I listened to a “This Day In History” podcast that just lists all of Spock’s privilege signifiers: His dad was an attorney for a railroad, a Yale graduate. Spock himself went to boarding school, then to Yale, where he was an Olympic gold medalist in rowing. Before going on to become a successful pediatrician and then the most successful parenting influencer of all time. 

Spock writes about how, although he grew up with tremendous privilege, he didn’t know it. He writes a lot about being shy, awkward, and insecure.

On his childhood privilege, he writes, ““When you’re a young child, you just assume that the way your family lives is the normal way to live: those who live less affluently are poor, and those who are more wealthy are rich. We were average for the neighborhood, which consisted of Yale faculty families, professionals, and junior executives in the same financial situation as my father” (Spock on Spock, p. 8)

Sounds totally average!

Despite this claim to living the mean, Spock had an unconventional early education. Remember Spock’s mother? 

Of the weird schedules and diets? Weird, but also kind of badass and confident.

Right. And she was similarly strict when it came to education. Mildred Spock insisted that none of her children start school at age 6, as was customary at the time, and she held them back until they were 7-years-old. Spock went to an in-home neighborhood school, then a public school for a very short time, until his mother and some other parents concocted this weird outdoor school. Spock, in his memoir, writes: “They persuaded the board of education to provide a teacher, a large wooden platform, a tent, twenty desks, and twenty thick felt bags to sit in.” Unheated, year round. (Spock on Spock, p. 45-46). Spock’s mother was just a nut about fresh air.

I think this, however unconventional, proves the privilege. They got this school together and got the Board of Education to pay for it. Kind of like contemporary charter school parents who want the financial benefit of public school, but all on their own terms.

How long did he go to outdoor school?

From ages 9-12. Then he attended a private school, his favorite, Hamden Hall, in a suburb in New Haven (not a boarding school) (Spock on Spock, p. 50).

Then, Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. at age 16, year 1919. He wasn’t homesick there, he writes in his autobiography (Spock on Spock, p. 61).

Then, he went on to college at Yale in 1921 because his father had been there. He lived at home until the Crew schedule made it necessary to live on campus.

Ooh, Yale. Oh, to have been an Ivy-league man!

Right? It’s via the rowing team that he gets to go to the 1924 Olympic games in Paris and wins a gold medal. He writes about how his Yale rowing team won the gold medal “by over three boat lengths, a disgraceful margin” (Spock on Spock, p. 78). He uses self-deprecation a LOT. Sort of in the way that pretty women will express their insecurities, like, in order to make other, less beautiful people, comfortable. 

Here is Spock, on enjoying that Olympic success:

Remember Skull and Bones, when it was in the Zeitgeist during George W. Bush’s presidency?

Riff on Skull and Bones I certainly remember the 2000 movie The Skulls starring a hot-off-the-creek Joshua Jackson. We were all kind of into conspiracy theories involving secret societies among America’s founders at that time, right? National Treasure? The Dan Brown oeuvre?

There’s another top secret society at Yale called Scroll and Key that selected Spock to be a member when he was a Yale junior. Get this, it was better than Wolf’s Head, the secret society to which Spock’s father belonged. These are the names I recognize from a lengthy list of Scroll and Key “notable members:” There’s a Colgate, a Vanderbilt, a Rockefeller, a Mellon. Sargent Shriver, Cyrus Vance, Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury cartoonist), Stone Phillips, Fareed Zakaria, Dahlia Lithwick, and, Ari Shapiro of NPR’s All Things Considered!

Riff on Scroll and Key? Or Ari Shapiro? 

I couldn’t help but notice that there was only one woman on that list. Scroll and Key only started admitting women in 1988. Seems like yet another good old boys club setting up men (mostly white men) to claim positions of power in society once they graduate. Love it. Great.

Unsolicited book recommendation: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It’s a fictional take on all of Yale’s secret societies as a magical nexus of the world. 

As an undergraduate, Spock majored in English and minored in history. He didn’t think majoring in a hard science like chemistry was the best path to medical school, writing “The undergraduate years may be the last chance to get a broader glimpse of what life and the world are about.” (Spock on Spock, p. 78-79). 

Which, while true, is not at all the reality of, I’d say, the majority of people who go to college, at least in my experience.

WITH ZERO PERCENT IRONY HE WRITES, “I’m glad that it was not hard to get into medical school, and that I could major in English” (Spock on Spock, p. 79)

this is ridiculous to read in 2023. This was a little before Spock’s time, but I absolutely love reading stories of America’s most fancy pants universities in the country’s early days when all the students were just drunk 17 year olds with zero qualifications or motivation. They were just handed diplomas on a platter and their progeny are still snagging legacy spots at top universities because of it while I’m concerned my 7 year old’s resume isn’t impressive enough for eventual college admissions. Aaaaaand now I’m stressed. Thanks Deborah.

Spock writes that in 1925, his GPA was a C+. And when he got admitted to Yale Medical School it wasn’t very competitive. Quote: “they were willing to take anybody who could pass the prerequisite courses and was not a reprobate” (p. 91)

LET’S take a moment to add some perspective. In 1916, NINE YEARS BEFORE SPOCK STARTED MED SCHOOL, the first woman was admitted to Yale Medical School. Her name was Louise Farnam. Farnam’s father was a professor of economics, so she had a bit of nepo-privilege working for her. When the Board of the med school discussed admitting women, they identified that a problem was, no lavatory facilities for women. Eventually,  Louise Farnam was admitted BECAUSE HER DAD PAID $1000 TO BUILD A WOMAN’S BATHROOM. (Yale Libraries).

Riff on nepo-babies, lady doctors, etc Not only did he build her a bathroom, he built her a fancy bathroom! $1000 in 1916? That’s like 28 grand in today’s money! Nothing but the best for our delicate lady doctors! Their constitutions cannot handle outhouses!

Halfway through medical school at Yale, Spock transferred to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University because he married his first wife, Jane Cheney (Maier, p. 42). As a reason for transferring medical schools, Spock writes that his and Jane’s social needs were not being met in New Haven, which “seemed dull, conventional, too full of my family’s friends. Most of my college friends were now in New York” (Spock on Spock, p. 94).

After he graduated from Columbia in 1929, he spent two years in an intern program at Presbyterian Hospital, This was a prestigious assignment, which he earned with his high medical school grades. (Maier, p. 77). then he completed a one-year residency at New York Nursery and Child Hospital Center.

Just like with undergrad requirements, this seems like a laughably quick path to full-doctor-hood. These are the elder statesmen we still consider experts, but their education was so bare bones compared to what we put med students through today. I know, I know, Spock was clear that his expertise came from his years of experience as a practicing physician, not from his training in school, and I’m totally exposing my own bias toward higher education, but it still feels unfair.

After medical school he trained in psychiatry, which is important, but we’re saving all of the psychotherapy Freud stuff for another episode.

Riff on teasing Freud I really hope Spock threw some major shade at Freud. I’ll take back all (or most) of the smack I’ve talked about him being a privileged white man if he gets in some good jabs at Freud.

It’s relevant to know that Jane Cheney Spock was from an affluent Connecticut family, it’s irrelevant to know that their money was made from silk manufacturing. 

It’s relevant to know that her mother was known as “Boody.” And Spock’s sister was known as “Hiddy”. Which both sound like Park Avenue nicknames, to me, just signifiers of WASP-y wealth. It’s irrelevant to know that my grandmother very purposefully named all 4 of her sons names that would not lend themselves to nicknames ending in that “ee” sound. An anti-WASP stance? Perhaps. As the proud owner of an “ee” name myself, I’m offended.

Anyway. Here is how Spock and Jane made it in New York. Spock’s dad paid his tuition, Jane got two thousand dollars from her mother per year and she had a job “taking family histories of patients” at Presbyterian Hospital. Spock “had a five-thousand-dollar legacy from [his] godfather, and [Spock and Jane] received a couple of thousand dollars as wedding presents” (Spock on Spock, p. 95)

This all sounds like kind of a lot of money for a couple of newlyweds in their early twenties, in 2002 dollars, when I was in my early twenties. Keep in mind that this was in the mid-NINETEEN-twenties. 

He’s was propped up, financially, by his wife’s family. During his residency he treated very poor patients, babies who have all of intestinal problems because their parents can’t afford ice to keep their kids’ milk from spoiling. (Kaye, 31-32).

At least, later in life, when he’s writing his autobiography, Spock seems, in retrospect, aware of his white privilege. But, at the time, I doubt he spent a lot of time or energy on it. He writes,“At Yale, it hadn’t seemed peculiar that there were no women or blacks and that the few Jews there were discriminated against socially. I didn’t have any sense of civil rights. I took it for granted that you went to school with people of your own sex, of your own kind.” 

In 1933, when he was 30-years-old, he started a pediatric practice in New York during the Depression. The same year that the Spock’s son Michael was born (Spock on Spock, p. 117). It was a tough time to start any kind of business. Banks were closed, couples were postponing children, parents were giving up routine check-ups.

He had a small practice and it grew slowly, so he spent “two-hour first visits and half-hour return visits” (Spock on Spock, p. 131). It took two years before his income exceeded his expenses (Massie, 84). Like many career men of that era, Jane stayed home and managed all the childcare and household stuff so Spock was free to focus on his fledgling and unprofitable medical practice. Needless to say, there’s no worrying about daycare costs, or daycare shortages, or emergency daycare.

You lost me at two hour pediatrician visits. I quite like our current pediatrician, but she is quite literally walking out the door the moment she walks in.

Toward the end of World War II, In 1944,ssigned to the Navy, rather than the army, so he requested Naval service. He spends two months in Bethesda, away from his family, at an orientation, before he’s assigned to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Queens. There, he works as a psychiatrist instead of a pediatrician.

 I feel like I should have some insight here as a military spouse, but my first question is: why did only the navy need physicians, not the army? Our land-based forces were just left to fend for themselves. The army keeps rolling along, indeed! Second, I’m kind of shocked that they even employed psychiatrists in the military back then? I tend to be of the opinion that not enough men employ mental health services, even now, but the military isn’t exactly known for encouraging men to freely explore their mental and emotional needs.

He spent a total of 2 years in military service. He worked at a naval-base hospital temporarily located on Long Island, then out to California to the U.S. Naval Personnel Depot at San Bruno, then Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, a Family Hospital and Clinic outside San Diego,*** then a Navy hospital in Oakland, then he was discharged in 1946.  (Spock on Spock, p. 147)

Okay, I’m not saying Spock’s life was easy or anything. I haven’t even mentioned yet, he had a personal tragedy to contend with, when he and Jane had a premature baby that died. Clearly, he worked, he got a medical practice going when it was tough to get an income-generating practice going in the early 1930s, he served in the Navy for the war effort.

HOWEVER, without the Yale legacy admission and without the financial support from Jane’s family, there is no way that Dr. Benjamin Spock would have become the successful pediatrician trained in psychoanalysis with a well-regarded reputation without those early life and early career support systems.

We’ll get to the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. But I want to bring up an early book deal offer that Spock actually turned down! 

He was approached by a Doubleday editor just 5 years after he started his practice. About writing a book geared toward new parents. He turned down the offer, because he didn’t know enough yet. (Spock on Spock, p. 131) 

Can you imagine turning down a book offer? Can you imagine anyone you know turning down a book offer?

No. If someone offered me a book deal to write about anything, I would take it. Even if it was, like, electrical engineering or something I know less than nothing about.

Continuing down our privilege path, Let’s talk a little bit about looking the part. Dr. Benjamin Spock was tall, lean, I wouldn’t say “handsome” necessarily, but he just looked the part of an authority figure.

Riff I took this opportunity to look up his photo on the Columbia website, and while he is clean cut and sporting a thick head of dark hair, he is scowling at me in just such a way that I am desperate to earn his approval. Just frowning out at all of us, disappointed in our misguided childrearing practices. I’m sorry Dr. Spock! Tell me how to make it right! Bananas? No bananas?

And, this is fun. He took great pleasure in looking the part. I have found some highly amusing anecdotes about Dr. Spock’s clotheshorse tendencies.

He was super fashionable, and really focused on looking put-together. There are so many outfits mentioned in books by Spock and about Spock. In the Spock on Spock memoir! There’s even a robust “Clothing preferences” section in the index.

His focus on fashion started early, when he was influenced by a teacher named Mr. Babcock, at Spock’s favorite school, Hamden Hall. Spock writes, “He was always immaculately groomed and always wore a blue suit with white chalk-stripes. I thought, That’s the way I want to look. And here I am today at eighty-six, still wearing a blue suit with white chalk-stripes.” (Spock on Spock, P. 51) 

Riff on blue suits with white stripes? I can’t argue with a preference for pinstripe suits. Conservative but still more flamboyant than a solid color? Sounds flawless. I need to know more about this “clothing preferences” section though. Do you have any excerpts?

Spock attributes his focus on fashion, in part, because he was made to wear his father’s hand-me-down suits when he was a teenager. So when he was a grown-up, he took great pleasure in shopping for himself. In the biography by Thomas Maier, it’s described that, though money was tight, “Ben allotted enough to buy what he called ‘the correct clothes’--smart-looking blue suits with white high-collar shirts, complemented by a gold watch fob Jane bought for him” (Maier,p 77)

Spock writes about a picture taken of him, pushing his son Mike in a baby carriage in Central Park, quote:  “You can also see how dapper I dressed. I had on a well-fitting overcoat and a Homburg hat at a slightly rakish tilt” (Spock on Spock, p. 119) 

When Spock is an older man, he traveled a lot to give speeches against nuclear arms and the Vietnam War, sidebar--another topic for a later episode--he continued to dress well. He writes, in his memoir, about his packing and laundering strategies. “One of the things that preoccupied me on the road was how to keep my clothes looking neat. I always carried an extra suit and managed to jam in four or five shirts, eight or ten detachable collars, shorts, and maybe an extra pair of shoes all in a carry-on bag. Back at the motel I would try to take the worst wrinkles out of my suit by pressing a hot wet washcloth against the elbow and knee wrinkles and, if possible, hang the suit up high to dry on the chandelier or curtain rod” (Spock on Spock, p. 180) 

He also wrote about how he only felt comfortable when he was dressed up. And how, in California, giving speeches, he’d dress more casual, in a blazer and slacks, but always a 3-piece suit on the East Coast. (Spock on Spock, p. 253-54)

When he taught at Western Reserve Medical School in Ohio, Dr. Spock prepared for medical school lectures “by slipping into a long white doctor’s coat.” 

A Saturday Evening Post article quotes him as saying, ‘I don’t really need this,’ he says, ‘but these are first-year students, and it helps provide the proper atmosphere.’” (Massie, p. 86). (Massie) 

He’s very aware of the maxim that “clothes make the man,” right? What’s Jeremy’s work wear situation? I don’t have to deal with a ton of menswear beyond t shirts, but my kids do wear uniforms to school, and I have recently been reconsidering the value of a detachable collar. It’s just so hard to keep them from looking limp and crooked. Then again, no matter how meticulously I care for the collars and cuffs, both shirts will be covered in some combination of jam and paint by the end of the day. So if clothes make the man, my future men are currently on a trajectory to be oil spattered mechanics or paint spattered artists.

Right. Clothes make the man and, in Spock’s case, I think privilege definitely created the expert.

maybe he was the only pediatrician who studied psychoanalysis in New York, but did that make him the best parenting expert? Or did it just get him a book deal? Think about the early days of blogging or Twitter. All those book deals handed out willy nilly just because someone happened to be the first person to write a cooking blog jam packed with those coveted real life anecdotes alongside recipes or the first person to distill the differences between boomers and gen-xers to 140 characters.

New Spock / Old Spock

Before we wrap up, let’s go to a segment we call “New Spock, Old Spock. In this segment we’ll take a look at early Spock advice and see what has changed since the mid-1900s.

Since we’ve been talking about clothes, let’s continue in that vein and talk about how Spock recommended dressing babies. In the 1957 edition of Baby and Child Care, there is a section titled “Clothing, Fresh Air, and Sunshine”

Spock writes, “More babies are overdressed than underdressed. This isn’t good for them. If a person is always too warmly dressed, his body loses its ability to adjust to changes. He is more likely to become chilled. So, in general, put on too little rather than too much and then watch the baby…Best guide of all is the color of his face. If he is getting cold, he loses the color from his cheeks, and he may begin to fuss, too” (157).

“Changes of air temperature are beneficial in toning up the body’s system for adapting to cold or heat. A bank clerk is much more likely to become chilled staying outdoors in winter than a lumberjack who is used to such weather. Cool or cold air improves appetite, puts color in the cheeks, and gives more pep to humans of all ages. A baby living continuously in a warm room usually has a pasty complexion and may have a sluggish appetite” (p. 159). 

IS THIS TRUE?! 

[LOL at pasty, sluggish babies in warm rooms]

What do later editions say about babies and dressing for the weather?

From 10th edition Both of the sections you quoted appear pretty much verbatim in the 10th edition. Including the part about pasty complexions!

There is an extremely detailed description of how to put a sweater on a baby and take it off again and an emphasis on sleep sacks that I would bet isn’t present in your version. Does the early version talk at all about 100% cotton vs. other fabrics?

“As a rule, babies don’t need more in the way of clothing than adults, and babies who are overdressed are often uncomfortable.” (p. 47)

What was your babywear of choice? I live somewhere hot, so you could conceivably say that my kids lived “continuously in a warm room,” but I didn’t notice any pasty complexions or sluggish appetites.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Spock Talk! Please subscribe so you are sure to get our next episode, in which we’ll explore how Dr. Benjamin Spock’s was part of a long, post-Industrialization societal shift to professionalize the domestic sphere!

See this episode’s show notes for our references.

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We’ll see you soon, the next time we Talk Spock!