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The chapter examines how ideas of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother were conveyed to women through the writings of childcare experts. It considers the work of principal authorities on child development who were popular from the 1940s to 1990s including Frederick Truby King, John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Benjamin Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford. Literature on childcare abounded throughout the second half of the twentieth century and ideas of how mothers should behave were hotly contested. Definitions of what made a ‘good’ mother were constantly in flux, though, so women had to adjust to these changing requirements. Through an analysis of the oral history interviews, this chapter explores the relationship between mothers and the experts. It shows how mothers could struggle to reconcile the demands that these experts were making upon them.

In 2003, Drs. Sean and Judith Palfrey, the masters of Adams House at Harvard University, invited students and other concerned citizens to get involved in the debates and to reflect upon the implications for themselves and for the country. In this case, the conflict in question was the pending invasion of Iraq. On January 5, 1968, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the celebrated author of Baby and Child Care, the bible for a generation of anxious American parents, and four co-defendants were charged with conspiracy “to hinder and interfere with the administration of the Universal Military and Training Act.” In other words, they had advised young people to resist the draft. The defendants in the Spock trial became known as the Boston Five. The Boston Five, the Chicago Seven, and the New Haven Nine are radical numbers. To at least some of today's audiences and readers, these numbers will be more mysterious than revealing. Each of these was a group of radical intellectuals, or intellectual radicals, trying to make a difference.

This chapter describes how William Sloane Coffin's personal confrontation with the Vietnam War pushed him to the forefront of the antiwar movement and to the pinnacle of his fame and influence. In one of the most celebrated political trials of the decade, the U.S. government tried, without success, to imprison Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and three others in a show trial meant to intimidate those resisting the draft. Coffin and his office became one of the key centers of antidraft and antiwar activity in the country, attracting an enormous amount of attention—positive as well as negative—from politicians, the media, college students, Yale alumni, and clergy and laity nationwide. When draft calls escalated along with the war, the selective service system became a major target of antiwar organizing. More potential draftees applied for conscientious objector status; some refused induction and went to jail; some left the country rather than be drafted.

This chapter reimagines the history of parenting as a subject for the study of religion. Through a schematic historical description of parenting in the United States, it tracks the expanded responsibilities and increased social expectations for parents in the formation of child identity. Focusing on the concept of parental authority, it argues that the relationship of authority between parent and child is an important document of religious history in a secular age, and encourages future scholars to explore parenting habits, prescriptions, and admonitions as an archive for religious studies.

The last semester of the final year of the Illinois student movement began peacefully enough, but when the Illiac IV supercomputer project was announced with suggestions it might be used for nuclear weapons development, the RU and newly formed Faculty for University Reform (FUR) quickly protested. Two youths failed in an attempt to bomb the downtown Champaign police station and were caught within moments, but no one was caught when a firebomb was thrown into the Armory ROTC office. Dr. Benjamin Spock, famous baby doctor and antiwar activist, spoke on campus, disparaging the idea of violent revolution.

Around the time of World War II, Mead’s personal and professional lives changed dramatically. She divorced Reo Fortune to marry her third husband, Gregory Bateson. She gave birth to a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson. She turned her anthropological lens on her own culture for the book And Keep Your Powder Dry, part of a larger effort to galvanize Americans for the war effort. Mead’s religiosity was attenuated in this period, for two reasons. One, Bateson, an atheist, did not want their daughter to be indoctrinated, and Mead complied. Two, Mead believed that the challenge of fascism called for a broadly ethical, humanistic response, in which religious narrowness—especially, the alliance of religion and nationalism—could be dangerous.

This chapter is concerned with the age range of approximately six to thirty-six months. It begins with an overview of the important areas of development in this age range and the ways in which early intervention at home by parents and therapists can facilitate such development. The benefits of early walking and the methods of achieving upright posture are discussed in depth. Other topics important for the habilitation and medical needs of this age group are also included. Benjamin Spock wrote of “the passion to explore” that characterizes the behavior of a one-year-old child. How to deal effectively with a wandering baby and make his environment safe is a perennial problem for parents of infants and toddlers. Erik Erikson, the great psychoanalyst, wrote eloquently about the other essential developmental characteristics of this age group—namely, the drive toward autonomy.