How Dr. Spock is Destroying America
In the last 50 years our nation has
taken a moral nosedive.
Since 1960 the rate of violent
crimes has more than tripled. Every day there are news reports of heinous crimes
unheard of in America a generation ago. Children murder their playmates, their
teachers, and their parents. Teenage mothers abandon their newborn babies in
trashcans, and every year students commit carnage on their classmates. Our
culture has sunk so low that children are no longer safe with their teachers in
school or at church – scores of men and women are arrested every year for
preying on the children under their care.
The sexual revolution that started
in the 60’s continues with many casualties. Promiscuity has become so rampant
that 1 of every 4 teenage girls now has a sexually transmitted infection. In the
last 5 decades practices have become so deviant that the number of distinct
STD’s had risen from 5 to more than 50 – a sudden increase of a thousand
percent. Obsession with sexual violence has brought a 318% increase in sexual
assault.
Our nation is in severe moral
decline and the descent is not slowing. The church is not far behind.
As a parenting counselor, it is not
too difficult to trace the cause of our troubles back to its origin. I hate to
say it, but our problem started with American icon, Dr. Benjamin
Spock.
Spock’s child rearing book “Common
Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” first published in 1946, sold 750,000 copies
the first year, has since sold over 50 million copies, and is sixth in sales
only to the Bible. Life magazine certified the depth of his influence, naming
Spock among the 100 most important people of the twentieth century.
America just happened to be ripe
for Spock's ideas. World War II had ended and we were experiencing great
prosperity. With prosperity comes indulgence and an appetite for luxury. We
began to raise our children with the same indulgent view we were developing. On
top of this, as America had elevated psychological and sociological experts we
had lost confidence in ourselves as parents. Insecurity caused parents to be
open to new ideas from an “expert.”
Within a decade after Spock’s first
book, a perceptible change began to develop in American families. Under Spock’s
influence, parents were watching their children become sassy and contentious,
and increasing numbers were seeing them become juvenile delinquents and
criminals. Over the last 50 years this out-of-control behavior has led to a 300
percent increase in the rate of violent crime.
As the crime rate started to crawl
up, SAT scores began to drop. Teenagers began to exercise less moral restraint
and revealed an increasing contempt for authority. The free-love hippy movement
and student protests were the inevitable outcomes of Spock-inspired
parenting.
Doctor Spock was aware of his
negative influence upon parents. In a 1968 interview with the New York Times,
Spock admitted that the first edition of his child-rearing book had contributed
to an increase of permissive parenting in America. “Parents began to be afraid
to impose on the child in any way," he said. In his 1957 edition he tried to
remedy that, but his rewrite didn’t succeed. Spock failed to see the deeper
problems of his philosophy, so subsequent editions continued to promote
parenting that cultivated narcissism, entitlement, and victim
thinking.
Instead of stressing the importance
of teaching self-denial and respect for authority, Spock emphasized
accommodating children’s feelings and catering to their preferences. No longer
did children learn they could endure Brussels sprouts and suffer through daily
chores. Using Spock’s approach, parents began to feed self-indulgence instead of
instilling self-control – homes were becoming less parent-directed and more
child-centered. As parents elevated children’s “freedom of expression” and
natural cravings, children became more outspoken, defiant, and demanding of
gratification. In fact, they came to view gratification as a “right.”
Don't get me wrong. Spock did not
intentionally set out to sabotage America. He was a sincere man who wrote his
book in response to a cold, authoritarian philosophy of parenting that had been
dominant in America. For years, parents had been told to withhold affection from
their children -- not to touch them too often -- not to respond to their tears.
Understanding of children had not been encouraged and fathers had held a minor
role in their nurture and care. These things distressed Spock, and they would
have upset me, had I been born back then. Children need our tender affection,
understanding, and respect. However, Spock’s solutions reflected total ignorance
of the hedonistic bent of human nature, and fostered an over-exalted sense of
self-importance in children.
One of the flaws in Spock’s
approach was that he promoted conflicting goals. He wanted children to learn to
follow the leadership of their parents, but he also wanted them to be outspoken
and independent from a young age. His teaching was inadvertently skewed in favor
of raising children to think more of themselves than others -- particularly
those in authority over them.
In the 1968 New York Times
interview Spock actually admitted that he hoped he had contributed to the
contempt for authority demonstrated by teens in the 60’s. “I would be proud if
the idealism and militancy of youth today were caused by my book," he
said.
Is it any surprise that Spock
participated with teenagers in protests and was arrested multiple times in the
60’s because of his contempt for governmental authority? And was it any more of
a surprise when he entered the 1972 presidential race as the candidate for the
socialist People’s Party? His political actions revealed the underlying
philosophy of his book.
As Spock’s radical parenting ideas
grew in popularity other “experts” jumped on the bandwagon and promoted their
own versions of indulgent child rearing. Since 1946 parenting approaches that
foster narcissism and contempt for authority have become the accepted norm in
higher education and subsequently in society. It is a simple matter to trace the
dominant hedonism of our adult culture back to Spock’s influence.
Although many will read this and
readily distance themselves from Spock or any secular philosophy, too few grasp
the seductive nature of modern ideas. What Spock did was appeal to parental
love. He steered parents away from the seemingly cold, objective pursuit of
character training and toward their own feelings of nurture. Rather than tell
parents the truth that love means doing what is right for our children
despite our feelings of empathy, he directed them to let their “feelings" guide
them. “Trust your own instincts,” he said. Before people realized it, he had
redefined love as “indulgence.”
This has left the majority of
mommies feeling that to love their children, they must make them happy. If
little junior doesn’t want to stay on Mommy’s lap, they let him down. If he
refuses to eat his broccoli, they give him pizza and a sugared vitamin. If he
loses a toy, breaks a window, or receives a parking ticket, they pay for his
negligence. In current generations, to “love” means to rescue children from
challenges, deprivation, and the consequences of their actions.
For most of history, such
indulgence was considered “spoiling a child.” Many parents who live for their
children’s happiness admit that they “spoil them a little,” but such practices
are outrageous, since to “spoil” something is to “ruin” it. Our culture now
suffers great moral decline and our lawmakers legislate like indulgent parents,
because of such a significant misunderstanding of love and
discipline.
This modern idea of being guided by
feelings stands in contrast to the Bible. Solomon instructed us to “Chasten thy
son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for
his crying“ (Prov 19:18). God made clear that our feelings cannot always
be trusted, particularly in the area of parenting. He went on to say that the
proof of love is the willingness to bring pain through discipline:
"For whom the LORD loves He
chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives." 7 If you endure chastening,
God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not
chasten? 8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become
partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons... 11 Now no chastening seems
to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the
peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."
(Heb 12:6-8,11).
Benjamin Spock died in 1998, and my
intent is not to malign a man in the grave -- it is simply to identify and
abandon the polluted well from which we have been drinking. America may be
sinking, but we don’t have to go down with her. Believers must turn away from
the wisdom of the world and look to the Bible to devise a plan of training and
discipline that will bear good and lasting fruit.
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Sunday, September 9, 2012
How Dr. Spock is Destroying America
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