Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

university persuaded the state’s Public Housing Authority to send in hundreds of prefab buildings that had been used for war workers, which now clustered around a cooperative grocery store, a bowling alley, and a community recreation center.
    The millions of married veterans and their spouses, who largely abandoned fried chicken for chicken soup and set up housekeeping in “homes” that had only recently served military purposes, faced a demanding experience that drove many young men and women to the limits of their endurance. Veterans attempted to study amid the din of screamingbabies and noisy toddlers, not helped by paper-thin walls, while their wives set up housekeeping with few conveniences or appliances. Yet it seems likely that a substantial number of these young couples saw their young children as a symbol of their independence from older relatives and older lifestyles and believed they had embarked on a marvelous adventure in this new “Atomic Age.”
    One of the developments that made this great new adventure more manageable for young married couples, whether they lived in Fertile Acres or in more traditional housing, was the publication in 1946 of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s
Baby and Child Care
, a paperback book that sold for 35 cents and was designed specifically for anxious young postwar parents. The book would go on to sell 30 million copies in 29 languages before the last Boomer was born, becoming the best-selling new title ever published in the United States to that time. Young mothers, from former war workers to future first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, were effusive in their praise of Dr. Spock’s reassuring, nonjudgmental approach, which explained that a simple combination of relaxation, persistence, and, above all, a sense of humor would solve most baby care issues, and that trust in one’s innate maternal and paternal instincts was an excellent first step in the parenting experience.
    The book included space for birth statistics, records of checkups, parent questions for the doctor, and an infant’s height and weight chart, along with advice that parents should enjoy their babies yet accept that some level of frustration was normal in all parenting activities. Spock admitted that “Children keep parents from parties, trips, theaters, meetings, games and friends. The fact that you prefer children and wouldn’t trade places with a childless couple foranything doesn’t alter the fact that you still miss your freedom.” Yet the rewards from this lifestyle were almost limitless, according to Spock, for compared with “this creation, this visible immortality, pride in other worldly accomplishments is usually weak in comparison.” On the other hand, if sacrifice was healthy, the martyrdom of needless self-sacrifice was counterproductive: “parents will become so preoccupied and tense that they’re no fun for outsiders or for each other.”

    Dr. Benjamin Spock, above, emphasized a commonsense, relaxed approach to postwar child-rearing. His book on baby and child care became one of the best-selling books of modern times.
(Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
    Benjamin Spock had the great good fortune to be accepted as authoritative and wise in a generally upbeat, pragmatic culture of young parenthood. His book gave young men and women permission to expand the traditional boundaries of parental involvement with and even indulgence in their children’s lives. These new parents were more willingto buy toys, less willing to use corporal punishment, and more open to friendship with their children than their own parents had been. New parenting now included playgroups, incentives for good behavior, and even children’s opinions in the forging of family decisions, from meals to vacations. New mothers were less often drill sergeants and more often counselors and advisers. New fathers were more involved and less forbidding.
    When these young parents had a