At the height of the Vietnam War, thousands of Americans wrote moving letters to Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s pediatrician and a high-profile opponent of the war. Personal and heartfelt, thoughtful and volatile, these missives from Middle America provide an intriguing glimpse into the conflicts that took place over the dinner table as people wrestled with this divisive war and with their consciences. Providing one of the first clear views of the home front during the war, Dear Dr. Spock collects the best of these letters and offers a window into the minds of ordinary Americans. They wrote to Spock because he was familiar, trustworthy, and controversial. His book Baby and Child Care was on the shelves of most homes, second only to the Bible in the number of copies sold. Starting in the 1960s, his activism in the antinuclear and antiwar movements drew mixed reactions from Americans—some puzzled, some supportive, some angry, and some desperate. Most of the letters come from what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority”—white, middleclass, law-abiding citizens who the president thought supported the war to contain Communism. In fact, the letters reveal a complexity of reasoning and feeling that moves far beyond the opinion polls at the time. One mother of young children struggles to imagine how Vietnamese women could endure after their village was napalmed, while another chastises Spock for the “dark shadow” he had cast on the country and pledges to instill love of country in her sons. What emerges is a portrait of articulate Americans struggling mightily to understand government policies in Vietnam and how those policies did or did not reflect their own sense of themselves and their country.

Benjamin Spock may have had a greater effect on the everyday lives of more people than any other living American. His personal life, however, was shaken by failure and tragedy. Thomas Maier's extensive interviews with Spock, his family, and others who knew him provide the first complete picture of this complicated man. Two photo inserts.

America's favorite pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock has helped two generations of parents raise their kids with his timeless bestseller, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. Now, today's parents can rejoice: a new compilation of Dr. Spock's timeless advice is here! Filled with Dr. Spock's insightful writings on the fruition of a child to college-aged adult, this first-time collection of essays provides parents with timely information on topics such as: a child's fears and anger coping with everyday stress teaching a child values and responsibilities understanding and dealing with violence in contemporary culture effective discipline prioritizing school work dealing with peer pressure discussing love, sex, and AIDS step-parenting With Dr. Spock's The School Years, parents everywhere will return again and again to Dr. Spock for all of their child-rearing questions.

At last, the nation's most trusted child-care expert has written an entirely new book on parenting. Now, he addresses the many new challenges contemporary parents face, from two-job families to single parenthood, and offers sound, reliable advice for today's parents.

The standard guide to baby and child care, from physical to moral development, includes new material on computers and the Internet and on non-traditional families.