ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This paper focuses on increasing medical influences on child-rearing advice in the mid-twentieth century America, with a special attention to the preventative aspects of mental health in Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. In the early twentieth century, childrearing already became an arena of professionalism and welfare. However, after World War II, those who were engaged in medicine extended their interest in building up a safer community. Thus, raising a physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy child was viewed as a precondition for establishing and maintaining a stable and safe nation because it was an influential way to raise a healthy and proper citizen. With immensely positive reactions received from its publication, Baby and Child Care played a significant role in formation of the image of familiar professionals and tangible medical information. Apart from the previous child-rearing manuals, which emphasized scientific methods of child care in a commending tone of voice, Spock’s advice appeared more friendly and permissive to the readers. Examining the aspects of preventative elements in Spock’s advice in the book, this paper deals with how Spock’s information and knowledge contributed to the infiltration of preventative medicine into the emotional and behavioral realm of the mother and child relationship.

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