![]() ![]() Benjamin Spock, pictured here in 1976, argued for raising children as individuals, and his book was both extremely popular and criticized.Īs the baby boom generation matured and became leaders of the anti-Vietnam war activism of the 1960s in which Spock himself participated, he was criticized for creating a permissive generation of young people who demanded instant gratification and who would not delay expectations, a criticism he refuted. ![]() ![]() A regular sleep schedule was necessary to allow babies to develop, as was a regular eating schedule.ĭr. Doing so, he argued, would produce children who cry more and demand more attention from parents. Departing from previous views, he maintained that children did not need to be picked up or held every time they cried at night. Spock opposed corporal punishment and encouraged parents to be flexible and treat their children as individuals to propagate a healthy environment for all family members. He received his medical degree from Yale Medical School and chose pediatrics as his specialty. Spock was raised in privilege, attending Andover prep school and Yale University as an undergraduate. Benjamin Spock, a pediatrician whose bestselling book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), taught young mothers that “you know more than you think you do” about raising children. Part of the reason was a new form of child-rearing propagated by Dr. Expectations and behavior varied too, such as between the earlier boomers, who were born between 19 and were old enough to fight in or protest the controversial Vietnam War, and the later boomers, born from 1957 to 1964, who were not.īut there is no doubt that expectations for this generation were high. There were also stark disparities between black and white boomers, as well as between whites and other minorities such as the growing Hispanic population, in economic opportunities and social and political equality. Of course, there were huge differences between the experiences of baby boomers born in affluent white suburbs of postwar America and those born in rural areas. (credit: “Baby Boom” by Bill of Rights Institute/Flickr, CC BY 4.0) birth rate (births per 1,000 population per year) for a century, with the 1946≡964 “baby boom” marked in red. They drove the economy and postwar growth rates as their parents spent on them in ways the preceding generation had not been able to do. The baby boomer generation was brought up in a relatively affluent environment, believing they were special and would make a contribution to the future of the country. By the end of the baby boom, the population of that generation accounted for two-fifths of the entire population of the country, which was 192 million people.įollowing on the heels of what demographers referred to as the “baby bust” generation, born amid the pessimism of the Depression and world war, the baby boomers were a generation raised with grand expectations about the future that led to massive spending by their parents on housing, education (including higher education), toys, diapers, health care, records, and candy. Between 19, 76 million babies were born in the United States, a population increase that had important effects on the postwar economy and culture. Young married couples had faith in the future, and for them, the family was a “haven in a heartless world.” They produced a demographic explosion in natural birth rates known as the baby boom. By the mid-1950s, women, on average, were marrying at age 20 and men at age 22, and by 1965, more than 90 percent of all women were married, up from 80 percent in 1940. The high rate of marriages in the postwar period set the stage for the baby boom. Shumard family, circa 1955” by Seattle Municipal Archives/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) The nuclear family was defined as a family consisting of only a father, a mother, and their children. Parents and their children pose for a photo, 1955. By the late 1940s and 1950s, the nuclear family with a father, a mother, and their children was the new norm, and the home was prized as a showplace for American values in the postwar era. The roles of men and women were altered in substantial ways. Although divorce rates were high right after the war (because those who had married before going off to war often returned home feeling alienated from the person they had married), the marriage rate was up, and stability in family formation became the new expectation. This drove up marriage rates in the aftermath of the war. Marriage and family proved central to this optimism, with rising expectations of education and homeownership fueled by the G.I. The postwar years brought a surge of optimism about the possibilities for economic prosperity after a decade of depression and war. Use this narrative with the Levittown Videos, 1947-1957 Primary Source and The Sound of the Suburbs Lesson to analyze the impact that the baby boom and urbanization had on American culture. ![]()
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