Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993 TAG: 9305040133
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL BEEGAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
Since 1946, parents have used Spock's "Baby and Child Care" to help them raise their children.
At the celebration, the pediatrician said parents should instill in their children a sense of service and respect for the spiritual aspects of sexuality.
Spock said the 1990s are not an easy time to be either a child or a parent.
"I think it could be a better time, but it is a worse time," he said.
Spock pointed to increasing violence, including some high school students carrying knives and guns to school, a jump in the divorce rate in the past 15 years and a quadrupling of teen-age suicides during the past 20 years as signs of trouble.
What approaches would help in raising children today?
"One is to bring up children with quite a different attitude, a different philosophy than to get ahead in the world," he said. "They should be reared to serve. That doesn't mean they can't have fun or enjoy it."
Service, Spock said, could be helping to set the table as a young child and volunteering in a hospital as a teen-ager.
If parents nurture an attitude of service in their children, he said, it will be at least a partial antidote to the materialism of modern American culture.
Spock also said children need to be taught that sex isn't just physical and mental, but also spiritual.
"Sexuality has lost a lot of its spiritual aspects. In trying to make sex seem more natural and less scary, as it was in my childhood many years ago, we leaned over backwards and have forgotten to emphasize that sexuality has as much to do with spiritual matters as the physical and mental," Spock said.
Spock said an absence of spirituality also contributes to the suicide rate because it shows sensitive teen-agers sometimes feel they have nothing to live for.
Sometimes criticized for appearing too permissive in his book, Spock said today's parents need to set limits on such things as television.
Parents, he said, should not condone children watching programs with excessive violence or sex.
Parents, he said, also should enforce rules about bed times and polite behavior, and be polite to their children as well.
Spock said this does not mean a return to stern child-rearing practices, but does mean that some parents need to be more sure of themselves and their standards than they are now.
Depite his age, he remains active as a advocate and political gadfly.
In February, Spock delivered medical supplies to the Cuban Red Cross despite an American embargo.
During that trip, he told President Fidel Castro the trade ban shamed him, a Cuban news report said. Spock said that he hoped President Clinton would lift the 31-year-old blockade, the Cuban Prensa Latina news agency reported.
During the Vietnam War era, he was convicted of conspiring to counsel men to avoid the draft. The conviction was reversed on appeal.
Spock appeared last Friday at "Boston's Biggest Baby Faire" sponsored by a drug store chain and several baby product manufacturers.
He put his theories to work when he was given an infant to hold while photographers snapped his picture. The baby nestled calmly in his arms.
by CNB