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'Dr. Spock: An American Life' by Thomas Maier

Dr. Spock: An American Life

Sunday, June 14, 1998

By Brenda L. Becker, Baltimore Sun

	Dr. Spock: An American Life By Thomas Maier Harcourt Brace $30.00

When Dr. Benjamin Spock died in March at 94, his obituaries were as overstuffed and unlikely as a John Irving novel. The two main acts of Spock's epochal career - as author of the Baby Boom child-care bible and then, in the 1960s, as goofy aging antiwar protester - were familiar enough.

But who remembered that Spock was on the U.S. gold-medal crew team in the "Chariots of Fire" Olympics or ran for president on a third-party ticket in 1972? (The best-selling author in American publishing history got 78,000 votes.) Or that Spock the family-values icon divorced his wife of nearly 50 years and married an earthy feminist 40 years his junior?

Thomas Maier renders these episodes in moderately juicy detail, along with the biographer's requisite nasty news break: Spock, America's god of parenting, was a pretty lousy father.

Spock seemed to know less than he thought he did. His powerhouse career left his family life strained and hollow. His two sons recall him as, yes, stern and emotionally distant; his wife, Jane, wracked by mental illness and alcoholism, felt eclipsed and shut out. Near retirement age, Spock decided that "pediatrics is politics" and launched into Vietnam War protesting.

Maier weaves an engrossing tale but, clearly charmed by Spock, he lets him off the hook a bit easily, especially when it comes to Spock's unrepentant political naiveté and egotism. The question of how the man who mass-marketed compassion and insight to America's parents could be both cold and clueless remains intriguingly unanswered.