Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care

Since its first publication more than 70 years ago, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care has been the world’s most trusted source of parenting information. In it, parents can find clear and reassuring information about all aspects of children’s physical and psychological growth and well-being, with comprehensive guidance about infant care, nutrition, safety, illnesses, how children develop at each stage, and what they need to grow up in our challenging society and make the world better by their actions. 

About the Authors:

Benjamin Spock, M.D., practiced pediatrics in New York City from 1933 to 1947. He then became a medical teacher and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, the University of Pittsburgh, and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The author of eleven books, he was a political activist for causes that vitally affect children: disarmament, day care, schooling, housing, and medical care for all. He had two sons, a stepdaughter, and four grandchildren. Dr. Spock, who died March 15, 1998, at age ninety-four, was married to Mary Morgan. Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care has been translated into thirty-nine languages and has sold fifty million copies worldwide since its first publication in 1946.

Robert Needlman teaches Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland and is a professor of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University. The son of a preschool teacher, he went to the University of Chicago “Lab Schools,” earned degrees in English Literature and Medicine from Yale, and trained in Pediatrics at Boston City Hospital. Before writing Dr. Spock’s Baby Basics and co-writing the last two editions of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, he co-founded Reach Out and Read, a national program that trains doctors to make reading aloud a part of the standard pediatric checkup. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, Carol Farver, a surgical pathologist and educator. Their daughter, Grace, is an artist.