Dr. Spock
An American Life
By Thomas Maier
Harcourt Brace, $30
ISBN 0151002037

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We all felt as if we knew Dr. Benjamin Spock. He was the quintessential baby doctor, the man whose advice transformed the way America raised its children. Our parents quoted him with devotion, and new parents still turn to his handy book when all else fails at 2 a.m. For half a century his Book of Baby and Child Care has begun with the comforting words, "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do."

How odd, then, to discover that indeed we don't really know Dr. Spock. Thomas Maier's timely and admirable biography, Dr. Spock: An American Life attempts to reconcile the Spock we knew with the one we didn't. The resulting portrait is, as Maier admits, "very complicated."

Complicated, and fascinating, too. Spock's was the voice that turned back the Victorians' harsh, "scientific" approach to raising children. Spock advocated breast feeding long before it was fashionable. He took a courageous stand against the prevailing theory of his day when he incorporated the then-controversial theories of Freud into his work and told Baby Boomer parents that their children were reasonable beings who needed guidance, not debased creatures who needed the rod more than they needed a hug.

Yet for all that, Spock was emotionally unavailable to his own family. Maier gives us both the public man and the private; and if the reader finds that the two don't quite mesh until Spock reaches old age, that perception only reflects the reality of the man's life.

This conflict is played out against the colorful backdrop of history. "Benny" Spock was born before telephones were invented, yet he lived to see his own Web page. A child of privilege, he graduated from Yale and was an Olympic athlete. In midlife, Spock became an ardent socialist and an anti-war demonstrator. He lived long enough to marry both a 1920s flapper and a 1960s feminist.

At every stage of Spock's life, Maier explores the contrast between the public and private spheres, raising this question: Are we destined to repeat the patterns we learned as children, or can we change? It was a question Spock contemplated often, and his answer, in the end, was idealistic. He thought we could. Yet his own life illustrates the struggle.

Amy Lynch is the editor of Daughters, the national newsletter for the parents of girls ages 8 to 18.