"He'd said that pickiness might last a few months, at most, and that by age 2 children should be eating "a pretty grown-up diet." But having been a child in the early 20th century himself, a time when most children had quickly learned to eat like their parents, he'd assumed that good eating simply happened by "instinct," and he'd warned mothers that telling children what to eat was oppressive, annoying, and counterproductive."
"By the time Dr. Spock was revisiting his advice, American ideas about children's tastes had fundamentally changed. Fast food, processed food, and nutritionally empty snacks and sweets had become mainstays. Children's diets were "poor and they are getting worse," Spock noted, with too few nutrients and too much high-calorie junk."
"When he'd written in his original book that it was fine to give children ice cream even if they hadn't eaten their spinach, he'd envisioned that as a rare scenario, but it wasn't rare at all by the late 20th century. Instead, "nice parents" by then said yes to treats and didn't insist on vegetables."
Dr. Spock, author of the influential Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, reconsidered his feeding recommendations by the 1970s. His original advice assumed children would naturally eat nutritious foods and warned against pressuring them about food choices, believing pickiness would resolve by age two. However, his guidance was widely misinterpreted as permission to feed children whatever they wanted. By the late twentieth century, American children's diets had fundamentally shifted toward fast food, processed items, and sugary snacks. Spock observed that children's nutrition had become poor and was worsening, with insufficient nutrients and excessive calories. His well-intentioned advice inadvertently contributed to permissive parenting around food, where parents avoided insisting on vegetables and readily offered treats.
Read at Slate Magazine
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