Older adults whose parents were reared in the first half of the 20th century may have been brought up on the advice that prevailed before Dr. Benjamin Spock. Here is what preceded Dr. Spock’s revolutionary approach:
Child-rearing experts in the early 1900s promoted conformity and detachment in raising children. In 1928, John B. Watson, one of the founders of behaviorist psychology, argued that children should be treated as adults. Mothers should habituate their children to strict schedules, let them cry themselves to sleep and avoid too much love and attention. In his 1930 book, “Behaviorism,” he wrote:
“Never, never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.”
https://theconversation.com/dr-spocks-timeless-lessons-in-parenting-122377
Dr. Spock’s book, “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare,” came out in 1946, at the start of the postwar baby boom (1946–1964), and changed Americans’ view of parenting. But some parents stood by the old approach, displaying little affection and treating “coddling” almost as if it were a crime. Maybe it was their way of justifying what their own parents had done, as if taking a different approach might have forced them to acknowledge how they had been undernurtured in their own upbringing.
My parents had Dr. Spock’s book on a bookshelf in the living room, but my mother confessed to me when I was in my twenties that her mother and grandmothers had cautioned her against too much cuddling of her children, of whom I was the eldest. As a result, she had been very conflicted about the right way to behave with us. It took a while, I think, for social attitudes to change. Some of us may still feel lingering effects of those old models.