In my case, at least, the timing was impeccable. Many decades ago this week, just as I was making my debut as a member of the human race, a young, largely unknown pediatrician published a book about how to raise noisy, smelly creatures like me with minimal damage to all parties involved. His name was Benjamin Spock (no relation to the pointy-eared guy from “Star Trek,” though they were both men of science), and he called his guide, “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.” It was a 500-page paperback, sucker-priced at 25 cents. He and his wife Jane had been working on it for seven years. There was nothing at all common about the result. The book sold at least 700,000 copies that debut year — one of the first of them to my parents — and similar numbers every year thereafter. Since Spock’s death in 1998, the guide has been updated regularly by a succession of publishers and is now available in 52 languages. “Doctor Spock,” as it is widely known for short, has become perhaps the most influential kid-raising instruction manual ever published in any era. It’s also among the most controversial. Spock rejected generations of traditional wisdom and some behavioral research about how strict schedules, strong discipline and herd conformity were needed to tame the primordial urges of these newborn savages. As John B. Watson, one of the pre-Spock era’s leading child psychologists, distilled the prevailing approach in his 1930 book “Behaviorism”: “Never, never hug or 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.” To Spock, such treatment was psychologically harmful and downright cruel. He encouraged parents to follow their own instincts. “What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all,” he advised. “Trust yourself. You know more than you think.” Spock himself was one of eight children born and raised in New Haven, Conn., by a strict mother and a genial general counsel for the New Haven Railroad. Young Benjamin, like his dad before him, attended Yale University, where he rowed on the men’s eights team that won a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Instead of pursuing a career in law or sports, however, he enrolled at the Yale School of Medicine and transferred two years later to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. After graduating first in his class, he did a six-year residency at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. An unusual step for a pediatrician in those days, that experience deepened his focus on the importance of empathy, emotion and permissiveness in child-raising. Spock’s approach did not endear him to his more conservative colleagues, especially those outside medicine. In the early 1960s, young Americans began to agitate against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and other inter-generational political divides of the moment. Scholars and politicians began to blame Spock-influenced child-rearing practices for producing a new crop of selfish, ill-behaved, Freudian-infused malcontents who didn’t shake their parents’ hands in the morning. He took full credit for the deed. “People have criticized me for seeming to step out of my professional role to become undignifiedly political,” he conceded. “I’d say it was belated realization that day care, good schools, health insurance and nuclear disarmament are even more important aspects of pediatrics than measles vaccine or vitamin D.” Indeed, to Spock, helping parents develop kids who could think for themselves and feel empathy toward others was something to be proud of. My three siblings and I were part of the Spock generation, though we didn’t know it at the time. We did, however, recognize this tall, smiling man from the book cover, ever natty in a Brooks Brothers suit. He was all over TV back then, dispensing opinions on war crimes and toilet training. He looked harmless enough, so we listened. Our parents, however, remained the true center of our world — that jolly young couple who, despite no previous experience, laughed a lot and seemed to know everything about raising kids, including how to make us feel secure, talented and loved. It’s as if they had absorbed Spock’s confidence and generosity from the book’s very ink itself. (Spock’s own family life was somewhat less jolly after a sad late-career divorce from Jane.) Considering my own parents’ relative lack of structure and discipline, my siblings and I turned out well. We got decent educations, found good partners and raised fine young-uns of our own. That could be because my folks embraced Spock’s laid-back parenting. It also could be dumb luck, but I’m putting my 25 cents on Spock. Sure, we had our crises and disappointments, but I doubt we would have pursued any other plan with our own kids. We did what seemed best. Like much of America was and still is, my family was raised with the help of a cheap paperback (now in its 10th edition, but still a bargain at 100 times the original price.) Somewhat amazingly, it’s a book that doesn’t seem to take its subject all that seriously. That, I suppose, is the secret of Spock’s genius and perhaps this whole child-rearing thing in the first place. Raising kids can be one of life’s most satisfying, exhilarating joys. So why should those noisy little monsters have all the fun?