Benjamin McLane Spock was born May 2, 1903, in New Haven, Connecticut; his parents were Benjamin Ives Spock, a Yale graduate and long-time general counsel of the New Haven Railroad, and Mildred Louise (Stoughton) Spock. His name came from Dutch ancestry; they originally spelled the name Spaak before migrating to the former colony of New Netherland. As the eldest of six children, Benjamin Spock helped take care of his siblings in various ways. As did his father before him, Spock attended Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University. Spock studied literature and history at Yale, and also was active in athletics, becoming a part of the Olympic rowing crew (Men’s Eights) that won a gold medal at the 1924 games in Paris. At Yale, he was inducted into the senior society Scroll and Key. He attended the Yale School of Medicine for two years before shifting to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he graduated first in his class in 1929. By that time, he had married Jane Cheney. Jane Cheney married Spock in 1927 and assisted him in the research and writing of Dr. Spock’s Baby & Child Care, which was published in 1946 by Duell, Sloan & Pearce as The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. The book has sold more than 50 million copies in 42 languages. Jane Cheney Spock was a civil liberties advocate and mother of two sons. She was born in Manchester, Connecticut, and attended Bryn Mawr College. She was active in Americans for Democratic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. After their divorce in 1976, she organized and ran support groups for older divorced women.

In 1976, Benjamin Spock married Mary Morgan, who had formerly arranged speeches and workshops for him. They built a home in Esculapia Hollow, Arkansas, on Beaver lake, where Spock and Morgan would row in Olympic training rowing shells early in the morning. Mary quickly adapted to Spock’s life of travel and political activism. She was arrested with him many times for civil disobedience. Once they were arrested in Washington, D.C. for praying on the White House lawn, along with other demonstrators. When arrested, Morgan was strip searched; Spock was not. She sued the jail and the mayor of Washington, D.C. for sex discrimination. The American Civil Liberties Union took the case, and won. Morgan also introduced Spock to massage, yoga, and a macrobiotic diet, and meditation, which reportedly improved his health. Mary scheduled his speaking dates and handled the legal agreements for Baby and Child Care for the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th editions. She continues to publish the book with the help of co-author Robert Needlman. Baby and Child Care still sells worldwide. For most of his life, Spock wore Brooks Brothers suits and shirts with detachable collars, but at age 75, for the first time in his life, Mary Morgan got him to try blue jeans. She introduced him to Transactional Analysis (TA) therapists, joined him in meditation twice a day, and cooked him a macrobiotic diet. “She gave me back my youth”, Spock would tell reporters. He adapted to her lifestyle, as she did to his. There were 40 years difference in their ages, but Spock would tell reporters, when questioned about their age difference, that they were both 16. For many years Spock lived aboard his sailboat, the Carapace, in the British Virgin Islands, off Tortola. At age 84, Spock won 3rd place in a rowing contest, crossing 4 miles (6.4 km) of the Sir Frances Drake Channel between Tortola and Norman Island in 2.5 hours. He credited his strength and good health to his life style and his love for life.

Benjamin Spock had a second sailboat named Turtle, which he lived aboard and sailed in Maine in the summers. They lived only on boats, with no house, for most of 20 years. At the very end of Spock’s life, he was advised to come ashore by his physician, Steve Pauker, of New England Medical Center, Boston. In 1992, Spock’s friend Richie Havens presented him with the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library for his lifelong commitment to disarmament and peaceable child-rearing. Benjamin Spock died at a house he was renting in La Jolla, California, on March 15, 1998. His ashes are buried in Rockport, Maine.