Toilet training at one year (or even a little sooner) was not unheard-of in the pre-Huggies years.
I'm not really dissing the article because of the early toilet-training thing, but because the NYT never seems to talk to anyone outside of the richest neighborhoods for these "parenting" stories. Upper West Side? Newton, Massachusetts? Gotta be two of the most affluent neighborhoods in the Northeast.
I think all notions of child rearing from Dr. Spock are suspect. I wonder where he got his ideas from, Freud and psychoanalysis? I'll try to Google. Later
With ready access to Benjamin Spock and all of his private papers, Mr. Maier explained how Spock's training in Freudian psychoanalysis was weaved throughout his famous book and helped popularize many of Freud's fundamental theories on child development. Somewhat ironically, Spock did not acknowledge Freud in his book. Spock felt that Americans considered Freud to be somewhat “dirty-minded” and “perverse.” However, later he admitted that his book was pure Freud. Moreover, Spock's “nurturing” views set the stage for the progressive liberalism of the late 20th Century in America, epitomized by the Great Society programs of the 1960's. His break with President Johnson over the Vietnam War illustrates the trauma of that era, and also the lost opportunity that Spock saw for the government in improving the lives of children, particular among the poor.