Yes, but Aren’t They All Our Children?

BOSTON — I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me I’m being defensive, I get, well . . . defensive.

And when the issue is as intimate as child rearing, and the accuser is Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, the man who overthrew Dr. Benjamin Spock’s reign as child-rearing dictator, I’m likely to start throwing around words like . . . well, “dictator.”

I’m so rattled, in fact, that I keep using the cliched “well . . . “ construction. But what can you do when the man you long to (rhetorically) throttle seems even gentler than the icons he brings to mind: Mr. Rogers . . . Capt. Kangaroo . . . Barney the purple dinosaur.

Even more frustrating: Brazelton, author of a million books, magazine columns and appearances on morning television shows, makes a heap of sense.

That’s why we were thrilled when he agreed to have breakfast with my wife, Pam, and me and our three children when we hit Boston on our summer-long, nationwide exploration of family issues.

*

The good doctor’s arrival did nothing to change our view of the occasion. Brazelton’s demeanor alone conveys that he’s the kind but no-nonsense grandfather every parent should have as an advisor.

Indeed, he is a grandfather he says, intimating that two of his four grown children recently returned home temporarily--meaning that he and his wife now have grandchildren in their midst.

“I used to say that the hardest thing about raising kids is giving them up,” he says, grinning. “I don’t say that anymore. It was so wonderful, that empty nest. We look back on it and say, ‘Oh Lord, where has it gone?’ ”

We all laugh, surprised to hear such irreverence from a man whose whole life has been an exercise in compassion for children.

But as we gulp our omelets and pancakes, Brazelton tells us a story that fills his eyes with tears--reassuring us that his empathy hasn’t really atrophied.

“I was walking down the street the other afternoon, and this man was coming toward me, with dreadlocks and everything, looking typically homeless,” he says.

The man, it turns out, was a Brazelton fan, who said he watched him whenever he could find a free TV.

When Brazelton expressed surprise, the man led the doctor around the corner, where his wife and infant daughter sat beside a mound of dirty clothes.

Then, Brazelton says, “the man held up this beautiful 4-month-old . . . and she went ‘Oooh!’ to me, and I just started weeping.

“The man said, ‘What are you weeping for?’ And I said, ‘What a plight you’re in!’ ”

But, Brazelton says, the man told him that he and his wife had stopped weeping and were trying to pull their lives together. “We’ve decided to get down to it.”

Brazelton uses this story to make three connected points.

One: that society labels such people as failures and tries to forget them fast.

Two: that most parents, no matter how messed up or luckless, maintain a deep love of their children.

Three: that such love can be kindled into motivation, if only society were sufficiently patient to locate and fan it.

For his part, Brazelton has been relentless in his efforts to encourage society to help floundering parents.

Agencies nationwide, for instance, are finding success with his “Touch Points” program--which offers intervention at specific stages of children’s and parents’ development, he says.

And he is proud of his role in helping to create the parental leave bill, which, while “watered down,” has encouraged American corporations to rethink their approach to family issues--in several cases spurring the creation of on-site preventive health care, day care and services for the elderly, he says.

Brazelton recalls the story about men standing by a riverbank and frantically trying to save an endless procession of babies flowing downstream. “Finally, one person got the idea of going upstream and stopping them from being thrown in,” he says.

What he regrets is that government efforts at intervention--through education, for instance--are met with such resistance.

This is where I feel compelled to play devil’s advocate--and to offer a glimpse into my own fears.

*

It seems to me, after all, that every parent sees two types of children in the world: their own and everyone else’s. Like Brazelton, most feel responsible for helping children whose parents have failed them. Many balk, though, when that help risks messing up the lives of their own children by lumping them in with the more problematic.

Part of the issue in our case, I’ll concede, is that Pam and I are anarchist parents. This is not to say we haven’t, on occasion, made screaming leaps for our stockpile of self-help child-rearing books--a genre that publishers deliver by the barge-load to The Times.

But these tend to be quick index searches for esoteric advice: “What to expect from a toddler who glues worms to her cheeks. . . .”

Unlike some of our hipper friends, we don’t have free-range children, growing unimpeded toward their natural bliss. But we also haven’t turned “parenting” into a graduate program, moving from that USDA class on “Correct Burping Procedure” to UCLA Extension’s “The Origami Approach to Tranquil Diapering”--as have some of our yuppier friends.

By and large, being a good parent, we figure, is mainly hard work and dedication, coupled with a handful of rules that can be picked up through grandmotherly wisdom, careful observation, heartfelt conversation and common sense.

So mandated child rearing makes us nervous.

But when I tell Brazelton that I feel conflicted about all this, that I worry that societal efforts to save the most troubled may expose the happier and healthier to problems they’d be better off avoiding at this stage--you know, how to put condoms on bananas, that sort of thing--he is unsympathetic.

“Yours is a defensive posture,” he says. “Maybe at some point you ought to realize that and say, ‘Well, what is the greater good?’ ”

But what, I counter, is more human than being defensive about the welfare of one’s children?

“Nothing,” he says, in a voice that makes me feel like he’s gently stroking my head. “But I don’t think that pertains just to you or me. I think it pertains to the people in the kitchen, to the people on the street.”

That leaves me in my guilt-ridden conundrum.

On one level I agree with what he’s saying, you see. But let me offer this illustration of why I worry, nevertheless, about lumping kids together.

*

Earlier, Brazelton forked French toast and discussed his extensive research into ways different types of infants affect their parents and siblings. Mid-sentence, he turned to Ashley, our 12-year-old daughter.

“I bet you’re a very quiet and sensitive person,” he said, perceptively. “It’s very different to have someone like you instead of him,” he said, nodding toward 7-year-old Robert, across the table.

Ashley blushed. Robert’s ears pricked up.

Later, when Ashley shyly let Brazelton know that she’s thinking of becoming a doctor, he was wonderfully encouraging: “You’d be a good one, Ashley,” he said.

“You have the most beautiful eyes,” he added, going on to say that clear vision might help her to know what people are thinking--a quality of great value to a pediatrician.

He looked from Robert to Ashley and grinned. “You can tell that he’s getting itchy, can’t you?” he said. “That he’s just about to blow up and give us a hard time?”

Lo and behold, Robert soon started flapping his napkin like a flag and banging silverware.

What’s odd, though, is that he had spent most of the breakfast on his very best manners. He acted up, in other words, because a prominent child specialist predicted he would.

And in a nutshell, that’s why I worry when anyone--even the world’s wisest and nicest doctor--starts parenting my kids when I haven’t specifically asked for assistance.

Does that make me defensive?

Don’t ask me, I’m no behavior expert.

* Next: A New Hampshire inventor’s plan to excite kids about science.

ON THE WEB

Visit the Sipchens on the World Wide Web at https:// www.latimes.com/trip/ for maps, journals and sounds from the family’s trip.