What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents

Hear the lament of Benjamin Spock, physician of children and guardian of innocence, who cried: “What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?” These are not the words of a distant thinker, but the cry of a healer who saw life nurtured only to be sacrificed on the altar of politics and war. His voice is filled with sorrow, yet also with righteous anger, for he understood that the labor of love and care is undone when nations send their youth to die for purposes unworthy of their blood.

The origin of these words lies in the years of the Vietnam War, when countless young men — children once carried in the arms of their mothers — were sent across the seas to fight and perish. Dr. Spock, who had devoted his life to teaching parents how to raise their children with gentleness and wisdom, could not remain silent when those very children were fed into the furnace of conflict. To him, it was a bitter contradiction: the physician heals, the family nurtures, yet the state destroys. What meaning has healing, if the healed are thrown into death?

The ignobility of such causes is what pierced Spock’s heart. For war, when fought for justice, is grievous but may be borne. Yet when fought for pride, for dominance, or for falsehood, it is worse than tragedy — it is betrayal. To ask parents to labor through sleepless nights, to raise their children strong, to pour years of love into them, only to see them slain for reasons unworthy of their sacrifice, is to mock the very sanctity of life itself. It is to sever the natural bond between parent and child, family and future, humanity and hope.

Consider the story of the young men who fell at Khe Sanh, in the highlands of Vietnam. Many were barely out of their youth, their mothers still treasuring their laughter, their fathers still proud of their growth. They faced fire and steel, not for the defense of their homeland, but for a struggle few of them fully understood. When the smoke lifted, the earth was littered with bodies — sons whose lives had been tenderly nurtured now lying silent. Dr. Spock’s question resounds here: what is the use of the physician’s art, of the parent’s devotion, when a nation wastes its children in such a way?

But Spock’s cry is not merely about one war. It is a timeless warning. In every age, the young are tempted to be used as instruments for causes proclaimed noble but rooted in ambition. Kings, emperors, and politicians send forth the innocent, while they themselves remain sheltered. Thus Spock joins the chorus of prophets and sages who remind us that the true measure of a cause is whether it honors life, or whether it destroys it for vanity.

The lesson is clear: the first duty of society is to protect its children. Every physician, every parent, every leader, every citizen must remember this sacred bond. If policies, ideologies, or ambitions place the young in needless peril, they must be rejected as ignoble. For no wealth, no territory, no pride of nation is worth the tears of mothers or the loss of sons and daughters. To forget this is to forsake the very purpose of civilization itself.

And so, beloved, what practical actions must we take? Speak out against causes that waste life for hollow glory. Teach children not only to be strong, but to be wise — to question those who would use them as tools of destruction. Support leaders who value peace, who place the future of the young above the pride of the old. And in your own life, honor the labor of parents and the vulnerability of children by living in a way that protects, not endangers, the generations to come. For if we heed Spock’s cry, we may yet build a world where physicians heal, parents nurture, and children flourish — and none are betrayed by the hand of war.