T. Berry Brazelton

T. Berry Brazelton (born May 10, 1918, Waco, Texas, U.S.—died March 13, 2018, Barnstable, Massachusetts) was an American pediatrician who was one of the pioneers of newborn behavioral research and who authored several influential books on parenting and infant development.

Brazelton graduated from Princeton University in 1940 and then attended medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, graduating in 1943. In 1945 he served his medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and then undertook pediatric training at Boston Children’s Hospital. His interest in child development led him to pursue further training and research in the field of child psychiatry. He established his own pediatric practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950.

In 1973 Brazelton and his colleagues developed the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS), an assessment tool for newborn behaviour. The NBAS can serve as an early indicator of developmental abnormalities, and it has also been used to measure the impacts on infants’ neurological functioning of numerous variables during pregnancy and birth.

While continuing his daily pediatric practice and conducting research, Brazelton also emerged as a public advocate for young children and families. He appeared before congressional committees to argue in support of parental and medical leave legislation and for increased assistance for children growing up in poverty. Like Benjamin Spock, the hugely influential pediatrician to whom he was often compared, Brazelton influenced the beliefs and practices of American parents through his many books. His television show, What Every Baby Knows (1983–95), won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1994. His best-known books, such as Infants and Mothers (1969), Toddlers and Parents (1974), and Families: Crisis and Caring (1990), focused on the parent-child relationship and the nature of individual differences in the behaviour of infants and young children.