An author’s index

Hazel Bell

I read recently of the all-time best-selling baby expert, Dr. Benjamin Spock, as proof of his understanding of and devotion to the mothers of our time, that he insisted on preparing the index to his book, Baby and child care, himself, rather than let a professional indexer do it, because ‘an indexer would not understand the headings under which a mother was likely to look’.

This puzzled me, as, though having then no experience of indexing or knowledge of it, I had two babies, and had never been able to find the information I wanted in Spock, until after several consultations of the index and tracing various passages through the text. Now, as both indexer and mother, I am equally perplexed. When my new baby had strange patches on its face, I was baffled to find no reference under ‘face’ or ‘complexion’, nor a subheading ‘face’ under ‘skin’. At last I looked under ‘rash’; but this was pre-judging the diagnosis. When I thought the child has swallowed a bead which might be lodged in its throat, it was astonishing to find nothing under ‘swallowed objects’, especially as there is an entry under ‘O’ for ‘objects in nose and ears’, but no ‘objects, swallowed’. ‘Throat’ yielded only ‘throat infections’. The child wasn’t choking, but at last I assumed Dr Spock might assume a mother to think he was, and looked there; the ‘choking’ entry led to a paragraph subheaded, ‘swallowed objects and choking’. I wonder what the secret aspect of motherhood is, that an indexer wouldn’t appreciate, which should prevent her looking under ‘swallowed objects’ when a child is not actually choking?

It was a long and merry chase to discover whether coffee, tea, alcohol or cigarettes would affect breast milk. The paragraph heading for this is, ‘The mother can lead a normal life’, following, ‘There are other ways to show affection too’ (i.e. than breast- feeding); so the two paragraphs conic together in the index, as a subhead under ‘breast-feeding’, ‘mother’s feelings’. No professional indexer would have selected that heading, true; nor would he have omitted to state anywhere in the index that the figures do in fact refer to page numbers, although throughout the book the paragraph numbers are printed in bold type, by comparison within which the page numbers are inconspicuous and less precise. Perhaps the amount of secret knowledge that Dr Spock assumes about every mother is indicated by that fact that the only reference to mothers he thinks necessary through this whole 595 page book is, ‘mother, working’!

There is a legendary tale of a young mother who saw her baby fall from the bed. and reached for her copy of Dr Spock before reaching for the fallen baby. I wonder what she looked for in the index? There is no entry under ‘falls’.

(Edition referred to — The Bodley Head, 1958.)

The Indexer, Vol. 6 No. 4, Autumn 1969, pages 181–2.