What is the origin of the formulation “The proper care and feeding of X” where X is anything, it seems.
Seems like a cultural reference that’s totally whooshing me, and I’ve seen it used twice now in the past week.
Could have been “The Care and Feeding of Children” published in 1943, but I don’t know if it was popular enough to be the source of the meme.
More recently (decade or so), Dr. Laura Schlesinger wrote a book “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.”
Wikipedia suggest that the book is correct, but the original publication date was 1921.
The original publication date is even earlier:
It went into 15 editions by 1934, going from a 66 page booklet to a 259 page book, so it was as popular and as major in its day as Dr. Spock became later. (Oddly, the Library of Congress doesn’t list the longer and later 1943 edition.)
It was turned around in 1931:
And parodied in 1945:
You can find dozens of “Care and Feeding” titles over the decades, on every possible subject.
Laura Schlesinger’s book came out in 2004 and so is probably the source of the revised phrase, although Gary A. Petri published The proper care and feeding of church volunteers: a practical guide for volunteer leaders in 1996.