Name William Sears Role Pediatrician | Children Robert Sears | |
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Parents Willard Sears, Lucille Sears Books The Baby Book, The Attachment Parenting, Prime‑Time Health: A Scientific, The Breastfeeding Book, Pregnancy Book Similar People Robert Sears, Elizabeth Pantley, Penelope Leach, Peter Sears, Otto Weininger Profiles | ||
William Penton Sears (born December 9, 1939) is an American pediatrician and the author or co-author of more than 30 parenting books, most notably several in the "Sears Parenting Library." He is a frequent guest on television talkshows, where he goes by the name Dr. Bill. He and his wife Martha Sears, R.N., are among the leading proponents of the attachment parenting philosophy.
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Life and career
Sears was born in Alton, Illinois, the son of Lucille and Willard Sears, an engineer.
Sears' residencies were taken at Children's Hospital Boston and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. As of 2004, he was an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine.
He is a medical and parenting consultant for BabyTalk and Parenting magazines and the pediatrician on the website Parenting.com. According to his biography, he has been a guest on more than 100 television shows including: 20/20, Donahue, Good Morning America, Oprah Winfrey, CBS This Morning, CNN, Today Show and Dateline.
According to his website, in 1997, Sears underwent major surgery for colon cancer, followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy.
Sears and his wife Martha have eight children, one of whom (Stephen) has Down Syndrome. Three of the children have also become doctors: Jim (the oldest) (one of The Doctors), Bob (second oldest), and Peter. A fourth son, Matt, is currently studying medicine at UC Irvine.
Sears and several of his family members are distributors and spokespersons for Juice Plus dietary supplements, which Sears promotes on his website. National Safety Associates (NSA), the company that markets Juice Plus, used testimonials from Bill Sears in advertisements promoting Juice Plus Gummies. In April 2005, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division, in response to a consumer complaint, deemed that the ads misleadingly implied that the Gummies are low in sugar and are a nutritional alternative to fruits and vegetables. In response, NSA promised to modify its ads and stop claiming that the product is “the next best thing to fruits and vegetables”.
As of 2009, Sears lives with his family in San Clemente, California, and operates a private medical practice (Sears Family Pediatrics) in Capistrano Beach, California with his sons.