Dorothy Dinnerstein was an American feminist academic and activist, best known for her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur (1976), published in the UK as The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World (1987). Using some elements of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

's psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

, particularly as developed by Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein

Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...

, Dinnerstein argued that sexism

Sexism

Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...

 and aggression

Aggression

In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause humiliation, pain, or harm. Ferguson and Beaver defined aggressive behavior as "Behavior which is intended to increase the social dominance of...

 are both inevitable consequences of childrearing's being left more or less exclusively to women; the issues intrinsic to a child's engagement with and separation from its mother, Dinnerstein thought, end up being conflated with gender relations. As a solution Dinnerstein proposed that men and women share equally in infant and child care.

Biography

Born in The Bronx

The Bronx

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...

, Dinnerstein went to Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

, CUNY for her undergraduate degree and earned the Ph.D. in psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 from the New School for Social Research in 1951. She taught at Rutgers–Newark in New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

from 1959 until 3 years before her death in an automobile accident. She was survived by a daughter and two step-daughters.

External links and further reading

• Questia Online Library article (subscription req'd to read entire content) "Dorothy Dinnerstein."
• Review of The Mermaid And The Minotaur by Vivian Gornick in The New York Times Book Review November 14, 1976 (Subscriber paywall)