Dorothy Dinnerstein was an American academic and activist, best known for her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur . Drawing from elements of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, particularly as developed by Melanie Klein, Dinnerstein argued that sexism and aggression are both inevitable consequences of child rearing being left exclusively to women. As a solution, Dinnerstein proposed that men and women equally share infant and child care responsibilities. Her theories were not widely accepted at the time they were published. Dorothy Dinnerstein was also a feminist, expressing her position by stating that “it's easier for women than for men to see what's wrong with the world that men have run".
Biography
Early life
Born on April 4, 1923 in the Bronx, Dinnerstein was raised in a Jewish community and was raised by her parents, Nathan Dinnerstein and Celia Moedboth, both progressive Jews. Nathan was an architectural engineer and Celia worked in administration at the Bronx Family Court. Unfortunately, Nathan's architectural engineer business did not survive the depression; Nathan found a job keeping the books at Mott Haven Salvage, owned by his brother-in-law Benjamin Moed, until his death at 49.
Marriage and family
During her collegiate years, she met and married Sidney Mintz, who later became a well known anthropologist. Their marriage ended shortly after WWII. Dinnerstein then married Walter James Miller. Miller was a poet and professor at . In the year 1955, the two had their only child, Naomi May. They divorced in 1961. Dinnerstein married Daniel S. Lehrman in 1961. Lehrman was a psychologist as well. Lehrman, who was previously married, had two daughters of his own, Nina and June, who lived with their mother Gertrude Lehrman in Queens, NY. Daniel and Dorothy lived in the Greenwich Village section of NYC and then in Leonia NJ. Lehrman taught and did research at Rutgers University, as did Dinnerstein. Lehrman died suddenly of a heart attack in 1972, at the age of 53.
After earning her degree, Dinnerstein was engaged in fighting for progressive causes including women's rights, environmentalism, an end to the Viet Nam war, and against nuclear proliferation. As part of her passion about these issues, she participated in a demonstration that briefly shutdown
''The Mermaid and the Minotaur''
During her time at Rutgers University, she began writing her first book. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangement and Human Malaise was published in 1976. She wrote this book to demonstrate her feelings toward feminist ideals and the gender roles in relationships, particularly in relation to child-rearing. Dinnerstein spends a large portion of the book discussing the need for male participation in raising children. Dorothy argues that the lack of a male figure in a child's life makes for an even more intimate relationship between the mother and child. As the book states, "It is in a woman’s arms and bosom that the delicate-skinned infant originally nestles… Her hands clean, soothe, and pat its sensitive bottom… She is the one who rocks or bounces it… who thumps it when it needs to burp." This is an incorrect summary of the ideas presented in the book; further editing is needed. The book became a classic of U.S. second-wave feminism and was later translated into seven languages. Her book contributed to the women's movement; using Freudian methodology she made important statements about men having the responsibility to raise children.
Death
On December 17, 1992, at the age of 69, Dinnerstein was killed in a car accident. She was survived by a daughter and two step-daughters.
Theories and contributions
In The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Dinnerstein takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing the ways in which sexist habits develop out of a society in which childcare is handled chiefly by women. She wrote from the perspectives of a microsociologist, a feminist, a humanist, an ecologist, and a psychoanalyst. Dinnerstein's theory recognized a series of long-term societal consequences that result from women being the sole childcare providers. Women are infantilized and degraded as a result of false perceptions that they are associated with the realm of childhood as opposed to the world of adulthood. Women become the scapegoats of adult resentment towards authority figures because they served as controlling authority figures during childhood. Women are blamed for life's pitfalls because of the early-childhood perception one's mother takes care of everything, so if something is wrong, it's the mother's fault for not making it all right. Men must use sexism and patriarchal means to control resented authority figures. Men are isolated from the world of emotions and interpersonal relations usually associated with childhood, creating an impossible and harmful standard of male infallibility, invincibility, and invulnerability. Dinnerstein concluded her book by saying that she recognized that families have started to move toward shared parenting for reasons unrelated to the consequences of female-dominated childcare, nonetheless, she wanted shared parenting to be “fortified by full awareness of these considerations. This effort of theirs, moreover, is supported by all the forms of action now being taken toward equity in the economic, political, legal, etc., spheres".
