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Born on April 4, 1923, Dorothy Dinnerstein grew up in a Jewish household located in New York City. Nathan, her father, and Celia Moed, her mother, raised Dorothy. Nathan was an architectural engineer and Celia worked in administration at the Bronx Family Court. Unfortunately, Nathan’s architectural engineer business did not last through the depression, so he then had to earn a living as a bookkeeper at his brother-in-law’s junkyard.

After completing grade school in The Bronx, Dorothy continued her education at Brooklyn College. There, Dorothy earned a bachelors degree in Psychology. Pursuing her education further, she received a Doctorate in Psychology in 1951 from the New School for Social Research.While earning her degree, Dinnerstein was engaged in fighting for liberal causes, women's equality, environmentalism, and nuclear design. Because of her passion towards these ideals, she facilitated a momentary shutdown of Wall Street. During her collegiate years, she met her first love, Walter Miller. Miller was poet and professor at New York University.

In the year 1955, the two had their first child, Naomi May. Naomi is the only child of Walter and Dorothy. Years later, Walter died of heart failure, and Dorothy was left a widow, but soon met and married Daniel S. Lehman in 1961. Lehrman was a psychologist as well. Lehrman, who was previously married, had two daughters of his own, Nina and June, that Dinnerstein soon adopted after their marriage. Daniel and Dorothy raised their kids in the city of Newark, New Jersey, where Dorothy taught and did research at Rutgers University.

During her time at Rutgers University, she began writing her first novel. In 1976, Dinnerstein published The Mermaid and the Minotaur:Sexual Arrangement and Human Malaise. She wrote this novel 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 novel discussing the need of male participation in raising a child.

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 [the mothers] 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.”

The book quickly became popular and was translated into seven different languages.

Two years later, in 1978, Dinnerstein published her second novel, The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World, which further expresses her feelings toward the dominancy of the female role in raising children.

On December 17, 1992, at the age of 69, Dinnerstein was killed in a car accident.