Many people might be drawn to Erica Komisar based on the brave stance she took in her book Being There, concerning the detrimental effects of mothers being separated from their children early in life. I listened to her on a number of more conservative podcasts, and found her very compelling and interesting. To critique the feminist, girl boss narrative in current times is a difficult thing to do, especially for a NY psychoanalyst. I thought that perhaps her book on adolescents would be equally insightful. I ended up throwing it in the trash.
The book starts out alright, but eventually she gets to the gender and sexuality chapter, and that pretty much invalidates everything else she has to say. He message to religious parents is to set aside all their old-fashioned, square notions of God's laws about sex and stop being so lame. COOL parents support their kids doing whatever feels good in the moment, and are up-to-date on all the made-up-five-seconds ago gender nonsense words. Parents that might worry about the state of their children's heart and soul need to ignore all that outdated mumbo jumbo. Worst of all, she seems to believe that a boy can become a girl and vice versa, and refers to them as such in the book. This fact, in my view, destroys any credibility she could possibly have on science-related subjects. I don't listen to "experts" who don't understand basic biological facts. Her stories in the book are nightmare fuel, yet the solutions rarely involve just acknowledging the problem for what it obviously is. One story is about a fourteen year old who had had sex with three different men and had already acquired a lifelong STD due to her parents' utter failure in raising her. Another is about a boy who had emotional problems and who had been raised by a nanny, since the two gay men who had custody of him were always travelling for their careers. The problem, in the author's view, has nothing to do with the fact that the boy has been denied both a mother and largely a father due to the men's selfishness. "Being There" makes it clear that a mother's love is central in a child's emotional development, but she completely throws that out the window when it comes to this particular ideology. It's not even mentioned as part of the equation.
Even though she has been on conservative podcasts, a NY psychoanalyst is ultimately just that - unable to take a stance against the lobotomies of our day (ie. drugging and mutilation of children). Her only input for the parents is to advise them to wait until the child is sixteen before going full board on the drugs and mutilations. You can decide whether you want to take parenting advice from someone who thinks this way, but for me, any potentially useful information in the book is overshadowed by it so much that it is effectively nullified. Religious parents need to stick to religious figures for sound parenting advice (there are many religious books on raising children - James Dobson is a great place to start). The secular world has nothing to offer but ever-increasing dysfunction and horror, fully supported and cheered on by credentialed charlatans.
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