Editing Melanie Klein (section)

==Influence on feminism==
In [[Dorothy Dinnerstein]]'s book ''The Mermaid and the Minotaur'' (1976) (also published in the UK as ''The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World''), drawing from elements of [[Sigmund Freud]]'s psychoanalysis, particularly as developed by Klein, Dinnerstein argued that sexism and aggression are both inevitable consequences of child-rearing being left exclusively to women.<ref name="Dinnerstein, Dorothy 1987 p. 26">Dinnerstein, Dorothy (1987). ''The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World'' (trade paperback) (Reprint with new introduction ed.). London: [[The Women's Press]]. p. 26 and 33–34. {{ISBN|0-7043-4027-5}}.</ref> Klein concluded that the infant's first and major concern is fear of being annihilated by the anger it feels, for example, when it is frustrated by the mother.<ref>Sayers, J. (2013). The autobiography of Melanie Klein. Psychoanalysis and History, 15(2), 127–
	163. https://doi.org/10.3366/pah.2013.0130 
</ref> As a solution, Dinnerstein proposed that men and women equally share infant and childcare responsibilities. She argues that if men shared childcare equally with women, they would be equally involved in the phantasies associated with infancy's paranoid and depressive worries. There would then be no way out of dealing with these anxieties and creating a more realistic attitude toward both men and women<ref>Sayers, J. (2013). The autobiography of Melanie Klein. Psychoanalysis and History, 15(2), 127–
	163. https://doi.org/10.3366/pah.2013.0130 
</ref><ref>Dinnerstein, Dorothy (1987). ''The rocking of the cradle and the ruling of the world''. London: Women's Press. {{ISBN|0-7043-4027-5}}.</ref> This book became a classic of U.S. [[second-wave feminism]] and was later translated into seven languages.<ref name=":2">"Dorothy Dinnerstein; Feminist Writer Was 69"(Obituary). ''The New York Times''. 19 December 1992. Retrieved 2 April 2011.</ref>

Feminists critical of Klein's work have drawn attention to an unwarranted assumption of a natural causality connecting sex, gender and desire, stereotypical gender descriptions and in general a prescriptive normative privileging of heterosexual dynamics.<ref>O'Connor, Noreen and Ryan, Joanna  'Klein: the Phantasy that Anatomy is Destiny' in Shelley Saguaro (ed) ''Psychoanalysis and Woman: A Reader'', London: Macmillan 2000</ref>