She is a graduate of Vassar College and Boston University, where she received a doctorate and taught for twenty-one years. She is also a graduate of the Advanced Training Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her debut book The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother was translated into three languages. The End of Gender: A Psychological Autopsy is her second book. She lives in Boston and Dubai with her husband Robert Thurer.