Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg (1881–1974)

Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg was born near Vienna, Austria, and educated in Germany and New York City. In 1903, she married Dr. Benjamin C. Gruenberg, then a biology teacher, with whom she had four children. She became a world-famous and highly influential expert on parenting and children and the director of the Child Study Association of America from 1923 to 1950. She wrote more than 15 books on parent and child issues, many of them bestsellers that were translated into various languages. These included Your Child Today and Tomorrow (1912), The Wonderful Story of How You Were Born (1952), and The Wonderful Story of You (co-authored with her husband, 1960). She also gave lectures on parenting, served on editorial boards for Parent's and Child Study magazines, and was a special consultant to Doubleday on education and children's literature. She chaired various White House subcommittees on behalf of children and parents and taught parent education leadership courses at Columbia University and New York University. She was an early advocate of giving children honest and fact-based answers to common questions such as "where do babies come from?" and popularized the practice of giving children a weekly allowance. Her daughter Hilda Sidney Krech also became a writer on parenting issues, and the two co-authored several books.