About Alvin Rosenfeld, MD

Alvin Rosenfeld graduated Cornell University and Harvard University Medical School, where he also later served as a faculty member. While at Harvard in the early 1970's, he was among the first clinicians to uncover the high prevalence of sexual abuse among children who became psychiatric patients. In 1977, Dr. Rosenfeld, a board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, joined Stanford University Medical School's faculty where he headed its child psychiatry training program. While there, he headed a research project on "typical" families and how they teach sexual values and attitudes to their 2 - 10 year old children. He has been a contributor over the years to our thinking about sexual rearing styles and "normal" sexual development.

Dr. Rosenfeld returned to NYC in 1984 and now spends his time in the private practice of child and adult psychiatry in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. Dr. Rosenfeld is an academic advisor to the Better Business Bureau's Children's Advertising Review Unit, which sets media and industry standards on children's advertising for television, magazines, and most recently, for the internet. He also serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, is an associate psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and serves on the Board of Governors for Harvard Medical School's Center for Mental Health and Media.

In 2005, Dr. Rosenfeld won the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Catcher in the Rye Award for Child advocacy. In 1997, he won the Wilfred Hulse Award for outstanding contributions to child and adolescent psychiatry. He has been included in The Best Doctors in America, Who's Who in Health Care and How to Find the Best Doctors in New York. From 1999-2004, he served on the editorial board of the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is the author of over 120 professional articles on child abuse, sexual rearing styles, psychotherapy, foster care, and historical issues. He has written five books. The Somatizing Child, co-authored with Elsa Shapiro. Healing the Heart, co-authored with Saul Wasserman. In 1993, Dr. Rosenfeld published The Art of the Obvious (Alfred Knopf), co-authored with the late Bruno Bettelheim. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish, and was an alternate selection of both the Book-of-the-Month and the Quality Paperback Book Clubs. In early 2000, he and Nicole Wise Co-authored Hyper-Parenting (St. Martins) which in 2001 was issued as a paperback, The Over-Scheduled Child. It has been or is being translated for Belgium, China, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Spain.

Dr. Rosenfeld has also written for the lay audience. He and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Dorothy Levine, co-authored a bi-monthly parenting column for American Baby magazine. He also has written a novel, A Dissenter in the House of God, about loss, grief and recovery, published by St. Martin's Press. Reviewers called this novel "a small masterpiece." Dr. Rosenfeld is frequently quoted in the press and has been a guest on numerous TV shows, such as Good Morning America, Larry King Live, The CBS Morning News, CBS Sunday Morning News, NBC Evening News, The Today Show, the Merv Griffin Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Day New York, and CNN News. He has been heard on numerous radio shows including NPR’s Morning Edition and The Diane Rehm Show. He co-hosted a Nickelodeon special with Linda Ellerbee to help children cope with the Oklahoma City bombing, and has contributed to specials on children’s sports on both CNN and ESPN. Articles about Dr. Rosenfeld’s work have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, Times of London, Daily Telegraph, and Canada’s Globe and Mail, Newsweek, Time, People, Parents Magazine, and numerous others nationally and internationally.

Dr. Rosenfeld lives with his wife and three children, Lisa, Sam and Michael. He is founder of a grass roots movement, National Family Night, which is devoted to rebalancing family priorities.