Schoenstein, Ralph 1933–

PERSONAL: Last syllable of surname rhymes with "keen"; born May 29, 1933, in New York, NY; son of Paul and Miriam (Stahl) Schoenstein; married Judy Lois Greenspan, January 11, 1959; children: Jill, Eve-Lynn, Lori. Education: Attended Hamilton College, 1949–51; Columbia University, A.B., 1953. Hobbies and other interests: Playing the piano, tennis, spending time with grandchildren.

ADDRESSES: Home—26 Harriet Dr., Princeton, NJ 08540.

CAREER: Writer. DuMont Television Network, New York, NY, writer-producer, 1955–56; American Weekly, New York, NY, staff writer, 1956–59; writer of humorous column "Doubletake," for Newhouse Newspapers, Long Island City, NY, 1959–61, and for New York Journal-American, New York, NY, beginning 1962; performer of oral essays for NBC, Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., (CBS), ABC, "Newsfront" on PBS, and National Public Radio (NPR). Military service: U.S. Army, 1953–55.

MEMBER: Sierra Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grantland Rice Memorial Award, Doubleday & Co., for nonfiction sports story "A Giant Fan's Lament," 1962; Playboy Award for Humor.

WRITINGS:

The Block, Random House (New York, NY), 1960.

Time Lurches On, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1965.

With T-Shirts and Beer Mugs for All, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1967.

My Year in the White House Doghouse, David White (New York, NY), 1969.

Little Spiro, Morrow (New York, NY), 1970.

I Hear America Mating, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1972.

Wasted on the Young, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1974.

Booze Book, Playboy Press (Chicago, IL), 1974.

Yes, My Darling Daughters: Adventures in Fathering, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.

Citizen Paul: A Story of Father & Son, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.

(With Arnold Roth) East vs. West, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

The I-Hate-Preppies Handbook: A Guide for the Rest of Us, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Kamikaze Management: The Rising Sun and the Sinking Yank, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

Alma Maters: How to Survive College Life, Dell (New York, NY), 1983.

Every Day Is Sunday, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1986.

Diamonds for Lori and Me: A Father, Daughter, and Baseball, Beech Tree Books (New York, NY), 1988.

You Can't Be Serious: Writing and Living American Humor, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1990.

Superman and Son, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1995.

Stop the Snoring!, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Max Morath and Diane Fay Skomars) Max Morath: The Road to Ragtime, Donning (Virginia Beach, VA), 1999.

Toilet Trained for Yale: Adventures in 21st Century Parenting, Perseus (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

Contributor of humorous essays to numerous anthologies. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including the New York Times, Daily News, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Star-Ledger, and Newsday.

SIDELIGHTS: Ralph Schoenstein, who speaks Spanish fluently and has worked as a ghostwriter for comedian Bill Cosby, is the author of numerous humor books. For example, his 2002 book, Toilet Trained for Yale: Adventures in 21st Century Parenting, uses the author's own experience as a parent and grandparent to provide a funny but insightful look at how modern-day parents place too much emphasis on early development for their children. The author decries the "pushy" parents who almost from the day their children are born have their eye on their future education at an Ivy League school and success in the world of grown ups. He scathingly renounces aspects of modern parenting, such as playing videos for infants in an attempt to get them to read by the time they are only a few months old or enrolling them in a yoga school for toddlers. For Schoenstein, these parents are not letting their children be normal kids and instead are creating pressures to succeed at far too early an age. Writing in Booklist, Vanessa Bush commented that the book is "an amusing but cautionary look at a troubling parenting trend." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Toilet Trained for Yale "sensible, warm, and funny."

Schoenstein told CA: "Writing is not something I do. A writer is what I am."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2002, Vanessa Bush, review of Toilet Trained for Yale: Adventures in 21st Century Parenting, p. 1370.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2002, review of Toilet Trained for Yale, p. 393.

Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2002, review of Toilet Trained for Yale, p. 234.

Wilson Quarterly, spring, 2003, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, review of Toilet Trained for Yale, p. 109.