Papers of Barbara Seaman, 1920-1983

The eldest of three sisters, Barbara Ann Rosner Seaman was born in New York City on September 11, 1935. Her father, Henry Jerome Rosner, was assistant commissioner of the city's Department of Social Services, and her mother, Sophie Blanche (Kimels) Rosner, was a high school English teacher. After attending public schools in New York, Seaman entered Oberlin College as a Ford Foundation Early Admissions Scholar. At age nineteen she was married for six months to Peter Marks. Seaman graduated from Oberlin in 1956.

The following year saw her marriage to Gideon Seaman, a psychiatrist, and the birth of their first child, Noah Samuel. Elana Felicia was born in 1960 and Shira Jean in 1962. Seaman was also the "foster mother of record" for Joey Nemecek, a boy who had dated Elana, and who had been on his own since the age of thirteen; Nemecek died under mysterious circumstances in 1977. In 1982 the Seamans were divorced, and Seaman married Milton Forman, president of Toltec Fabrics, Inc.

During the early 1960s, Seaman and Gideon Seaman wrote a column on marriage for Bride's Magazine ; a later column entitled "Your Mind, Your Heart" was syndicated through the Bell-McClure newspaper network (1970-1971). Seaman was a columnist and contributing editor at Ladies' Home Journal (1965-1969), child care and education editor at Family Circle (1970-1973), contributing editor at Omni (1978), and author of articles and reviews in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Ms. , The New York Times , the Village Voice , and the Washington Post .

Her books include The Doctors' Case Against the Pill (New York: Peter H. Wyden, 1969), and, with Gideon Seaman, Free and Female (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1972), and Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones (New York: Rawson, 1977). For a more complete list of her writings, see Who's Who in America, 1984-1985 .

In 1975 Seaman taught at the College of New Rochelle (New York) and at Sagaris Institute (Plainfield, Vermont). She has appeared frequently on television, and has lectured widely on health care at a number of institutions, including the City University of New York, Columbia University, University of Michigan, New York University, and Oberlin College. She testified on a variety of health care issues before Congressional committees (1970-1983), and in 1970 was recognized by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for her part in seeing that appropriate written warnings to patients accompanied each prescription. In 1973 Seaman was honored by the Library of Congress for being the first to raise worldwide the problem of sexism in health care, and in 1978 she received the Matrix award given by New York Women in Communications, Inc.

A co-founder of the National Women's Health Network, Seaman has served on the boards and advisory committees of a number of organizations, including the New York Women's Forum (1974), Feminist Press (1975- ), DES Action (1977- ), Older Women's Health Project of New York University's Medical Center (1980), Abortion Rights Mobilization (1981- ), and Women's Health Newsletter (1983- ). She is also a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Association of Science Writers, PEN, and Women's Ink.