Amy Dickinson

Dear Betrayed: You could teach your son an important lesson by changing your own sexuality to show him how easy it is. Try it for the next year or so: Stop being a heterosexual to demonstrate to your son that a person’s sexuality is a matter of choice — to be dictated by one’s parents, the parents’ church and social pressure.

Later, Dickinson made the idea a way to honor the memory of her mother on her birthday, December 23. Dickinson asked readers of her column to give a book to a child on Christmas or whatever day they celebrated. She said it could be new or a favorite book, but it should be wrapped at the foot of the child's bed. The parent should read the book to the child after it is unwrapped. In 2019, Dickinson joined with Children's Reading Connection, started in Ithaca, New York.

In November 2016, Dickinson announced the release of her second memoir, "Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home," coming in March 2017 from Hachette Books.

On Monday, November 18, 2013, Dickinson ran a letter from a parent who wanted his son to "stop being gay" because the parent found it embarrassing. It was signed "Feeling Betrayed." Dickinson responded:

On February 9, 2009, Dickinson's memoir, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them, was released by Hyperion Books. It reached The New York Times bestseller list in two weeks, debuting at number 16.

In 2009, Dickinson began asking her readers to wrap a book and put it on their children's beds on Christmas. Along with the Family Reading Partnership, "A Book on Every Bed" meant many children received books not only at Christmas but on birthdays or other holidays.

Dickinson was born and raised on a small dairy farm in Freeville, New York. She attended Clark University in Worcester, MA, from 1977 to 1978 and transferred to Georgetown University. She married Anthony Mason, a CBS News correspondent, in 1986. They moved to London in 1987. A daughter, Emily, was born there in 1988. The couple divorced in 1990. Dickinson married Bruno Schickel, a builder from Dryden, New York, on August 16, 2008. Dickinson still lives in Freeville.

In 2003, Dickinson succeeded Ann Landers (Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer) as the Chicago Tribune' s signature advice columnist. Tribune Content Agency syndicates Ask Amy to newspapers around the world.

Amy Dickinson (born November 6, 1959) is an American newspaper columnist who writes the syndicated advice column Ask Amy. Dickinson has appeared as a social commentator on ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's The Today Show.