Marriage and Family Life
Schlessinger met and married Michael F. Rudolph, a dentist, in 1972 while she was attending Columbia University. The couple had a Unitarian ceremony. Separating from Rudolph, Schlessinger moved to Encino, California in 1975 when she obtained a job in the science department at the University of Southern California. Their divorce was finalized in 1977.
In 1975, while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neurophysiology who was married and the father of three children. Bishop separated from his wife and began living with Schlessinger the same year. Schlessinger has vociferously proclaimed her disapproval of unwed couples "shacking up" and having children out of wedlock. But according to personal friend, Shelly Herman, "Laura lived with Lew for about nine years before she was married to him." "His divorce was final in 1979. Bishop and Schlessinger married in 1985. Herman says that Schlessinger told her she was pregnant at the time, which Herman recalls as " particularly joyful because of the happy news." Schlessinger's only child, a son named Deryk, was born in November 1985.
Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for years, and many thought she was an only child. She had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her mother's death in 2002 from heart disease. Her mother's remains were found in her Beverly Hills condo approximately two months after she died, and lay unclaimed for some time in the Los Angeles morgue before Schlessinger had them picked up for burial. Concerning the day that she heard about her mother’s death, she said: “Apparently she had no friends and none of her neighbors were close, so nobody even noticed! How sad.” In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a "vulgar, inhumane manner by media types" because of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense advice based on family values. She said that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them.
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