Dobson and I

My parents were not devotees of James Dobson, and yet he and his lifework Focus of the Family were so ubiquitous that they formed, if not the white noise of my childhood, at least a ticking fan.

My younger brother is what, in the eighties, was called a “strong-willed” child. In a dearth of practical wisdom on parenting my parents were at a loss on how to corral him and give his younger brother some semblance of a normal un-bullied childhood! My mom is a tough nut. She once asked him in tears if he wanted her to give up? He wept… no, no he didn’t. And she didn’t, and he turned out to be a fine man. I have heard her satirically quip, “I’d like to ask Dobson what he would do in this situation”, the emphasis heavy on the D. But who was Dobson?

As we grew we discovered Adventures in Odessey. In a lake of twaddle, think: Babysitter’s Club and the very first attempts to turn the Narnia books into movies (#scarycostumebro), Adventures in Odessey was a breath of fresh air. A caliber of quality that took kids seriously, and an endless stream of stories that had substance. But who was Dobson?

A new fascination with the radio would lead me to occasionally hear him. While surfing stations, a less than baritone voice would come through at times, I’d pause to listen, and he would be speaking gently and methodically on some point of family life. Not some ethereal super-spiritual point – but like a learned person who has seen some things – seamlessly melding his faith with his degree. Something about his approach to topics nudged what I now know to be my philosophical bent. But who was Dobson?

Then came the teenage years and Brio magazine. Rebecca St. James had her first album, and she was on the cover! Each month there would be full color glossy articles and pictures, music reviews, and a Q&A. It feels quaint from this vantage point, but at the time it was a lifeline that preserved me from the mind-numbing stupidity of Seventeen magazine and the likes. But who was Dobson?

And then one summer along came a handsome blond boy who ran, and boxed, and lived shirtless with a non-skip Discman in the back pocket of his wide-leg Tommy Hilfiger jeans.  In the same way you don’t notice the clicking fan until it is turned off, I didn’t notice the tenor of my childhood until I met him. In many ways we were similar with the exception that I was settled, and he was running. While the exteriors of our two Christian upbringings looked similar on the surface the undercurrents were in sharp contrast. Through him I would understand that Dobson had been a more significant part of my childhood than I noticed.

This boy, who would ultimately become my husband, had been raised in a cult. Nothing wild and crazy, and if you met them you might not notice anything amiss. It wasn’t the typical externals of a cult but the inward workings. An emphasis on the reading of one man’s writings and interpretations of the Bible. Of syncing thought on all points. A gnostic and circular understanding of faith, that had no practical outworking. A spiral of metaphysical mumbo jumbo that gave everyone the warm fuzzies but didn’t offer anything to grow on, walk out the door with and apply to life. When his family became one of several divorce casualties in that circle, he and is Irish-twin brother were sent swirling out of their orbit and into mine. Angsty and unmoored they would each clamor for handholds wherever they could find them. The first firm out-cropping for my husband, was Dobson.

This boy was cool, so cool. And yet he was constantly carrying around books by this guy I had only ever heard my parents speak of in moments of exasperation, and the covers! Not cool. And yet within those pages he found a man of steady faith who spoke about real life, REAL life! Things that touched reality, things that could affect reality. Things that could have saved his family.

His favorite was “Life on the Edge”. He credits this book with having got-the-girl. I credit it with us still being married. In a sibling duo where one would ultimately take his own life due to the trauma and brokenness of their family, and the other would deal with all of the mental and emotional fallout, this book was a load star. James Dobson was the only handhold of practical Christian living that my husband had ever been given, and he grabbed on with both hands.

As newly marrieds the spinner on our game board was slapped hard and spun wildly. One of the passages we held onto was a passage from a letter James Dobson’s own father had passed on to him. In this letter he wrote to his fiancés on the eve of his marriage:

“I want you to understand and be fully aware of my feelings concerning the marriage covenant which we are about to enter. I have been taught at my mother’s knee, and in harmony with the word of God that the marriage vows are inviolable and by entering into them I am binding myself absolutely and for life. The idea of estrangement from you through divorce for any reason at all (although God allows one, infidelity) will never at any time be permitted into my thinking. I am not naive about this. On the contrary, I am fully aware of the possibility, unlikely as it now appears, that mutual incompatibility or other unforeseen circumstances could result in extreme mental suffering. If such becomes the case, I am resolved for my part to accept it as a consequence of the commitment I am now making and to bear it, if necessary, to the end of our lives together.

I have loved you dearly as a sweet heart and will continue to love you as my wife but over and above that, I love you with a Christian love that demands that I never act in any way towards you that would jeopardize our prospects of entering heaven, which is the supreme objective of both of our lives and I pray that God himself will make our affections for one another perfect and eternal.”

This was the legacy James Dobson’s father had left him, and through his books we felt grafted into that legacy. The advice of a father to a son was passed onto to a generation of fatherless sons. A call for men to be men before Jordan Pettersen ever came on the scene, a call for men to look beyond themselves with selfless love to the people who needed them the most.

And so, with sometimes gritted determination, we turned to face outward, even when our own navels were so greatly in need of gazing. That blond boy became a man as he walked in the long shadow of those other loyal men and chose to focus on his family while battling his own demons. The phrase “extreme mental anguish” did not feel dramatic in those days. Healing did come, not through a therapist or a pill, and not easily or all at once, but it did come as we kept walking out of the tangle of briars and into the light. For my husband, it was largely James Dobson who led the way.

As life stabilized and babies came, “Bringing up Boys” was published and I was miffed, I had girls. By the time “Bringing up Girls” came out I was on to other things. We once visited Focus on the Family’s headquarters in Colorado Springs on an early family road trip; slid down the slide in pillowcases and felt that it was a bit of a pilgrimage. But my kids never hit Adventures in Odessey as hard as the earlier generation did. We were moving on. Like the builder of a great building that loses sight of the foundation in the distraction of the finishing touches, we were whole and growing.

In time, as each of the girls reached 16 or 17 years of age, their dad would pull a ragged, marked-up copy of “Life on the Edge” off of the shelf, spend 3-4 months of Saturday breakfast dates with them one-on-one and read through the book that helped him “get-the-girl”… and “keep-the-girl” as he would jokingly say. But there was more to it than that, he was passing on a legacy.

For them, I am sure it was a bit like with me: But who is Dobson? We didn’t listen the radio anymore, some of them hadn’t even been born when we had visited way back when. He was just simply some old guy dad talked about and always teared up over when he read that one particular passage.

And then he died.

My husband texted me the news. He felt so far away from our lives now. So far below the surface of our ground that I had almost forgotten he was there.

And then my adult kids started sending me screen-shots of snarky posts about his death and asked, Who is Dobson?

Short version:

“He was a child psychologist who earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in the 60’s. He worked at Children’s Hospital Los Angles and saw some of the worst of what broken people can do to children. His impression was that real help had to start at the family level, had to begin with parents. At the encouragement of his father, he began to focus more on his own family, being present – being available. He soon saw that the need was wider than his own corner and began a radio show to talk about such things. That radio show became Focus on the Family ministries, a wide network of many offerings designed to support families. When put into his timeframe we see that he was the sand bar in a confluence of 2 streams. In the secular world, the ideas of free-love and self-first were beginning to wreak havoc on the most vulnerable of the population. In the Christian world a renewed interest in spirituality held potential to make faith a subjective experience, detached from how you lived at home and in the work place. James Dobson’s work bridged a unique gap during that time. Times have changed, and in a field of sunflowers a single specimen doesn’t seem all that impressive. But alone! At the beginning of Focus on the Family, the field was grass. There weren’t any mom groups or influencers or really, even people writing books. There wasn’t really anyone, focusing on the family.”

In the month that both Ozzy Osbourne and James Dobson have died, and the former is raved about and hailed as “America’s Dad” while the latter is maligned. My dander is up.

To be clear, there is a segment of the population who will hate James Dobson because of the “narrow” way he defined family. There are some who will continue to celebrate his death due to his pro-life position. That is fair. Duck while I shoot over your head.

***

To those who want to accuse James Dobson of creating some sort of culture of abuse, I am here. And more than that, I was there. Predominately the posts I have seen are from people with second-hand information who have never listened to the man speak or read his books. Its easy to click “share”. My challenge is, read some content, full books. Listen to his voice and approach. Disagree on points if you like, but get a feel for the man.

Beware air-plant influencers who think that your existence isn’t rooted in the work of others. Tread lightly you who have husbands who take night shifts, and change diapers, and grocery shop. These things were not the norm in the years before Focus on the Family. A look at movie from that era show that there was a toxic element of masculinity that went unchecked. Today those guys get Petterson, back then those guys got Dobson.

To make it sound like Focus on the Family was plot of privileged white males oppressing women is false, I was there! It was women - mothers, who were nudging his books to dads who drug their feet. Dobson said to men what they didn’t really want to hear it at the time. Said what only another man could say. His work was to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and over time it affected our culture, even those who thought they were outside of his reach.

Are there individuals that took permissions not given, misinterpreted things, legislated and misapplied ideas? Of course! Just as there are individuals that hold to regimented charts for their 1000 Hours Outside quota, overdose their kids on Weston A. Price fare so that they want to live exclusively on Dr. Pepper, burn their kids out on the CC timeline song, and weary them of Charlotte Mason with so. Much. Talking. About all of the things. There will always be that type of person who loves the law and misses the heart, the white-washed tombs. It doesn’t change the fact that there was much good in James Dobson’s work.

***

It is the part of immaturity to criticize what has gone before; to paint with a broad brush and make generalizations based on what is necessarily a limited amount of experience. It is the part of foolishness to chip away at the foundation one stands upon.

The current chatter about Dobson is the tip of what is a longer trend, that of criticizing our parents for the things we think could have been better - or rather, are told should have been different. Parents, with the same measure you judge, you will be judged. The clock is ticking and all too soon the sections of population will shift again, as if on cue. One day you are the young, enlightened, enthusiast; and then elephant rolls over. Will you be smashed or did you model humility to the critics you were raising?

That scrappy generation of parents in the 80’s and 90’s who caught a vision for something different, who tuned in radio sets and bought books, set a course that was counter cultural to the rest of society. The ones who prioritized children in various ways, saw them as people worthy of their time and energy are the bedrock on which the current homeschool/ purposeful parenting movements rests. Every generation has its emphasis and as hindsight is always 20/20 time will show that the angle that you feel so certain about now (Trad Wife, Hyper Spiritual, Unschooler, Ultra Reformed, Orthodox/Catholic, Gentle Parent, ______-free parenting) is going to look a lot less obvious in a couple of years, at least to your children. I promise. Grace and humility walk down the center of the road. This is your invitation to walk with them.

***

At the end of the day, it cannot be denied that we are a template of Rome. Gibbons framed the characteristics, and Suzanne Collins recognized them. Social media is the Caesar Flickerman show, and the mob is fickle in all three scenarios. Nothing has to be true it just has to be said, be entertaining, and it is swallowed whole. This is the space in which we live. This is the space we have to resist.

***

In the final scene of “Gladiator”, Maximus has slain the evil emperor, but in the process received a mortal wound. As he falls to the ground and dies, the crowd in the coliseum is confused. The mob doesn’t know the whole story, and the few men who do know, stand around awkwardly until Lucilla chides them, “Is Rome worth one good man’s life? We believed it once. Make us believe it again.” And then she commands them, “He was a soldier of Rome. Honor Him.”

My purpose is similar, “Was the family worth one good man’s life?” James Dobson is a man who believed it. He ran the race set before him, and while I’m sure it can and will be picked apart, just as ours may be some day; he finished well. He was a gentle person who loved children and worked to alleviate their suffering, instead of band-aids he aimed at root causes. Instead of looking to programs, he empowered the family to do what only it can do best. He supported society, not from the outside – but from the inside, on a cellular level. He was a person of constant will with a strong sense of right and wrong. He practiced what he preached and lived a very public life free of scandal.

He passed our family a legacy.      

 Honor him.”

Sara Timothy 2025