Chapter 5: Blame the Rebellion on Mr. Rogers

On Dr. Dobson, Fred Rogers, and how emotional intelligence changes everything

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Chapter 6: Blame the Rebellion on Mr. Rogers

What would be different if multiple generations of American children hadn't grown up under Religious Authoritarian Parenting methods? In chapter 5, we discussed the way RAP parenting negatively impacts the internal sense of safety of children who grow up in homes that use these methods. This week, we look at contrasting voices, like that of Mr. Rogers and Dr. Spock, who were contemporaries of authors like Dr. Dobson. What impact did the ideas of these wildly different parenting approaches have on the kids who experienced them? And did James Dobson really have a monopoly on "Christian" parenting?

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I remember when my oldest child started watching a show called Bluey a few years ago. They would watch it when they didn’t feel good, or were having a hard day. My child begged me to watch the show with them, so I finally did. I was shocked by how much I loved it—it was so funny and sweet, and I found myself crying during multiple episodes. It was able to contain the small joys, pleasures, and safety of a family filled with love and play. I was amazed at how the fictional Heeler family had so much emotional intelligence. They let their kids be kids—with all the emotions that come with this—and even encouraged it.

Whether within a family unit, or with friends, or at school, Bluey seemed to ask: how do we learn to be ourselves and let others do the same? Emotions such as fear, boredom, selfishness, anger, disappointment, joy, anticipation, and sadness are all discussed and addressed as a normal part of growing up, and even being an adult! As I watched Bluey with my child, I marveled at how fantastic it was. Many of the episodes revolve around how to be in community, even with people who are very different from each other. Learning how to identify, name, and process the wide range of emotions we have as humans is seen as a vital element for learning how to be in community with others.

It felt so very different from the teachings about childhood emotions I was raised with. Sometimes I think to myself I wish I would’ve had Bluey when I was a kid. It can be easy to think that the family we see in Bluey, with their ease, flexibility, and room for emotions, is a product of this generation: I had James Dobson and Focus on the Family, my kids get Bluey. But in reality, religious authoritarian parenting wasn’t the only option when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s. Long before I was even born, Mr. Rogers was teaching American society how to develop emotionally intelligent and securely attached kids.

More than just a kind man with a great selection of sweaters, Fred Rogers is now remembered in history as a man who pioneered emotional intelligence in children’s TV programming. He was well aware of the potential possibilities TV had for harming children—especially treating them as little more than future consumers. As an ordained minister, he poured his life into a television program that would give children the ability to name and address all the different emotions they experienced, and he did this because he was passionate about childhood psychological development.

But Mr. Rogers wasn’t alone. Since the 1950s, voices like Dr. Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and Margaret MacFarland¹ had been advocating for an approach to raising children that didn’t utilize corporal punishment and coercive control Looking at healthy patterns of development, these child psychologists pointed out how damaging authoritarian parenting methods were to the kids themselves, especially in how little room these methods made for the full range of human emotions.

In 1965 Fred Rogers, who worked closely with Margaret Macfarland as a theological student, started broadcasting this new way of interacting with children—as if they were individuals full of feelings and goodness and inherent worth and dignity. MacFarland remained a consultant on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood for 20 years until her death, often talking with him daily about his show and how to tailor it to sensitive children. Her saying, “Whatever is mentionable is manageable,” became a guiding maxim for Fred Rogers² and is one that still holds true today. Fred Rogers believed that if children could talk about the fears, worries, and joys they held inside of them, then those feelings could be processed. And it was the job of the adults in their lives to help children identify, name, and process their emotions, which would create a safe and flourishing neighborhood for everyone.

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This is just one example of the conservative discourse around people like Mr. Rogers and their approach to children. To read the entire article, go here.

But Mr. Rogers’ methods, and the psychology behind them, were seen in many ways as the enemy by white evangelical conservatives like Dr. James Dobson. Dobson’s first book Dare to Discipline, published in 1970, came at a key time both in American politics and in the spheres of child psychology³. As mentioned in previous chapters, patriarchal white conservatives were dismayed by the rising waves of young people protesting Vietnam and agitating for civil rights in the 1960s. To make his case for going back to “traditional” modes of discipline, Dr. Dobson first had to convince his audience that these modern child psychologists and their philosophies around emotional intelligence were not only wrong, they were dangerous. 

Dobson called Dr. Spock and those like him “permissive” parenting experts and made a habit of blaming them for many of the ills he perceived in society⁴. This was to become a bedrock belief of religious authoritarian parenting experts who taught parents to suppress unwanted emotions in their children, including anger. These RAP authors believed children were born with an innate desire to fight authority and that this must be snuffed out if a hierarchical, patriarchal, and white-supremacist society was to continue on. “Willful defiance” is what Dobson called this drive, and he believed it to be the innate sin nature that pastors and theologians talked about⁵. 

Quote from Dare to Discipline. It is important to note that Dobson, along with many evangelical men, were incredibly worried about the lack of respect for the police amongst the younger white generation.

By using religious language like “sin nature,” Dobson appealed to Christian parents who already believed that humans were sinful and needed to submit themselves to a higher authority to be saved. This also enabled Dobson to up the pressure for people to use his methods by stating that if the parents did not embark on a careful and thorough method of disciplining their kids, starting from infancy, then their children would most certainly reject God, and them. Dobson believed kids were sinful from birth and must be dominated, first by the parents, and then by appropriate authority figures in the church and in society. But how do you prepare kids to immediately obey and respect the “right” authority figures in an age where young people are protesting in the streets?

Dobson, who studied clinical psychology, had the answer: you focus on the first five years of a child’s life, when their bodies and brains are most receptive to input, and you teach them to equate authoritarian control with love. White Protestant Christianity was fertile soil for these beliefs to take root, which meant that Dr. Dobson sold millions of copies of both Dare to Discipline and The Strong-willed Child—and became progressively “more” Christian with each of his books. But in the beginning, he focused mainly on the psychology of child-rearing and how to use it strategically in various developmental stages in order to squash autonomy and control children and their emotions. In later chapters we will unpack the methods of control, but for today we are simply looking at the ideology and theology behind these parenting practices.

from Dare to Discipline

RAP authors appealed to their readers in a variety of ways, including painting toddlers as enemies in a battle for authority. Dare to Discipline starts off with the fictional story of three year old “Sandy” and her mother “Mrs. Nichols” in a battle of wills. Sandy refused to go down for her nap and kept asking for things like a glass of water. Mrs. Nichols had read “permissive” experts who said that a child will eventually respond to patience and tolerance, so this is what she tried to do, helping Sandy verbalize her feelings and trying to view the conflict as an inevitable misunderstanding between two individuals in different developmental stages of life. Dobson breaks into this story with his own assessment: “Unfortunately, Mrs. Nichols and her advisors were wrong! She and her child were involved in no simple difference of opinion; she was being challenged, mocked, and defied by her daughter.⁶” Dobson loved to contrast so-called permissive parents who wanted to have a “heart-to-heart” connection with their children with his method of parenting, which went “nose-to-nose.” 

Dobson goes on to write: “the actual meaning of this conflict and hundreds of others was simply this: Sandy was brazenly rejecting the authority of her mother.”  Dobson argues that how Mrs. Nichols handled this rejection of authority over nap time would determine the entire tone of her relationship with her daughter. If Mrs. Nichols ignored these challenges to authority over nap time, then Sandy was heading down a path of never obeying any authority in her life— with drugs, sex, and liberal politics sure to follow.

This was to be the repeated pattern of all of Dobson’s parenting books:

• Paint a dire picture of the future of America’s (white) Christian children

• Blame permissive parenting / modern child psychology

• Propose going back to “traditional” discipling methods

• Make the first few years of childhood a battleground between the will of the parent and the will of the child

• Promise a happy future full of loving, obedient children/Americans⁷ 

The formula worked beautifully for book sales, which is why Dobson and other religious parenting experts have stuck to it for decades. Dare to Discipline was a best-seller, launching Dr. Dobson’s career (which in time led to him starting his own radio program, the organization Focus on the Family, and a long and prolific political lobbying career⁸). The New York Times eventually called Dobson the most influential evangelical in America, mostly for his political lobbying against gay people and abortion⁹. But his impact on society in the realm of parenting philosophies should not be overlooked, because it is the bedrock of all of his political activism and influence, and where he got his start in the public eye.

Is it a fluke that a child psychologist became one of the most successful political organizers in the United States? Is the rising wave of religious authoritarianism in the United States a result of the targeted aims of child psychologists like Dr. Dobson who convinced parents to use his methods? Is the blind adoration of a “strong man” who we can submit ourselves to the natural end goal of religious authoritarian parenting? 

And what would have happened to the United States—and to millions of children—if our parents had listened to Fred Rogers instead of Dr. James Dobson? What if the themes of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood or even Bluey had been the bedrock of our homes?

What if living in community with others was the main goal of parenting in religious authoritarian homes, instead of immediate obedience to authority? 

It’s hard not to wonder what kind of neighbors we all would be, if Mr. Rogers had been the most popular Christian parenting expert in the United States for the past seven decades. But since his methods were unlikely to produce citizens who were easy to control, perhaps he never stood a chance in a society where white patriarchists were desperate to hold onto political power.

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In our next chapter, we will be looking more in-depth at how RAP authors targeted specific developmental stages in toddlerhood, and framed the normal development of autonomy as the enemy of the god-ordained order. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please subscribe and join the Strong-Willed community.

For today, let us know in the comments: were there certain emotions in your childhood home that were not allowed? Or were feelings allowed to be expressed and processed?

1. All three of these powerhouses of child development worked together at the Arsenal Family and Children’s Center in Pittsburg. You can read more about Roger’s relationship with McFarland here: https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/when-fred-met-margaret

2. We highly recommend The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers as a source of information on Rogers’s background with child development experts.

3. An interesting article by a historian of mainline protestant child rearing practices talks a bit about Fred Rogers and Dr. James Dobson being contemporaries here.

4.  Dobson describes what permissive parenting looks like thusly: “In the absence of adult leadership the child is her own master from her earliest babyhood. She thinks the world revolves around her heady empire, and she often has utter contempt and disrespect for those closest to her. Anarchy and chaos reign in her home. Her mother is often the most frazzled and frustrated woman on her block. It would be worth the hardship and embarrassment she endures if her passivity produced healthy, secure children. It typically does not.”

5. Thanks, Augustine!

6. Dobson, Dare to Discipline, 12. In the first two pages of the introduction of his best-selling book, here are all the words Dobson uses to describe Sandy/children: Defiant Tyrant Dictator youngster Antagonizing Demanded Little tigress Challenged Mocked Defiant Brazenly rejecting authority, and Stiff-necked child.

7. Did it work? Do the children of parents who utilized religious authoritarian methods have happy relationships full of mutual respect from their caregivers? Or was there never an end point to the control, and never an appropriate time for the child to develop autonomy and differentiate from the parents?

8. Dare to Discipline has remained in print for over 40 years and has sold over 3.5 million copies. In later posts we will talk about the parenting lectures Dobson made about Dare to Discipline and the Strong Willed child that were viewed by 100 million people in the 1970s and 80s.

9. “Dobson is the most influential evangelical leader in America . . The closest thing to his influence is what Billy Graham has in the sixties and seventies” Richard Land, from the Southern Baptist Convention. Quoted in The Jesus Machine, how James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War by Dan Gilgoff, 7.