Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
Dr. James Dobson has died at age 89. Why are the victims of his methods celebrating?
Yesterday morning, on August 21st, I woke up to the news that Dr. James Dobson — who we credit with starting the modern Religious Authoritarian parenting movement here in the US — had died.
My social media feeds slowly filled with exvangelicals who were rejoicing at the news — but after the initial euphoria, there was a quiet sadness in our reflections. Yes, we are happy that a man who caused so much harm is now dead. But what does this mean for us, today? How does this undo the damage this man wrought — now just in our childhoods, but for American politics in general?
I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but his death is as good of a time as any to name the harms he perpetuated in the name of Christianity on millions of innocent children. So to that aim, today I am writing this short post that summarizes some of his harmful beliefs that we have written about in our 15 published chapters (you can read them all here).
1. He pioneered the modern Religious Authoritarian Parenting movement.
Dobson built a marriage and family empire on his parenting methods he popularized in a series of televised lectures (and then later books) called Dare to Discipline and the Strong-Willed Child that were seen by 80 million people (1/3 of the US population) by the 1980s. Despite being a child psychologist in a time when the experts were warning people of the long-term impacts of corporal punishment and advocating for emotional intelligence, Dobson did the opposite of what was good for children, and he was clear that he disregarded the psychological research available to him, in favor of his interpretation of the Bible . He encouraged a generation of parents to spank their children early and often, equating it to being a Bible-believing Christian. He has been very upfront that his parenting methods had political aims, as he was incensed by the civil rights movements, feminism, and the protests against the Vietnam War erupting in the United States in the 1960s. In order to “take America back” he believed children needed to be disciplined into immediate obedience to authority. Thus, the modern religious authoritarian parenting (RAP) movement was born.
2. He taught parents that little children were sinful, manipulative, and that their wills needed crushing.
Dobson took the Christian doctrine of original sin and used it to convince parents that they must hurt their children in order to save them. In reality, his aims were to create children who were easily controlled and who would immediately comply with “godly” male authority the rest of their lives. The way he writes about children in his books — especially toddlers — makes it clear that he detested (disobedient) children and loved insulting them (calling them dictators, manipulative, and sinners). He taught parents to view their children as sinful as fully grown adults and demonized normal developmental milestones and neurodivergence as willful defiance that could only be corrected by ritualized punishment.
3. He taught parents how to abuse their children in a ritualized manner.
Dobson, with his soft-spoken radio persona, assured parents over and over again that his methods would leave no long-lasting damage to children. He taught that if parents hurt their children in a calm manner, than it wasn’t abuse. He advocated for parents to tell their children they were being punished for their own good, use wooden implements to strike their children on the buttocks over and over again and to ensure that it inflicted pain, and then force the children to repent, say thank you for the abuse, and hug the parents afterwards. Dobson claimed this method would lead to a life-long close-knit family dynamic where the children would always be grateful for their chastisement and would grow up to replicate these methods with their own families. In reality, he was setting children up for a lifetime of equating abuse with love, and being forced to be grateful for it. Research clearly shows that corporal punishment, no matter how “calmly” it is administered, impacts both the brain and the nervous system in detrimental ways. Not only that, but his enthusiastic support for corporal punishment led to countless instances of abuse in families, including sexual abuse.
4. He learned everything he know about marriage and family counseling from a known white supremacist eugenicist.
Dobson got his start after college as the assistant to positive eugenics guru Paul Popenoe (who inspired some of the policies of the Third Reich). You can read more about this connection here, but Popenoe was the father of modern marriage and family counseling in the US, where he worked to help white women remain married to white men and have lots of children. Dobson become focused on how to raise the children of these families in such a way where they would replicate the white, conservative, patriarchal values he was obsessed with, which is where his parenting methods came into play. Despite being an atheist, Popenoe even wrote the forward to Dare to Discipline, praising Dobson’s “Bible-based” methods. For many of us who grew up with these RAP metohds, we had no clue we were pawns in a positive eugenics movement aimed at keeping power within white, male, conservative hands.
5. He was one of the most influential far-right political lobbyists in American history.
It’s hard to adequately convey how many pieces of legislature or policy in the United States have been impacted by Dobson’s political lobbying career. While he never ran for office, in the latter half of his career he became obsessed with creating organizations that would implement on a state and federal level his white supremacist patriarchal ideology. He viewed himself as the savior of white patriarchal America, and was a ceaseless advocate for anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-trans policies in particular. If you look at the organizations that are on the board of Project 2025, for instance, almost 1/3 of them either started by or were supported by James Dobson. We hope that journalists and historians will research this particular element of Dobson’s life and make it more public.
TLDR: Dr. James Dobson was a known animal abuser, child abuser, bigot, racist, misogynist who made millions (tax-free!) off of his right-wing white supremacist empire.
And millions of us are left to pick up the pieces after being punished constantly in childhood for having normal developmental responses or any kind of emotions at all.
There is no way to convey in this short post the amount of harm he has done or the scale and scope of those affected. For more information on these methods, how they targeted specific developmental stages, and how they lead to estrangement within families, please see the rest of our work.
For everyone who survived these methods and is reading these words today, I want to tell you: you are not alone, and your strong inner will is a beautiful part of you. We do this work at STRONGWILLED because we want the survivors of Dobson’s RAP methods to find solidarity with others and also do the deep work to build up our connections to our bodies, ourselves, and our own autonomy.
As we celebrate the death of a dangerous and damaging person, we are also celebrating ourselves. We are here, despite everything. And we will continue connecting to our strong wills and resisting religious authoritarianism wherever we might find it. And we are grateful to be doing this work in community with you.
I'll take this as an opportunity to express sorrow to the multitude of victims of Dobson's teachings and send wishes of love and healing for them.
Love the line about connecting to our strong wills to speak out about this! Feels like a bit of empowerment and redemption for a label that wrecked my self-image and self-esteem for so many years.
I’m wondering if you’re familiar with any research studies on the harm of Dobson and RAP? I have the empirical research on spanking, and anecdotally (and personally), I absolutely know the harm. But I’d like to be able to have studies to cite, if possible.