James Dobson is perhaps the most influential American evangelical next to evangelist Billy Graham. The author of many books on Christian parenting and child training and the founder of the rightwing organization and designated hate group Focus on the Family, Dobson has wielded significant power over the shape and goals of the Christian Right in the United States. From his early promotion of homeschooling in the 1980s to his endorsement of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns in both 2016 and 2024, Dobson has been at the forefront of the Right’s successful takeover of American politics.
I was recently inspired to re-read Dobson’s 2001 book Bringing Up Boys after reading a quotation from it in Marissa Frank Burts and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis’s fantastic and upcoming book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting (anticipated October 2025). Bringing Up Boys is Dobson’s first attempt at gender-specific parenting—parenting a child according to gender roles and ideals seen as Christian or godly. With a focus on how fathers and mothers (but mainly fathers) should “shape the next generation of men,” according to the book’s subtitle, the book address numerous issues confronting boys in the 1990s and 2000s, including allegedly inherent differences between boys and girls, the roles fathers and mothers should play in boys’ lives, the aforementioned issue of homosexuality, protecting boys from adult predators, disciplining boys, and more. For Dobson, the “ultimate priority” of parenting boys, apart from evangelizing them, is raising them to become “strong and decisive leaders, good workers, and men who are secure in their masculinity” (p. 245).
Burts and McGinnis review several of Dobson’s books in theirs, but one statement from Bringing Up Boys stood out as especially disturbing and sent me to find my copy. This statement occurs in Chapter 9, which is titled “The Origins of Homosexuality.” In Chapter 9, Dobson gives advice to parents of boys who are exhibiting what he calls “prehomosexuality”—a developmental stage some boys experience that, if left unchecked by family and mental health professionals, will lead to “a homosexual lifestyle” (p. 115). The movement to normalize such a lifestyle, Dobson claims, “is the greatest threat to your children” (127, emphasis on original).
To prevent this “greatest threat” from damaging one’s boys, Dobson recommends a book called Preventing Homosexuality: A Parent’s Guide by conversion therapy advocate Joseph Nicolosi. Nicolosi’s book, Dobson says, is “the very best resource for parents and teachers I have found” (118) and “the most insightful material available on the subject” (122). Dobson reprints several pages verbatim from Nicolosi’s Preventing Homosexuality in his own book (118-122).
There are numerous remarkable aspects of Nicolosi’s Preventing Homosexuality excerpt in Dobson’s book. One is Nicolosi’s claim that heterosexuality is actually not natural but learned through socialization and indoctrination: “Growing up straight isn’t something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires social support. And it takes time.” Nicolosi argues heterosexuality is best encouraged by fathers breaking their boys’ connection with their mothers: “If [a father] wants his son to grow up straight, he has to break the mother-son connection that is proper to infancy but not in the boy’s interest after the age of three” (122).
How exactly does a father do this with his son? Well, according to Nicolosi, a father should show his child his large penis. I wish I was making that up but I am not. This is the quotation that originally jumped out at me and which Burts and McGinnis cite in The Myth of Good Christian Parenting:
“The boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger” (120).
Here is an image from the book of the text:
Now, do not get me wrong: there is nothing inherently abusive about parents bathing or showering with young children. This is a common practice in many households throughout history and the world to enable parental bathing or showering, to save resources, and to teach proper hygiene. However, I also need to be clear: while family nudity is not inherently abusive, purposefully exposing your adult genitals to a child to encourage their sexual development is child sexual abuse.
It does not matter if you want children to develop into heterosexual or homosexual adults. It does not matter if your motives are good or evil. Again, plain and simply, purposefully exposing your adult genitals to a child to encourage their sexual development is child sexual abuse. That is not something adults should be doing to encourage child sexual development. It is completely unscientific and thus serves only an erotic function for the adult. By recommending this disturbing advice from Joseph Nicolosi, James Dobson is directly promoting and encouraging child sexual abuse. He is also providing substantial cover for child molesters in families, enabling and empowering their criminal acts by baptizing them or obfuscating them as normative and healthy.
There is one other section from Bringing Up Boys that I want to discuss. On page 127, also in Chapter 9 on homosexuality, Dobson says teenage boys should not care for children because their sex drive is so high that even “good kids” could be “enticed” to sexually abuse children. Here is his reasoning:
“I’ll go a step further to make a controversial recommendation to you as parents. I don’t think it is a good idea to leave your children of either sex in the care of teenage boys. Nor would I allow my teenage son to baby-sit. Why not? Because there is so much going on sexually within adolescent males. It is a preoccupation that invades every aspect of life. The sex drive in boys is at its lifetime peak between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Under that influence, children have been severely damaged by ‘good kids’ who meant no harm but who were enticed by curiosity to experiment and explore.”
Here is an image from the book of the text:
I think this is fascinating, especially coming right after encouraging young fathers of boys to shower with and expose their genitals to their children. In evangelicalism, since sexual purity and large families are prized, early marriage is popular. Many evangelical couples are encouraged to get married right after high school or in college. These same couples are also discouraged from using birth control. This means many evangelical couples have children while still technically teenagers (18 or 19 years old).
If 18-year-old men should not be entrusted with the care of others’ children due to the possibility of child molestation, why should we entrust them with their own children? And why would we be so foolish as to tell these potential sexual predators to show their children how big their penises are?
A father’s penis is not magical. It neither gives the father the right to authority and power, like patriarchy claims, nor does it cure homosexual children of their homosexuality. That Dobson, a child psychologist, thinks otherwise is not just disturbing. It should also cast doubt on his entire project.