One would think after reading about Dobson's concern for dad-deprived boys that over the years he himself embraced a lifestyle that balanced work and family demands, and that when there was a conflict between the two, family won. However, a radically different picture of Dobson's personal life emerges in James Dobson's War on America.
Notwithstanding his fame in the political arena, Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson is still plugging away at what made him his bread and butter: convincing Christian women that their husbands fall far short of being the godly husbands and fathers that Dobson holds himself out to be. Oh, and, of course, buying Dobson's books, CDs, and videos is the best way to shore up their husbands' deficiencies.
In the February 22, 2013 issue of Charisma Magazine, Dobson writes:
As I review research on family disintegration, I am repeatedly confronted with the same disturbing issue. Boys are in trouble today primarily because their parents, and especially their dads, are distracted, overworked, harassed, exhausted, disinterested, chemically dependent, divorced, unable to cope or simply not there.
Dobson doesn't provide citations for any specific research he has reviewed. He doesn't have to. His status in the evangelical world as the foremost authority on all things family makes his word gospel. His assertion alone is enough to drive wives and mothers throughout the nation to their knees, begging God to make their husbands dedicated and caring fathers--just like James Dobson.
One would think after reading about Dobson's concern for dad-deprived boys that over the years he himself embraced a lifestyle that balanced work and family demands, and that when there was a conflict between the two, family won.
However, a radically different picture of Dobson's personal life emerges in James Dobson's War on America, a tell-all book written in the late 1990s by Focus on the Family co-founder Gil Alexander-Moegerle (pronounced Meggerly). Alexander-Moegerle says that Dobson is, in reality a Type-A driven workaholic who regularly put work ahead of family:
[A] central tenet Focus sells to customers in cassettes, books, and magazines is the necessity of slowing down the pace of life and reserving prime quantities of your time, effort, and energy for your family. Search through the complete works of James Dobson and you'll find this principle everywhere.
But the reality is that:
In the years I worked with him, I was not aware of any work weeks that were less than six- or seven-day marathons for Dobson.
Alexander-Moegerly recounts the following story of when a Focus on the Family staffer felt like the frenetic pace at the organization was taking family time away from his wife and small boy. Dobson's attitude was that the staffer could go pound sand:
I recall a meeting of the executive staff of Focus on the Family in which our frantic corporate pace came up. We were discussing the staffing needs of our burgeoning publications department. The specific issue on the table was a report that one of our magazine editors...had been working overtime for three months to help us launch a new magazine and now that the magazine was up and running, he wanted to get back to normal hours...Dobson's first response, upon hearing that this young father refused to work further overtime, was, "Well, we'll just have to find someone who will!"