June 18, 2001
James Dobson urges messengers to
protect God's plan for marriage, kids
___By David Winfrey
___Kentucky Western Recorder
___NEW ORLEANS--America's traditional families are disintegrating, but Christians must continue to work to protect God's plan for marriage and child development, James Dobson told the Southern Baptist Convention June 13.
___Speaking to the closing session of the SBC annual meeting in New Orleans, the founder of Focus on the Family encouraged Baptists both to work to preserve the institution of the family and to safeguard their own families.
___Dobson spoke via satellite from his office in Colorado Springs, Colo., because his jet had malfunctioned en route to New Orleans, forcing him to return home.
___Recently released statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show the critical status of American families, Dobson said in an address broadcast by satellite from his headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. According to the census statistics, during the past 10 years:
___The number of households headed by unmarried partners increased 72 percent.
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___ Additionally, Dobson said, census figures state that for the first time in American history households with both a married couple and children in the home have fallen below 25 percent of all households.
___ "The family is disintegrating. It's not just Christians or conservatives who are drawing this conclusion," Dobson said. "If the family disintegrates, then everything goes with it because our government, our institutions, our way of life, everything sits on that foundation of the family."
___ Two byproducts of disintegrating families are suffering children and declining family evangelism, he said.
___ Dobson said the chaos and unpredictability of a failing family affects boys more harshly than girls.
___ He said he recently completed a book titled "Bringing Up Boys." Among his findings were that boys are three times more likely than girls to be on drugs, five times more likely to commit suicide and 12 times more likely to commit murder.
___ "Why are boys in such trouble? The reason is because of the breakup of family," Dobson declared.
___ "Boys, because of their nature and testosterone and all that makes up what a boy is, are more likely to get in difficulty when there's chaos in a family," he added. "They need stability. They need predictability."
___ Dobson said boys also need male role models to teach them what it means to be a man. Boys are born emotionally attached to their mothers but transition that attachment to their fathers between ages 2 and 5, the psychologist said.
___"Boys are not born knowing what it means to be a boy. They certainly aren't born knowing what it means to be a man. … They learn that from being around the male role model, hopefully a father."
___ In some cases when boys have no male role model to learn from, they can attach back to their mothers and develop homosexual tendencies, Dobson asserted. "You hear often that homosexuality is genetic nature. Don't you believe it," he said, adding that there's not "a scrap of evidence" to document that claim.
___The disintegration of the family also has the potential of yielding entire generations of families that don't know about Christ, Dobson said. "The soil in which the seed of the gospel is planted will turn acidic if there are no families."
___ Dobson noted that researcher George Barna has stated that people who have not committed to the Christian faith by age 18 have only a 6 percent chance of becoming Christians.
___"The family is the greatest vehicle ever devised for transmitting the value system to the next generation," Dobson said.
___Dobson applauded the Southern Baptists Convention's Council on Family Life, created a year ago to study how SBC agencies can help strengthen families.
___"Focus on the Family is going to stand with you in this initiative in every way that we can," he declared. But he warned that talk about families is insufficient to preserve them.
___"Your families are in danger too," he said.
___To laymen, Dobson urged daily prayer for their families and to be conscious of what they are teaching by their actions.
___To pastors, Dobson asked whether the growth of their churches had become a greater priority than the health of their families.
___He noted that when he was a teenager his father, a prominent Nazarene evangelist, cancelled a four-year slate of speaking engagements to be with his family when Dobson had become a rebellious teenager who was too difficult for his mother to control.
___ "He saved me, he pulled he in. … He let me know that I mattered to him," Dobson said. "He paid the price to invest himself in my life, and I'm very grateful that he did."
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