James Dobson

James Dobson (born April 21, 1936, Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.—died August 21, 2025, Colorado Springs, Colorado) was a child psychologist, a radio host, and the founder of Focus on the Family, a massive Evangelical Christian media empire. Dobson was a key figure in the Christian Right movement that emerged in the United States in the 1970s, and he advised and supported every Republican president from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. He has often been called one of America’s most influential Evangelical leaders.

Early life and education

Dobson was the only child of James Dobson, Sr., and Myrtle Dobson (née Dillingham). His mother’s father and one of her grandfathers had been charter members of the Church of the Nazarene, an Evangelical denomination based in the Midwest, and his father was a traveling evangelist in the Nazarene church. “You do not have to talk very long with James Dobson, Jr., to learn that his father’s influence is the most powerful in his life,” contributor Tim Stafford wrote in a 1988 profile for Christianity Today, a major evangelical periodical founded by Billy Graham. The family lived in various small towns in Texas and Oklahoma while Dobson was growing up, and he graduated from high school in San Benito, Texas, near the Mexican border. He decided to become a psychologist while attending Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University), a Nazarene college in California, and he graduated with a psychology degree in 1958. During that time he met Shirley Deere, whom he would marry in 1960. The couple would later have a son and a daughter.

Dobson earned a master’s degree in 1962 from the University of Southern California and then a doctorate in child development from that same school in 1967. He worked at the university’s medical school for 14 years as a clinical professor and, concurrently, as a psychologist at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

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Career and Focus on the Family

His rise to fame started with the publication of his 1970 book Dare to Discipline. It contrasted sharply with the advice of Benjamin Spock, a pediatrician who encouraged parents to be in tune with their children’s feelings instead of taking a disciplinarian approach. Aimed at Christian families, Dare to Discipline provides parenting advice rooted in an Evangelical understanding of family and parental authority. The book famously recommends corporal punishment with a belt or switch, a theme that would remain a consistent part of Dobson’s parenting philosophy over the years. Dare to Discipline went on to sell more than 3.5 million copies, and many of Dobson’s subsequent books on marital relationships and parenthood also sold in the millions.

Dobson’s success in publishing would eventually give him the opportunity to leave academia, a decision possibly motivated by the increasing normalization of homosexuality in his field. (In 1973, for example, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM], and the American Psychological Association followed suit in 1975.) Having taken a leave from his professional practice in 1977, Dobson established Focus on the Family, a Christian nonprofit organization in Arcadia, California, with which he launched his own radio show. With a mission to affirm “the God-ordained institution of the family,” Dobson’s broadcasts sought to support traditional family values with advice, teaching, and encouragement for heterosexual couples and parents navigating life’s struggles. Although his peers were famous pastors and televangelists, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Chuck Swindoll, Dobson was not an ordained minister and did not have a church ministry. Much of his appeal came from his background as a psychologist, a fact that also allowed him to reach some conservative Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Mormon audiences, who likely would not have engaged with an Evangelical preacher.

The combination of Dobson’s educational bona fides and his caring, down-home style helped boost the popularity of his books and radio broadcasts. Focus on the Family soon grew into a media empire with millions of listeners and readers. In the 1980s the ministry started to expand its media reach, producing radio programs for adults and children, television shows, films, books, magazines, and Sunday school curricula. By 1988, 50 million people had reportedly watched Dobson’s seven-part Focus on the Family film series, based on his Family Life Seminars from the 1970s. The series was popularly aired or otherwise distributed among churches and Bible study groups as well as being broadcast on television. At its peak, Focus on the Family’s daily radio program was carried on more than 4,000 stations across North America, and broadcasts were distributed in more than 160 countries in 27 languages. The organization moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1991, where it is headquartered today. The Focus on the Family radio program was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.

Over time, Dobson’s messaging became increasingly political, espousing the idea that traditional family values were being threatened by abortion, gay rights, and gender equality. To combat what he considered societal ills, Dobson taught that families should embrace an authoritarian patriarchal structure with distinct gender roles, and he often floated the ideals of Christian nationalism (an ideology calling for the government to incorporate or endorse aspects of Christianity). Moreover, he openly shared his opposition to divorce, drugs, pornography, and the teaching of evolution. He advocated for gay conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth and helped create the purity culture movement of American Evangelicalism, which emphasizes modesty and strict dating rules, including sexual abstinence before marriage.

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In 2009 Dobson left Focus on the Family, citing differences with its president, Jim Daly, and founded the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute (JDFI; originally named Family Talk) the following year. There he hosted a radio program, Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, with his son, Ryan Dobson, until 2016.

Political involvements

Dobson’s political involvement began in 1983, when he established the Family Research Council, a socially conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., that has helped coordinate lobbying organizations at the state level. (In 2010 the think tank was formally designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its perpetuation of “anti-gay propaganda”—a charge the group denies.) During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Dobson served on several governmental panels dealing with a variety of subjects, including pornography, teenage pregnancy, and tax reform. For years, he declined to explicitly endorse candidates, but he and his organization were extremely effective at mobilizing voters on conservative issues. In 1994 the congressional switchboard received almost a million calls after Dobson denounced a certain provision in an education bill, and almost immediately the U.S. House of Representatives voted 422–1 to remove the provision. Republican presidential candidates routinely went to Colorado Springs to meet with Dobson.

In 2004 Dobson created Focus on the Family Action (now Family Policy Alliance), an organization that was not tax-exempt and was thus allowed to participate in partisan electoral politics. It was part of a major effort to secure the reelection of Republican Pres. George W. Bush that year. In the 2008 presidential primaries Dobson was vehement in his criticisms of Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate.

Dobson endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and was a key faith adviser during Trump’s presidency. He and other prominent faith leaders, including Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and Jerry Falwell, Jr., served on President Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board to provide counsel on issues important to Evangelicals. In 2019, following the first impeachment of Pres. Trump, Dobson attacked the editorial board of Christianity Today after it called for Trump to be removed from office for his “blackened moral record.” Dobson supported Trump during his two subsequent presidential campaigns.