(RNS) — Growing up as a child of a Focus on the Family executive in the 1990s, Amber Cantorna-Wylde belonged to a seemingly idyllic family at the epicenter of American evangelicalism.
Her household was infused with the teachings of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who endorsed strong marriages, clear family hierarchy and strict discipline for children as antidotes to rising divorce rates, second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. At age 13, Cantorna-Wylde was surrounded by family and friends as her father placed a silver purity ring on her finger, symbolizing her commitment to virginity until marriage.
“There was an expectation that was put on us, because of who my father was and the reputation that we had in the community, that we were supposed to behave a certain way,” said Cantorna-Wylde, whose father, Dave Arnold, was the executive producer of the smash hit children’s Christian radio program “Adventures in Odyssey.”
Amber Cantorna-Wylde. (Courtesy photo)
But Cantorna-Wylde, now 40, claims it was Dobson’s teachings on family that tore her own apart. After she came out as gay, her parents stopped speaking with her — a decision she says resulted from Dobson-approved parenting advice.
When Dobson died last month at age 89, Cantorna-Wylde was one of hundreds of evangelicals raised with Dobson’s precepts who took to social media to question his legacy. Many of these former “Focus on the Family kids” say their families were ruptured by parents who closely followed Dobson’s teaching. For them, the parenting methods that promised stability instead fragmented the very relationships they were intended to uplift.
A University of Southern California child psychologist, Dobson burst onto the parenting advice scene in 1970 with the publication of “Dare to Discipline.” An answer to the popular Dr. Benjamin Spock, whom Dobson called too permissive, “Dare to Discipline” framed parent-child interactions as a power struggle and instructed parents to discipline children decisively and early. Dobson argued that physical discipline as young as 15 months would stave off teenage rebellion and the …