Family Declines Prompt James Dobson to Write Dystopian Novels

Dr. James Dobson, author of over 25 books on marriage and family, recently released his first novel, Fatherless. With his co-author Kurt Bruner, Dobson portrays a dystopian future in which foundational family realities, taken for granted for eons, grow increasingly marginalized. Dobson recently answered questions about this new work in an interview with Religious News Service.  Here are some highlights:

Q: Why did you venture into fiction after writing about real-life parenting for so long?

A: This is my first novel, but not my first foray into fiction. I have always believed in the power of narratives to influence thought and shape the spiritual imagination. While with Focus on the Family I challenged the team to create a radio drama series called “Adventures in Odyssey.’’ My co-author, Kurt Bruner, led that team for several years. We couldn’t be more excited about the potential of this new trilogy to embody themes on which I have been writing, speaking and broadcasting for decades.

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Q: What are some of the real-life issues today that made you write this future fantasy?

A: The single threat to our future is the trend away from forming families to begin with. Marriage is in drastic decline. For the first time in history more women are single than married. Raising children is now considered an inconvenient burden rather than life’s highest calling. For the first time in our history there are fewer households with children than without. The most basic human instinct, forming families, is in dramatic decline. And the implications of that reality, as we’ve depicted in these novels, are breathtaking. That’s why we chose the looming demographic crisis as the backdrop to these stories.

We're hopeful this creative storytelling approach will engage people who otherwise wouldn't have heard about these pressing demographic trends or may have glazed over seeing them presented outside of a narrative context.

The Demographic Cliff

In all the recent debates about U.S. fiscal policy, debt and threats of a fiscal cliff, an underlying problem has received little attention. "Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff," Jonathan V. Last wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. "Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate." The article is an excerpt from Last's new book that comes out today whose title says it all: What to Expect When No One's Expecting, but the blurb for the book fills in some helpful details:

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It’s all bunk. The "population bomb" never exploded. What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

We have enjoyed the writing Last has been doing on marriage and family for the Weekly Standard and were glad to see him write such a substantive book on the significant difference it makes when countries have fewer babies. What we especially appreciate is that Last is willing to describe the problem in great detail, but then also prescribe a way forward. And his prescription is simple:

In the face of this decline, the only thing that will preserve America's place in the world is if all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Hispanics, blacks, whites, Jews, Christians and atheists—decide to have more babies.

He goes on to to address a variety of cultural attitudes (such as our preoccupation with an exalted view of "happiness" that drives us away from procreation) and policies that should change (Social Security reform, college cost management, land management planning, etc.) in order to make it easier to welcome babies.

Power for Parenting

Not long after we left the hospital with our firstborn (and the middle-of-the-night assistance of nurses and staff) I realized that parenting requires supernatural power to do well, for God’s glory. But that’s precisely what we have in Christ, through the promised Holy Spirit, our Helper (John 14:15-17). Just as Jesus (in the flesh, living as fully man) was, in his humanity, able to obey, so too can we obey God. By the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’m learning this and more with the help of Bruce Ware’s excellent new book, The Man Christ Jesus.

If you’re blessed with children, and they slept most of last night (and even more if they didn’t!), take some time in your waking hours to strengthen your soul with this excellent book.

New Christian fiction dramatizes likely demographic trend

We’ve been looking forward to the release of the new book Fatherless: A Novel by Dr. James Dobson and Kurt Bruner.  It’s the first in a dystopian trilogy that looks ahead to see how today’s demographic trends could play out.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

The year is 2042, and a long-predicted tipping point has arrived. For the first time in human history, the economic pyramid has flipped: The feeble old now outnumber the vigorous young, and this untenable situation is intensifying a battle between competing cultural agendas. Reporter Julia Davidson-a formerly award-winning journalist seeking to revive a flagging career-is investigating the growing crisis, unaware that her activity makes her a pawn in an ominous conspiracy. Plagued by nightmares about her absent father, Julia finds herself drawn to the quiet strength of a man she meets at a friend’s church. As the engrossing plot of FATHERLESS unfolds, Julia will face choices that pit professional success against personal survival in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world.

In the dystopian tradition of books like 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games, FATHERLESS vividly imagines a future in which present-day trends come to sinister fruition.

We’ve traded notes with Kurt Bruner about this demographic trend for several years now and we’re excited to see him collaborate with Dr. Dobson to dramatize what the future may hold as current attitudes about family making play out.

Read the first chapter of Fatherless online.

"Teaching 'Taco Bell's Canon'" Makes Me [sic]!

Retired college professor James E. Courter's students proved with hilarity that reading is essential to writing. In "Teaching Taco Bell's Canon," he provides ample evidence that hearing something and being able to write it are two entirely different things. He calls his former students' "literary sub-genre" a "stream of unconsciousness." Consider these winners:

One guy admitted that he had trouble getting into "the proper frame of mime" for an 8 a.m. class. … Another lamented not being astute enough to follow the lecture on "Taco Bell's Canon" in music appreciation class. … One complained that his roommate was "from another dementian." Another was irritated by a roommate's habit of using his "toilet trees."

The examples go on. And while his column was good for a laugh on the treadmill, reason enough to run a few extra minutes, it both encourages me and gives me pause. Pause, for I realize some of these young people will one day assume roles of responsibility that will have consequences for the communities we live in (imagine a professional whose every email, letter, and printed speeches contains multiple occurrences of [sic]--the bracketed word that shows an odd or erroneous spelling is printed exactly as the author wrote it!). Encouragement, for I'm convinced more than ever that it's right that parents cut back on modern entertainment and distractions -- TV, iPhones, internet, computer games, etc., -- in exchange for reading.

Read! Uplift the importance of reading lots of books, as often as possible. Read to your children and read to yourself. Order books from the library and bring home stacks and stacks as varied and interesting as you can find. Use good, reliable books of books and lists of books to find suggestions. If your kids don't like to read, read to them. They like you. And likely you'll be surprised how much they'll enjoy being read to. Even the older ones! And if you don't like to read, consider the reasons. It does take effort, but all things worth doing, do.

May it not be said of us by our children that books weren't often a source of entertainment or discussion, or even present, in our homes. The consequences of too-little reading are too great.

Courter wraps with this sobering thought:

Among students' biggest complaints is that hey have to write so much in college. In his end-of-semester evaluation, one honest soul complained that "writing gives me fits." Sad to say, it's not uncommon to hear students remark on how much they look forward to being done with English.

Who knows what language they'll use then?

Further Reading

Cultural Changes in Approach to Starting FamiliesBarbara Dafoe Whitehead, "Life Without Children," State of Our Unions 2006, The Social Health of Marriage in America

Christian Apologetic for Family Formation Albert Mohler, "Does the Family Have a Future? Part 2" Albert Mohler, "Can Christians Use Birth Control?"

Biblical Guidance for Having and Raising Children John MacArthur, "A Plan for Your Family: God's vs. the World's" John MacArthur, "God's Pattern for Children, Pt. 1" Kenneth Boa, "Perspectives on Parenthood"

Financial Resources Ellie Kay, Financial Resource Center Money Saving Mom, moneysavingmom.com

Dealing with Loss The Story of Audrey Caroline, Bring the Rain Hope for the Journey of Grief, String of Pearls Candice Watters, Grieving Miscarriage

Getting Kids to Work Gladly

When our kids complain about their chores, and even more when they grumble about pitching in to help with the day-to-day work of a busy family, it's tempting to help them see how good they have it by reminding them how much more work I have to do. But that is not God's way. It will never turn their hearts from complaining by being a complainer myself. God made us in His image and when we work, we are doing what He does. When I work wholeheartedly, I show that I am made in God's image. God is at work.

Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17). (See also, Psalm 66:5, Romans 8:28,Genesis 2:2, Psalm 121:4, Philippians 2:13, John 5:36, John 14:10.)

We serve an active God who has revealed Himself to us in Scripture, the very book that calls inactivity and laziness folly. Proverbs 6:9 asks, "How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?" Followed a passage that's sometimes quoted in our home:

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest— and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man (6:10-11).

So important is this lesson that it's repeated verbatim a few chapters later in Proverbs 24:33-34.

Author Paul Tripp says, "The call to meaningful, necessary, productive, and creative labor goes to the very heart of our identity as creatures made in the image of God." (Age of Opportunity, p. 203-204 )

Rather than model complaining and holding up all the work I have to do, I need to show our children that I embrace the work I get to do, that which I've been called to do. With gladness. It is a privilege to be given responsibility and working joyfully as unto Him brings Him glory. It's also a prerequisite for more and increasing responsibility (see the Old Testament stories of Daniel, Joseph, Samuel).

I pray today, and every day, I'll be a good example of what it means to work as unto the Lord with all my heart. There's much more at stake than just clean dishes.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Colossians 3:23-24).

Summer Reading for Kids

I still remember inhaling the classics, The Hound of the Baskervilles and Treasure Island, greatly abridged, with pictures on every other page, the summer my Dad let me read my way to a new bike. I think that may have been the only summer he "paid" me to read. I remember feeling a little guilty about the whole thing. It was fun to earn the prize, but I would have read anyway. Good books are their own reward.

Our kids seem to be cut from the same cloth. They love the library reading challenge and speed through books on their way to temporary tatoos, stickers, cheap plush toys, and entries into drawings for slip-n-slides and tickets to minor league baseball games, but they're still reading well into July, weeks after earning all the library has to give.

Their favorites at present are mysteries. Harrison is working his way through all the old Hardy Boys books and Zoe's hooked on American Girl Mysteries. What about your kids? Do they like to read? And if so, what? Does their summer reading differ from what they spend time on during the school year?

UPDATED

Thanks to all my mom friends who sent in their kids' favorite titles. Here's a partial list, some of which I've read.

• Stuart Little
• Robin Hood
• Dick and Jane
• From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
• by E.L. Konigsburg
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• Phantom Tollbooth
• The Janitor's Boy (same author as Frindle)
• I've heard Mr. Pipes
• Misty of Chincoteague
• Henry and Ribsy
• The Magician's Nephew
• Old Yeller
• My Friend Flicka
• The World at Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller
• Out of the Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
• Shipwrecked
• A Traitor Among Us
• Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Redwall Series
• Adventures of Pinochhio
• Roller Skates
• The Door in the Wall
• Darkness over Denmark
• The Mysterious Benedict Society Trilogy
• The Sign of the Beaver
• The City of Ember (four book series)

Getting Your Marriage Healthy for Starting a Family

Starting a family will stretch a marriage.  That stretching has the potential to deepen the purpose and sweeten the friendship of your marriage.  Having a baby, however, isn't the magic solution to turning a bad marriage into a good one.  If you've been struggling with your spouse, we want to recommend a book that our publisher is releasing the same day that our book comes out.  It's called The Marriage Turnaround and it was written by Mitch Temple, a friend and colleague at Focus on the Family. Here's a description of the book from his Website:

Most marriage books and speakers address the topic of marriage problems from a reactive standpoint -- symptoms rather than root causes. The emphasis seems to be on changing behavior without getting to the thinking, mindset and beliefs driving the behavior. Yet most destructive patterns in marriage stem from destructive myths, thinking and attitudes.

Common myths in marriage today include: "I can change my spouse ..." "My marriage is about meeting needs ..." "As long as we are happy ..." "We can't have a successful marriage ..." "It doesn't matter how we treat each other...."

Such distorted thinking destroys good marriages.

The Marriage Turnaround takes a fresh, practical, humorous approach in tackling marriage thinking, attitude and behavior problems. Whether you are about to be married, just married or been married for years, the insights based on over 25 years of experience and wisdom will benefit you and your spouse.

Mitch frequently makes the point that one of the best things parents can give kids is a healthy relationship with their spouse.  We believe Mitch's book is a great resource for that purpose.