Family Talk Weekends

Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk Weekend. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for making time during your weekend to take us along or to have us with you at home. Family Talk is a listener-supported broadcast outreach, and your prayers and financial partnership make these programs possible. We have a great program in store for you today, so let's jump right in.

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome, everyone, to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Today, we're continuing Dr. James Dobson's classic interview with the late Diane Pasno about her book called Feminism: Mystique or Mistake. In part one of their conversation, Diane shared her own journey from embracing feminism as a student at UCLA in the 1960s to questioning its core assumptions. She explained how what began as a Christian movement advocating for basic women's rights had transformed into something very different, something that often dismisses the value of motherhood and marriage while promoting an agenda that can often leave women feeling confused and unfulfilled.

Today, we're going to hear the rest of this important conversation, but first, let's listen in now as Dr. Dobson sets the stage for today's discussion.

Dr. James Dobson: We're going to hear the second half of an interview that is controversial and that other programs might not be willing to talk about or deal with. This one focuses on the subject of the women's movement and a book that was written by Diane Pasno called Feminism: Mystique or Mistake. In that book and on this program, she shared her view of the modern feminist movement in a very critical way and how it has really failed women.

Truth is unity, and when you get it right, there will not be a contradiction within it because it all comes from the Creator himself. I think there are principles in the scriptures that we need to look at before we swallow all of the ideas and concepts that came along in the late '60s and '70s and are still very much with us today having to do with the roles of women and how they should see themselves.

Roger Marsh: Those insights from Dr. Dobson set the stage perfectly for what we're about to hear today here on Family Talk. Now, what makes this program especially powerful is that during the original recording, the audience contained a large group of college-aged students. Today, we're going to hear many of the thoughtful questions that they had for Diane, questions that reveal the real struggles young women face as they navigate cultural pressures and seek God's will for their lives. Let's kick off this important discussion with a question from the audience.

Guest (Female): What responsibility is there for Christian scholars, women, to step into the academia and just try to have an influence that counters the feminist ideology and philosophy that's predominating our society?

Diane Pasno: Good question. It’s a wonderful question. I think it's very scary, first of all, because it's a David and Goliath situation because you will be in the minority and you need to understand that. I think my first bit of advice to you would be, so it's not so scary, is to get involved in a Christian organization on campus: Navigators, Campus Crusade, Young Life, so that you're not David and Goliath, you're several Davids against Goliath.

If you can mobilize women who are like-minded to confront the women's studies department in a university and say, "You know, you're one-sided. You're giving me one side of this issue. Your teaching is not open-minded. It doesn't consider my worldview." My advice to you is just to get together with some of your Christian friends and go in force. You'll need comrades.

Dr. James Dobson: Getting to the heart of her concern is that there should be, hopefully, women on those university campuses that share the worldview of some of the students. I know when I first went to the University of Southern California, I was registering as a graduate student and scared half to death. There were 30,000 students around me. I didn't know what I was going to be expected to do. I didn't know what contradictions to my faith would occur. You always wonder if you can make it in that environment.

That very night, a professor who was just a few years older than I am, but had gone on and gotten his PhD, was on the faculty there at USC in my field. He recognized me and came up and said hello to me and said, "Come on up to my office." Here's a guy who believed exactly what I believed, who essentially put his arm around me and said, "You know, God's put you here and we'll work on this thing together." You talk about an oasis in the midst of a desert. That's what it was for me. So to have these godly professors, even though they're in the minority, there to assist and give encouragement to students who are trying to make it there is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Diane Pasno: Are you thinking about being such a woman?

Guest (Female): Yes.

Diane Pasno: Are you really?

Guest (Female): I was considering psychiatry, actually, as a career, but I think that's as a trying to avoid the vulnerability of being a mother. I mean, I say vulnerable because I feel like it's such a lower position, you know, lower place in society.

Dr. James Dobson: Do you believe that?

Guest (Female): No, I don't, but it's hard when you're not supported. Here, I feel supported to say that I want to be a mom and have kids, but I feel so demeaned if I'm with other people that are challenging me with all these other ideas and philosophies. So it's hard to go through that.

Dr. James Dobson: You know what's happening over and over now is that young women hear this message and they either postpone or decide not to have babies, and then at 33 and 34 and 35, they start to panic and they realize they've missed an opportunity and it's getting very late. There are many childless women today who would love to hold a baby, and they were sold a lie, I think, in the early days. I resent the lies that are being told to the young women that are out there because in 20 years, they will regret it. Many of them will regret it and it'll be too late.

Diane Pasno: I resent the lies that are fed to the young men as well, because we have a generation of men who don't know what it means to make a commitment, who don't know what it means to protect a family, who don't know what it means to cherish a woman and remain pure until marriage. The feminist movement has distorted so many things that were precious and that the Lord said in scripture were precious.

Dr. James Dobson: Next question.

Guest (Male): My question is: what can men in today's society do to reestablish the roles of men and women in society as they were intended by God?

Dr. James Dobson: Well, God will give you the opportunities to defend the things that you believe, and you have to be ready to give an answer. You have to know what you believe. You have to have thought it out properly, and it has to be consistent with scripture, and then grab the opportunity the Lord gives you. You're not going to change the whole world. I've been guilty of trying to do that on occasion. You can't change the whole world, but you can sure change your little corner of it and be useful to the Lord. If no one responds, you've still done what He asked you to do. I think if you keep your eyes and ears open, you'll have an opportunity to do that. I just wish that more Christians saw that as their responsibility to defend the things they believe. Diane, they get intimidated by that same politically correct notion and keep it to themselves because they don't want to get hurt and embarrassed and ostracized. Who's next?

Guest (Female): What is your advice to young women like myself who are not ready to be a mom and a wife and I have aspirations and I do have longings and hopes and desires to do things? Is there a balance for that future, or your advice to me now as all of us as singles and who are built with passions to serve the Lord and to do different things?

Diane Pasno: Good question. Yes, it's wonderful. You have opportunities that women of my era never had. So I can totally understand when you say, "I'm really not ready for marriage. I don't even have a boyfriend, and actually, I'm really looking forward to taking my education and having a great career." My caution to you would be this: career isn't everything. Always use discernment in your professional life. Are you doing what you're doing because you're getting plaudits from your parents, from people you went to college with? Are you climbing up the corporate ladder because it's what you've been told is important? Just remember to submit yourself daily to the Lord, and He will guide you to where He wants you to be because serving Him is all that really matters, really, when you get right down to it.

Dr. James Dobson: Diane, until that relationship comes along, the person that you love, the person you want to marry and have children with and maybe be a full-time homemaker or not, until that occurs, you would support her desire to press toward a career that uses these talents and skills that she's learned in school and let the Lord lead, wouldn't you?

Diane Pasno: Let the Lord lead. He says He will be a lamp unto your feet. What that means to me is that He never reveals the horizon to us. There's not a big headlight on your hat like a miner would have that shows far out into the future. He shows you one step at a time. That's all you see. He's a lamp unto your path, and you walk in the light that you have. Right now, there's no man in her life and she has this desire inside to use her life productively. I'm sure you would suggest that she press ahead. You have gifts that are unique to you, and if you give them to the Lord, He's going to make you shine like the noonday sun in whatever you choose to do. I would never have anticipated being where I am today at your age. At your age, I was going to marry my husband, have adorable babies, and maybe teach when they were raised. I never anticipated a career. But the Lord does surprising things when you submit to Him. He orchestrates your days, but it's an act of submission and you have to get yourself out of the way and let Him work.

Dr. James Dobson: Next question.

Guest (Female): I would have to admit even when the ladies are introducing themselves to our class, we always say what our career goals are, and it's almost intimidating when we say, "Well, when I grow up, I want to be a wife and a mom." So it's almost like we've killed our hearts if we do have that desire and we're scared to say that. But you had mentioned that it has infiltrated the church. So my question is: how can the church bring back the heart to women, or what's the church's role in this?

Diane Pasno: That's a difficult question because of a dynamic in the church. There's this incredible tension between moms who stay at home and raise their children and moms who work and pursue a career. So when you ask what the church's role is, that's a difficult question because you do have that subtle battle going on within the church and you're not going to get a consistent response.

Dr. James Dobson: A lot of passion on both sides. Exactly. And it's that's a hard question. Do you have anything you can add, Dr. Dobson? Well, you're right, Diane. It is controversial. If we bring homemakers in here to the studio and we talk about what their lives are like and we try to support them, we'll get an avalanche of mail from angry women who are angry at the women who are staying home and pointing a finger at them. On the other hand, if we bring the working women into the studio, and we've done that, then we get beat up from the other side. It is amazing what tension there is throughout society and the church is really a product of the culture at large. What that means for women this age right here is they're going to hear about everything in the church. And you have to decide what God's saying to you.

Diane Pasno: You're going to hear about everything, and what Dr. Dobson said is precisely true. You have to hear what God is saying to you because to say that all women in a congregation should stay home with children negates the ability of the Lord to orchestrate the lives of His people. There might be women in that congregation whom He wants in the workplace for very viable reasons to further His kingdom on earth, and so you cannot put people in boxes.

Dr. James Dobson: And we've got to be respectful to each other. Exactly. Whatever the decision is made, don't we? I mean, we've got it fixed so that everybody loses. The working woman feels guilty because she's not home taking care of her kids, and the woman who's home taking care of kids feels like she's wasting her life. Everybody loses and God didn't intend that. Next question.

Guest (Female): I understand that your book addresses post-abortion stress and how you think that is affecting, is going to affect the abortion issue.

Diane Pasno: I think that is the deepest, darkest secret of the feminist movement: that women are suffering after having an abortion. They keep it a secret. I think Christians keep it a secret too, but they write to us, don't they? They write to us. Christians who work in crisis pregnancy centers who are running post-abortion trauma classes are seeing women now who had abortions back in the '70s when it was first made legal, and they are still suffering the after-effects emotionally from that experience. But it's a secret. No one wants to talk about it because to talk about it means that feminists were wrong about it. Their love affair with abortion is so important to them they'll protect it at all costs, including that lie. They will lie to women to protect it.

Dr. James Dobson: You know, Diane, I really believe that many pastors won't talk about abortion not because they're afraid to deal with the legal and moral implications of it, but because they know there are women throughout their congregations who have had abortions, who have been hurt by them, and they don't want to hurt them more and so they don't raise the issue. But it's better to turn a little light on. Sunshine is a marvelous healer, and it's better to take that to the Lord and cleanse it and let Him have it. I think it's a mistake not to tell people that. Next question.

Guest (Female): My concern is similar to Katie's in that I have a strong desire right now to pursue a career and to pursue higher education. My question is, I wondered if you had any practical advice for a woman, a Christian woman in the workplace, on how to actively and even confidently pursue a career without falling into the trap of the feminist mentality or even to be associated with that because it can be so destructive.

Diane Pasno: I think the most miserable women whom I've ever worked with are those who accept what feminists say is important in the workplace and make that what's important to them. I'll give you an example. There are young women who come to work and their measure of success is how quickly they can climb the corporate ladder and how quickly they can get into supervisor and managerial positions because that to them is success. That is not success as measured by the Lord. The Lord might have you in a position, for example, as a writer or an artist or some other thing that is exactly perfect for your skill set, exactly where He wants you to be. If you were to change positions and follow that dictate that you need to be climbing and you always need to be doing something different and aggressively pursuing the next step, you might be negating His plan for your life altogether. So just remember, it's not important what you've been told is important: that to succeed, get more money, climb up the ladder, have a title. That is not important.

Dr. James Dobson: Diane, you of all people say that with the understanding that you began at probably the lowest position here, or one of them, and did climb the corporate ladder and did rise in salary and did rise in supervisorial responsibility and did get a title. But I have the feeling that that never was primary to you. I've never sensed that you were hammering for that.

Diane Pasno: Never mattered to me. Every time a job change was brought to my attention, I fought it, as a matter of fact. I didn't want to change because it was not a comfort zone.

Dr. James Dobson: I want to say something to the women who are here that I think's really important to understand. The longer you live, the faster life goes. Looking back on it, you realize how very, very brief a particular period of your life was. When you're your age and you're looking forward, it looks like 10, 15, 20 years is a long, long time. It is the blink of an eye. You can devote yourselves to children, to raising those kids and giving them the best that you have. It's a short window of your life, and you've still got, by normal actuarials how long you're expected to live, you've got a longer period of time to use the skills that you have and to develop those professional responsibilities. There's a lot left. You don't have to choose between children and a career, but you usually have to take the children first because the window closes on that one very, very quickly. You understand what I'm saying? And maybe that's what you're trying to say in this book, Diane.

Diane Pasno: Well, there are many older feminists who are now looking back at their lives and questioning what they indoctrinated this generation with. They're questioning it and they're going, "Maybe I didn't have all the answers." Unfortunately, so many of them will never look to Christianity for the answers.

Dr. James Dobson: Maybe that's why you call your book Feminism: Mystique or Mistake. Great title. The subtitle says Rediscovering God's Liberating Plan for Women. I know it was difficult for you to do this.

Diane Pasno: It was difficult, but I don't think people realize how well-read you are on the issue of feminism. They think that feminist women know women's issues, but Dr. Dobson has accumulated maybe more files than I have on the subject. You can talk about it just as well.

Dr. James Dobson: Well, I wrote my third book on that subject, what wives wish their husbands knew about women, which was really coming right out of the feminist movement. It was 1974 when I wrote it, and we were right in the thick of that philosophy, and I saw that it was flawed then and that's what I was writing about way back then. You've come along and updated it. Thanks, Diane, for being with us. Thank you, ladies and man, for being with us today and for participating in the broadcast, and we'll get together again. God's blessings to you, Diane.

Diane Pasno: Thank you for having me.

Roger Marsh: Well, it is such a privilege to listen in on that conversation and the honest questions from these college students. You could really hear the tension they were feeling, wanting to follow God's plan for their life while facing pressure from a culture that often dismisses traditional values. You've been listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk and the conclusion of Dr. Dobson's memorable conversation with the late Diane Pasno about her book called Feminism: Mystique or Mistake. Now, if you missed any portion of today's broadcast or you want to go back and listen to part one, go to drjamesdobson.org/familytalk.

The questions we heard from the college students in the audience get to the heart of the real-world struggles this generation is facing. They're longing for truth and craving clarity about their identity and purpose. That is precisely why the work of the James Dobson Family Institute remains so essential. To make a secure donation online, go to drjamesdobson.org. That's drjamesdobson.org. If you prefer, you can call a member of our constituent care team at 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. Or, if you prefer, you can send your tax-deductible donation through the US Postal Service. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, PO Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Once again, our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, or you could just use the initials JDFI for short, PO Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949.

I'm Roger Marsh, and on behalf of all of us here at the James Dobson Family Institute and the broadcast division, which is Family Talk, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you can still trust for the family you love.

Dr. James Dobson: Here's today's Dr. Dobson Minute. My friend Dennis Rainey tells a story of Double Eagle II, the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The men piloting that magnificent balloon caught an invisible air corridor all the way across the Atlantic. But when they were just off the coast of Ireland, they became ensnared in a heavy cloud cover and ice began to form on the balloon's outer shell.

Now, something like this scenario is repeated far too many times in homes today. There's ice on the balloon and the altimeter says we're sinking because we continue to add activities and stretch ourselves to the limit. Instead of adding, there's time to cut back, to simplify, to spend more time at home and not more money away from home. Then we can soar above the clouds, free and unencumbered by the things that weigh us down. For more information on this topic, visit drdobsonminute.org.