For the second edition of James Dobson’s Family Talk program criticizing the feminist movement with former Focus on the Family vice president Diane Passno, the two fielded questions from an audience of young adults. One young woman asked what they would recommend to a person like herself who is “not ready to be a mom and a wife” but does have career aspirations. Passno, who is promoting her new book that criticizes feminism, told her that it is wonderful she has so many “opportunities that women of my era never had,” seeming to overlook the fact that the tremendous growth in opportunities for women is one of the accomplishments of the feminist movement. But she did caution her that she may only have those career aspirations because of what she hears from her parents and colleagues.
Questioner: What is your advice to young women like myself who—I’m 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? What’s your advice to me now as singles who are built with passions to serve the Lord and to do different things?
Passno: It’s wonderful. You have opportunities that women of my era never had and 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 and 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.
As Passno and Dobson later explained, the culture has been inculcated with “lies” from the feminist movement, leaving society with unhappy childless women, immature men, and remorseful feminists.
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 and there are many childless women today who would love to hold a baby and they were sold a lie. I resent the lies that are being told to the young women that are out there because in twenty years they will regret it, many of them will regret it and it will be too late.
Passno: 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.
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Passno: There are many older feminists who are now looking back at their lives and questioning what they indoctrinated this generation with and they’re questioning it and they’re going ‘maybe I didn’t have all the answers,’ and unfortunately so many of them will never look to Christianity for the answers.
Dobson: And their children are even more confused because they’ve gotten mixed messages and the passion with which the early feminists started has now kind of diminished with time in the present generation.
