Completing Dr. Dobson's two-part series on the dynamics of raising boys and girls, we review his second book Bringing Up Girls. (For our review on the former Bringing Up Boys, please look on our main page)
While these books are primarily aimed at helping parents understand their children (and those of all ages), they are greatly helpful in gaining readers insights into the world of mankind insofar as it relates to our sexual/gender makeup. While this directly applies to topics discussed in Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage (another book we have recently reviewed), it also applies to those of us that are seeking to more thoroughly understand the human experience from perspectives that we are not privy to. As an adult male, I can say with all confidence (as many feminists would be happy to shout from behind their computer screens) that I have no idea what it is like to be a little girl navigating all of the challenges and complications that come with the differences of male and female anatomy and physiology.
Does Dr. Dobson know any better than I would? Well, with a Ph.D. from USC in Child Development, as well as decades of psychological counseling for families, couples, and children, there is little argument to be made that he wouldn't. Those who claim that he is unfit are only arguing for ad hominem due to their disdain of his conclusions. So, what are his conclusions?
Many parents have become far too distracted, overworked, and stressed out to care much about teaching morals and manners to children.
Dobson begins this book as he does in Bringing Up Boys by presenting some basic biological differences in boys and girls as it relates to their development (both sexually and neurologically). While some of the facts remain the same (such as the vastly greater amount of testosterone that male brains receive), there are a couple of things that I was unaware of that have made me look to my infant daughter with awe. Between six and thirty months of age the ovaries of little girls produce huge amounts of estrogen "comparable even to adult levels." This process is called "infantile puberty." This produces a desire to bond, nurture, and communicate. This leads to little girls being much more attentive to faces in order to interpret emotions than boys, better recognition of vocal tones and their implications, and even the ability to recognize when she is being ignored. The corpus-callosum in girls is 25% larger than in boys, increasing the communication between their emotional and analytical parts of the brain dramatically in contrast to their male counterparts.
All of these facts were unbelievable, but even more unbelievable was his discussion of the perceived norms for behavior that have evolved through time for females. There was a time when girls transitioned into "ladies" rather than simply women. Ladies were mannerly, had good morals, and kept proper etiquette. Because of this, they were seen in society as women of repute, worthy of respect and reverence. Ladies were not people to be cursed in front of, they were not to be disrespected, and they were to be protected. However, in our modern day, there are few if any modern "ladies". There are now only women. Women are now, as Dobson puts it, "encouraged to be brash, rude, crude, profane, immodest, immoral, loud, and aggressive" in an effort to be seen as equal with men and assertive. What has been lost as a consequence? Reputation, respect, reverence, and protection of women. As women have endeavored to show themselves as simply "men with different parts", they are increasingly being treated as such - a fact that Dobson rightly decries as a shame that indicates our loss of sense in the modern world.
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While there are many good things about this book that I did enjoy, one aspect that I absolutely cannot stand, and I trust that any academic reader will equally detest, is that this book practices what in any academic setting would be called outright plagiarism. Dobson makes a lamentable habit of allowing entire portions of his book to be dominated by block-quotes taken from other authors. This may be acceptable if he were examining the claims made by such authors, or even introducing their thoughts and then elaborating on them afterwards, but that is not the case at all. He will simply say something along the lines of what he does to introduce the 10th Chapter in saying, "These selected short proverbs were compiled or written by Harry Harrison and published in a delightful little book entitled Father to Daughter: Life Lessons on Raising a Girl." He goes on to tell the reader to enjoy the insights quoted, before devoting the next 5 pages to quoting that book. There is no examination, nor any elaboration whatsoever. The 10th Chapter is exactly 5 pages - all quoted from another person's book.
He does the same thing in Chapter 17, and Chapter 8 is just a 15 page transcript of a conversation that he had with a group of girls without any examination or elaboration whatsoever. The other chapters are not bereft of this sort of behavior. One can scarcely find two pages in a row without a large block-quote that has been taken from someone else's book, and again, this may have been excused if there was ample explanation or elaboration, but that is simply not the case. This book is more of an anthology on the topic than an original piece. Two entire "chapters" are devoted to answering questions that have been submitted to him, and contrary to what would be expected, they are not added onto the end of the book, but come entirely out of nowhere in the 13th and 20th chapters, only to be followed by more narrative as if they didn't just happen. It reads terribly and makes the reader wonder if this was actually a book that Dobson wanted to write, or if he just had a bunch of source material laying around that he compiled into a text.
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