The Heritage Foundation, a major conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., is rolling out a set of public policy ideas aimed at encouraging marriage and childbirth, both of which are in serious decline. The agenda is expansive, ranging from larger tax credits for children to taking on the cultural malaise that discourages marriage and childbirth.
Predictably, critics on both the Left and the Right have already begun attacking these ideas. The James Dobson Family Institute looks forward to reviewing the Heritage pro-family agenda, and we expect to endorse many of its proposals.
As I watch the controversy, I have a strong sense of “déjà vu” about my own report on the family, published years ago. It, too, was attacked by critics—and was enthusiastically supported by Dr. James Dobson.
In 1980, the last year of President Carter’s administration, a White House Conference on Families took place. Dr. Dobson attended the event and was shocked by what he saw. The “delegates,” many of them left-wing activists, could not even agree on what a family was or the definition of marriage.
In January 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the new president. He immediately began to move the government in a more pro-family, pro-life direction.
I was blessed to serve in the Reagan administration for eight years. I was assigned a portfolio of policy areas to oversee, including the sanctity of life, education reform, parental rights, religious freedom, and family values.
In January 1986, President Reagan asked me to prepare and submit a report to the White House identifying the major problems facing the American family. The assignment was broad. I was asked to review the family’s critical role in perpetuating civilization, examine the breakdown of the family and resulting social disorder, and evaluate the role the government had played in this breakdown. Finally, I was to recommend to the president specific and immediate steps we could take to help support families.
Interestingly, the idea of this review had originated with Dr. James Dobson two years prior. During a White House briefing in January 1984, Jim had made a series of suggestions about the family to President Reagan, including a complete examination of government programs and their impact on the home. That the report was ultimately completed is evidence of the impact one citizen can have!
I assembled a team of a dozen government experts from various Cabinet departments and agencies. This esteemed group included Clarence Thomas, currently a Justice of the Supreme Court. Each expert was tasked with reviewing regulations in their agency that were detrimental to families and undermined the rights and responsibilities of parents.
After dozens of meetings and a final presentation to the White House Domestic Policy Council, the Administration gave me the green light to introduce the report to the public. I knew, of course, that some of the recommendations would generate public debate. But I was not prepared for the firestorm that was about to erupt.
The critics went after specific ideas, but they were particularly incensed over some simple statements of truth I wrote in the report. This paragraph particularly caused a furious backlash:
It is time to reaffirm some “home truths” and to restate the obvious. Intact families are good. Families who choose to have children are making a desirable decision. Mothers and fathers who then decide to spend a good deal of time raising those children themselves, rather than leaving it to others, are demonstrably doing a good thing for those children. Countless Americans do these things every day. They ask for no special favors—they do these things naturally out of love, loyalty and a commitment to the future. They are the bedrock of our society. Public policy and the culture in general must support and reaffirm these decisions—not undermine and be hostile to them or send a message that we are neutral.1
This celebration of the norm, my verbal praise of family values, and the assertion that private choices have public consequences, was just too much for Washington’s liberal press corps to handle. The accepted wisdom in this city holds the exact opposite of what I had stated in the report.
When I described certain choices as good and desirable, I was, by implication, calling other choices bad and undesirable. This is the ultimate “sin” in Washington. I was making value judgments in a culture that talks in non-judgmental terms about “lifestyles,” not about commitment or fidelity.
By the next morning, I found myself in one of those Washington firestorms that cause so many political appointees to hide under their desks.
Other portions of the report came under fire as well. We recommended that the government restore the authority of parents and families. To the chagrin of the bureaucratic busybodies in the nation’s capital, we asserted that when intervention in family life was necessary, “it should be undertaken by institutions closest to control by citizens . . . churches, neighborhood groups and voluntary organizations.”2
Rounding out the list of recommendations were calls to eliminate value-free sex education classes in schools, stop the distribution of birth control devices to minors without parental permission, provide tax relief to families instead of special-interest groups, create better policies to encourage adoption, and appoint federal judges who respected family and traditional values. In short, our report flew in the face of conventional wisdom on nearly every major issue.
But amidst the media backlash, something else happened. Jim Dobson, seeing the vicious attacks, called and invited me to come on his radio show, and I enthusiastically accepted. The interview began a lifelong friendship that lasted for decades, right up until his passing in 2025.
Throughout the decades since, the battle over the family and the sanctity of life has raged on, and every generation must rise to the challenge. If America is going to be “great again,” we must be godly again. Most importantly, we must rededicate ourselves to marriage between a man and a woman as God’s institution to bring children into the world.
I know Dr. Dobson is cheering us on as the James Dobson Family Institute continues to fight the good fight for faith, family, and freedom.
- The Family – Preserving America’s Future: A Report to the President from the White House Working Group on the Family by Gary L. Bauer, 1986, 3, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED316515.pdf (accessed January 13, 2026).
- The Family – Preserving America’s Future, 5.
