In the latest episode of Family Talk, Dr. James Dobson delves into an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Joe McElhaney and the late Dr. Freda McKissick-Bush. They confront the alarming statistics of sexually transmitted infections among young people and dissect the misleading cultural narratives surrounding teen sex. This episode also highlights parental influence and the importance of fathers in instilling values and guidance in their daughters, underscoring that kids are indeed listening and absorbing crucial life lessons.
Well, hello everyone. I’m James Dobson and you’re listening to Family Talk, a listener-supported ministry. In fact, thank you so much for being part of that support for James Dobson Family Institute.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh. And on today’s program, we’re bringing you the conclusion of Dr. James Dobson’s important conversation with Dr. Joe McElhaney and the late Dr. Freda McKissick-Bush. And before we go any further, I must warn you that today’s content is definitely intended for mature audiences. Parental and listener discretion is greatly advised. Now, on the last edition of Family Talk, we heard these three medical experts discussing the shocking prevalence of sexually transmitted infections among young people and the dangerous myths our culture tells teens about sex. Did you know that 50% of all STIs occur in people ages 25 and younger? Or that 55% of teens have had sex by the age of 18? These statistics alone reveal just how desperately our young people need the truth. And on today’s edition of Family Talk, Dr. Joe McElhaney and Dr. Freda McKissick-Bush will once again continue their eye-opening discussion about their book called Girls Uncovered, New Research on What America’s Sexual Culture Does to Young Women. Dr. McElhaney is a board-certified OBGYN who founded the Medical Institute for Sexual Health. And Dr. McKissick-Bush was a retired board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist who dedicated her life to helping women understand the truth about sexual health. Sadly, Dr. Bush went home to be with the Lord in January of 2023, but her legacy of compassion and truth-telling lives on. So now let’s get into part two of Dr. James Dobson’s conversation with Dr. Joe McElhaney and Dr. Freda McKissick-Bush on today’s edition of Family Talk.
SPEAKER 04 :
It turns out that God knew what he was doing, and he gave guidelines for us and commandments to us in the Scripture. I’m looking at 1 Thessalonians 4, 3 to 8. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality. that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for such sins as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God who gives you his Holy Spirit. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? That ought to be taught to every teenager. And that’s not, you know, an isolated scripture that I’ve chosen here that’s kind of proof text. I mean, it is all through the scriptures. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 and 25. Flee from sexual immorality. All of the sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. You’re not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. It’s pretty clear what the Lord had in mind here.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Christian parents really want their kids to understand that, I think, in general. And I think Christian parents particularly need to understand that the kids, when they’re asked who gives them the most guidance as far as their behavior goes, not just sexual behavior, but behavior in general, are parents. And I think a lot of Christian parents and other parents, too, don’t really believe that the kids are listening to them. So I think that the encouragement that we would give parents, all parents, not just Christian parents but all parents, is that the kids are listening. When you’re talking to them and they give you that dumb, stupid look like I already know that, they still are hearing and they still are often following the guidelines that parents give them, even into college. The data shows that even in college, the parents are often the ones that the kids are listening to for their behavior.
SPEAKER 04 :
I have mentioned before a critically important night in my childhood when I was riding in the car with my mom and dad. And I was in the back seat and my mom and dad were – obviously my dad was driving and my mom in the passenger seat. And we began talking. I was 11 years old and began talking about things that I needed to know as I grew older. And one of them was with reference to sexual activity, sexual behavior. And I didn’t understand much about what it was. I learned a lot that night. But my dad said to me, I can remember the conversation as though it were happening today. He said, I want you to know something. There will come a time when a girl will offer herself to you. And I want you to be ready for that moment when it comes. I don’t want it to take you by surprise because you need to decide right now what you’re going to do when you’re confronted with that situation. and what God would have you do. And he talked me through that whole thing. I was 11 years old. Here I am at this stage of my life, and it is still with me. And I heard it, and it influenced me. And I can tell you that as I grew older and began dating and had access to the car and went off to college too, I was keenly aware that I was not alone in that car. with a girl, that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was in there too. And it was not my mom and dad that kept me moral. And Shirley and I were both virgins when we got married. And that is the most precious thing in our relationship. It is an exclusive act between us, something that bonded us together because I learned to control my own passions in that regard. You were covered.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I would like to add how important that conversation was with your father and how important fathers’ conversations are with their daughters. They need to hear it from a man who cares what it is that they expect of them and the type of young woman that he expects him to be. He needs to also touch and hug them in ways, even as they begin to fill out, ways that let them know, I’ve got you covered and that I’m here for you. Because girls don’t have to then search for that with another man outside who may not have the same care for them.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a book. by a well-known author called Bringing Up Girls that talks about that so well. Dr. Dobson, I mean, you really hit that nail on the head in that book. Boy, I would encourage parents, particularly dads, to read that book.
SPEAKER 04 :
One of the pieces of research that I saw repeatedly, the study was done on many occasions, that depression is directly related to this sexual behavior as well. It’s not just physical disease. Those who are sleeping around, they have a disdain toward themselves. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a researcher at Notre Dame and there’s a researcher at the University of Texas, both of whom have shown that relationship between sexual involvement and depression. And depression is rampant among college kids. And you think about a kid who’s depressed, then taking the MCAT, the test for going to medical school or the test for going to law school, and how competitive all that is and how this depression can affect their performance on those. And they never get into law school or are able to accomplish what they wanted to because their sexual involvement has caused depression. I mean, it’s really a downhill. It touches every dimension of life, doesn’t it? It does.
SPEAKER 02 :
And one of the things I do want the listeners to understand is in the book, we don’t just give statistics that are doom and gloom, but we also give them hope. And we give information specifically what parents can do, what our society can do, and what the girls themselves can do in order to increase their opportunities for reaching their goals and their dreams. And there’s hope in this book as well. And we can help the young ladies to say, With a different decision, you can set in place those behaviors that will help you to reach that. It starts with a decision. It starts with a plan, even if you have to write out yourself a contract. And just as the brain can be retrained and rewired, so can your behavior. We talk to the young ladies about things that they can do, and one of the things is establishing behaviors that you will and you will not do. And even if you have to get an accountability partner, which can be a parent but can be another caring adult, then you can establish that different behavior. And part of the decision is don’t let yourself try to please the young man more than you are wanting to control your future. Put yourself in the driver’s seat as far as making decisions about what you will do and make sure you’re responsible for protecting yourself, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. And you avoid those situations that will put you in a place where you even have to say no.
SPEAKER 04 :
Dr. Bush, let’s suppose there’s an 18-year-old girl in your office. And she comes in and you’re trying to counsel her and give her a lot of information very quickly. And she just says, doctor, you don’t understand. I love this guy. I want to spend my whole life with him. And you are going to try to warn her that those feelings might be temporary and probably are and that she had better be careful about the physical contact, the intimacy that she has with this guy. Are you able to bring along a kid who has a lot of oxytocin going on?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it sounds like they’ve already been having some sexual foreplay that is going on. And one of the first things I try to do when I have this opportunity is find out what are your dreams and your goals for yourself. And then let’s talk about what if and how that behavior plays into you reaching your goals and your dreams. And then once you see what their goal or their destination is, then you start working backwards as to how this behavior will affect that and setting up boundaries. So when you are talking with a young lady who has not started sexual activity, you can give her some of these examples as well. But mainly you’re saying to her, what is it that you want for your life? And how can you be in the driver’s seat more or less and establish that? Include the young man in the conversation because often he’s hormonal and he’s not really aware of the consequences because the media doesn’t talk about it. Haven’t had the conversation with their parents. And so you are giving them information to arm them and give them power. to make decisions about their lives for the future. It is amazing how actively the young people will participate when you have a conversation.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, one of the things that I wish every young woman knew is that the notion that power in a relationship with a guy can only be had by giving him what he wants sexually.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s a lie.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is a lie, and yet girls believe it. And what happens is that he walks away having gotten what he wants, and she is left in a lurch. He frequently is not interested in her anymore. And so instead of gaining power, she loses power.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. And that’s part of the lie, too, about cohabitation being smart. It is certainly not something that you want to do. Not only are we talking about contraceptive failures, but also your opportunities for marrying are lessened. And if you do marry, studies show that you’re more likely to get divorced. So it’s not going to be a long term relationship.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that your marriage is more likely to be troubled, unhappy, and with really a lot of pain if you’ve cohabited before you got married.
SPEAKER 04 :
There’s some very interesting good news in this book, too. Let’s talk a little bit about it. One of them is an absolutely wonderful book. hormone, a powerful hormone called oxytocin. And I would like you all to talk about that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Dr. Darrell Bock Oxytocin is a phenomenal hormone. Ladies who’ve had a pregnancy and been in the hospital and needed to have something to make their contractions stronger have been given oxytocin to make their contractions stronger. Women who breastfeed their babies, it’s oxytocin that makes that milk letdown happen. But oxytocin does a bunch of other things that are just phenomenal. One is that when two people are skin to skin, and that can be the mother and the baby, the oxytocin causes them to emotionally bond with each other. So I often say that the women will die for that baby not just because it’s cute but because they’ve been holding that baby and loving that baby and their oxytocin has been pouring out and they are bonded to that baby. Well, the same thing happens with a man and a woman. When they are close with each other, hugging each other, having sex with each other, the oxytocin just pours out in that woman’s body and brain and it bonds her to that guy.
SPEAKER 04 :
That scares every father in the nation.
SPEAKER 03 :
As a matter of fact, there’s a doctor at UC San Francisco that did some research on a neuropsychiatrist. And in her book about oxytocin, she says, in our studies, we found that if a woman hugged a man for more than 20 seconds, she trusted him. So oxytocin actually increased trust in a man. Dr. Bush, you talked about this earlier, and that is that there’s something beautiful about the way God has made us. And oxytocin is one of those incredible things. That if a man and a woman marry each other, oxytocin bonds them together in that relationship as they then are sexually involved and then do get pregnant. Then the oxytocin helps hold them together as a husband and wife. for years for the benefit of raising that child with a father and a mother.
SPEAKER 04 :
But it can be abused, too. Absolutely. If a person has multiple sexual partners, they begin to lose the power of oxytocin to bond them with a particular person.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And apparently that is one of the problems when people have multiple partners, that they have the oxytocin bond and they break it. Then they go with another guy and they break that. And that pattern actually then will make the oxytocin ineffective in holding them together later on than when they do get married.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I want to throw in another hormone that affects that, and that is the dopamine, which gives you the reward for the sexual behavior. But when you have multiple partners, after a while, you are chasing the high of the dopamine. And so you can become addicted to sex without being concerned about the person with whom you’re having sex.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, you know, I wrote in my book an illustration that I read someplace that really interested me. There was a woman who was giving birth to a baby. And as the baby was about to be born, she was obviously flooded with oxytocin. And she looked over in the corner of the room and there was a nurse there. who was standing there just leaning against the doorframe. And she felt such an attraction, not sexual, an emotional attraction to that nurse and just felt so loved by that person and so supported by that person who, you know, it was all hormones that were going on. So what was bonding her to her baby also bonded her to a stranger who,
SPEAKER 03 :
And that is a great example. It felt so real to her. And yet she had no earthly idea that was a result of a chemical in her body and her brain that was doing that. And if we could just get across to young women that these hormones are there. They’re dramatic and dynamic. And if she starts playing around with them. with these hormones, by becoming real physical and even sexually involved, that it’s like a fire that she set. There’s one study that shows if a girl has had sex, and often they do with someone they think they’re in love with as an adolescent, within one year, 75% of them will have had sex with just some other guy that’s not necessarily even a romantic interest.
SPEAKER 04 :
Because of the hormonal influence.
SPEAKER 03 :
The hormonal influence and probably a breakdown in a barrier. But they’re playing with fire when they get involved. And so the best thing clearly is that they just not become involved. And set these boundaries that Freda was talking about a while ago.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, one more comment about oxytocin. My wife, Shirley, has been a fantastic mother. I mean, she is just a wonderful mother and has been from the beginning. But when she was pregnant, she would say to me, how do I know I’m going to love this baby? I don’t even know him or her. I don’t know what sex the child is. I know nothing about that child. How do I know how I’m going to react to this baby? And I said, I think the Lord’s taking care of that. I didn’t know about oxytocin, but I knew that there was a mechanism. And, of course, the moment that baby was laid in her arms when Danae was born. She was on fire for that baby.
SPEAKER 03 :
Haven’t we seen that, Freda? Absolutely. With our moms after we delivered those babies and seeing them plopped up on the mama’s belly and breastfeeding. It’s a phenomenal thing to watch that bonding.
SPEAKER 04 :
So there’s a right way and a wrong way to use these powerful forces. We are sexual creatures. We’re made this way. It’s good. It’s good. Yeah, it is good, but it is designed to function in a certain way. And if you abuse it and chase it just as a form of recreation, there are consequences that the Scripture talks about.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. All of the different gifts God’s given us, like an appetite for food or the ability to sleep, or even the ability to worship, all of these things, we can distort them and destroy our lives. The truth is that the Medical Institute is a scientific organization, and our focus has been really be honest about science as much as we can, but we have never found one single thing that conflicts with what Scripture says about sexual behavior.
SPEAKER 04 :
I thank the Lord for you and other godly physicians who are out there doing what you can to get this message across to young people who are getting such misinformation from other sources. And, you know, I worry, too, about all the kids who don’t have fathers. And girls desperately need their dads as the first male representative to put his arm around her, to love her, to kiss her, and to teach her what it means to fall in love, to demonstrate that with his own wife. and model it for her. And without that, you’ve got an uphill climb, don’t you?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and I would encourage modeling that behavior for both the mom and the dad because it’s important for them to see what it is that you’re wanting them to do. One of the reviews of this book that I read talked about they suspected this book was written to Christians, and it was more of the same preaching to the choir. And I reflected on that, and my thought was… You know, even the choir has to have rehearsal. It’s not a Christian book, but it is definitely based, as we said earlier, on the Word of God. Science supports it because God also created science.
SPEAKER 04 :
I hate that phrase, you’re just talking to the choir, because church people need the information as much as other people do, and they get into many of the same problems.
SPEAKER 03 :
They really do. You did introduce something a minute ago in your scenario about the young woman who was in love with a guy, and that young woman’s fortunate that she would have talked to Dr. Bush. Because Dr. Bush would give her accurate information, good guidance away from being sexually involved, and the benefits of sexual abstinence until marriage. Many young women and many parents will take their children to doctors who do not have that perspective, who honestly do not know the data about the failure of condoms, the failure of contraceptives. They’ll actually say, well, you can use contraceptives if you do decide to become pregnant. sexually involved and you can be safe that way. I would strongly encourage any parent who takes their child to a doctor who doesn’t back up their philosophy about sexual absence until marriage to change doctors and to take their child to someone who will support their values about sexual behavior.
SPEAKER 01 :
Dr. McElhinney’s advice is something parents really need to take to heart because the guidance our kids receive during these formative years can shape the entire trajectory of their lives. You’ve been listening to Family Talk and the conclusion of Dr. James Dobson’s conversation with Dr. Joe McElhinney and the late Dr. Freda McKissick-Bush. Now, if you missed any portion of this two-part broadcast, or if you want to share it with a parent who needs to hear these insights, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. There you’ll also find information about the book called Girls Uncovered. And also, when you visit our website, I want to remind you about a powerful new resource that we’re offering, a free 10-day email series called When God Doesn’t Make Sense. You know, there are times when we struggle with heartaches and trials that are so severe, we can’t understand how God could let them happen. But in those situations, when he seems to make no sense at all, the truth is we may never fully understand some of the tragic circumstances God permits in our lives. And that’s why we’ve created this email series. It’s based on Dr. James Dobson’s bestselling book called When God Doesn’t Make Sense. These daily messages explore the depths of hardship and examine its purpose. And after spending just a few minutes each day with this series, you will find your faith strengthened as you discover how dark valleys can bring life’s greatest blessing, a closer walk with Jesus. Now to sign up for this free email series, go to drjamesdobson.org. That’s drjamesdobson.org. Now, today’s broadcast represents the heart of what we do here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, promoting biblical principles that support marriage, family, and child development. We stand for the sanctity of human life and God’s design for sexuality because we’ve seen how those truths protect and preserve families. Through daily audio programs like the one you’ve been listening to, we are reaching millions of listeners with wisdom rooted in Scripture, and your partnership allows us to continue this crucial work. Now if today’s program has opened your eyes to the dangers facing our young people, we invite you to join us in this mission. You can make a secure donation over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Of course, you can also make a donation securely on our website at drjamesdobson.org. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of all of us here at the James Dobson Family Institute, 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. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
