Susan B. Ridgely is Associate Professor of American Religions at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work focuses on demonstrating the importance of age as a category of analysis in religious studies, by highlighting how children shape their religious communities as well as how the interplay of generations serves as a primary means of innovation. She is the author of When I was a Child: Children's Interpretations of First Communion (2005) and editor of Children and Religion: A Methods Handbook (2011).

"Presenting nuances within the group through its discussion of adherent age in relation to the category of religion, this book is a must-read for any undergraduate, graduate, and professor studying evangelicalism in America." -- Jeremee D. Nute, The University of Alabama, Religious Studies Review

"Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."-B. W. Hamilton, CHOICE

"There is no more universal challenge than parenting. Susan Ridgely shows how Focus on the Family offers a disciplinary touchstone for a wide range of Christian adherents seeking answers to the toughest parental quandaries. Through her thoughtful engagement with a range of informants, Ridgely decodes evangelical extremism and finds within it more flexibility and virtuosity than previously understood. After reading Practicing What the Doctor Preached, there can be no doubt: parenting is the lived religion of political life." --Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, Yale University

"Since the 1970s, Focus on the Family has delivered a uniform message for promoting 'family values.' But do people really follow it? Susan B. Ridgely's smart and engaging book answers that question. Through interviews and a comprehensive examination of its literature, Ridgely follows the negotiations between prescription and practice as evangelical parents embrace the rhetoric of 'family values.' An important and lively study that is a must read for anyone interested in contemporary American evangelicalism." --Amy DeRogatis, author of Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism

"In this deeply researched and clearly written study, Ridgely offers an empathetic analysis of one of the most influential-and controversial-conservative religious movements of the past half-century. Challenging popular stereotypes of a monolithic top-down organization, Ridgely shows a significant gap between Dobson's authoritarian pronouncements and the common sense ways in which his followers actually implemented them. She also shows how the movement changed over time, varied on different issues, and splintered between convert and cradle evangelicals. It is a singularly important contribution to the burgeoning academic literature on religion and culture in contemporary America." --Grant Wacker, author of America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation