Parenting programs authored by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo and promoted by Growing Families International (GFI), including Preparation for Parenting and Growing Kids God's Way, are both wildly popular and highly controversial. The programs mix sound parenting advice with highly disputable ideas, but this does not fully account for the controversy. GFI has provoked unprecedented public censure from Christian leaders because, although it is not a cult, it has consistently exhibited a pattern of cultic behavior, including Scripture twisting, authoritarianism, exclusivism, isolationism, and physical and emotional endangerment.

In 1997, approximately 100 health-care providers, including nationally known experts and 20 fellows of the American Academy of Pediatrics, sent a "letter of concern" to the AAP regarding Ezzo's child-care advice. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported on the growing controversy, and in April, the AAP's own District IV Chapter Convention passed a resolution calling on the AAP to investigate "Babywise" and its effects on infant health. In the same month's issue of the AAP News, Dr. Matt Aney, a California pediatrician, wrote an editorial in which he discussed having personally reviewed dozens of medical records of infants with health problems ranging from low weight gain to dehydration to symptoms of depression that developed after parents had followed the feeding advice contained in "Babywise". The nation's largest professional organization for lactation professionals, the International Lactation Consultant Association, has become so alarmed by growing numbers of parents using Ezzo's "infant management program" with poor results that, at its recent international conference in July, the group offered a presentation to a standing-room-only audience on how to deal with "rigid approaches to care giving" in the clients that they see.

While some are using the term cult to categorize GFI, in our estimation this is clearly not warranted. Unfortunately, however, GFI's behavior does parallel the characteristics of cults in significant ways...