We are so thrilled with the community response to this project already — we already have nearly 750 people signed up for this project! We understand just how hard this topic is for people to engage with, and it takes a certain strength of character to do the hard, hard work of unpacking our childhoods (especially when this contradicts the desires of our caregivers).
For our first weekly community discussion prompt, we wanted to ask folks to introduce themselves and also to begin the work of understanding what shaped the parenting strategies of their parents / caregivers.
If you prefer, you can journal your answers, make art projects, or discuss them with friends and family members. You can practice autonomy by deciding when and how you want to answer these discussion questions!
For today, we’d love a little introduction from you:
Where did you grow up?
What generation are you? Do you know where your parents got their parenting methods from? If you were raised in white evangelicalism, it’s almost a guarantee that you were raised with Dobson-like parenting methods, but there were many different authors promoting similar (but subtly different) approaches. Or perhaps your parents got their ideas from specific religious communities.
Lastly, we would love it if you wanted to share with us a random fact about yourself -- what your current special interest is, or your favorite season, or your favorite personality typing system :)
These discussion posts will be a weekly occurrence, and since STRONGWILLED deals with heavy and often triggering topics, we’d like to set some guidelines for the comments:
While comments are limited to paid subscribers, the comment thread is a public place, so post with an awareness that it could be read by anyone.
This is not a therapy space. This is a place to share about common experiences, but not to receive psychological support for trauma.
Everyone has their own experiences, and they might differ from yours. This does not invalidate your experience!
Please don’t give unsolicited advice (but if it is asked for -- feel free to share!)
While we recognize that we might have readers who used these methods with their own children, this project is committed to centering the voices of those who grew up as kids under religious authoritarian parenting. If another person talking about their childhood experience is triggering to you as a parent, we kindly ask that you deal with your emotions and do not make others do that work for you. Everyone here has had the experience of being a child dependent on their caregivers, and this is where the conversation will be centered.
This is a preview of our weekly discussion posts. After the month of April, these posts will not be able to be seen by people outside of the paid subscriber community. In May we will have a limited number of paid subscriber spots we will be giving to people from the LGBTQIA+ community, so stay tuned for that info!
Hi! I'm Krystiana, a millennial missionary kid/pastor's kid. My parents were definitely swimming in the waters of this culture; they would recommend "Shepherding a Child's Heart" and "To Train Up a Child" (as well as the Pearls' marriage books, yikes!!). They were so intense about spanking that our other friends in our same church thought it was too much. Until my 20s, I gave my parents a lot of leeway and benefit of the doubt for their abuse. Becoming a long-term caregiver/nanny for other children and taking time to learn about child development and how to show up for the individual needs of kids was very redemptive for me; it caused me to confront that what they did was a choice, optional, unnecessary.
Re: special interests!! I'm currently fixating on the musical Wicked as a "true believer" deconversion story. DL published my essay about Jane Eyre recently, and this feels like it lives in the same universe to me! Similar plot pattern undertaken by a scrupulous, earnest, potentially neurodivergent coded character who is betrayed by what she most believes in, and has to grieve it and sacrifice her reputation, community, and belonging for the sake of integrity. (I have a big pattern recognition instinct for deconversion stories! Going to be writing more about this coming up.)
Oh this is the analysis I needed of Wicked!!! I read the book when I was very conservative and I didn't like it . . . but now you are making me want to see the movie when it comes out. I have always thought it would be such a great podcast / youtube channel idea if people just watched movies (especially recent Disney Pixar ones) and talked about all the deconversion themes! PS if anyone wants to read Krystiana's amazing essay on Jane Eyre it's here: https://dlmayfield.substack.com/p/no-net-ensnares-me
I have been thinking about starting something like that! I keep a running mental list of my deconversion stories but I want to know if other people have noticed other ones! I'll let you know if I do it. ;)
I included several Disney movies in my Trust Yourself Again live group in processing this stuff! I’ve been wanting to share/collaborate on this type of story processing! Keep me posted if you do. I cohost the Trauma and Pop Culture podcast and maybe we could do an episode (or more) about these stories on there! I want to hear your thoughts about Wicked. I threw a Wicked allusion into my upcoming piece for DL too! 😂 can’t wait to read about Jane Eyre. I always resonated with that book and her inner world. Apparently so did Annie Kotowicz who wrote about it in What I Mean When I say I’m Autistic.
Catherine, I just came back and saw this comment but I loved the easter egg of your Wicked reference in your essay! One thousand percent a neurodivergent character. I'm so convinced that every protagonist who is overly earnest and socially ostracized is actually autistic, I almost get annoyed when it's not mentioned in analysis. Why we have to do our own analysis! ;)
Cause we’re cutting-edge, out-of-the-box thinkers. And most people are only aware of the old autistic stereotypes so wouldn’t even think about it. And would probably get it wrong if they did. So we’re doing it. I can’t wait to hear or read more from you on this!
Catherine, would you be interested in reading/workshopping this essay I wrote about Wicked and deconversion? If you are not available, no pressure at all!
oh my gosh, I was just reading a book by Tedd Tripp where he says parents can talk to kids about their frustration because "frustration" is not a word in the Bible. I knew I shouldn't be shocked, but just the level of culty-ness (maybe fundamentalist is an easier term?) blew my mind
Hi there, fellow Wicked obsessive here!! I absolutely adore Gregory Maguire's tetralogy and regularly re-read them (Oz was one of my escapes as a child and I mostly got away with this because my parents were pleased one of their kids was reading long "classic" chapter books).
How fun! I'm actually very jealous that you had this as a child. I saw the original movie as a kid obviously, but I didn't know about the Maguire books until recently. I'm a musical theater fan but had never seen Wicked live until this week when the national tour came to town, so somehow I never registered the actual plot, and I just can't get over it! I feel like I'm extremely late to this cultural party, but it makes me weep and I can't stop thinking about it. I've gone to the show twice this week (nosebleed seats are pretty cheap), and I might just keep going. A deconversion grief story?! A platonic love story/song?! A rich lore to explore? I'm in deep now. Do you have thoughts about the upcoming movie? I'm so worried about it haha.
Oh, forgot to mention, I can’t wait to hear your insights about Wicked.
And I gave my parents lots of leeway too, but if they actually read Dobson’s books, it is crazy to think they would just accept that. Thank you, DL and Krispin for diving into the nightmare of RAP do I didn’t have to read them myself. 🫶
Scrupulous, earnest and potentially (definitely) neurodivergent fits me to a tee! Thank you for that description of Elphabah too. I had a hard time getting into the Gregory Maquire trilogy unfortunately (I’ll try again at some point) but I love the musical Wicked. I saw it years ago when I lived in Chicago. I’m curious about Elphabah sending out flying monkeys and supposedly trying to hurt people? Am I remembering the story wrong? Was that just the revisionist narrative created by the Ozians? Cause I can’t imagine anyone autistic (or probably any form of neurodivergent) hurting others intentionally, even for the cause of justice.
Hi, friends! I'm so happy to be here and so excited that y'all have so many subscribers already!! I grew up in a small (so very white) town in Ohio. I was homeschooled from 2nd-4th grade, then went to public school where I graduated in 1994 in a class of 71 students and most of my teachers were Christians. My parents were conservative and evangelical (still are) and read/listened to James Dobson (and Jerry Falwell, etc) but THANKFULLY, I wouldn't call their parenting style authoritarian. And their marriage was actually much more egalitarian (although they wouldn't have said that). As the oldest daughter of four kids, I was given a ton of freedom, and didn't have to do "girl" things. I got paid to bale hay for my grandpa, mow the yard for my dad. I played softball and basketball and ran track and cross country. I spent very little time doing any kind of domestic chores and when I did them, I got paid. I also got paid to babysit my siblings. I wasn't forced to be a good Christian girl. I chose it on my own. And it lasted well into my 30s. I started deconstructing in my late 30s, and at 48 I don't call myself a Christian anymore. I'm a writer, and I've recently written 3 books of angsty, fun poetry about my experience/journey out of white evangelical Christianity. What do I do for fun? I'm suuuuuper into poem art and protest art these days. I cut up my poems and glue them on illustrations from old kids' books, and I collect James Dobson books (and other toxic books) and make JimDob bookmarks and other art. While I'm thankful that my parents' beliefs/views didn't translate into harming me physically/emotionally, I'm sad that they've swallowed all this crap on a political level, voting for Trump, believing the FOX news propaganda, etc. And my 97yo grandpa wrote a book a few years ago called Socialism Exposed (it's equal parts sad, infuriating, and hilarious). BUT I DIGRESS. So happy to be here!
Hi! I'm a millennial who grew up in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. My dad was a music minister at a large Southern Baptist church. My parents read all of the Dobson, Pearl, and Tripp books and expected our family to be a perfect example for the rest of the congregation.
My fun fact is that this is the first time I've ever shared anything about my experience (outside of therapy and very close friends) and it's terrifying, but I am so happy this community exists and grateful for the opportunity to share and learn about other peoples' experiences.
Welcome, and we totally get the terror of talking about these experiences (or even thinking about them!). It's such a sign that a person was raised with RAP methods, honestly. We are so happy you are here.
Hi all! I'm Flan Park, homeschooled millennial career military-to-pastor's kid with family roots in Plain Anabaptist tradition, independent fundamentalist churches, Midwestern evangelical anabaptism, and <spooky voice> The New Age Movement. My parents were deeply involved in Virginia home educators and HSLDA circles, and my childhood church was split between "normal (lol, lmfao)" homeschoolers and Gothard families. My parents read Dobson books, conducted Ezzo trainings with other homeschooled parents (and practiced Babywise on my younger siblings), and participated in a Ted Tripp seminar right before my adolescence that basically ruined my life for 2 years. While they have both mellowed out over the years since they were raising kids (in part because my older sister and I are both educators/counselors with, you know, reasonable training), they have never actively made amends for the impact of their religious beliefs on me and my siblings.
As an authoritarian homeschooling success story, I am naturally now a queer/trans Radical Faerie anarchocommunist public librarian in a polyamorous relationship with two agnostics.
I love cooking and baking and film and reading, and I'm currently working my way through Reem Kassis' The Palestinian Table a few recipes at a time, making vegetarian adjustments along the way.
"As an authoritarian homeschooling success story, I am naturally now a queer/trans Radical Faerie anarchocommunist public librarian in a polyamorous relationship with two agnostics." (this sentence is EVERYTHING)
Well, maybe at some point you could write for us about the Ted Tripp years (no pressure!!!! just dreaming about the future). So delighted to have you in these here parts, and now I really really want to learn to make a few Palestinian dishes. Got any recs for someone who gets overwhelmed by cooking?
Strong maybe on sharing more memories from the Ted Tripp years. It takes a LOT of nerve for me to be able to hold onto recollections from that period (or anything before 17 really), but I think I could be brave enough inside the space of this project. ❤️
As far as cooking goes, I think a great starting spot for cutting thru the overwhelm is to pick a dish. A favorite dish that makes you feel good to eat. Think about what you like about it, what are the most central things about the sensory experience of eating it? Are there any flavors you really like? Write stuff down! Eat it made by a restaurant a bunch.
Then, you can search for recipes online. I have a couple blogs I use a lot for my personal taste and for ease of recipe reading. A good place to start is Budget Bytes, and the more you search the more you’ll find your cookbook writing “people” out there. Anymore a lot of my new dish impulses come from tiktokers and insta chefs i started following when I was getting curious about a specific discipline—vegetarian cooking, pastry baking—or cuisine—national, local, regional, whatever. The more you view and try, the more it can be fun, like a conversation with a friend or sibling.
Make your recipe—or maybe combine two or more based on your tastes and skills and needs. Observe what works. Observe what is still missing. Decide if you want to try again or move on—often times when learning a new thing the second, third, or fourth try is where you really nail it, but that’s tough when you’re hungry. So having a backup takeout or freezer or box plan is a good call when you’re experimenting.
Eventually, with enough practice with your key recipes and favorite ingredients , you might find yourself wanting to make different things with them, or substituting different parts. A quick google search for “x ingredient substitute” can normally verify if you are on the right track, and steer you well if your first thought wasn’t an A+. And this might be where you start the search for a second or third signature make :).
My number one tip for ANYONE cooking with or for neurodiverse needs tho is this: keep everything that you want to taste regularly at eye level in your kitchen. I have a rack with all the salts and oils and spices and blends that I use for sauté nightly, and that thing saves my life!! Knowing what flavors I have available regularly prompts me toward what kind of dishes I can make with them, or what kind of dishes I want to make but lack an ingredient or skill for. And that drives me back to the blogs and the cookbooks and the grocery store for FUN.
Tips 2 & 3 are simple: a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife, and a box cake is just a scratch cake premeasured 💜
TBH have an idea for a mini zine series called “Thinking About Dinner” for finding the joy in routine experimentation when you are failure averse but love caring for yourself and others…and I think this community would love it ❤️ So if anyone would want to be an alpha tester of the concepts please just let me know!
Something I hope y’all cover in this publication is the way different RAP groups play off each other by painting THOSE PEOPLE as the “patriarchal”/“too extreme”/“inflexible”/“Pharisaical” group, and “our way” as reasonable/Biblical/natural parenting.
definitely! I already have a post half written about how they (like many other evangelicals on other issues) claimed a moral high ground by describing themselves as "the middle"
Did you also have a parent who would tell stories from their childhood trying to show you how they could be coming down SO much harder? The first generation evangelical way 🤣
I’m a Gen-Xer through and through. I still love 80s music even though, can we talk about the coercive love themes in most popular 80’s songs? My parents are of the Silent Generation and staunch “pre-Vatican II” Catholics. My husband has always joked that you have to subtract 20 years whenever talking about things in my family. I’m really interested in finding out where their parenting advice came from. I’ve had to go very low contact with them as I deconstruct, though. I have always been a leader in my church, but I’m seeing how my neurodivergence has more to do with that than my faith. I’ve hit a plateau with learning about being autistic and about manipulation tactics/cults and am diving deeply into this stuff now. I’ve started with your first podcast episode moving forward! That’s fun!
Hi - I’m Shelley. I’m a Gen-Exer raised in fundamentalism in the Church of Christ. Christian school all the way thru college. Devoted to “ministry” and gods “calling” along with ex-pastor husband up until 2020 but deconstructing since 2016. I can’t participate in Evangelicalism after everything that’s happened since 2016 in America. The harmful and abusive theology was laid out for me very clearly and it is not compatible with life. Learning a new way forward and a new way of being. Glad to be here in a healing space. ❤️
Love this and I love the Gen-Xers in my life who knew when to walk away from toxic religious spaces. I feel like it is such an interesting generation when it comes to responding to societal change.
Hello, folks! Pleased to be here! I'm Mel, an Elder Millennial who grew up in a small rural town in Central Florida, currently residing in Metro Detroit.
My upbringing was... complicated. Both on my parents came from deeply traumatic and abusive households, rampant with substance abuse, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, where boundaries were unheard of let alone modeled, and the only "Parenting Skills" present were along the lines of "Make sure they don't starve, and you're golden." (And even then, this was not always successful, as my father's family - nine small children existing with a single mother - had poverty to contend with as well) So when I say my parents had zero contextual lens through which to draw from what healthy parenting should look like, I do so with a dry degree of understatement thaat leaves me furious on their own behalves to this day.
Mom and dad met in middle school and have been deeply enmeshed ever since, marrying and fleeing their dysfunctional home live within months of my mother (the younger of the pair) graduated high school. Neither of them have fully faced or dealt with the insane degree of trauma they faced as kids - My mom did do some psychotherapy when I was young during a phase where she was otherwise suicidal, while my father had no professional help whatsoever. As a result, I was essentially parented by a man quick to anger and frustration but otherwise heavily shut down emotionally, and a perpetually fragile and shaken mother who was frequently overwhelmed to tears and looked to her young children for emotional regulation and support.
I will note that I think their Evangelical Christian faith saved their lives. It gave them community and structure and healthy friendships where they previously had none - Even now, with their dwindling health and advancing age, they cling to those beliefs to this day like a lifeline that keeps them breathing in spite of the unfairness they've faced through much of their lives. It also, however, lead to a very fervent, rather fanatical adherence to the parenting advice they were receiving from their Southern Baptist besties and the likes of Dr Dobson et all, and the combination of that fanaticism combined with two very hurt, perpetually emotionally unregulated minds and bodies made childhood for both my younger brother and I a well meaning but ultimately traumatic and confusing experience.
These days, mom is still an unregulated, trembling mess. Dad is years into crumbling and forgetting with Dementia. My brother died from an overdose in 2020 after decades of struggling to assuage his demons with every chemical he could get his hands on. I'm doing everything to heal alongside my hubby, who had a traumatic (albeit non-religious) upbringing of his own, while learning to navigate later-in-life CPTSD/ADHD diagnosis, and a Progressive, Agnostic, Non-Binary, decisively Queer identity that if fully communicated, my parents would neither understand nor accept, so I, frankly, just don't bother telling them.
On a happier note - Special Interests! My imagination was my coping mechanism growing up, and ironically enough, has lead to my career as an adult. I'm an artist, designer and art director who has worked on feature film, television, commercials, and the occasional comic book. I love to read, write, hike, garden, and spoil the heck out of our four pampered black cats. I'm also a gigantic nerd.
I can feel the hard-earned care, compassion, and up-close understanding of generational trauma you are bringing into this space. We are so glad to have you here. I have found that going low-contact with my parents has really given me the break I needed to both a). identify the abuse I experienced and also b). allowed me to see my parents as traumatized children themselves. It's such a strange and honestly confusing space to be in but that is where I am at currently.
I feel that, 100% - And honestly, by my experience, having that distance with parents while working through trauma is so important, and can save a parent/child relationship in the long run, because it can give you the room needed to evaluate and process hurt without running the risk of letting that hurt lash out in ways that can be damaging long-term. I went about 6 months at one point fully no-contact about 10 years back, for example, because I was absolutely in a state of "I physically cannot communicate with you guys right now, because I'm processing so much anger, and I am not in a space to speak with you from a place of compassion." They were genuinely hurt and confused at the time, but it was so worth it to give myself the breathing room to work through those feelings, and eventually come back and start to establish some better boundaries with them when I was ready. Rooting for your on your healing journey, DL!
Mel, I'm with you that for traumatized parents (specifically my dad) I really do think evangelicalism saved his life. It's so complicated to reckon with, because I think he might have died without it, but also his rigidity in clinging to it is really sad. I spent a lot of years worrying that his children leaving the church would rattle him so much he might die, if the thing we're "rejecting" or undermining is the thing that has been his whole reason to keep living. (He is in his 60s currently, still pastoring a church). Thanks for sharing all of this. Do you have links to your art or creative work??
I feel this so much - Between losing my brother and coming to understand that her other child is very much not following Evangelical Christianity as I was raised to on top of everything else she's been and is going through, my poor mom's been especially dissociated over the past few years, even while her faith remains strong. It's hard to watch, and certainly harder for her to experience. But for me, the further away I am from the church, the better my mental health at this point in my life, so it's something I have to adhere to.
Thank you so much for sharing. I too have lost a brother, it adds so much complication to all of the feelings and navigation of relationships. However, his life and passing is a large part of the reason I’m here.
Hi. My name is Amy. I am an elder Gen-Xer from Minneapolis. My parents grew up in the mainline Baptist church but didn't attend regularly until I was in 2nd grade. We moved and started attending a Congregational church. My mom was SUPER into Hal Lindsey and end times stuff. She began making friends with very evangelical women and attending Bible studies. She took me to see Lowell Lundstrom and the Joni movie. We moved again and they started attending an Evangelical Free Church and became Amway salespeople. That's when they really fell down the rabbit hole of Fundamental/Evangelical church. I was in 8th grade and my brother was in 6th. My mom found Dobson and Christian radio, which she had on all day. She started calling me the strong-willed child and my brother her compliant child and the way she said them, her tone of voice, told me all I needed to know about which one was better or more favored. My parents are from the very end of the silent generation. They were teens in the 50s. I am Gen-x and was definitely left on my own a LOT. We were to be seen and not heard and if we were heard, we were to be polite and complimentary. My dad was mostly absent as he worked and had hobbies. My mom parented out of convenience and anger. If it was convenient to her, great. If not, anger. There was physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from her towards me and I definitely felt her resentment and frustration. I grew up hearing, "What will ____________ think?" Appearance meant everything to her. I'm happier being honest, comfortable, safe, and connected. Currently, I am low contact with my parents which is easier because they live in FL. My husband died in February of 2023 and I recently had a mental breakdown and health emergency. I am working my way out of that and trying to find who I am. I was also recently diagnosed with ADHD. I am a born caretaker. I love animals of all kinds but dogs are my favorite. I love crafts but jump from one to another as my fixations change rapidly. I LOVE the ocean but any water and wooded area will please me. I have an affinity for Jesus and his teachings but am finding myself very disconnected from God though I believe in a creator/being bigger than myself. I am more connected to nature, people, animals, and art/beauty. I believe love wins and is the ultimate pursuit. I love you both and am so thankful for this project.
Amy I am SO glad you are here and I loved all that you shared with us. You have obviously done so much of the good, hard work to pay attention to yourself, your grief, and your pleasures and I am so grateful you are here with us.
LCMS raised here, early boomer parents. I'm told I was compliant as a baby as my mom could take me anywhere with her & I would be quiet. "Such a good baby." As if a crying baby is bad? I became strong willed too when I was a little older & that was a problem. It was certainly easier for them the times when I was compliant, but not better for me. I had to learn to be assertive as an adult. It's still easier/less conflict to fawn sometimes, but now I can fight it more.
I'm currently questioning what to do about church and everything with that, so this seemed a good group to be in.
Hello! I'm a millennial from south Texas and was definitely raised in a high control environment. I went to public school, went to a Presbyterian church (that really promoted intellectual study of the bible but was still very white and evangelical), and I was generally allowed to read whatever I wanted but everything else was strictly regulated by my Focus on the Family loving parents. (We went on very few family vacations but a big one was going out to visit them in CO in 97). Now I know I'm autistic but my mother in particular just saw a "strong-willed" child (especially when I was a toddler). She had a battered copy of The Strong Willed Child and tried to do everything by the Dobson books when I was growing up. I believed along with them, was all in on Christian pop culture, studied theology like it was my job, etc. I stopped being a Christian in college (a little more than 15 years ago) after my parents died but I'm still not 100% out to my family even though they know I don't go to church anymore. I was definitely raised to believe that I'm inherently evil and it's been hard to try and get that out of my head. My current interests are noir movies and making things with air dry clay (I'm not very good yet but it's fun).
I know that mainline church denominations read Dobson, but it's just a good reminder that it wasn't only non-denom evangelicals who were steeped in FotF. And I agree with DL, we should totally go visit!
I feel like at some point I am going to have to go to Colorado Springs . . . Maybe Krispin and I will do a travel vlog :). What are you making with air dry clay? I have a huge lump of it and don't know what to do . . .
Hey everyone! I grew up in Charleston SC. I was homeschooled so my parents had direct control over parenting, school subjects, etc. I’m a later millennial.
My parents used all the parents advice mentioned in that first post! Dobson, Tripp, Pearl, and Ezzo. They even went to all the classes the Ezzo’s provided since they lived in the same town. I’m pretty sure they still have the books on their bookshelves.
My current interest is taking a deep dive into the journals I started writing at 9yo to understand how my worldview was shaped and how I can move on from them in a healthy way. I’ve been writing all sorts of poetry and essays about my experience. I’d been searching for about two years for the right way to maybe get my experience out there and discovered this on Substack! Y’all have inspired me to start my own so thank you ❤️
It’s honestly so wild! A lot of it is disheartening especially towards the teen years but there’s also really cool things too. Like I wrote about every sleepover I ever had! What food we ate and who was there and what movies we watched
Oh man. We haven't even really dived into the Ezzo stuff too much but in later months we will be tackling that a bit more. I am so happy to hear about your own Substack!!!!
Hi, I'm in that weird space of being on the edge of gen x but sometimes included with millennials.
Northern Indiana where I still live. Private Christian school for elementary & college but public for everything else, which was...eye-opening.
Church & so much Dobson. I read Strong Willed Child as a child to find out what my parents were going to do to me. I remember it being pretty boring for the most part (as an 8 year old), but I liked the comics.
One thing I'm into is K-pop & learning Korean & about the culture. I also like learning about older Korean folk singers who were popular before the 90s.
what's been wild for me to think about is that Dobson's first book came out early enough for some boomers to be parented under it. It's not just millennials, although you can totally join our club if you want. Also, it is heartbreaking to think about a kid wanting to read a book to figure out their parents, and I second what Marla & DL said :(
That line really stood out to me to Marla. Dobson loves to brag about how many kids tried to throw away or hide that book in particular (which breaks my heart too).
Oof. That hurts my heart so much, because I know the level of desperate helplessness his methods can create in kids and absolutely no one should have to experience that -_- James Dobson is the WORST!
I pretty much dumped my intro in a comment on the opening post, but seeing as this is public I’ll keep it basic. I grew up in Minnesota, and I’m an elder millennial (born 1981). My parents were heavily influenced by Dobson and Bill Gothard. My dad was a career politician. That should explain a lot about the environment I was raised in. 🤣
My special interest is travel but really, exploring avenues and finding the best way I can move (permanently) to Europe in 5 years once I’m an empty nester.
I think travel is SUCH a fun special interest. I can't travel a lot these days but I love watching travel content. Also, my uncle was a politician for a few years and WOW. The pressure that put on his kids seemed enormous to me (worse even than being a pastors kid???)
I'm Claire an elder millennial from California. Grew up in the desert (Kevin McCarthy's district, which is how it sounds), but live in San Diego now. I grew up in a non-denominational church associated with Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), but later in HS my family went to a Southern Baptist church. Though my parents were/are egalitarian, being around the evangelical world still seeps in, especially being in a small town where everyone goes to church and everything is conservative. I don't have memories of being spanked, but my sister was. I was the compliant child and she was the strong-willed one. My parents were young parents, so I feel like they did the best they could with what others around them told them to do. My mom was/is a public school teacher and we went to public school, so our family was always looked at as "less than" for not homeschooling or going to private christian school. While I thought I escaped a lot of the authoritarian parenting stories I hear of, once I became a parent I realized my "automatic thoughts" go to RAP solutions instinctively. Not spanking, but the desire that my children should be compliant and quiet and obey, and this is the best way. So lots to deconstruct as a parent. I've always called it undoing Christian parenting supremacy.
As a mom of young school aged children, I'm still trying find hobbies that are my own and don't revolve around kids. I did recently find I enjoy coloring with my son, so I have my own set of markers and books :)
Yeah, we had conversations about what is distinct about RAP parenting and even though spanking was a huge part, it's about the automatic obedience/submission part which can take so much effort to unlearn
Hello, Nicole here- Gen X, grew up as an army kid, moving every couple years. My mom grew up culturally Christian and entered hard into fundamentalism when I was born. We had all the Dobson books, and Gothard (!). I was homeschooled and it’s been a long path to get free.
I really enjoy nature and love spending time outside. Strong willed enneagram 7 who had parts my mom could never break. 💕
Really looking forward to what you are doing here with this subject.
Hello there, I’m a millennial who was raised in Arizona by evangelical parents who homeschooled me until sophomore year of high school. Focus on the family was definitely big in our house. Current special interest is Baldur’s Gate 3 which I have over 400 hours in without finishing a campaign.
What I like the most about BG3 is the characters. You can collect companions to fight alongside a protagonist character you create. All of the companions, your character included, are people who are dealing with trauma and high control backgrounds. Part of the theming of the game is how you process your trauma and what you do with it, if you turn and try to help people or try to hurt and control them yourself. There’s a version of the player character called The Dark Urge who has violent intrusive thoughts and I found it to be immensely cathartic to play what is called a “resist play through” as someone who was recently diagnosed as having ocd and a hoarding disorder.
This is really interesting! I'm not a video game person but my partner is. I'm curious, was the game created to have that theme in the characters and sort of cathartic role-play around trauma, or do you think it's just what especially stands out to you about it? I love storytelling that resonates with our own narratives, thanks for sharing with the group :)
I think that it’s a purposeful theming. The protagonists and their companions have been abducted by essentially the dungeons and dragons version of aliens and infected with a parasite that gives them psychic powers but also may eventually turn them into the creatures that infected them. As a player you have a choice in how much you use and develop these powers, all while edging closer to becoming the thing that hurt you and losing your “humanity” (in quotes because being fantasy there are non-human playable characters). That combined with the fact that all of the origin companions have backstories where they come out of controlling and/or manipulating situations and those are pretty well explored throughout the game (with the exception of Wyll unfortunately, who deserves better) leads me to believe the developers definitely had trauma and the affects of abuse in mind when creating it.
Hello, I am a millennial from a small town in Canada. I have a whole rant about how evangelical christian culture in Canada is mostly imported from the states and how that effects local politics.
My parents got their discipline from their church, families and Dobson and Gothard. But weirdly my dad's mom- a PK, and one who had a hard time of it, is the person who taught me respect for young children and is one of my big inspirations as an Early Childhood Educator. ( she was a SAHM and helped with the PACEs program at her church)
A random fact about me is that I when I want to feel grounded and secure, I wear a pair of socks that I or my mom knitted.
A Canadian has entered the chat! I am honestly SO curious what research or journalism has been done on how Christian media and Christian publishing has influence Canada. I love homemade clothes SO much they feel so incredibly special to me so I totally get the sock thing.
As a fellow Canadian (from Quebec), I too have a rant about how the US has exported its version of evangelicalism (and white evangelicalism’s vision of what Christianity looks like) abroad. And now it is also exporting its politics. In my short lifetime I have watched how churches of the Francophonie have slowly been colonized to adopt the culture, organizational structures, marketing strategies, and combative posture of American Evangelicalism.
Yeah! I am from central BC, and it is wild to me how I watch things about Gothard or IHOP KC and then realize that people from my town of 80k went to go learn from those people.
Hi! I'm Pam and I am a end of the era Boomer. Which means I'm old enough to have raised my kids "God's Way" (but didn't), and was 11 or 12 when the first Dobson books came out, so was not raised (for the most part) that way. My parents were both from Dutch immigrant families and attended the Christian Reformed Church. (I share this background with Kristen Kobes Du Mez [Jesus and John Wayne]. It's a tradition that values the intellect, but that has become more influenced by larger evangelical culture and the neo-reformed movement in recent years.) I think my parents used the time-honored method of raising their children based on how they were parented, with what they hoped were improvements, based on their own experiences. There were high expectations (and perhaps somewhat narrow ones) but it was a reasonably healthy and loving home. I think my father was the more stable parent emotionally. He died when I was a young adult. I attended public schools in a small but really diverse community in Eastern Washington, and then a Christian college in a bigger city.
I realize I'm a generation off for many of you, but like some of you, I am low-contact with my mother, who I believe has mental health issues. She has always been politically conservative but what that means now, in this MAGA era, is not what it meant even 10 years ago, and she has become more authoritarian -- and unaccepting of the life choices of her grandchildren, and all but one of her daughters, in recent years. That daughter, my sister, chose to break contact with me about the time DT took office.
I raised my children as Christian homeschooling and many of the other RAP books and programs were on the rise. I realize this isn't the place to talk about those choices. But I will say that whether or not you followed that path, the pressure was there, and if you attended a Christian church, the influences and culture were there.
My special interest is knitting, though right now I'm working to finish a completely hand-sewn dress (Alabama Chanin if that means something to anyone) in time for a couple of summer weddings and a Juneteenth event in Montgomery AL that we're excited to have been invited to.
I will just add that it is a surreal experience to have grown up in what I believed was a close family, only to be rejected by both a sibling and parent, late in life. To anyone outside the "cult" I would not appear to have veered from the general path I was on in life.
This is such a great project! I grew up solidly GenX in SW Missouri in an extra-conservative offshoot of the Assemblies of God. I think maybe my experience of growing up in a single-parent household maybe be a minority position? Before my parents split up, I remember writing a heart-broken letter to James Dobson, asking him to help my parents because they argued all the time and I felt like if he would personally intervene, that would fix everything. We listened to all of the FotF radio programs religiously, and attended church a minimum of 3 times a week.
I was the genuinely tender-hearted "good kid" who hardly ever did anything intentionally that I knew to be "wrong", but because of fucking Dare To Discipline, I was frequently spanked to the point of bruising with a belt. My siblings who were actually "strong willed" fared so much worse. If not for JD, I believe this would not have happened. I also believe my young mother was completely overwhelmed and legitimately doing the best she knew to do--what the authorities in her life told her she MUST do if she really loved god and loved her children--but it had lasting damaging consequences for all of us.
When I had my own kids, I deeply regret that I initially tried to carry on an authoritarian-lite version of the parenting practices I was raised with, but quickly realized it felt SO WRONG and also it didn't even work. (Hello, my beautiful, neurodivergent children! I love you, and am so very grateful that you helped me learn a much better way to be human. <3) (Also screw JD, et al. for always saying parents and children can't be friends. That's absolute bullshit.)
Hi! I'm Jo (she/her). I grew up in southern Oregon. I'm a Xennial (micro-generation between Gen X and Millennials), but I also accept the term Elder Millennial. My parents definitely liked Dobson and Focus on the Family. I heard a lot of Psalty the Singing Songbook and Rush Limbah was on the radio on the way to Christian school when I was a preteen/teen. But my parents did take the parenting advice with a grain of salt, so if things felt super icky to them, they didn't take that parenting advice. We were very actively involved in our local Foursquare church.
I am so into audiobooks and trail walks. And audiobooks and puzzles on my super cool puzzle table that I splurged on this Christmas. And audiobooks and pretending I know how to garden. And audiobooks while cooking dinner and cleaning the house, having taught my kids to come pull my phone out of my back pocket and hit pause before they start talking to me (it brings me so much delight that they have learned to do this). Oh! And I like doing pottery while listening to audiobooks too.
Hi hi, I’m a younger millennial from Québec who grew up in Mali, West Africa, where I attended an international school and learned English. The acquisition of this new language and my proximity to American missionaries allowed me to stumble into the world of white evangelicalism circa 2000. I remember seeing titles like Dare To Discipline and Bringing up Girls on my missionary friends’ bookshelves and observed how tightly controlled they were by their parents. I didn’t grow up that way. My indoctrination and fawning to please religious authorities came more from being an earnest undiagnosed autist in Pentecostal churches than from the kind of parenting I experienced at home. I always felt like I could think and believe differently than my parents but being a good Christian girl felt like a role/script I could play well that masked how truly weird I was and out of place I felt on a constant basis.
Analyzing the culture and industry that produced Christian authoritarian parenting advice is of interest to me since I parted ways with my best friend when I was in the thick of my deconstruction and she started gobbling up books like Shepherding A Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and spanking her 18month old.
My current special interests are learning about epigenetic and the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s that secularized Québec and created a unique society/culture in North America that is not just secular but perhaps anti-religious.
oh my goodness now I desperately want to travel to Quebec some day!!!! I relate a lot to what you are talking about when it comes to Pentecostal spaces . . . I haven't unpacked all of that but wow those are traumatic places with traumatic theology.
Apr 11·edited Apr 11Liked by D.L. Mayfield, Krispin Mayfield
Hi! I’m a cusper between Millennial and Gen Z. Methods I grew up with included lots of Dobson, MacArthur, and Babywise. Random fact about me: one of my current special interests is whimsigothic fashion. Edited to add: I'm from West Michigan.
Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m a little late to the game on commenting on here. I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and a very white, southern Baptist church. I was homeschooled second through fifth grade but the rest of time was in public school. public school definitely helped my family not be stuck in a Christian bubble.
But Church was always still a huge part of life. We were always expected to go to church on Sundays, and youth group on Wednesdays was something I always looked forward to. Spiritual warfare was interestingly, a big part of youth group. My mom has always been all about it. She’s even currently helping support the church’s Bondage Breaker class this week.
My mom relied heavily on James Dopson for parenting guidance. Even to this day, she recommends Focus on the Family resources to others (even to me as I parent my own kids).
My parents utilized spanking. I was always known as a strong-willed child, and received the most spankings out of all the kids. I remember them closing the blinds when they spanked us for fear that neighbors would think they were abusing us.
I am now based in the Atlanta area and love living in a beautifully diverse neighborhood. Our backyard is like a sanctuary and I love picking flowers with my two boys to make flower arrangements for our dining room table.
Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm on the tail end of Gen X. I grew up in a small farming community in Illinois and now live in Chicago. My mother grew up in a Catholic family of 12 kids where there was certainly poverty, alcoholism, some physical abuse, and likely some sexual abuse. She became an evangelical Christian between the birth of her first and second (me) daughters. My mom is emotionally immature and she was an excellent target for high control religion; she went in deep and has never come back out. (My dad came from a Lutheran background and also became an evangelical, but the child-rearing, discipline and spiritual direction came almost exclusively from my mom.) The soundtrack of my childhood was Moody Radio. (Moody Bible Institute in Chicago is a dispensationalist and highly theologically conservative school in Chicago.) There was a hefty dose of Dr. Dobson on what seemed like daily, along with other conservative self-help that seemed very aimed at women. My mom subscribed to so many FOTF publications - Citizen Magazine anyone??? - and read lots of Dobson books. She had a well-thumbed copy of "The Strong Willed Child" that I always assumed was used to parent my older sister, who was a loud, active tomboy. I was a deeply introverted girly-girl who wore dresses, read a lot, and tried so hard to behave well. Imagine my surprise when l learned in my early 20's that the SWC was because of me! Because I was also an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid with high anxiety and lots of sensory issues. My efforts to articulate my needs were viewed as disobedience, complaining, and a bad attitude.
Food is a huge special interest for me in a number of different ways (cooking, researching, eating). My most recent obsession, however, is all things related to my community of cat-loving weirdos that I met through a offbeat cat rescue around the same time that we left our church last year.
Hooo boy I would love to do an entire deep-dive on Citizen magazine but when will I ever have the time? They still have an online mag that is just as bad as you would think it would be. I resonate / am so heartbroken with your realization that your sensory needs were clocked as being strongwilled.
My name is Jonathan, and I'm a PK at the tail end of GenX. My dad was an IFCA pastor in small farming communities in MI, MN, and WI. My parents followed Dobson to the letter, and I had clam shell cases of Adventures in Odyssey tapes and a subscription to Clubhouse (?) magazine. When I was 12, my parents came into my room with a Dobson book on tape about adolescence. They said, "You're going to start changing, so listen to this." and dropped it like a live grenade before fleeing the scene. I never listened to them and had no idea what was going on during puberty, since I attended Lutheran, Baptist, and Pentecostal schools. I came out at 27, and my main interest at present is trying to overcome the authoritarian tendencies in my DNA as I raise my 2-year-old son with my husband. I still shame spiral with every parenting failure. Also eager to start reading Dayspring, a novel by Anthony Oliveira about the disciple Jesus loved which is supposed to be turbo-gay.
So happy you are here Jonathan (and my goodness, I can *feel* the clamshell cases of AiO in my hands right now). Please report back on what you think of the novel, it sounds amazing!
Hi! I will just say hello and happy to hear I am not the only Gen Xer here, since I resonate so completely with this topic. Raised (and traumatized) by good ole JD anf FOTF and even tried reading SWC for my eldest Gen Z daughter. Thank god it didn’t stick. Thank you for doing this. Very thankful for all of the millennials in my life. Happy this topic is being addressed, and thank god I got out of white christian evangelicalism in my 30’s.
I've been working on a theory that a LOT of Gen-Xers have some things to say about how they were raised. / didn't pass on what they were raised with. I'm happy to be proven right!
Hi all! I'm finally at a spot work and mental health-wise where I have some space to catch up on reading and processing religious trauma, and it's good to be back! I'm a young millennial, raised mostly in Colorado, though my parents were part of a high control inner-city evangelistic commune for over a decade. I don't know which philosophy of parenting informed that group, but I do remember it was authoritarian and punitive. (In the early days of the group there was controversy around "spanking" being used by the elders as a punishment for adult members, though that was before my parents' time there.) Once we moved and my parents integrated into an evangelical church in Colorado, Dobson's works became a staple.
A random fact about myself is that my profile icon on here is a reference to the demon Crowley. Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the writers nearest and dearest to my heart, and having characters like Crowley in Good Omens and the witches in the Discworld books asking so many of the questions I had been afraid of changed my life.
Hi Corry, we are so glad you are here (and can take all the time and space you need to process this stuff). My oldest child is really into Good Omens and it has been really amazing to dig into that world and the questions it raises with them!
Hello All! I'm a Xennial, we demand to be special! I grew up in NH went to the same church/Christian school k-12th grade. Then a proudly unaccredited Bible Institute, a Southern Baptist College, and then a Biblical University. It was a scene. I poured nearly 30 years into a religion that didn't even like me. I'm always a little bit angry about being an expert in such a weird religion. I'm now in the suburban Portland Oregon area.
My current obsession is finding out-of-print second wave feminist books and anthologies. One of my kids is in 4th grade so I'm planning a lot of weekend trips to national parks this summer.
Hi! I'm Elise, and I was raised by fundamentalist wolves, but I escaped. Wouldn't go to the parochial high school of my denomination or to church college. This was a great disappointment to my devout parents, until I told them the trouble the students got up to there. (It was a boarding high school.) I'm GenX (some say my birth year makes me a Boomer, but nope, and I Will Fight on that) and a lifelong upper Midwesterner of the US, now living in Minneapolis. I am, in no particular order, a jewelry designer, a poet, a writer, a musician, a bisexual semi-retired activist who founded some stuff in the 80s and 90s, polyamorous, married, neurodivergent, and in no particular order. And I'm still digging out the psychological land mines that were installed in me early on. I'm glad to be here, and really glad to meet you all.
Hi! I’m Beth. I’m a Xennial. I’m from Kansas and live in Kansas now. My parents had more moderate parenting techniques until they moved to Kansas and joined a Bible church. That is where they got introduced to Bill Gothard first and then James Dobson. That was when the big T trauma began. I have ADHD and I can’t remember the other questions. But being neurodivergent and raised in this culture is its own special kind of hell. The ven diagram between adhders in this culture and strong willed kids is probably a circle.
Very happy to be here! I was led to believe that strong willed kids were few and far between. 🤦♀️
Hi! I’m Birk, a queer neurodiverse trans nonbinary elder millennial who once identified as a Christian punk kid because it was the most accessible form of rebellion under my conservative evangelical parents. I’ve been lurking as time has allowed because I’ve been trying to be more aware about approaching burnout and haven’t had the bandwidth to engage. But I feel some space opening so I’m going to show up when I can!
I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, PA and attended 2 different United Methodist churches with my family from birth until I left home for college (I attended Eastern University for Youth Ministry because Gold told my Mother that her children would be called to work in the church). Around that time the UMC got too liberal for them and they moved on to an Assembly of God Church while I was in college. They now attend a large evangelical Methodist church in West Virginia. My grandmother was a United Methodist pastor in West Virginia so I had a unique perspective of having grown up in a family who believed in women being in leadership which I can actually appreciate in a way. My parents volunteered in Children and Youth Ministry so
those were a big focus through out my childhood and youth. Anyways! I have specific memories of Dobson’s Strong Willed Child being on their bookshelf and I’m sure there were many others. And they definitely followed this parenting style and I was frequently referred to as the strong willed one. I’ve been pretty low contact with them for the last couple years and recently it appears they are not currently communicating with me.
I’m an early childhood educator, artist, a bit of a witch I guess you could say and parent of 2 with my Quaker pastor partner living in Portland, Oregon. We both actually started deconstructing in college and I recently stoped attending his Quaker meeting with his full support. I have many artistic special interests specifically ceramics, knitting, collage and currently drawing/painting with watercolor crayons. I’m also a low key rock hound who loves to get lost in hyper focus mode combing the ground or beach for pretty rocks.
Coming to this late but following closely. I'm an elder millennial, parents are younger boomers. They both came from Christian families but with a fair amount of chaos, so Conservative Christianity and FotF gave them a structure and control that felt safe. We attended a large Conservative Baptist Church (now Venture Network) in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.
I was homeschooled full time and then part time in middle school, and spent time with some very conservative families into early high school; as an adult, I'm now recognizing Doug Wilson influences in those communities. I'm very grateful it was always assumed I would attend college, but enmeshment was encouraged in my family as well. They had planned to have me court rather than date, but I didn't date until 19 and it was a moot point (tbh recognizing that it was considered moot then was a blessing).
I married young (23) but in that community, I felt like I was marrying old because I hadn't married straight after college. We also struggled with significant infertility, finally adopting in 2020.
Our daughter is spirited and strong-willed, so you know which book has been recommended - and which book will absolutely not enter our home. But I'll admit I've also felt at sea, figuring out how to parent her sensory needs and speech delay and big feels and knowing that what was modeled for me or husband is NOT what we want for her.
Something that's come up for a lot of my peers is adult neurodivergent diagnoses (ADHD/autism/autism with ADHD) and realizing how those neurodivergences were treated/"disciplined" within their family structures. Were you a "picky eater", or did you have sensory needs that presented as taste and texture aversions? Were you disruptive or did you have unmet energy and motion needs? Most of these kids were labeled "strong-willed" and the protocol from Dobson was to break their spirits, so we have a generation of churched kids who had unmet mental health needs whose parents were told instead to break their will. Did the health community have resources for recognizing a wider spectrum of sensory needs? No, but I still have feelings about it.
Hi, I’m Sarah and late to the party. I’m a Xennial, grew up as a missionary kid in South America, met my husband in high school there, and we later served as missionaries ourselves in SE Asia.
My family history is very religious - my dad’s dad was a pastor in the Missionary Church (C&MA adjacent) and my mom went to Christian school with the Belz family who later founded World magazine. So I grew up with all the Christian magazines - World, Citizen, FoTF magazine, Brio, etc. I would even read Charisma magazine at my grandpa’s house. My parents were VERY into Dobson. I also remember them talking about friends who had gone to the Gothard seminars although they never did. I have fond memories of family devotions with the Character Sketches books and was SHOOK when I realized a few years ago that they are ATI/Gothard materials 😱
I have mixed feelings about looking back on how I was parented because on one hand my dad is a doctor who overall is pro-science and encouraged critical thinking and “discernment” in us kids, but also is so very conservative/fundamentalist in so many ways.
I have a hard time with personality tests - I have difficulty accurately evaluating and understanding myself to answer questions well. Maybe that’s a result of trying fit in and make everyone happy all the time??
I’m Catherine. I grew up in a large southern Baptist church in Pensacola, FL. Felt so much pressure to be the model Christian kid and Christian witness. Went to Wheaton college where even though conservative I felt like I had a little more breathing room to explore other ways to know God. Although still a codependent relationship with god, it wasn’t as controlling. When I studied psychology for my MA I started learning that emotions weren’t dangerous and I learned about codependency. That started a huge level of my healing trajectory. A few years later I moved to more progressive Christian spaces, and in the past few years I’ve fully deconstructed and deconverted. I’m a therapist who specializes in embodiment, self-trust, and healing from emotional, relational, and psychological trauma. I’m married to a PCUSA pastor so still in church. Two young kids (6 and 3) and back in my hometown (which is what caused the triggers that led to deconstruction).
I can’t thank you enough DL and Krispin for this project and this space to comment and collaborate and process together along the way. You’re putting together connections that I’ve been musing on for a while and I’m so grateful to have these insights and communities. My framework around this so far had been moving from someone else knowing what’s best for you to honoring that each person can best decide what’s best for them. We have our own internal compasses and our bodies tell us what’s safe and what’s not. Looking forward to more of your insights.
Hi I’m Abi. I’m an elder millennial. I live in Ohio. I was homeschooled all the way through except my senior year, I was signed up for a fake school so I could do post secondary at a local college. I was a MK kid for bit. My parents got their parenting from Gothard, The Pearls, Shepherding, Izzos, and Doug Wilson. They were definitely authoritarian. Immediate obedience without question very hammered into our heads, with stories about parents asking their kids to obey and it saved them from snakes attacking to drive in the fear. Spanking until we stopped crying, spanking older children, comparing spanking devices with other parents were all norm. When we were missionaries my parents were even part of making informational videos on the difference of spanking vs beating for the local government so they could “discipline” the children we worked with. They are definitely the evangelical to Gothard, to classical/calvinist, to Trump/Q pipeline.
Thank you so much for all your work exposing this stuff!
Greetings, slowly working my way through the comments. Grew up a pastor’s kid in various independent baptist churches, homeschooled roughly K-12, unaccredited bible college degree (that one still hinders my career path). My parents discovered Gothard and then Dobson, the Pearls, Tripp, Mary Pride, Harris, HSLDA, etc. they didn’t follow any one specific person but used more of a pick and choose approach. Spanking and bible lectures were pretty much the only parenting tool they used. I read a lot of the parenting and marital advice books in my early teens trying to figure out what I was supposed to do and why my parents were the way they were. Deconverted in my thirties and have spent the past decade discovering who I actually am and what I want. Special interests are reading, container gardening, sewing and dabbing in various types of art and drawing.
Hi! I'm Krystiana, a millennial missionary kid/pastor's kid. My parents were definitely swimming in the waters of this culture; they would recommend "Shepherding a Child's Heart" and "To Train Up a Child" (as well as the Pearls' marriage books, yikes!!). They were so intense about spanking that our other friends in our same church thought it was too much. Until my 20s, I gave my parents a lot of leeway and benefit of the doubt for their abuse. Becoming a long-term caregiver/nanny for other children and taking time to learn about child development and how to show up for the individual needs of kids was very redemptive for me; it caused me to confront that what they did was a choice, optional, unnecessary.
Re: special interests!! I'm currently fixating on the musical Wicked as a "true believer" deconversion story. DL published my essay about Jane Eyre recently, and this feels like it lives in the same universe to me! Similar plot pattern undertaken by a scrupulous, earnest, potentially neurodivergent coded character who is betrayed by what she most believes in, and has to grieve it and sacrifice her reputation, community, and belonging for the sake of integrity. (I have a big pattern recognition instinct for deconversion stories! Going to be writing more about this coming up.)
Sending tenderness to you all showing up here. <3
Oh this is the analysis I needed of Wicked!!! I read the book when I was very conservative and I didn't like it . . . but now you are making me want to see the movie when it comes out. I have always thought it would be such a great podcast / youtube channel idea if people just watched movies (especially recent Disney Pixar ones) and talked about all the deconversion themes! PS if anyone wants to read Krystiana's amazing essay on Jane Eyre it's here: https://dlmayfield.substack.com/p/no-net-ensnares-me
I have been thinking about starting something like that! I keep a running mental list of my deconversion stories but I want to know if other people have noticed other ones! I'll let you know if I do it. ;)
The latest Star Wars trilogy definitely fits the deconversion theme right along with Wicked (I love Wicked!).
I included several Disney movies in my Trust Yourself Again live group in processing this stuff! I’ve been wanting to share/collaborate on this type of story processing! Keep me posted if you do. I cohost the Trauma and Pop Culture podcast and maybe we could do an episode (or more) about these stories on there! I want to hear your thoughts about Wicked. I threw a Wicked allusion into my upcoming piece for DL too! 😂 can’t wait to read about Jane Eyre. I always resonated with that book and her inner world. Apparently so did Annie Kotowicz who wrote about it in What I Mean When I say I’m Autistic.
Catherine, I just came back and saw this comment but I loved the easter egg of your Wicked reference in your essay! One thousand percent a neurodivergent character. I'm so convinced that every protagonist who is overly earnest and socially ostracized is actually autistic, I almost get annoyed when it's not mentioned in analysis. Why we have to do our own analysis! ;)
Cause we’re cutting-edge, out-of-the-box thinkers. And most people are only aware of the old autistic stereotypes so wouldn’t even think about it. And would probably get it wrong if they did. So we’re doing it. I can’t wait to hear or read more from you on this!
Catherine, would you be interested in reading/workshopping this essay I wrote about Wicked and deconversion? If you are not available, no pressure at all!
oh my gosh, I was just reading a book by Tedd Tripp where he says parents can talk to kids about their frustration because "frustration" is not a word in the Bible. I knew I shouldn't be shocked, but just the level of culty-ness (maybe fundamentalist is an easier term?) blew my mind
I loooooved your Jane Eyre piece! I can't wait to read about Wicked.
Hi there, fellow Wicked obsessive here!! I absolutely adore Gregory Maguire's tetralogy and regularly re-read them (Oz was one of my escapes as a child and I mostly got away with this because my parents were pleased one of their kids was reading long "classic" chapter books).
How fun! I'm actually very jealous that you had this as a child. I saw the original movie as a kid obviously, but I didn't know about the Maguire books until recently. I'm a musical theater fan but had never seen Wicked live until this week when the national tour came to town, so somehow I never registered the actual plot, and I just can't get over it! I feel like I'm extremely late to this cultural party, but it makes me weep and I can't stop thinking about it. I've gone to the show twice this week (nosebleed seats are pretty cheap), and I might just keep going. A deconversion grief story?! A platonic love story/song?! A rich lore to explore? I'm in deep now. Do you have thoughts about the upcoming movie? I'm so worried about it haha.
Oh, forgot to mention, I can’t wait to hear your insights about Wicked.
And I gave my parents lots of leeway too, but if they actually read Dobson’s books, it is crazy to think they would just accept that. Thank you, DL and Krispin for diving into the nightmare of RAP do I didn’t have to read them myself. 🫶
Scrupulous, earnest and potentially (definitely) neurodivergent fits me to a tee! Thank you for that description of Elphabah too. I had a hard time getting into the Gregory Maquire trilogy unfortunately (I’ll try again at some point) but I love the musical Wicked. I saw it years ago when I lived in Chicago. I’m curious about Elphabah sending out flying monkeys and supposedly trying to hurt people? Am I remembering the story wrong? Was that just the revisionist narrative created by the Ozians? Cause I can’t imagine anyone autistic (or probably any form of neurodivergent) hurting others intentionally, even for the cause of justice.
How cool!! I’ve heard cats is like that too. I never watched that stuff because I was a Christian, but I really should now.
It’s weird how the villain of all the stories has turned out to be the good guy and the good guys turned out to be bad!
Hi, friends! I'm so happy to be here and so excited that y'all have so many subscribers already!! I grew up in a small (so very white) town in Ohio. I was homeschooled from 2nd-4th grade, then went to public school where I graduated in 1994 in a class of 71 students and most of my teachers were Christians. My parents were conservative and evangelical (still are) and read/listened to James Dobson (and Jerry Falwell, etc) but THANKFULLY, I wouldn't call their parenting style authoritarian. And their marriage was actually much more egalitarian (although they wouldn't have said that). As the oldest daughter of four kids, I was given a ton of freedom, and didn't have to do "girl" things. I got paid to bale hay for my grandpa, mow the yard for my dad. I played softball and basketball and ran track and cross country. I spent very little time doing any kind of domestic chores and when I did them, I got paid. I also got paid to babysit my siblings. I wasn't forced to be a good Christian girl. I chose it on my own. And it lasted well into my 30s. I started deconstructing in my late 30s, and at 48 I don't call myself a Christian anymore. I'm a writer, and I've recently written 3 books of angsty, fun poetry about my experience/journey out of white evangelical Christianity. What do I do for fun? I'm suuuuuper into poem art and protest art these days. I cut up my poems and glue them on illustrations from old kids' books, and I collect James Dobson books (and other toxic books) and make JimDob bookmarks and other art. While I'm thankful that my parents' beliefs/views didn't translate into harming me physically/emotionally, I'm sad that they've swallowed all this crap on a political level, voting for Trump, believing the FOX news propaganda, etc. And my 97yo grandpa wrote a book a few years ago called Socialism Exposed (it's equal parts sad, infuriating, and hilarious). BUT I DIGRESS. So happy to be here!
You know a community is going to be deep AND fun if Marla is in it! Everyone go check out her substack here: https://substack.com/@marlataviano
Oh my god I love you!
Hi! I'm a millennial who grew up in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. My dad was a music minister at a large Southern Baptist church. My parents read all of the Dobson, Pearl, and Tripp books and expected our family to be a perfect example for the rest of the congregation.
My fun fact is that this is the first time I've ever shared anything about my experience (outside of therapy and very close friends) and it's terrifying, but I am so happy this community exists and grateful for the opportunity to share and learn about other peoples' experiences.
Enneagram 8 / ENTJ
Welcome, and we totally get the terror of talking about these experiences (or even thinking about them!). It's such a sign that a person was raised with RAP methods, honestly. We are so happy you are here.
oof, all the parenting books PLUS being a minister's kid, it's a lot!
Thank you for being so brave!!
Hi all! I'm Flan Park, homeschooled millennial career military-to-pastor's kid with family roots in Plain Anabaptist tradition, independent fundamentalist churches, Midwestern evangelical anabaptism, and <spooky voice> The New Age Movement. My parents were deeply involved in Virginia home educators and HSLDA circles, and my childhood church was split between "normal (lol, lmfao)" homeschoolers and Gothard families. My parents read Dobson books, conducted Ezzo trainings with other homeschooled parents (and practiced Babywise on my younger siblings), and participated in a Ted Tripp seminar right before my adolescence that basically ruined my life for 2 years. While they have both mellowed out over the years since they were raising kids (in part because my older sister and I are both educators/counselors with, you know, reasonable training), they have never actively made amends for the impact of their religious beliefs on me and my siblings.
As an authoritarian homeschooling success story, I am naturally now a queer/trans Radical Faerie anarchocommunist public librarian in a polyamorous relationship with two agnostics.
I love cooking and baking and film and reading, and I'm currently working my way through Reem Kassis' The Palestinian Table a few recipes at a time, making vegetarian adjustments along the way.
Enneagram 4 / XNFP / Gemini-Pisces-Leo / Personality Profile Agnostic
"As an authoritarian homeschooling success story, I am naturally now a queer/trans Radical Faerie anarchocommunist public librarian in a polyamorous relationship with two agnostics." (this sentence is EVERYTHING)
Really thought that would get it all across, ha!
So glad you're here Flan!
Well, maybe at some point you could write for us about the Ted Tripp years (no pressure!!!! just dreaming about the future). So delighted to have you in these here parts, and now I really really want to learn to make a few Palestinian dishes. Got any recs for someone who gets overwhelmed by cooking?
Strong maybe on sharing more memories from the Ted Tripp years. It takes a LOT of nerve for me to be able to hold onto recollections from that period (or anything before 17 really), but I think I could be brave enough inside the space of this project. ❤️
As far as cooking goes, I think a great starting spot for cutting thru the overwhelm is to pick a dish. A favorite dish that makes you feel good to eat. Think about what you like about it, what are the most central things about the sensory experience of eating it? Are there any flavors you really like? Write stuff down! Eat it made by a restaurant a bunch.
Then, you can search for recipes online. I have a couple blogs I use a lot for my personal taste and for ease of recipe reading. A good place to start is Budget Bytes, and the more you search the more you’ll find your cookbook writing “people” out there. Anymore a lot of my new dish impulses come from tiktokers and insta chefs i started following when I was getting curious about a specific discipline—vegetarian cooking, pastry baking—or cuisine—national, local, regional, whatever. The more you view and try, the more it can be fun, like a conversation with a friend or sibling.
Make your recipe—or maybe combine two or more based on your tastes and skills and needs. Observe what works. Observe what is still missing. Decide if you want to try again or move on—often times when learning a new thing the second, third, or fourth try is where you really nail it, but that’s tough when you’re hungry. So having a backup takeout or freezer or box plan is a good call when you’re experimenting.
Eventually, with enough practice with your key recipes and favorite ingredients , you might find yourself wanting to make different things with them, or substituting different parts. A quick google search for “x ingredient substitute” can normally verify if you are on the right track, and steer you well if your first thought wasn’t an A+. And this might be where you start the search for a second or third signature make :).
My number one tip for ANYONE cooking with or for neurodiverse needs tho is this: keep everything that you want to taste regularly at eye level in your kitchen. I have a rack with all the salts and oils and spices and blends that I use for sauté nightly, and that thing saves my life!! Knowing what flavors I have available regularly prompts me toward what kind of dishes I can make with them, or what kind of dishes I want to make but lack an ingredient or skill for. And that drives me back to the blogs and the cookbooks and the grocery store for FUN.
Tips 2 & 3 are simple: a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife, and a box cake is just a scratch cake premeasured 💜
TBH have an idea for a mini zine series called “Thinking About Dinner” for finding the joy in routine experimentation when you are failure averse but love caring for yourself and others…and I think this community would love it ❤️ So if anyone would want to be an alpha tester of the concepts please just let me know!
Something I hope y’all cover in this publication is the way different RAP groups play off each other by painting THOSE PEOPLE as the “patriarchal”/“too extreme”/“inflexible”/“Pharisaical” group, and “our way” as reasonable/Biblical/natural parenting.
definitely! I already have a post half written about how they (like many other evangelicals on other issues) claimed a moral high ground by describing themselves as "the middle"
Mm. When I tried to discuss the impact of my upbringing with my mom, her response was "but we weren't fundamentalist like that."
Yeah my mom will harp on not doing Gothard/ATI, but conveniently forgets comparing our behavior to those kids’.
Hi, fellow millennial military-to-PK Anabaptist roots person 👋
Did you also have a parent who would tell stories from their childhood trying to show you how they could be coming down SO much harder? The first generation evangelical way 🤣
I’m a Gen-Xer through and through. I still love 80s music even though, can we talk about the coercive love themes in most popular 80’s songs? My parents are of the Silent Generation and staunch “pre-Vatican II” Catholics. My husband has always joked that you have to subtract 20 years whenever talking about things in my family. I’m really interested in finding out where their parenting advice came from. I’ve had to go very low contact with them as I deconstruct, though. I have always been a leader in my church, but I’m seeing how my neurodivergence has more to do with that than my faith. I’ve hit a plateau with learning about being autistic and about manipulation tactics/cults and am diving deeply into this stuff now. I’ve started with your first podcast episode moving forward! That’s fun!
Pre-Vatican Catholics!!! Wow. We are so glad you are here!
Me, too!
Hi - I’m Shelley. I’m a Gen-Exer raised in fundamentalism in the Church of Christ. Christian school all the way thru college. Devoted to “ministry” and gods “calling” along with ex-pastor husband up until 2020 but deconstructing since 2016. I can’t participate in Evangelicalism after everything that’s happened since 2016 in America. The harmful and abusive theology was laid out for me very clearly and it is not compatible with life. Learning a new way forward and a new way of being. Glad to be here in a healing space. ❤️
Love this and I love the Gen-Xers in my life who knew when to walk away from toxic religious spaces. I feel like it is such an interesting generation when it comes to responding to societal change.
Hello, folks! Pleased to be here! I'm Mel, an Elder Millennial who grew up in a small rural town in Central Florida, currently residing in Metro Detroit.
My upbringing was... complicated. Both on my parents came from deeply traumatic and abusive households, rampant with substance abuse, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, where boundaries were unheard of let alone modeled, and the only "Parenting Skills" present were along the lines of "Make sure they don't starve, and you're golden." (And even then, this was not always successful, as my father's family - nine small children existing with a single mother - had poverty to contend with as well) So when I say my parents had zero contextual lens through which to draw from what healthy parenting should look like, I do so with a dry degree of understatement thaat leaves me furious on their own behalves to this day.
Mom and dad met in middle school and have been deeply enmeshed ever since, marrying and fleeing their dysfunctional home live within months of my mother (the younger of the pair) graduated high school. Neither of them have fully faced or dealt with the insane degree of trauma they faced as kids - My mom did do some psychotherapy when I was young during a phase where she was otherwise suicidal, while my father had no professional help whatsoever. As a result, I was essentially parented by a man quick to anger and frustration but otherwise heavily shut down emotionally, and a perpetually fragile and shaken mother who was frequently overwhelmed to tears and looked to her young children for emotional regulation and support.
I will note that I think their Evangelical Christian faith saved their lives. It gave them community and structure and healthy friendships where they previously had none - Even now, with their dwindling health and advancing age, they cling to those beliefs to this day like a lifeline that keeps them breathing in spite of the unfairness they've faced through much of their lives. It also, however, lead to a very fervent, rather fanatical adherence to the parenting advice they were receiving from their Southern Baptist besties and the likes of Dr Dobson et all, and the combination of that fanaticism combined with two very hurt, perpetually emotionally unregulated minds and bodies made childhood for both my younger brother and I a well meaning but ultimately traumatic and confusing experience.
These days, mom is still an unregulated, trembling mess. Dad is years into crumbling and forgetting with Dementia. My brother died from an overdose in 2020 after decades of struggling to assuage his demons with every chemical he could get his hands on. I'm doing everything to heal alongside my hubby, who had a traumatic (albeit non-religious) upbringing of his own, while learning to navigate later-in-life CPTSD/ADHD diagnosis, and a Progressive, Agnostic, Non-Binary, decisively Queer identity that if fully communicated, my parents would neither understand nor accept, so I, frankly, just don't bother telling them.
On a happier note - Special Interests! My imagination was my coping mechanism growing up, and ironically enough, has lead to my career as an adult. I'm an artist, designer and art director who has worked on feature film, television, commercials, and the occasional comic book. I love to read, write, hike, garden, and spoil the heck out of our four pampered black cats. I'm also a gigantic nerd.
I can feel the hard-earned care, compassion, and up-close understanding of generational trauma you are bringing into this space. We are so glad to have you here. I have found that going low-contact with my parents has really given me the break I needed to both a). identify the abuse I experienced and also b). allowed me to see my parents as traumatized children themselves. It's such a strange and honestly confusing space to be in but that is where I am at currently.
I feel that, 100% - And honestly, by my experience, having that distance with parents while working through trauma is so important, and can save a parent/child relationship in the long run, because it can give you the room needed to evaluate and process hurt without running the risk of letting that hurt lash out in ways that can be damaging long-term. I went about 6 months at one point fully no-contact about 10 years back, for example, because I was absolutely in a state of "I physically cannot communicate with you guys right now, because I'm processing so much anger, and I am not in a space to speak with you from a place of compassion." They were genuinely hurt and confused at the time, but it was so worth it to give myself the breathing room to work through those feelings, and eventually come back and start to establish some better boundaries with them when I was ready. Rooting for your on your healing journey, DL!
Mel, I'm with you that for traumatized parents (specifically my dad) I really do think evangelicalism saved his life. It's so complicated to reckon with, because I think he might have died without it, but also his rigidity in clinging to it is really sad. I spent a lot of years worrying that his children leaving the church would rattle him so much he might die, if the thing we're "rejecting" or undermining is the thing that has been his whole reason to keep living. (He is in his 60s currently, still pastoring a church). Thanks for sharing all of this. Do you have links to your art or creative work??
I feel this so much - Between losing my brother and coming to understand that her other child is very much not following Evangelical Christianity as I was raised to on top of everything else she's been and is going through, my poor mom's been especially dissociated over the past few years, even while her faith remains strong. It's hard to watch, and certainly harder for her to experience. But for me, the further away I am from the church, the better my mental health at this point in my life, so it's something I have to adhere to.
And - you bet! You can find all of my silliness here: https://linktr.ee/mxfitforge
Thank you so much for sharing. I too have lost a brother, it adds so much complication to all of the feelings and navigation of relationships. However, his life and passing is a large part of the reason I’m here.
I'm so sorry for your loss ♥
Thank you so much for sharing this.
Thank you for taking the time to read it! ♥
Hi. My name is Amy. I am an elder Gen-Xer from Minneapolis. My parents grew up in the mainline Baptist church but didn't attend regularly until I was in 2nd grade. We moved and started attending a Congregational church. My mom was SUPER into Hal Lindsey and end times stuff. She began making friends with very evangelical women and attending Bible studies. She took me to see Lowell Lundstrom and the Joni movie. We moved again and they started attending an Evangelical Free Church and became Amway salespeople. That's when they really fell down the rabbit hole of Fundamental/Evangelical church. I was in 8th grade and my brother was in 6th. My mom found Dobson and Christian radio, which she had on all day. She started calling me the strong-willed child and my brother her compliant child and the way she said them, her tone of voice, told me all I needed to know about which one was better or more favored. My parents are from the very end of the silent generation. They were teens in the 50s. I am Gen-x and was definitely left on my own a LOT. We were to be seen and not heard and if we were heard, we were to be polite and complimentary. My dad was mostly absent as he worked and had hobbies. My mom parented out of convenience and anger. If it was convenient to her, great. If not, anger. There was physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from her towards me and I definitely felt her resentment and frustration. I grew up hearing, "What will ____________ think?" Appearance meant everything to her. I'm happier being honest, comfortable, safe, and connected. Currently, I am low contact with my parents which is easier because they live in FL. My husband died in February of 2023 and I recently had a mental breakdown and health emergency. I am working my way out of that and trying to find who I am. I was also recently diagnosed with ADHD. I am a born caretaker. I love animals of all kinds but dogs are my favorite. I love crafts but jump from one to another as my fixations change rapidly. I LOVE the ocean but any water and wooded area will please me. I have an affinity for Jesus and his teachings but am finding myself very disconnected from God though I believe in a creator/being bigger than myself. I am more connected to nature, people, animals, and art/beauty. I believe love wins and is the ultimate pursuit. I love you both and am so thankful for this project.
Amy I am SO glad you are here and I loved all that you shared with us. You have obviously done so much of the good, hard work to pay attention to yourself, your grief, and your pleasures and I am so grateful you are here with us.
LCMS raised here, early boomer parents. I'm told I was compliant as a baby as my mom could take me anywhere with her & I would be quiet. "Such a good baby." As if a crying baby is bad? I became strong willed too when I was a little older & that was a problem. It was certainly easier for them the times when I was compliant, but not better for me. I had to learn to be assertive as an adult. It's still easier/less conflict to fawn sometimes, but now I can fight it more.
I'm currently questioning what to do about church and everything with that, so this seemed a good group to be in.
I also like animals, being artsy, and nature.
Yes the ideal baby was the one with no needs! Same with toddlers which seems . . . so wild to me after raising two kids of my own.
So much resonates with me. My silent generation parents seem a lot like yours.
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
Hello! I'm a millennial from south Texas and was definitely raised in a high control environment. I went to public school, went to a Presbyterian church (that really promoted intellectual study of the bible but was still very white and evangelical), and I was generally allowed to read whatever I wanted but everything else was strictly regulated by my Focus on the Family loving parents. (We went on very few family vacations but a big one was going out to visit them in CO in 97). Now I know I'm autistic but my mother in particular just saw a "strong-willed" child (especially when I was a toddler). She had a battered copy of The Strong Willed Child and tried to do everything by the Dobson books when I was growing up. I believed along with them, was all in on Christian pop culture, studied theology like it was my job, etc. I stopped being a Christian in college (a little more than 15 years ago) after my parents died but I'm still not 100% out to my family even though they know I don't go to church anymore. I was definitely raised to believe that I'm inherently evil and it's been hard to try and get that out of my head. My current interests are noir movies and making things with air dry clay (I'm not very good yet but it's fun).
I know that mainline church denominations read Dobson, but it's just a good reminder that it wasn't only non-denom evangelicals who were steeped in FotF. And I agree with DL, we should totally go visit!
I feel like at some point I am going to have to go to Colorado Springs . . . Maybe Krispin and I will do a travel vlog :). What are you making with air dry clay? I have a huge lump of it and don't know what to do . . .
So far candlesticks for some weirdly skinny candles I have and little altar like things for trinkets and gemstones.
Whit's End is way less impressive than it sounds on the radio, LMFAO.
Hey everyone! I grew up in Charleston SC. I was homeschooled so my parents had direct control over parenting, school subjects, etc. I’m a later millennial.
My parents used all the parents advice mentioned in that first post! Dobson, Tripp, Pearl, and Ezzo. They even went to all the classes the Ezzo’s provided since they lived in the same town. I’m pretty sure they still have the books on their bookshelves.
My current interest is taking a deep dive into the journals I started writing at 9yo to understand how my worldview was shaped and how I can move on from them in a healthy way. I’ve been writing all sorts of poetry and essays about my experience. I’d been searching for about two years for the right way to maybe get my experience out there and discovered this on Substack! Y’all have inspired me to start my own so thank you ❤️
we love all the creative ways to process this, what's it like to have a written record of so much childhood/adolescence?!!!
It’s honestly so wild! A lot of it is disheartening especially towards the teen years but there’s also really cool things too. Like I wrote about every sleepover I ever had! What food we ate and who was there and what movies we watched
I reeeeeeeally wish I still had my diary from when I was a kid.
Oh man. We haven't even really dived into the Ezzo stuff too much but in later months we will be tackling that a bit more. I am so happy to hear about your own Substack!!!!
Oh nice! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for when y’all get those posts up. And thank you! It’s taken some bravery
I've been writing poetry about my past too. So healing!!
Hi, I'm in that weird space of being on the edge of gen x but sometimes included with millennials.
Northern Indiana where I still live. Private Christian school for elementary & college but public for everything else, which was...eye-opening.
Church & so much Dobson. I read Strong Willed Child as a child to find out what my parents were going to do to me. I remember it being pretty boring for the most part (as an 8 year old), but I liked the comics.
One thing I'm into is K-pop & learning Korean & about the culture. I also like learning about older Korean folk singers who were popular before the 90s.
what's been wild for me to think about is that Dobson's first book came out early enough for some boomers to be parented under it. It's not just millennials, although you can totally join our club if you want. Also, it is heartbreaking to think about a kid wanting to read a book to figure out their parents, and I second what Marla & DL said :(
"to find out what my parents were going to do to me" That breaks my heart. I love that you're learning Korean (the language and the culture).
That line really stood out to me to Marla. Dobson loves to brag about how many kids tried to throw away or hide that book in particular (which breaks my heart too).
UGH. Fuck him.
Oof. That hurts my heart so much, because I know the level of desperate helplessness his methods can create in kids and absolutely no one should have to experience that -_- James Dobson is the WORST!
I pretty much dumped my intro in a comment on the opening post, but seeing as this is public I’ll keep it basic. I grew up in Minnesota, and I’m an elder millennial (born 1981). My parents were heavily influenced by Dobson and Bill Gothard. My dad was a career politician. That should explain a lot about the environment I was raised in. 🤣
My special interest is travel but really, exploring avenues and finding the best way I can move (permanently) to Europe in 5 years once I’m an empty nester.
Enneagram 9 / INFP
I think travel is SUCH a fun special interest. I can't travel a lot these days but I love watching travel content. Also, my uncle was a politician for a few years and WOW. The pressure that put on his kids seemed enormous to me (worse even than being a pastors kid???)
Yeah I’m not sure which is worse! We had to remain an “electable” family at all times.
wow, really reminds me of some of the dynamics with the Duggars, in terms of the RAP and having a parent in politics
Ugh. I hate this for you.
Are you still in MN? I live here.
Unfortunately no, I’m in Texas now. 🫠
Oh, bummer. Well, come visit sometime. :)
I'm Claire an elder millennial from California. Grew up in the desert (Kevin McCarthy's district, which is how it sounds), but live in San Diego now. I grew up in a non-denominational church associated with Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), but later in HS my family went to a Southern Baptist church. Though my parents were/are egalitarian, being around the evangelical world still seeps in, especially being in a small town where everyone goes to church and everything is conservative. I don't have memories of being spanked, but my sister was. I was the compliant child and she was the strong-willed one. My parents were young parents, so I feel like they did the best they could with what others around them told them to do. My mom was/is a public school teacher and we went to public school, so our family was always looked at as "less than" for not homeschooling or going to private christian school. While I thought I escaped a lot of the authoritarian parenting stories I hear of, once I became a parent I realized my "automatic thoughts" go to RAP solutions instinctively. Not spanking, but the desire that my children should be compliant and quiet and obey, and this is the best way. So lots to deconstruct as a parent. I've always called it undoing Christian parenting supremacy.
As a mom of young school aged children, I'm still trying find hobbies that are my own and don't revolve around kids. I did recently find I enjoy coloring with my son, so I have my own set of markers and books :)
Yeah, we had conversations about what is distinct about RAP parenting and even though spanking was a huge part, it's about the automatic obedience/submission part which can take so much effort to unlearn
Hello, Nicole here- Gen X, grew up as an army kid, moving every couple years. My mom grew up culturally Christian and entered hard into fundamentalism when I was born. We had all the Dobson books, and Gothard (!). I was homeschooled and it’s been a long path to get free.
I really enjoy nature and love spending time outside. Strong willed enneagram 7 who had parts my mom could never break. 💕
Really looking forward to what you are doing here with this subject.
love to hear about a strong willed en 7! Also, seems like being an army kid plus RAP would be a rough combo
"parts my mom could never break" (I love this!)
Hello there, I’m a millennial who was raised in Arizona by evangelical parents who homeschooled me until sophomore year of high school. Focus on the family was definitely big in our house. Current special interest is Baldur’s Gate 3 which I have over 400 hours in without finishing a campaign.
What do you love most about Baldur's Gate 3? I know nothing about this game!
What I like the most about BG3 is the characters. You can collect companions to fight alongside a protagonist character you create. All of the companions, your character included, are people who are dealing with trauma and high control backgrounds. Part of the theming of the game is how you process your trauma and what you do with it, if you turn and try to help people or try to hurt and control them yourself. There’s a version of the player character called The Dark Urge who has violent intrusive thoughts and I found it to be immensely cathartic to play what is called a “resist play through” as someone who was recently diagnosed as having ocd and a hoarding disorder.
I've heard a bit about this game, but I didn't know the storyline was so intriguing! So cool.
This is really interesting! I'm not a video game person but my partner is. I'm curious, was the game created to have that theme in the characters and sort of cathartic role-play around trauma, or do you think it's just what especially stands out to you about it? I love storytelling that resonates with our own narratives, thanks for sharing with the group :)
I think that it’s a purposeful theming. The protagonists and their companions have been abducted by essentially the dungeons and dragons version of aliens and infected with a parasite that gives them psychic powers but also may eventually turn them into the creatures that infected them. As a player you have a choice in how much you use and develop these powers, all while edging closer to becoming the thing that hurt you and losing your “humanity” (in quotes because being fantasy there are non-human playable characters). That combined with the fact that all of the origin companions have backstories where they come out of controlling and/or manipulating situations and those are pretty well explored throughout the game (with the exception of Wyll unfortunately, who deserves better) leads me to believe the developers definitely had trauma and the affects of abuse in mind when creating it.
This sounds amazing.
Hello, I am a millennial from a small town in Canada. I have a whole rant about how evangelical christian culture in Canada is mostly imported from the states and how that effects local politics.
My parents got their discipline from their church, families and Dobson and Gothard. But weirdly my dad's mom- a PK, and one who had a hard time of it, is the person who taught me respect for young children and is one of my big inspirations as an Early Childhood Educator. ( she was a SAHM and helped with the PACEs program at her church)
A random fact about me is that I when I want to feel grounded and secure, I wear a pair of socks that I or my mom knitted.
A Canadian has entered the chat! I am honestly SO curious what research or journalism has been done on how Christian media and Christian publishing has influence Canada. I love homemade clothes SO much they feel so incredibly special to me so I totally get the sock thing.
it's cool to hear stories like this -- little glimmers that let us know that this parenting style didn't have to be the norm
As a fellow Canadian (from Quebec), I too have a rant about how the US has exported its version of evangelicalism (and white evangelicalism’s vision of what Christianity looks like) abroad. And now it is also exporting its politics. In my short lifetime I have watched how churches of the Francophonie have slowly been colonized to adopt the culture, organizational structures, marketing strategies, and combative posture of American Evangelicalism.
Yeah! I am from central BC, and it is wild to me how I watch things about Gothard or IHOP KC and then realize that people from my town of 80k went to go learn from those people.
Oooh I'd love to hear more about evangelical culture in the States seeping into Canada.
Hi! I'm Pam and I am a end of the era Boomer. Which means I'm old enough to have raised my kids "God's Way" (but didn't), and was 11 or 12 when the first Dobson books came out, so was not raised (for the most part) that way. My parents were both from Dutch immigrant families and attended the Christian Reformed Church. (I share this background with Kristen Kobes Du Mez [Jesus and John Wayne]. It's a tradition that values the intellect, but that has become more influenced by larger evangelical culture and the neo-reformed movement in recent years.) I think my parents used the time-honored method of raising their children based on how they were parented, with what they hoped were improvements, based on their own experiences. There were high expectations (and perhaps somewhat narrow ones) but it was a reasonably healthy and loving home. I think my father was the more stable parent emotionally. He died when I was a young adult. I attended public schools in a small but really diverse community in Eastern Washington, and then a Christian college in a bigger city.
I realize I'm a generation off for many of you, but like some of you, I am low-contact with my mother, who I believe has mental health issues. She has always been politically conservative but what that means now, in this MAGA era, is not what it meant even 10 years ago, and she has become more authoritarian -- and unaccepting of the life choices of her grandchildren, and all but one of her daughters, in recent years. That daughter, my sister, chose to break contact with me about the time DT took office.
I raised my children as Christian homeschooling and many of the other RAP books and programs were on the rise. I realize this isn't the place to talk about those choices. But I will say that whether or not you followed that path, the pressure was there, and if you attended a Christian church, the influences and culture were there.
My special interest is knitting, though right now I'm working to finish a completely hand-sewn dress (Alabama Chanin if that means something to anyone) in time for a couple of summer weddings and a Juneteenth event in Montgomery AL that we're excited to have been invited to.
On the post tomorrow I'll be digging into the pressure on parents. The whole system was so dysfunctional!
I will just add that it is a surreal experience to have grown up in what I believed was a close family, only to be rejected by both a sibling and parent, late in life. To anyone outside the "cult" I would not appear to have veered from the general path I was on in life.
This is such a great project! I grew up solidly GenX in SW Missouri in an extra-conservative offshoot of the Assemblies of God. I think maybe my experience of growing up in a single-parent household maybe be a minority position? Before my parents split up, I remember writing a heart-broken letter to James Dobson, asking him to help my parents because they argued all the time and I felt like if he would personally intervene, that would fix everything. We listened to all of the FotF radio programs religiously, and attended church a minimum of 3 times a week.
I was the genuinely tender-hearted "good kid" who hardly ever did anything intentionally that I knew to be "wrong", but because of fucking Dare To Discipline, I was frequently spanked to the point of bruising with a belt. My siblings who were actually "strong willed" fared so much worse. If not for JD, I believe this would not have happened. I also believe my young mother was completely overwhelmed and legitimately doing the best she knew to do--what the authorities in her life told her she MUST do if she really loved god and loved her children--but it had lasting damaging consequences for all of us.
When I had my own kids, I deeply regret that I initially tried to carry on an authoritarian-lite version of the parenting practices I was raised with, but quickly realized it felt SO WRONG and also it didn't even work. (Hello, my beautiful, neurodivergent children! I love you, and am so very grateful that you helped me learn a much better way to be human. <3) (Also screw JD, et al. for always saying parents and children can't be friends. That's absolute bullshit.)
oh my heart aches at the thought of you writing to James Dobson to come help your family.
Hi! I'm Jo (she/her). I grew up in southern Oregon. I'm a Xennial (micro-generation between Gen X and Millennials), but I also accept the term Elder Millennial. My parents definitely liked Dobson and Focus on the Family. I heard a lot of Psalty the Singing Songbook and Rush Limbah was on the radio on the way to Christian school when I was a preteen/teen. But my parents did take the parenting advice with a grain of salt, so if things felt super icky to them, they didn't take that parenting advice. We were very actively involved in our local Foursquare church.
I am so into audiobooks and trail walks. And audiobooks and puzzles on my super cool puzzle table that I splurged on this Christmas. And audiobooks and pretending I know how to garden. And audiobooks while cooking dinner and cleaning the house, having taught my kids to come pull my phone out of my back pocket and hit pause before they start talking to me (it brings me so much delight that they have learned to do this). Oh! And I like doing pottery while listening to audiobooks too.
Hi fellow xennial! I think my first VHS tapes were of Psalty, collected all the audio cassettes. Rush was a familiar name too.
Hi hi, I’m a younger millennial from Québec who grew up in Mali, West Africa, where I attended an international school and learned English. The acquisition of this new language and my proximity to American missionaries allowed me to stumble into the world of white evangelicalism circa 2000. I remember seeing titles like Dare To Discipline and Bringing up Girls on my missionary friends’ bookshelves and observed how tightly controlled they were by their parents. I didn’t grow up that way. My indoctrination and fawning to please religious authorities came more from being an earnest undiagnosed autist in Pentecostal churches than from the kind of parenting I experienced at home. I always felt like I could think and believe differently than my parents but being a good Christian girl felt like a role/script I could play well that masked how truly weird I was and out of place I felt on a constant basis.
Analyzing the culture and industry that produced Christian authoritarian parenting advice is of interest to me since I parted ways with my best friend when I was in the thick of my deconstruction and she started gobbling up books like Shepherding A Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and spanking her 18month old.
My current special interests are learning about epigenetic and the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s that secularized Québec and created a unique society/culture in North America that is not just secular but perhaps anti-religious.
oh my goodness now I desperately want to travel to Quebec some day!!!! I relate a lot to what you are talking about when it comes to Pentecostal spaces . . . I haven't unpacked all of that but wow those are traumatic places with traumatic theology.
Hi! I’m a cusper between Millennial and Gen Z. Methods I grew up with included lots of Dobson, MacArthur, and Babywise. Random fact about me: one of my current special interests is whimsigothic fashion. Edited to add: I'm from West Michigan.
Hi, my whimsigothic friend!
Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m a little late to the game on commenting on here. I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and a very white, southern Baptist church. I was homeschooled second through fifth grade but the rest of time was in public school. public school definitely helped my family not be stuck in a Christian bubble.
But Church was always still a huge part of life. We were always expected to go to church on Sundays, and youth group on Wednesdays was something I always looked forward to. Spiritual warfare was interestingly, a big part of youth group. My mom has always been all about it. She’s even currently helping support the church’s Bondage Breaker class this week.
My mom relied heavily on James Dopson for parenting guidance. Even to this day, she recommends Focus on the Family resources to others (even to me as I parent my own kids).
My parents utilized spanking. I was always known as a strong-willed child, and received the most spankings out of all the kids. I remember them closing the blinds when they spanked us for fear that neighbors would think they were abusing us.
I am now based in the Atlanta area and love living in a beautifully diverse neighborhood. Our backyard is like a sanctuary and I love picking flowers with my two boys to make flower arrangements for our dining room table.
I love that you have created your own little sanctuary! What a beautiful thing for us strongwilled kids to finally get to experience.
And just want to clarify that I have a Chinese name because I’m married to a Chinese-American man. I am white and grew up in a white family.
Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm on the tail end of Gen X. I grew up in a small farming community in Illinois and now live in Chicago. My mother grew up in a Catholic family of 12 kids where there was certainly poverty, alcoholism, some physical abuse, and likely some sexual abuse. She became an evangelical Christian between the birth of her first and second (me) daughters. My mom is emotionally immature and she was an excellent target for high control religion; she went in deep and has never come back out. (My dad came from a Lutheran background and also became an evangelical, but the child-rearing, discipline and spiritual direction came almost exclusively from my mom.) The soundtrack of my childhood was Moody Radio. (Moody Bible Institute in Chicago is a dispensationalist and highly theologically conservative school in Chicago.) There was a hefty dose of Dr. Dobson on what seemed like daily, along with other conservative self-help that seemed very aimed at women. My mom subscribed to so many FOTF publications - Citizen Magazine anyone??? - and read lots of Dobson books. She had a well-thumbed copy of "The Strong Willed Child" that I always assumed was used to parent my older sister, who was a loud, active tomboy. I was a deeply introverted girly-girl who wore dresses, read a lot, and tried so hard to behave well. Imagine my surprise when l learned in my early 20's that the SWC was because of me! Because I was also an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid with high anxiety and lots of sensory issues. My efforts to articulate my needs were viewed as disobedience, complaining, and a bad attitude.
Food is a huge special interest for me in a number of different ways (cooking, researching, eating). My most recent obsession, however, is all things related to my community of cat-loving weirdos that I met through a offbeat cat rescue around the same time that we left our church last year.
Hooo boy I would love to do an entire deep-dive on Citizen magazine but when will I ever have the time? They still have an online mag that is just as bad as you would think it would be. I resonate / am so heartbroken with your realization that your sensory needs were clocked as being strongwilled.
My name is Jonathan, and I'm a PK at the tail end of GenX. My dad was an IFCA pastor in small farming communities in MI, MN, and WI. My parents followed Dobson to the letter, and I had clam shell cases of Adventures in Odyssey tapes and a subscription to Clubhouse (?) magazine. When I was 12, my parents came into my room with a Dobson book on tape about adolescence. They said, "You're going to start changing, so listen to this." and dropped it like a live grenade before fleeing the scene. I never listened to them and had no idea what was going on during puberty, since I attended Lutheran, Baptist, and Pentecostal schools. I came out at 27, and my main interest at present is trying to overcome the authoritarian tendencies in my DNA as I raise my 2-year-old son with my husband. I still shame spiral with every parenting failure. Also eager to start reading Dayspring, a novel by Anthony Oliveira about the disciple Jesus loved which is supposed to be turbo-gay.
So happy you are here Jonathan (and my goodness, I can *feel* the clamshell cases of AiO in my hands right now). Please report back on what you think of the novel, it sounds amazing!
Hi! I will just say hello and happy to hear I am not the only Gen Xer here, since I resonate so completely with this topic. Raised (and traumatized) by good ole JD anf FOTF and even tried reading SWC for my eldest Gen Z daughter. Thank god it didn’t stick. Thank you for doing this. Very thankful for all of the millennials in my life. Happy this topic is being addressed, and thank god I got out of white christian evangelicalism in my 30’s.
I've been working on a theory that a LOT of Gen-Xers have some things to say about how they were raised. / didn't pass on what they were raised with. I'm happy to be proven right!
Hi all! I'm finally at a spot work and mental health-wise where I have some space to catch up on reading and processing religious trauma, and it's good to be back! I'm a young millennial, raised mostly in Colorado, though my parents were part of a high control inner-city evangelistic commune for over a decade. I don't know which philosophy of parenting informed that group, but I do remember it was authoritarian and punitive. (In the early days of the group there was controversy around "spanking" being used by the elders as a punishment for adult members, though that was before my parents' time there.) Once we moved and my parents integrated into an evangelical church in Colorado, Dobson's works became a staple.
A random fact about myself is that my profile icon on here is a reference to the demon Crowley. Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the writers nearest and dearest to my heart, and having characters like Crowley in Good Omens and the witches in the Discworld books asking so many of the questions I had been afraid of changed my life.
Hi Corry, we are so glad you are here (and can take all the time and space you need to process this stuff). My oldest child is really into Good Omens and it has been really amazing to dig into that world and the questions it raises with them!
Hello All! I'm a Xennial, we demand to be special! I grew up in NH went to the same church/Christian school k-12th grade. Then a proudly unaccredited Bible Institute, a Southern Baptist College, and then a Biblical University. It was a scene. I poured nearly 30 years into a religion that didn't even like me. I'm always a little bit angry about being an expert in such a weird religion. I'm now in the suburban Portland Oregon area.
My current obsession is finding out-of-print second wave feminist books and anthologies. One of my kids is in 4th grade so I'm planning a lot of weekend trips to national parks this summer.
Hi! I'm Elise, and I was raised by fundamentalist wolves, but I escaped. Wouldn't go to the parochial high school of my denomination or to church college. This was a great disappointment to my devout parents, until I told them the trouble the students got up to there. (It was a boarding high school.) I'm GenX (some say my birth year makes me a Boomer, but nope, and I Will Fight on that) and a lifelong upper Midwesterner of the US, now living in Minneapolis. I am, in no particular order, a jewelry designer, a poet, a writer, a musician, a bisexual semi-retired activist who founded some stuff in the 80s and 90s, polyamorous, married, neurodivergent, and in no particular order. And I'm still digging out the psychological land mines that were installed in me early on. I'm glad to be here, and really glad to meet you all.
Hi! I’m Beth. I’m a Xennial. I’m from Kansas and live in Kansas now. My parents had more moderate parenting techniques until they moved to Kansas and joined a Bible church. That is where they got introduced to Bill Gothard first and then James Dobson. That was when the big T trauma began. I have ADHD and I can’t remember the other questions. But being neurodivergent and raised in this culture is its own special kind of hell. The ven diagram between adhders in this culture and strong willed kids is probably a circle.
Very happy to be here! I was led to believe that strong willed kids were few and far between. 🤦♀️
Hi! I’m Birk, a queer neurodiverse trans nonbinary elder millennial who once identified as a Christian punk kid because it was the most accessible form of rebellion under my conservative evangelical parents. I’ve been lurking as time has allowed because I’ve been trying to be more aware about approaching burnout and haven’t had the bandwidth to engage. But I feel some space opening so I’m going to show up when I can!
I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, PA and attended 2 different United Methodist churches with my family from birth until I left home for college (I attended Eastern University for Youth Ministry because Gold told my Mother that her children would be called to work in the church). Around that time the UMC got too liberal for them and they moved on to an Assembly of God Church while I was in college. They now attend a large evangelical Methodist church in West Virginia. My grandmother was a United Methodist pastor in West Virginia so I had a unique perspective of having grown up in a family who believed in women being in leadership which I can actually appreciate in a way. My parents volunteered in Children and Youth Ministry so
those were a big focus through out my childhood and youth. Anyways! I have specific memories of Dobson’s Strong Willed Child being on their bookshelf and I’m sure there were many others. And they definitely followed this parenting style and I was frequently referred to as the strong willed one. I’ve been pretty low contact with them for the last couple years and recently it appears they are not currently communicating with me.
I’m an early childhood educator, artist, a bit of a witch I guess you could say and parent of 2 with my Quaker pastor partner living in Portland, Oregon. We both actually started deconstructing in college and I recently stoped attending his Quaker meeting with his full support. I have many artistic special interests specifically ceramics, knitting, collage and currently drawing/painting with watercolor crayons. I’m also a low key rock hound who loves to get lost in hyper focus mode combing the ground or beach for pretty rocks.
so glad you're here Birk! :D
Pretty rocks are awesome. The joy of hyperfocusing on finding interesting rocks can be so comforting.
Coming to this late but following closely. I'm an elder millennial, parents are younger boomers. They both came from Christian families but with a fair amount of chaos, so Conservative Christianity and FotF gave them a structure and control that felt safe. We attended a large Conservative Baptist Church (now Venture Network) in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.
I was homeschooled full time and then part time in middle school, and spent time with some very conservative families into early high school; as an adult, I'm now recognizing Doug Wilson influences in those communities. I'm very grateful it was always assumed I would attend college, but enmeshment was encouraged in my family as well. They had planned to have me court rather than date, but I didn't date until 19 and it was a moot point (tbh recognizing that it was considered moot then was a blessing).
I married young (23) but in that community, I felt like I was marrying old because I hadn't married straight after college. We also struggled with significant infertility, finally adopting in 2020.
Our daughter is spirited and strong-willed, so you know which book has been recommended - and which book will absolutely not enter our home. But I'll admit I've also felt at sea, figuring out how to parent her sensory needs and speech delay and big feels and knowing that what was modeled for me or husband is NOT what we want for her.
Something that's come up for a lot of my peers is adult neurodivergent diagnoses (ADHD/autism/autism with ADHD) and realizing how those neurodivergences were treated/"disciplined" within their family structures. Were you a "picky eater", or did you have sensory needs that presented as taste and texture aversions? Were you disruptive or did you have unmet energy and motion needs? Most of these kids were labeled "strong-willed" and the protocol from Dobson was to break their spirits, so we have a generation of churched kids who had unmet mental health needs whose parents were told instead to break their will. Did the health community have resources for recognizing a wider spectrum of sensory needs? No, but I still have feelings about it.
Oh yes - to relax, I knit 😆
Hi, I’m Sarah and late to the party. I’m a Xennial, grew up as a missionary kid in South America, met my husband in high school there, and we later served as missionaries ourselves in SE Asia.
My family history is very religious - my dad’s dad was a pastor in the Missionary Church (C&MA adjacent) and my mom went to Christian school with the Belz family who later founded World magazine. So I grew up with all the Christian magazines - World, Citizen, FoTF magazine, Brio, etc. I would even read Charisma magazine at my grandpa’s house. My parents were VERY into Dobson. I also remember them talking about friends who had gone to the Gothard seminars although they never did. I have fond memories of family devotions with the Character Sketches books and was SHOOK when I realized a few years ago that they are ATI/Gothard materials 😱
I have mixed feelings about looking back on how I was parented because on one hand my dad is a doctor who overall is pro-science and encouraged critical thinking and “discernment” in us kids, but also is so very conservative/fundamentalist in so many ways.
I have a hard time with personality tests - I have difficulty accurately evaluating and understanding myself to answer questions well. Maybe that’s a result of trying fit in and make everyone happy all the time??
I’m Catherine. I grew up in a large southern Baptist church in Pensacola, FL. Felt so much pressure to be the model Christian kid and Christian witness. Went to Wheaton college where even though conservative I felt like I had a little more breathing room to explore other ways to know God. Although still a codependent relationship with god, it wasn’t as controlling. When I studied psychology for my MA I started learning that emotions weren’t dangerous and I learned about codependency. That started a huge level of my healing trajectory. A few years later I moved to more progressive Christian spaces, and in the past few years I’ve fully deconstructed and deconverted. I’m a therapist who specializes in embodiment, self-trust, and healing from emotional, relational, and psychological trauma. I’m married to a PCUSA pastor so still in church. Two young kids (6 and 3) and back in my hometown (which is what caused the triggers that led to deconstruction).
I can’t thank you enough DL and Krispin for this project and this space to comment and collaborate and process together along the way. You’re putting together connections that I’ve been musing on for a while and I’m so grateful to have these insights and communities. My framework around this so far had been moving from someone else knowing what’s best for you to honoring that each person can best decide what’s best for them. We have our own internal compasses and our bodies tell us what’s safe and what’s not. Looking forward to more of your insights.
Hi I’m Abi. I’m an elder millennial. I live in Ohio. I was homeschooled all the way through except my senior year, I was signed up for a fake school so I could do post secondary at a local college. I was a MK kid for bit. My parents got their parenting from Gothard, The Pearls, Shepherding, Izzos, and Doug Wilson. They were definitely authoritarian. Immediate obedience without question very hammered into our heads, with stories about parents asking their kids to obey and it saved them from snakes attacking to drive in the fear. Spanking until we stopped crying, spanking older children, comparing spanking devices with other parents were all norm. When we were missionaries my parents were even part of making informational videos on the difference of spanking vs beating for the local government so they could “discipline” the children we worked with. They are definitely the evangelical to Gothard, to classical/calvinist, to Trump/Q pipeline.
Thank you so much for all your work exposing this stuff!
Greetings, slowly working my way through the comments. Grew up a pastor’s kid in various independent baptist churches, homeschooled roughly K-12, unaccredited bible college degree (that one still hinders my career path). My parents discovered Gothard and then Dobson, the Pearls, Tripp, Mary Pride, Harris, HSLDA, etc. they didn’t follow any one specific person but used more of a pick and choose approach. Spanking and bible lectures were pretty much the only parenting tool they used. I read a lot of the parenting and marital advice books in my early teens trying to figure out what I was supposed to do and why my parents were the way they were. Deconverted in my thirties and have spent the past decade discovering who I actually am and what I want. Special interests are reading, container gardening, sewing and dabbing in various types of art and drawing.