HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Jamie” is a pseudonym.
I have been mulling something over for about a month. Pieces of this for much longer. There is something I have noticed and it’s kind of driving me bonkers.
As someone who has taught in Christian/private schools, home schooled, been home schooled and now a mom of a public school student, I feel like I have a bone to pick.
Growing up home schooled and going to a billion home schooling conferences, I heard tons of “horror stories” of public school kids/classes/teachers. Looking back, I am surprised that some of these speakers didn’t dim all the lights and put a flashlight under their chin while they spoke. Parents leave these conferences determined not to let their kid go to a public school ever. So they keep home schooling, and honestly? Some home schooling families have no business “teaching” their kids, because they are learning nothing. (Those are the ones that give the “good” home schooling families a bad name.)
Even if these poor moms are ready to quit home schooling, they can’t. There’s fear. There’s judgement. There’s a pile of canned, self-righteous answers for all their reasons. Generally speaking, there’s no money to send their children to Christian school, public school is “out” (in their minds) and so they muddle on. Done, but not done.
When I taught (in several) Christian schools, there would be comments from the admins and staff alike that would poo-poo the other Christian school in the area. Basically, gossip:
“ABC school handled such and such poorly, we would have handled it so much better.”
“XYZ school allows such and such to go on, we would never allow that here.”
It all pretty much follows the pattern of “they are bad because ___, we are better because ____”.
Building yourself up with examples that may or may not be true (or based on truth) and tearing another down. It’s kind of a manipulative way to keep your staff and students right where you want them, all the while jacking up their tuition so much, it’s almost (if not impossible) to send even one child, never mind more than one. But still looking down their noses at public school families and rolling eyes at home schoolers.
I’m pretty tired of the whole scene.
There are fabulous teachers in the public school system, just like there are fabulous teachers at the little Christian school down the road, and fabulous mothers teaching their own children. And, news flash —
There are horror stories coming out of all three.
The public school system is not the enemy. It makes a convenient target, because it’s big and vague. And just because you assign too much home work, make your students wear uniforms, and have Christian in your title doesn’t make you “better.” And there are home schooling families that need to put aside their fear and the lies they have swallowed for years and admit they are in over their heads. The bottom line should be your children’s education. My oldest has learned more this year in public school than she has the last 3 years I have taught her. It’s been the best thing for her. I can “just” be her mom, and it’s taken a lot of pressure off of me.
It kills me when I hear people say, “I got to hear my child sing praise songs while cleaning their room. Ah, the benefits of home schooling.” Or, “I just got to see my child read a chapter out of the Bible. Ah, the benefits of home schooling.” Really? Somehow my children will never read the Bible or sing praise songs because they are in public school? They will never play nicely with their sisters or practice the piano or go to AWANA because they are in school? Just because it happens at 10:30 in the morning at your house, doesn’t mean it can’t happen after 3:30 in the afternoon at my house.
However you choose to educate your child is your business.
But there is not one way to do it. And there is not merely one way for each family. Kids are different, their needs are different, and situations change. Being fluid isn’t being weak. It’s being open minded and honest and putting your kids first.
Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Three
HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.
Trigger warnings:various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.
Finally Dad comes and calls us into the living room. He has the belt in his hands and Mom is sitting in the chair looking like a martyr. We all sit and wait to see what punishment Mom has decided that we should have. She always has the final decision even if Dad is the one to tell us what it is. If Dad doesn’t give us a punishment that she thinks is bad enough then she will start yelling at him and we will end up getting what Mom has decided.
Dad has the belt in both hands with the two layers together. Then he separates the layers and then pulls them flat again very fast to make a loud crack. It sounds like he just spanked someone very hard. I shiver but try not to look scared. He’s done this before and now I am terrified because I know what’s coming.
Dad looks like he is enjoying our reactions and has a slight grin on his face. To me it looks like an evil grin and I yell at him that this is not funny. Mom jumps up out of her seat and rushes over to slap my face and yells at me not to ever yell at her husband. She sits back down and Dad gets up and starts walking around the room in circles in front of us over and over. While he is walking he keeps cracking the belt very close to us changing the person who he does it in front of.
He is talking the whole time about our rebelliousness and our bad attitudes and making Mom miserable. He has been around the room at least four times now and now he is starting the fifth. This time he starts swinging out the belt towards us. Abby just screamed. He hit her across the front of her legs. John is next; he got hit on the knees. I am trying not to show how scared I am but I can tell that Dad knows I’m terrified. He gets closer to me and I hold my breath and then slowly let it escape as he starts to pass me. All of a sudden he turns back around and catches me with the belt across my lower arms and stomach. I can’t control the scream of pain that comes out.
I look over at Mom and she is looking quite satisfied with what is going on. Dad keeps going around the room, someone gets hit every time he goes around but we never know who or where. Sometimes he hits the sofa beside us just to scare us. By the end of it he had gotten the fronts of my legs, shoulders, arms, chest, knees and stomach. Abby got hit everywhere too. I wasn’t paying attention to John because he was on the other sofa. Dad finally sat down but he cracked the belt one more time just for effect.
I am so angry now I am trembling. I know Mom and Dad think I am trembling because I am afraid but I’m not. I am screaming at them in my head, screaming at Dad asking him how he could do this to his daughters, screaming at Mom for making him do it.
The lecture is finally over. We are going to miss supper tonight and we are so hungry. Mom has a home school meeting tonight which means we get a little break because Dad always falls asleep on the sofa after supper. As soon as he starts snoring I go to my room and pack my duffle bag. I pack some clothes and my favorite blanket and Rita. Then I sneak in the kitchen and get some apples and put them in the duffle and head out the side door.
I sneak around the back of the house to the woods that separate our house from the road. It is the middle of summer so I know that the leaves on the trees will hide me. I have to be careful though, because there woods are full of poison ivy and I don’t want the poison on me.
I start to head for the road. I just got to the road and now I hear Dad calling me. I don’t answer but I start to walk faster. As soon as I get to the road I start running and I run as fast as I can all the way to the stop sign. I am going to run away and I’m not going to let Dad find me. I turn around when I get to the stop sign to make sure he isn’t following. I hear a car coming on the main road and run up the hill into the trees so they won’t see me. When I see the car I almost throw up. It is Mom.
I lay down as low as I can and I know she didn’t see me. As soon as I see the van turn into our driveway I take off down the main road. I know where I am going. There is a lady that goes to our church that does not live very far away. I know I can make it there by morning time.
This is the third time I have tried to run away and Dad always caught me before I got off our road. Now I have made it farther then ever and I’m not going back. Every time I hear a car coming, I get off the road very fast and hide in the trees. I am almost to the end of this road now all I have to do is get onto Broad River Rd and go till I get to the lady’s road. I hear another car coming up behind me and I hide as best as I can. There are not good trees right here so the best option I have is to hide in the ditch.
I get down as low as I can and hold my breath but this time the car doesn’t keep going it slows to a stop. I hope that is because the car is about ready to turn but it isn’t. I hear a car door open and the Dad yell at me to get into the car. I know I am caught again but this time I get up and yell back that I’m not going. He yells at me again to get in the car and I yell back no!
I start to try to run in the other direction but he is faster and catches me. He drags me back by the arm and shoves me in the car. He gets back in and takes me home.
I know I am in big trouble.
We get back to the house and Dad tells Mom where I was. She grabs my bag away from me and dumps every thing out on the kitchen floor. As soon as she sees Rita she grabs her away from me and tells me I have lost her again. She sees the apples and tells me that because I took them, I am going to miss every meal tomorrow and I have a twenty page paper to write on stealing. I don’t know how long she will keep Rita this time but I refuse to let them see me cry. I pretend like I didn’t care and leave the room.
Abby asks me if I am upset and I tell her no. I will try to run away again one day.
*****
It is finally bedtime and we are all relieved.
Abby is so weak from being hungry that she can hardly walk and all she wants to do is sleep. John somehow always manages to sneak food out without getting caught, but Abby and I are too afraid to try. Abby and I climb into bed and talk for a few minutes trying to ignore the nawing hunger in our stomachs. Abby goes to sleep very quickly but I have a hard time going to sleep while I am that hungry.
I finally start to go to sleep when I hear stomping down the hall. They are Mom’s footsteps and I know that this means she is coming to our room. She bangs open the door and turns on the light screaming for us to get up.
What possessed you to think you had permission to sleep?
She yanks us out of bed and yells at us to get into the living room. She tells all of us to stand on the rug until she gets back and stomps out of the room. Abby looks like she is going to fall over. In my head I plead with her not to sit down because I don’t want Mom any madder. Mom finally comes back in carrying one of the hard wooden desks. Dad is following with another one and puts his down and goes back for the third one.
Mom then tells us that we have not done a bit of school work today. So now we get to stay up until that day’s school is done along with as many undone assignments that she tells us. We each sit down at a desk and I feel total despair. I am so hungry and so tired that I cannot think. She lays down on the sofa with the belt across her lap and says that if she finds us sleeping, not working fast enough, or doing sloppy work than she will start spanking.
I work for a while and steal a look at Mom and see that she has gone to sleep. I prop my head against my hand with my other hand holding my pencil so it looks like I am writing. I tell myself that I’m only going to sleep for just a minute so that I can get a little more energy.
*****
I wake up to a slashing pain across my back.
Mom is standing over me and strikes again.
I stand up as fast as I can so that she can hit my bottom instead of my back but I all of a sudden feel sick and dizzy and fall to the floor. Mom keeps swinging the belt and hits my sides and my legs and my back again. I curl into a ball to try to protect myself while she keeps swinging. She hits my side so hard that I jerk out straight uncontrollably leaving my front exposed. Before I can curl back up she swings the belt again and this time it catches me on my chest. I scream in agony and she finally stops. She reaches down and grabs a handful of my hair and yanks me off the floor and forces me back into the desk.
Her face is in mine, I see in her eyes that she hates me. She screams that if I dare fall asleep again then I will stand in the corner till devotion time the next morning.
For the rest of the night we all fight sleep and try our hardest to get some school work done. We are never working fast enough when Mom wakes up. So periodicly we are all getting many spankings.
It is finally 6:15 am and time for family devotions.
Shadowspring’s story was originally published on her blog Love. Liberty. Learning. She describes herself on her blog as, “a home school mom near the end of my career home schooling and looking forward to what life has to offer next. I am a follower of Jesus and a lover of freedom, as it is for freedom that Christ has set me free (Gal 5:1).” This story is reprinted with her permission.
Today I plan to post about some home school marriage disasters of which I have personal knowledge. As I freely admit, my own home school marriage was in deep trouble, and I fully intend to tell that story. I guess I’ll give a brief synopsis of my story at the end of this little post, just to be fair.
Also before I begin my laundry list of half a dozen bad marriages, let me point out that I know dozens if not hundreds of home school families that have perfectly fine marriages as far as I can tell. No doubt some are even great!
I am not posting any real names. I know that some will accuse me of making these stories up since I will not post any verifying details. That is okay by me, accuse away. I know that these stories are all true, even though I will not reveal the details. Each story represents real flesh and blood people that I have seen.
Please keep in mind that all the names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved, innocent or not. Also each of these families was very active in their church leadership during the time that I knew them. They are all Christians with a capital C.
The Founders were a family that proudly started the first home school support group in their area. To everyone’s shock and dismay, their oldest son secretly married another home school girl as soon as he turned eighteen. So began the unraveling of their whole family.
I remember the Dad telling me puzzled that he did not understand how this could happen. He and his son and discussed it and his son agreed to wait until after college to marry. (Get the feeling Dad did all the talking and none of the listening? I do.)
Shortly after, Dad was arrested for sexual misconduct. Mom divorced dad, and the other children were enrolled in private school. Dad later confessed that there were marriage problems going on for a long time before the divorce.
But all this time the Founders were very involved in what was to become an exclusive Christian home school support group. Their son was prepared academically for any Ivy League school. I don’t think he ever even made it to college, though. Last I heard he was working at an entry level job to support his wife and young child.
The Excluders were a very loud and opinionated family that was largely responsible for that home school support group’s “statement of faith”. Their idea was that we needed to protect our children from associating with other home school children that didn’t share our Christian values. They won that battle, and so the only home school support group in that county became closed to all but Christians.
The father of the Excluders is now a registered sex offender. Seems while he was away on business he would chat online with young ladies in need of “spiritual guidance”. A police officer, posing as a fourteen year old girl, agreed to meet him at his hotel to discuss this all in person. According the the prosecutors and law enforcement, he was guilty of soliciting a minor. His wife did not leave him. They are still married and I think still home schooling. But I don’t for one minute believe that everything is fine in that marriage.
Then there is the Serial Adulterer family and the Refuses Work family. Incidentally, in both of these families, friends of mine, the fathers fancy themselves preachers called by God. And preach they do, every chance they get. Though why anyone wants to hear anything either of them has to say, I could not tell you. They must keep their private lives hidden, or put on an amazing spin to it all.
Mr. Refuses Work is also an adulterer, though not as practiced at it as Mr. Serial Adulterer. Both claim their latest woman are finally God’s true calling for their lives and now their ministries will really take off!
Mr. Refuses Work is now divorced. Believe it or not, his wife put up with him refusing to work for three years. Once he finally returned to work, he met his current girlfriend and left his wife. Yes, after she gave up home schooling and supported the family on her part-time wage for three years! Always the submissive wife, I don’t think she would have ever left him (though she should have years ago!).
Mr. Serial Adulterer’s wife is still praying and trusting God to heal her family, though as her long time friend, I wish she would divorce him and move on with her life. Her children have been in and out of public school/home school as mom has had to work off and on. She is a great teacher and loves to bless her children with the freedom to home school when possible, but Mr. Serial Adulterer is not the most reliable provider.
I promised you half a dozen families but I have deleted at least three of my examples because, even though there was moral failure and broken hearts galore, not every reader understands the connection between teens acting out and the state of their parents’ marriage. I see it clearly, but it would take too much time and a lot of research and footnotes to make the connection plain to all. So I have only chosen to write about the crystal clear home school marriage failures.
Others I have left out because as best as I can tell the people in the marriages appear to be resigned to an unhappy life. I suppose if they are willing to accept a crappy marriage, that is a disaster in itself, since Jesus wanted our joy to be full. But they would claim they are okay, so I won’t post their example.
Which brings me to my story in brief. I was also in leadership in the home school community. My husband has a perfect religious pedigree, though he never fancied himself a preacher or teacher. To the outside world he has always been a great guy, little shy maybe, but a great guy. He was friendly, knew a lot of Bible verses, held to the right doctrine plus he was a great provider.
The hidden reality? My husband was an abusive man. Not only abusive. He has many good qualities. Not always abusive. In the first ten years of our marriage I hardly noticed it at all. Abusive moments were rare and easily excused. It wasn’t until our children were older that he really began to grow cold.
But he had hidden hatred and resentment in his heart that grew to poison our marriage and our family. And there is a reason Jesus told us that hating someone is akin to murdering them. Hatred leads to violence. It is inevitable.
I can’t end this post without letting everyone know that my marriage is healing and growing stronger every day because my husband is healing and growing stronger every day. Once he admitted that he was an abusive man and started getting useful help, things began to turn around.
If I had stayed within the constraints of fundamentalism and Christian Patriarchy, my husband and I would absolutely not be happily married today. Our relationship from the very beginning consisted of many departures from the teachings I grew up with. Each of those departures furthered the development, health, and mutual happiness of our relationship.
The first departure: As a single woman, I moved out of my parents’ home to get a college education. What is a completely ordinary step for many North American women was a desperate and terrifying leap for me. My family’s homeschooling church, led by Reb Bradley, promoted a very restrictive view of gender roles along with a strong suspicion of the “liberal bias” of higher learning institutions. Within the church culture, daughters were obligated to stay home under their father’s authority until marriage; once married, they would be housekeepers and stay-at-home mothers. For daughters, a college education was dangerous (because it removed them from their father’s protection), risky for their faith (because it exposed them to non-Christian ideas), and wasteful (because it was not practical for their duties at home).
However, despite my church’s reservations about college, only good things came to me through my experiences there, far away from home. College helped me grow socially, intellectually, physically, and spiritually in ways that have benefited me in every area of my life since then. But of all the good things, I am most grateful for the chance to meet my husband; we were definitely meant to be together. Without college, we would never have met.
The second departure: My boyfriend and I dated instead of courting.According to Reb Bradley’s teaching of “Biblical” courtship, a daughter needed the protection and guidance of her father to find a spouse. This was because women were supposedly easily deceived, just like Eve in the Garden of Eden, swayed by their emotions and easily taken advantage of. Through the courtship process, a father could “guide” his daughter by screening any suitors for “correct” religious and political beliefs; he could “protect” his daughter by making rules about displays of affection and enforcing those rules through constant supervision.
My experiences away from home at college convinced me that my church was completely wrong about women. In fact, it was denying women experience and education that caused them to be so dependent on men; it was not an innate quality of women. As I was working hard to increase my self-confidence and independence that my church and family had damaged, I made a goal for myself: I was not only going to date, I was also going to ask out the guy.
The first and only guy that I asked out turned out to be my future husband. As it so happened, we lived several hours apart from each other, so we only had one meeting and one shot at a relationship. If I hadn’t taken the initiative to ask him out, we would never have ended up together.
It is absolutely critical that my husband and I found each other without being pushed or restricted by our parents. We were not playing a role of trying to please our parents and stay true to our parents’ beliefs; we were free to be ourselves, and we could see more clearly what our life would be like together if we got married. We were adults, taking responsibility for ourselves and our well-being in the present and the future.
The third departure: My fiance and I cohabitated before getting married.It goes without saying that cohabitation was forbidden in the culture I was raised in, since even the alone time of dating was considered unnecessary and hazardous to “purity”. In fact, cohabitation was seen as one of the great evils of society and a major contributor to the decrease of marriage and increase of divorce rates in North America.
My fiance and I never planned to cohabitate. The circumstances of life simply made it the best option for us. It was only later that we saw that cohabitation itself benefited our relationship. It gave us confidence that we were making the right decision to get married, because we could more clearly envision our future married life together. What were the gaps like between structured activities and conversations? What were we like as introverts, when we withdrew from our pseudo-extroversion in order to recharge? What was it like to take care of mundane tasks together, like keeping up an apartment, cooking, cleaning, and shopping for groceries? What did he act like, first thing in the morning before he’d had his coffee? What did I look like, first thing in the morning before I’d put on makeup? The fewer surprises, the better–especially when it’s a lifelong commitment you’re talking about.
The fourth departure: He pushed me to freely express my opinions and disagree with him.As we developed a closer relationship, we began to experience some communication challenges. Specifically, I found it extremely difficult to express my opinions, even when we were just making simple decisions such as what movie to watch or restaurant to eat at. A lot of this was due to my emotional repression from authoritarian parenting, but there was more to it than that. It also came from a serious misunderstanding of healthy relationships, which I had learned from my church and family. I felt, deep down, that having and expressing my own opinions was selfish and would cause my partner unhappiness. I thought we would have a better, stronger, and happier relationship if I buried my preferences and played the role of a supportive wife.
To my surprise, the opposite was true. Due to my “unselfishness,” I rarely felt loved or understood, and my partner constantly felt frustrated as he tried to guess my wants and needs in order to make me feel valued.
It turned out that he wanted to have a relationship with a real person, a person with feelings and thoughts. He did not want a “yes man” or a deferential subordinate; he wanted us to learn from and challenge each other. Improving our communication skills beautifully affected our relationship; we began to understand ourselves and each other much better. With that greater understanding, we were able to begin making better decisions as a team, compromising and compensating each other when necessary, so that we experienced the most mutual benefit.
The fifth departure: We don’t separate our responsibilitiesbased on gender. Within fundamentalism and Christian Patriarchy, your role in life is based on your gender, with no regard for your personality, strengths, weaknesses, or preferences. If you are a man, you must provide and lead. If you are a woman, you must take care of the house and children and defer to your husband’s decisions. Any unhappiness that arises from this gender-based arrangement is merely a sign of your need to depend on God more and try even harder to fulfill your gender role properly.
That approach to life is blind to the huge amount of variety in the world and even the variety in the Bible. Instead of acknowledging variety and diversity, everything is black and white, neatly categorized, and stacked in little boxes. All the misfits and in-betweens are either ignored or labeled as sinful.
My husband and I realized right away that we would both be unhappy if we just automatically followed traditional gender roles without adapting them to suit who we were. In some ways, we appear very traditional at first glance; I quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom, and he supports us financially by working every day. However, we are only doing that because we both happen to be happy in those roles right now, and we do not feel trapped because we know we could choose another arrangement at any time.
In many other ways, we have chosen to depart from traditional gender roles to promote the greatest mutual happiness and success. For instance, he loves cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, while I find cooking to be a monotonous chore. We are both happier when we share the cooking responsibilities. Also, organizing and planning comes naturally to me, but he has a lot of difficulty thinking of and keeping track of the details. That means we are both happier and things run more smoothly when I take charge of managing our plans and vacations. Over time, we have recognized that we each have areas of expertise, so the person with the relevant skill or knowledge naturally takes the lead at the appropriate time. Each of us is unique, and together we make a unique team; it would be a shame to damage that dynamic relationship by trying to force ourselves into roles that don’t fit us.
These five departures are risks that I took, doing the very things that I had been warned about for my whole fundamentalist youth. In the end, it turned out that they were stepping stones from my depressed past life to my satisfied present life. They were an escape route surrounded by scary shadows and “maybes”, but I’ve finally made it out into the light. I feel extremely lucky. I hope for the same happiness for each person who reads this; just realize that happiness doesn’t come from formulas and rules, and it will probably look different for you than for me, because of the beautiful variety of life.
HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.
Trigger warnings:various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.
Tomorrow is my birthday and I will be eight years old!
“Maybe tomorrow I will start to be loved again by Mom and Dad.”
I am so excited because Mom said that I can make my own birthday cake. I feel like such a big girl. Mom has been yelling at us a lot for the last few weeks but I know she won’t yell at me tomorrow because it’s my birthday!
I am so excited about tomorrow that I don’t pay attention to my mopping after supper. Now Mom is mad at me again because I missed so many spots. Why can’t I get it done right? I tell Mom I’m sorry and I’ll try harder next time. I hope this doesn’t mess up tomorrow. It’s finally bedtime and I know that the faster I go to sleep the faster tomorrow will come. So I am a good girl and don’t talk to Abby.
*****
It’s my birthday! Mom says that, as soon as the kitchen is cleaned up from breakfast, I can start making my birthday cake. I am going to make a carrot cake. That is one of my favorites.
I get out all the ingredients from the recipe card and put them on the counter just like Mom does. Then I separate the dry ones and the wet ones like she said. I tried to be very careful to make sure I had each one right but somehow I got the flour and the baking soda mixed up on the card. I put in two cups of baking soda instead of two cups of flour. Mom came in just as I put the second cup of baking soda in and saw my mistake. She is yelling at me now and all I see is her angry face almost touching mine. She says that I’m stupid and lazy and can’t follow directions. She says that I just wasted a lot of ingredients and that she should never have let me bake anything.
I try not to cry but I don’t do a very good job and tears start flowing. She yells at me to shut up and get out of her kitchen. I run to my room as fast as I can to get away from Mom and grab Rita and curl up on my bed and keep sobbing. Why did she get so mad? I tried so hard. I guess I am stupid and shouldn’t be allowed to bake anything. Rita’s yarn hair is very wet with my tears now but I know she doesn’t mind and I know she loves me.
Mom just called me back in the kitchen. I don’t want to go but I know I better or she will get even madder. She is still very angry when I get back and says that I have to make my cake and that she is going to be standing over my shoulder to make sure I don’t do anything wrong. I am scared now because I know she is looking for me to do something wrong and now I don’t want to make my cake. She makes me get back on the chair so I can reach the counter and start measuring. It is so hard because I still can’t make myself stop crying and I know she is getting madder at me. She tells me that I’m a crybaby and to shut up. I really try but it is so hard!
I finally get everything done and the batter mixed and in the oven and she finally lets me go. I am angry but I am careful not to show it. Everything is ready for the party now and Mom is back to happy again. I pretend I’m not mad at her so that I will have a good birthday party. John and Abby say that the cake is very good and I am very proud of myself and I hope that next year Mom will let me make my own cake without her watching me again.
I forget that I’m mad at Mom because they gave me such a nice card and present and I tell them I love them. I do love them. They are my parents. I am happy as I go to bed and hope that maybe tomorrow I will start to be loved again by Mom and Dad. After all they had made such a sweet card and I knew they meant it.
****
It’s now almost my ninth birthday and I really don’t care. I have so many undone school assignments that I know I won’t have a good day. Mom says I’m lazy and stupid. Mmaybe I am, I don’t know and right now I don’t care. Every school assignment that she gives me I can’t do it right, so why should I bother? She has a clipboard hanging up on the kitchen wall that says Mary’s undone list. John and Abby have one too. I hate that clipboard! There are several pages on it. All of them are filled top to bottom with assignments that she says aren’t done. Most of them I already have done but she didn’t like the way that I did them or said I didn’t try and ripped them up for me to do over. I also have a whole bunch of chores that Mom says I haven’t finished. That means more trouble and more spankings.
I know it will not be a good birthday, so I pretend I don’t care. Inside I am so angry at Mom but I dare not show her.
Shame
Fear and shame grip me as soon as I wake up.
The bed and my pajamas are cold and wet again. I am terrified.
The last time I wet the bed only a couple of nights ago, Mom got so angry. I am a big girl. Why can’t I wake up when I need to go?
I shake Abby awake and tell her I’m so sorry because I know that she will have gotten wet too. We jump out of bed very fast and take the sheets off the bed and I take them into the laundry room for Mom to wash, then Abby and I run to the bathroom to get cleaned up as fast as we can. We run water in the tub and take a bath as fast as we can and get dressed to go clean up our room.
I don’t make it back to our room before Mom is yelling for me to get in her room. I hate her room and am scared to go in because I know that she knows. She yells at me that I’m a big baby and that I’m lazy. She screams at me that I’m causing her more laundry and that from now on, if I wet my bed then I have to wash everything I messed up. I am crying now and I don’t understand why Mom is so angry. I want to wake up when I need to go but I just can’t. She is still yelling at me and I try to listen just so she will finish and let me go, but she keeps going. She says that if this doesn’t stop, then she is going to tell everybody at church what a baby I am.
Now I am really terrified. She finally finishes but I know I am in trouble. We only have an hour to finish all of our chores and she yelled at me for almost 20 minutes after I had already used up about 15 minutes to get the dirty clothes in the laundry room and get cleaned up. I now only have about 25 minutes to clean the two downstairs bathrooms, empty the dishwasher from last night, vacuum all three bedrooms and the living room, and fold laundry. I know I am doomed.
I work as fast as I can but it is no use, I am only able to get the dishwasher empty and clean one bathroom before the timer goes off. Mom yells at all of us to get to the kitchen and we trip over each other to get in there as fast as we can. She goes down the list starting with John. His chores are not signed off neither are mine nor Abby’s. She yells for us all to line up outside her door for our spankings. John goes first and we listen outside as the belt hits him over and over again. I try to count them so I know how many I’m going to get but I’m so scared that I loose count.
I’m next. I don’t seem to be moving fast enough for her so she grabs me by the hair and drags me to the side of her bed. I try not to scream as she yells at me to pull my pants down. She starts spanking and I start counting to try to pay attention to something besides the pain. I don’t want to scream and I try not to make a sound but tears are running down my face by the time she reaches spanking number fifty.
She finally stops and yells at me to get out of her sight. I pull up my pants as fast as I can and get out of her room. I run into my room across the hall and grab Rita to hug her and cry into her while Mom gives Abby hers. I am counting Abby’s so that I can put Rita down and run into the living room before Mom comes out of her room so I don’t get caught and Mom doesn’t take Rita away from me again.
She took Rita from me a while ago for two weeks and I just got her back. I can’t lose her again.
As soon as the rounds of spankings are over, she yells at all of us to go into the living room for a family meeting. We all know what that means and it means we are going to have a miserable day. Of course what is different than all the others? Even if they don’t start out like today did, they are all miserable.
We have now been sitting on the sofa for about two hours while Mom has been lecturing and lecturing and sometimes reading parts of Proverbs. Because she had been yelling at me first thing this morning, we missed family devotions so she decides that now is a good time to have them while she is lecturing. She finds the Proverbs about the foolish and lazy person and about the wicked. She tells us that it is in the Bible that the foolish man needs to be punished until his wickedness is driven out of him. She says that we are the wicked and foolish people that God is talking about us in those chapters. She tells us that she cannot let rebellion go unpunished because she is God’s representative to us. If we rebel against her than we are rebelling against God.
She says that God gives people the authorities in their lives and that she was ours, therefore we are supposed to obey her without grumbling or complaining and especially without question. Then she starts down the same thing that I have heard almost every day for as long as I can remember. She says that she is in a war against us and that God is on her side in that war. She says that she will not lose the war and we will be judged by God for not obeying her. She says that she will keep fighting till she dies, we die, or we are finally broken of our will. Then she turns to Deuteronomy and reads some in there and tells us that, if we would only obey her, then there would be so many blessings. We would be happy as a family and God would not be angry with us.
I listen to her ramble for a little while and then I just start tuning her out. I listen just enough so that if she asks me a question, I will be able to answer it. I tell myself that she is wrong. I do try to get my chores and school work done.
Right now I am getting angrier and angrier because I am watching the clock and I know how long we have been sitting here. We have already long since missed breakfast and now we are only an hour away from lunch time and she is still talking. I know this means that we will miss lunch, too, because we have to have half of our school assignments done and signed off before we are allowed to eat lunch. I can’t remember the last time I had breakfast and this is the third day in a row that I have missed lunch.
Last night I only was able to have one of Mom’s five-minute, one helping meals.
I am so hungry right now that even if I wanted to listen to Mom I would have a hard time. Mom is still very angry and is making herself angrier as she is talking. She tells us that in the Old Testament rebellious children were stoned to death and that’s what we deserve. Now she is doing her fake crying and asking why we are all out to get her and to make her life miserable. She asks us why we can’t be good children like all the children in the home school group. She’s too tired to keep going so now she throws us all outside until Dad gets home to “deal with us” because she says we are out of control.
We are not allowed to take anything outside with us even our school work and we are not allowed to leave the back porch. I know this means that we will either miss supper too or only get a five-minute meal. It’s so hot out here and I am so thirsty but I know better than to ask for water. When we get thrown outside, Mom says that we lose all the privileges of living in the house.
I hear Dad’s car pull into the driveway and am not sure whether or not to be scared or relieved. Dad comes in the house and goes straight back to his room. We can hear him and Mom talking through their bathroom window next to the deck. Mom is talking very mean and is yelling.
Homeschooled Girls and Trash Cans: Latebloomer’s Story, Part Two
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Latebloomer” is a pseudonym. Latebloomer’s story was originally published on her blog Past Tense, Present Progressive. It is reprinted with her permission.
What do homeschooled girls and trash cans have in common?
They both only leave the house once a week.
“What do homeschooled girls and trash cans have in common?”
This joke was well-received among homeschooled youth because it rang true for so many of us. For almost all of my teen years, church was the only social activity that I engaged in, the only time during the whole week that I might have a chance to interact with people who were not my immediate family. Making friends in that context, especially as a shy teen girl, seems daunting. However, I had an even greater obstacle to deal with: I was not allowed to participate in youth group.
My parents were absolutely terrified of teenage rebellion. Thanks to various books and speakers popular in the homeschooling community, my parents believed teen rebellion to be a recent American trend due to indulgent parenting and peer pressure. A rebellious teen was more than just an annoyance in the homeschooling community: that teen was turning his/her back not only on the parents, but also on God. What a tragic waste of years of sacrifice and careful training by the parents! This type of thinking motivated my parents to maintain careful discipline and to shelter us from almost all contact with our peers, even at church.
I distinctly remember the conversation between the youth pastor and my mom. I was probably 14 or 15, and so shy that I would start shaking if anyone tried to talk to me at church. Although social interaction was painful, I desperately needed it, and I think the youth pastor noticed that. He approached my parents after church one day to invite us to Sunday school. My mom asked for the materials that were being used in Sunday school, and took them home to peruse them with my dad. I heard the decision the next week at the same time as the youth pastor: “Our kids will not be attending Sunday school.” The reason? Apparently the material mentioned a teen who was frustrated with his parents, and it was dangerous for me to think that frustration was a valid or normal feeling for a teen to have toward parents.
The tough thing about social phobia is that it is often self-reinforcing. In my case, my severe social anxiety displayed itself in uncontrollable muscle spasms, and anticipating the shaking made me even more anxious about interacting with people. What if someone noticed me shaking? I used to cry myself to sleep at night quite often, occasionally trying to get my mom to notice my tears by sniffing juuuust loud enough for her to hear as she walked by my door. When she came in to ask why I was crying, I would say something like, “I don’t have any friends” or “I don’t know how to talk to people.” The answer to these was always the same: “You have us” or “You’re talking to me right now.” In the morning, life would proceed as usual.
Unfortunately, the “usual” for my life at home was very empty and quiet. My dad was working long hours and was permanently in a bad mood when at home, and my mom was always sapped of energy for various reasons. She left us kids to do our schoolwork independently much of the time; we even corrected our own errors from the answer key. Later, due to mysterious and debilitating health problems, her energy was so low that just going to the grocery store was often too much for her to handle. It was simply understood in the family that we shouldn’t harass her about wanting to leave the house. Since I wasn’t able to get my driver’s license until I was 18, I was stuck for hours, days, weeks, months, years with little-to-no mental or social stimulation.
Little-to-no stimulation is not an exaggeration; obviously, a teen girl who can’t even go to Sunday school due to “bad influences” is going to find many other things forbidden to her as well. Our home did not have a TV; we watched few movies; we only read pre-approved Christian or classical books; we did not have internet access; and we certainly did not listen to most music. My one musical joy was listening to Steve Green and going to his concert with another homeschooling mom. When I tried to add Rebecca St. James to my CD collection, my mom almost had a meltdown because of the beat and the heavy breathing; it didn’t matter that almost every song was a verbatim quote from the Bible. I knew my role–honor your parents–so that CD went straight into the trash and I tried to feel happy that I was obeying God.
What did I do with my time at home? I dragged my school work out to take up most of the day; I spent large amounts of time spaced out, lying on my bed; I wrote in my journals; and I made my own clothes. My homemade clothes were the outward sign of my feelings of isolation. Starting at about age 13, I was responsible for furnishing my own wardrobe (within the boundaries of modesty my parents provided, of course). I had $25 a month to work with, and my mom could tolerate shopping at fabric stores much more than at clothing stores, where everything was “immodest.” (And that was in the women’s clothing sections–I didn’t even know that clothing came in junior sizes until after I had graduated from high school!) Out on various errands or on family vacations, wearing my very odd, ill-fitting clothing, I felt the stares and desperately wished that human contact was unnecessary. “I wish I could just be a hermit!” — this sentence occurs a little too frequently in my teen journals.
My first friend of my teenage years came from Hope Chapel, when I was about 17. Pastor Reb Bradley, with the support of the homeschooling families of HC, would not allow a youth group in the church. Finally, I was not so odd! It was easier to strike up a conversation with someone, knowing they might be just as desperate and nervous as me. It was easier to not feel judged when the other person’s clothes were just as odd as my own. I could more easily feel successful at conversation because it was not full of cultural references that I had no idea about. I became a little more confident socially, strengthened my atrophied conversational muscles, and got a little more hopeful about life. I was even able to add a second friend by the time I was 19.
Now I’m 30 years old, with four years of college and eight years of work between me and my teen self, yet I still feel the effects of the isolation I experienced growing up.
First, I still feel significant social anxiety in even the most non-threatening situations. I am particularly at a loss in group settings full of new people. What do I say? When do I say it? Whom do I say it to? How/when do I end a conversation? Even in a circle setting, when it’s my turn to say my name, my blood pressure skyrockets.
Second, in the whole world, there is no place and no group of people where I feel like I belong. It’s like I was raised in a different culture, with the distinct difference that I can never go “home” to it. I’m permanently a foreigner; interacting in this foreign culture takes a lot of attention and effort. I’ve tried to catch up on the culture I missed…to watch the movies, to listen to the music, to see pictures of the clothing styles…..but it will never mean to me what it means to you. People always use cultural references and nostalgia as a way to build community and connections between people; for me, they create distance and remind me how different I am inside.
My profile photo is of the 80s star Molly Ringwald. The first time I ever heard her name mentioned was at my first real job, when I was 22 years old. God bless my dear gay boss, who saw through my awkwardness and gave me a chance at the job because I looked like his favorite childhood actress! When he learned that I had no idea who she was, his jaw hit the floor.
These days, I manage to avoid shocking people too much, unless I decide to tell them about my past. To me, the biggest compliment I can receive today is, “You were homeschooled? Wow, I can’t even tell!”
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Abel” is a pseudonym.
Growing up in my homeschool world, I heard constantly from everyone around me about the importance of modesty and purity. Women were supposed to dress up like Victorian-aged puritans because men are so susceptible to lust and we just can’t control ourselves. I never understood this. But I accepted it because everyone else around me seemed to and I never felt I had the right to question it. If I tried to question it, wouldn’t that just be the sexual freak inside me trying to fight God?
Oh. Yeah. I kinda got ahead of myself.
There’s a sexual freak inside of me. Or, well, there’s a sexual freak inside of every male. According to my culture, all males are sexual freaks waiting to happen.
We’re like ticking time bombs of atomic hormones.
You don’t want to let those time bombs out until marriage. And it’s really easy to let them out. That’s why women should all dress so carefully. If a man happens to see a woman readjusting her bra strap, all hell could break loose and men could turn into savage beasts. There is a rapist inside of all men, including me.
I never thought there was a rapist inside of me. I never felt a desire to force myself onto a woman when I accidentally saw a bra strap peaking out of a woman’s denim jumper. But I still felt sick to my stomach when I caught myself looking one second too long at that bra strap. I felt that indicated my inherent dirtiness. I felt nothing but pure disgust for my body. I felt God staring at me from that bra strap, as if he was about to turn me into a pillar of salt, just like he turned Lot’s wife into salt for looking back at Sodom.
I’d stay awake at night, begging God to forgive me.
I’m surprised there’s not a whole generation of homeschooled males that have fetishes about bra straps.
But really, what I took to heart from all this talk about how obsessed men were with sex was not just that there was a rapist inside of me. It was that apparently I had a broken rapist inside of me. Because, honestly, I never felt so overwhelmed by semi-exposed skin that I couldn’t control myself. I spent years thinking there was something wrong with me. Men were supposed to “stumble” when they saw a midriff, or a shoulder, or too much leg. But I never “stumbled” like that — meaning, I never saw a midriff and went home and masturbated about it.
So I decided when I was sixteen that I must be gay.
In retrospect, that only made me feel worse.
Because men never made me “stumble,” either.
Because I’m not gay.
I was actually straight. And as far as straight people go, I was actually normal, too. Apparently normal people — straight or gay or whatever you are — don’t obsess about sex as much as homeschooling parents do.
I was conditioned by all these myths that pervade homeschooling that males are so overwhelmed by sex that they can’t exercise any semblance of self-control. But you know what? We can. And we’re not only hurting women by saying that women are responsible for mens’ thoughts. We’re also hurting men by making us all out to be monsters with uncontrollable sexual urges.
Rape is a horrible thing that should be opposed by everyone. Normal human sexuality is completely different. And I am sad that I grew up in a world that saw no problems with blurring the lines between the two.
It took me years to figure that out. What I used to think was me being gay eventually became me wondering if I just had a really low libido. But then I went to the doctor and found out, no, my libido is fine, too.
Apparently my problem was that I’m not a stereotype manufactured out of thin air by the I Kissed Dating Goodbye courtship cult.
But after everything I’ve gone through, that’s a problem I am ok living with.
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Charity” is a pseudonym.
I’ve been following HA from the beginning. I knew from the first moment I saw the Facebook page that I would write my story, even though I do not think there is anything surprising about my life. I was raised in a conservative Christian home, was homeschooled through graduation, and in graduate school dropped Christianity for feminism. That transition, while difficult, felt natural for me. Feminism gave me a language for the discrepancies I could see and feel, but could not name. To this day my parents are dismayed and my brother is bemused about my ideological transformation.
I don’t know what parts of my life are important to tell, which parts are most salient. I just know that along the way I learned to hate myself. Because even though I know that I am smart and beautiful, I also know that I should be better. The only yardstick I have is absolute perfection for whatever it is that is on my plate in the moment. And if I can’t be perfect, then I need to just complete whatever the project is and move on to something else. There is so little joy in that way of living. There is no self-acceptance. Nothing can just be what it is in the moment; the striving is both constant and tortuous. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.
I was raised to be a good Christian girl who did the best she could. It just so happens that, aside from math, I’m good at most things I have tried. All of my life I’ve been told that everything I touch turns to gold. There is a shit-ton of pressure in that statement and that pressure is the center of my story.
Until college, my social circle consisted mostly of other homeschoolers and families from church. Basically my life was “all Jesus all the time.” I learned from a very early age that both God and Jesus were perfect and that perfection was the goal. Of course, my parents would deny that they ever taught me that explicitly, because of course perfection is impossible. But try telling that to a child who grows up hearing about how the perfect love of God covers all her sins! I am a typical first-born, Type-A overachiever. Combine that with the teaching that God made it possible for me to be perfect through the perfection of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross, and BOOM. I am a walking shitfest of a mess.
As a teenager I tried to do everything right. I signed the True Love Waits pledge card, and took it one step further: no kissing until marriage. I taught abstinence-only sex education to 7th graders at a local Catholic school. And as if that wasn’t enough, I happily boarded the Joshua Harris I Kissed Dating Goodbye train. I am still baffled as to how I believed that I could do so much talking about sexsexsex, whether it was blatant or veiled, and not want to even think about doing it! I was encouraged and applauded by every adult I met for my amazing character, commitment, and chastity. But what I remember most was feeling shame about every inch of my body and what it wanted, how good it felt when I touched myself, and the simple desire of wanting a boy to like me. How could I be perfect if I wanted to have sex?
Growing up I lacked imperfect role models…people who were successful, but weren’t afraid to genuinely admit their imperfection.
For the next decade, that was my frame of mind. Any little imperfection ate away at my self-worth. I really bought into Matthew whatever-whatever, ‘be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.’ Instead of seeing my life as an opportunity to nourish my soul through learning what my mind and body could accomplish, every endeavor became yet another way to measure my failure. How can I be the perfect student if I don’t have a 4.0 (finally got it on my third degree!)? How can I be the perfect yoga instructor if I can’t touch my toes? How can I be the perfect partner if what I want is to leave the man I married? How can I be perfect if one of the few places I find both joy and solace is in a bottle of rum? Growing up in the Christian homeschooling subculture taught to view life from the negative. I want to believe this was unintentional. My flair for the dramatic aside, my biggest regret is that I wasn’t taught to enjoy and love my body or my life. I was taught that both my body and my life were things to be disciplined, controlled, and held in check.
I bought into the belief that not being perfect meant I was a failure.
A different truth is that if I ever achieved perfection, there would be nothing left for which to live.
I took a three-day break after writing that last sentence. I needed time to process. Yesterday morning I was having breakfast with a friend of mine and I told him about this essay. He asked me what my story had to do with being homeschooled, since it sounded to him like a story about being raised super-Christian. Good question. My answer? Being homeschooled meant that I only ever came in contact with other people of the same persuasion, religious/belief system, hell!, life system, as the one in which I was living. Being homeschooled for me was being surrounded by people who were also supposed to be perfect because we were all ‘covered by the blood of Jesus.’ I didn’t know that imperfection was an option. I didn’t know that I could make choices outside of the Bible and still be a good person, that I would still like myself, that people would still like me, that God would still like me. Not that I really believe in God anymore, but that’s for a different essay. It wasn’t until graduate school that I finally came out of my shell—out of my parents house—and realized that there was an entire world in which my identity didn’t hinge on if I was a virgin or read my Bible or went to church or dressed modestly or all the other things my childhood and adolescence was hyper-focused on—because of course, for a woman, those things equal perfection.
Hang on. I’ll be back in another couple of days.
After rereading and thinking and editing, I’ve decided that this is not something I want to come back to. This isn’t really the story I want to tell. So let me start again.
I was homeschooled. I was sheltered. I was raised in a very conservative, Christian home. But I got out. I don’t have any major regrets from high school; I am lucky. I have worked exceptionally hard to get to know myself, to be honest with the people in my life, and to make choices that are good for me. Being homeschooled taught me to hold myself accountable and that at the end of the day, the only person who was responsible for what was or was not accomplished was me. My parents taught me an amazing work ethic that I couldn’t shake even if I tried. Sure, that has led to me being a perfectionist workaholic who sucks at relaxing, but the yoga and rum are helping with that.
My parents and I no longer talk politics or religion, but I know that they love me and have my back. Being homeschooled meant that I had a lot to overcome in terms of finding a footing in the world outside of my parents house; I think it took me a lot longer than average to figure out who I wanted to be because the people I came in contact with were so homogenous—I didn’t have options to pick from until I was in my 20s. But, being homeschooled also taught me to be content with myself because quite often I was left alone to my own devices.
So, all that to say being homeschooled was definitely a curse; in that sheltered, Christian environment I learned some pretty shitty ways of thinking about myself. But being homeschooled also taught me how to look out for myself. Perhaps that part of the equation paved the way for me to become the feminist I am today? My mother would die if she read that. But even so, without both those pieces of the puzzle, I doubt I’d be writing this today.
Feminist philosopher Margaret Urban Walker writes that,
In any case, I think that feminist thinkers are entitled to the excitement and intellectual challenge of forging and intensively testing visionary paradigms, of inaugurating their own discursive communities as sites of solidarity and creative communication in their own terms, and of self-consciously exploring confrontational rhetorics as some instruments, among others, for initiating wholesale intellectual change in their favor. (“Further Notes” 154)
Writing this piece has been a process of “feminist thinking” for me; becoming a part of the HA community has forced me to (re)consider so much about myself. I am grateful for the opportunity to add my voice in solidarity.
There are two versions of me: my parents’ version of me and my version of me. Before my high school years, I don’t think there were two versions of me. Instead, there was just the version my parents wanted. This is probably true of most children, but my parents were fundamentalist Christians involved in ATI – a homeschooling cult.
In my middle school years (I can’t really tell time by years, or by grades, my youth is blurred and marked by big events or debate resolutions), my parents plunged me into the patriarchal/men-must-be-leaders movements of the 1990s. They saw homosexuality, single women, women in authority, and feminism as threats to traditional gender roles. So they trained me to be a warrior for godly men. ATI’s version of this was called ALERT (Ralph has written about it here) and they liked to play Boy Scouts – but with less fun and more Bible study. I became a biblical scholar around this age, constantly studying passages, their Greek and Hebrew meanings, cross-referencing those passages in lexicons and study tools, and recording my observations on something called the “Meditation Worksheet.” Ironically, these worksheets prepared me deconstruct my cultic worldview and to rebuild my own worldview– whoops!
I was that really Christian kid that probably drove you nuts. I preached to my Christian neighbors that they shouldn’t be reading the NIV because it was Satan’s tool to undermine the divinity of Jesus. I passed out tracts at restaurants. I was not afraid to judge everyone, as a thirteen year old, and inform them about the Straight and Narrow Path to Holiness. Some of my closest friends became the pastor of our small Southern Baptist church – we would regularly discuss theology.
In high school, I started to think for myself and form my version of me (I’ll call it “me-me” and my parents’ version “parent-me”). Whenever me-me would discuss his thoughts with my parents, I would come into conflict with them. Their Christian worldview permeated every sector of knowledge – biology, geology, and especially politics, history, and religion. Throughout my high school years I vacillated between me-me and parent-me. At will, I could “turn off” all the parts of myself that my parents disliked. However, when there was something me-me really wanted that I couldn’t just “turn off” my desire for, it drove me crazy. Usually it was girls. It wasn’t a sexual thing, I just loved the intimacy and having someone I could share all my teenage angst with. My parents and I fought for probably five years over girls.
My parents decided that I needed some relationship indoctrination, so I got to learn all about “courtship.” Courtship is about as traditional and stupid as it sounds. I was told that I was supposed to “guard my heart” against “serial dating.” They made dating and breaking up sound like this violent emotional crime that left people with long-term scars. This meant that, before I entered into any relationship, I was supposed to ask my parents’ permission before I asked the girl’s father for permission to date her. Mind you, all power and authority over women was supposed to flow through men. Like any good patriarchy. Physical contact during a courtship is almost always a strict no-no. You are not allowed to hold hands, kiss, hug, or even be together alone. Some of the courtships I have seen have ended in terrible marriages and, in one case, double homicide.
This idea of courtship was huge and fixated on sexual purity and emotional purity. It grew huge after Joshua Harris’ book I Kiss Dating Goodbye and it was advocated at basically every homeschooling event and by most institutions. Some groups formed solely for the purpose of educating people about courtship and Patrick Henry College (started by Michael Farris to train homeschoolers to be influential in Washington, D.C. politics). ATI was huge about courtship, they even advocate betrothal! That’s where the children have even less power in their romantic lives and the parents “pick” out a decent mate for them, then they are forced into a marriage because it’s “God’s will.” Of course, only fathers, and occasionally mothers, know God’s will
So commitment in my romantic relationships was usually propelled by the guilt of needing to be in a “courtship.” Of course, you aren’t supposed to court until the man is financially able to support a woman, which meant I was supposed to avoid romantic relationships til my mid-20s. This was unacceptable, so I just engaged in quasi-courtship with three different girls through high school – sort of promising to marry them all, planning our lives and futures together, and then usually they broke up with me because God told them to (though I was an ass).
I remember I would form a lot of what would become my identity on the car rides home from something. My truck became my only escape on a daily basis – with my truck came the first time in my life I had literal freedom. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. That freedom usually provoked thoughts and I would work big issues like courtship in my mind listening to music. I’m always amazed at how my parents will dismiss me-me and try to guilt and shame parent-me out of the shell. De-construction and re-construction your identity is not easy and my parents always acted like it was fun for me to rebel. Yes, when I was a teenager it was fun to let the immature me-me out for a joy ride, only to be clamped down on and repressed. But that excitement ended in college. I slowly came to a peace about myself that did not depend on my parents, or their affection. Finding the me-me was one thing, but synthesizing that into my emotions was much more difficult.
I say all this to try and explain both of the versions of myself. I can be parent-me, I can turn it on, and turn off my own desires and personality. It took years for me to even find out what me-me wanted from life and I found a tremendous peace when I discovered my desires and not my parents’. Throughout college, I would go home and I would let a little more of me-me come out – it was a very slow “coming out,” to borrow a phrase. I admitted to smoking tobacco. That I wasn’t a libertarian anymore, I was a liberal – lots of these involved political discussions where my parents felt almost as betrayed that I no longer shared their political beliefs than if I had renounced the faith. I never did renounce Christianity, only the corrupt vessel of the Christian church. Admitting I was dating took awhile – I just recently admitted I believed in evolution. Usually, each admission of the me-me ended in a fight or conflict. Even in college, they could not let go.
When I first started dating my wife, I asked if she could stay the night in my parent’s house because I needed a ride back to school. My father said he wasn’t comfortable with that because it would give my younger sister a bad example of “serial dating. To put this in perspective, this would be the second girl I brought home to my family ever. I said that I was really serious about this girl and if they chose to act like this, I would tell my girlfriend, and I would understand if she didn’t want my children around them. This sobered them up quickly and they agreed to let her stay. But it demonstrates the types of conflicts that would occur when me-me contradicted parent-me.
When my parents manage to convince me to attend their church, my mom always expects me to sing. My mother and I spent a lot of time bonding in the church choir when I was younger, so she expects me to find the same joy in it now as I did then. It simply does not work like that. Me-me does not enjoy church because it reminds me of all the negative feelings of guilt, shame, and intense pressure to be good. These days when it comes to spirituality, me-me cannot compromise.
Even now that I am married, my parents still want and expect parent-me. I don’t like the same things, I’m not the same person, and when they laugh and reminisce about the great times they had with parent-me, I can’t help but feel uneasy inside. They reminisce for parent-me because they know they may never see him again. They still try to draw on the guilt and shame they instill in me by saying things like “that’s not what we wanted for your life.” Or telling me the consequences of my sins, then questioning why I don’t think certain things are sins. When they pressure me-me to revert to parent-me, I get angry, defensive, and emotional. So I just stop expecting anything, sharing anything, being vulnerable. I don’t want parent-me for my life – that should mean something. And I don’t take spiritual advice from cultists.
The lawsuit from my former abusive church has come and gone and I have been doing some deep thinking — trying to figure out what brought us to that particular church — what made that church appealing to us? I had to acknowledge that this church, like other prior churches, was strongly pro-homeschooling. In fact, if you didn’t homeschool, you may not feel very comfortable there. So, it made me go back further, all the way back to the very beginning — before we started homeschooling and were investigating. What I have discovered is alarming: patriarchal teachings that are often times abusive, parenting styles that are often abusive, and ideas completely outside of mainstream Christianity are going on in the homeschool movement.
My husband and I have been married 27 years and have 7 children from 25 yrs down to our 6-yr old “caboose”. We have always homeschooled. We have always believed that this was the best choice for our family. We have been to many churches due to my husband’s military service and job changes. Many people have influenced us in our homeschooling, parenting, marriage, and our Christian life journey and right now, I am angry. I am angry about what I have discovered looking over our marriage, looking at our parenting styles over the years, looking at decisions we have made, looking at people who influenced us — people we trusted to be godly, like-minded and who wanted the best for their children and families.
If you have not been connected with the homeschool movement and click on some of these links, you might say: ”Um, yea, you drank the Kool-Aid long ago.” If you’ve been in the homeschool movement, you will probably be nodding along and can reminisce with me. I will take you on a wild journey going back through what I have experienced or seen in the past couple decades as a homeschooling mom. Here is a sampling, and not in any order, of the kinds of influences, beliefs, philosophies, practices we dealt with or were familiar with among the homeschooling movement over the years:
Why did we have so many children? How do you know when your quiver is full? Would we have had this many children if we hadn’t listened to specific teachings? Who invented the jumper dress? Why did I sometimes feel guilty if I didn’t wear my denim jumper? I no longer own a denim jumper. Who decided Gregg Harris or Michael Farris were the spokesmen for homeschoolers? Why did so many homeschoolers flock to the articles and books of Mary Pride?
Is it okay to refrain from sex to not get pregnant or is that saying “no” to God’s blessings of children? Did it really mean one isn’t trusting God if taking measures to prevent pregnancy after cycles returned 6 weeks postpartum (and round-the-clock nursing)? How many blessings of babies did I prevent by taking matters in my own hands? Is God mad at me for my “interference” of “His plan”?
What about all of those families who stop having babies after only 4 children or 2 children — are they disobeying God? Why don’t they want God’s blessings? Who is targeting the homeschooling community to convince them to pop out babies to overpopulate the world with Christians babies? Why does this same dude bombard our mailboxes right before Christmas to encourage us to buy Christmas toys (gender specific boy toys for boy and girly girl toys for girls) when their family does not celebrate this “pagan” holiday?
How did I get to the point where I believed that I may be treading dangerously if I was not a member of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association? Who would protect me if someone from school district came to my door and wanted to find out why my children weren’t attending the evil government school down the block? How many homeschool families printed out instructions on what to say to government officials if “they” came unannounced to our door to interrogate? How many of us had HSLDA phone numbers in a prominent place — just in case? Where did all of this fear come from?
Why was I corrected when I said “public” school instead of their preferred “government” school? Is there an agenda going on? Who is feeding all of this? Who decided that boys should be owning their own home businesses to support their families? Who decided that all colleges were bad until Patrick Henry College was founded by popular homeschool leaders in the “movement” and then all of a sudden it became “okay” and even “good” to send our kids away to college?
How did the homeschool movement influence my views as far as who I voted for or how involved I was in politics? How did they convince me that I was eating improperly and I needed to grind my own wheat and make my own bread? How did the homeschool community have the inside scoop before my traditional-schooled friends from church when it was going to become the end-of-life-as-we knew-it during the Y2K scare? Who brought that hype to the homeschool community? Would you like to ask me how many homeschoolers I personally know who are still going through their stockpiles of grains? Seriously!
When did I get to the point where I looked down at my friends who were Christians and either sent their children to public or private schools when “they should” be teaching their own? How did all of this happen? Why do so many homeschoolers balk at immunizations? Why are some homeschoolers so proud? Homeschooled kids were the smartest because they always won the National Spelling Bees, right? Who decided that homeschoolers should be involved with speech and debate? Why are so many families going to their state capitals and involving themselves in politics — because they were going to be the movers and shakers of world in the political arenas? And why is my husband responsible for my faith and the faith of our children? And why do we have to go through him on spiritual matters? Does God not speak directly to homeschool kids and wives?
Who told me about modesty and how I should be dressing and how my daughters should be dressing? What does modesty have to do with homeschooling? Why do all homeschool boys look alike with similar short haircuts? Who convinced me that my children could never “date”, but must only “court” and that my husband gets to choose our children’s future spouses? How did, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” become such a popular book? Who named the government as “evil” for wanting to know how our children are educated? Why do homeschoolers assume the worst when they file their “notice to intent” with their local school district?
Why do they assume that the school district secretary doesn’t want to deal with homeschoolers and will instigate more trouble by wanting more information than required by law? Who made up this purity ring ceremony — and that our teen daughters should wear their purity rings symbolizing their virginity until they replace it with their wedding ring? Who started this thing where daughters shave their fathers’ beards? Below you will see an invitation to a Father Daughter Tea from Vision Forum. Fast forward to 1:37 to see daughters shaving their fathers. Um, really?
Who decided that boys should have their homes paid for before they get married? And why are organized sports so wrong? When did Young Earth creation become a primary issue to be a Christian and that if you didn’t believe it, you might not be Christian? Why are scientists looked at as if suspect? Psychology is of the devil. What’s with all of those pictures of large families with matching clothes on the covers of homeschooling magazines? Are my children supposed to be wearing matching clothes? Who decided that was the right way to dress kids? Who decided that women should only wear dresses?
And what about those who show up at conventions with head coverings — are we bad women if we don’t have them? Who decided that family-integrated churches were better than traditional churches for our family? Why is it that homeschoolers brag about their children being able to interact and socialize well, yet you can “pick them out” a mile away because they look and act so “different”? Who has been instigating the us-vs-them mentality regarding so many of these topics? Who decided that the only job that we should be teaching our daughters is to be “keepers of the home” and serving their fathers and then serving their future husbands?
Who decided a 1/4-inch plumber’s line was an appropriate tool for spanking? Who taught us that if we had to repeat a command twice to our children, our children were being disobedient: First-Time Obedience. How did we let this group convince us that all infants should be able to go 4 hours between feedings. What single man decided that fathers were an umbrella of authorityover the family below God? What same man also encouraged men and women to get vasectomies and tubal ligations reversed to allow God to control the size of their families and then paraded post-reversal children in front of the auditorium at conventions?
This is quite a diversion from spiritual abuse in the church, but I need to go there. I now believe the homeschooling movement made our spiritually abusive church seem appealing to us. Some of the above is just plain quirky, but other issues go much deeper affecting core spiritual beliefs and agendas.
My daughter, Hannah, is 25 yrs old and she was only homeschooled. The first traditional school she attended was community college and last spring she became a college graduate. Her peers were from an early generation of the growing homeschool movement. More and more blogs are being published by young adults like my daughter who are “coming out” and sharing their homeschool experiences. The stories are not pretty. My daughter has shared some of her story. And you can read the story I wrote about Hannah’s experience here. In that story, you can get an idea of the controlling environment in which she lived and how she had to escape – it remains one of the most popular blog posts.
What she experienced at home has probably gone on in many homes. I bear much responsibility for it. I went along with it. I have apologized to my daughter many times for it. The abusive church we found also aligned with these philosophies of heavy-handed control of children, even adult children. Hannah was 21 when she moved out. She was not a child, yet we thought we owned her.
I assumed (yeah, I know about that word), that when we got into homeschooling that it was a safe community — a community where children’s best interest was at heart. We wanted to have the primary influence in the education of our children. That’s good, right?
But I have discovered that there is an underlying agenda in the homeschooling community that has been there all along — even years before I started — and it continues to this day. I believe that some of this underlying current — taken to an extreme — could be responsible for breaking up families, causing abuse, wreaking havoc on people’s spiritual life.
I firmly believe that God used the lawsuit in a powerful way to highlight the issue of spiritual abuse in the church. He was there during the entire time providing amazing support for me. My life is rich having gone through it. But now I’m wondering if God is using another experience of my life to share here.
While I have spent countless hours writing blog posts about spiritual abuse in the church, I think there is a setup for spiritual abuse that originates in the homeschool movement. In our abusive church, we felt a “kindred spirit” (and all the homeschool moms just laughed at me with that phrase) in the church because of with like-minded teachings and beliefs. Some of these ideas need to be explored further.
I think it’s important to hear from these young adults who have lived it and are now trying to put the pieces together of their childhood together as they begin their families.
Homeschoolers Anonymous 