By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator
Most Christian homeschoolers know Mary Pride as “the queen of homeschooling,” one of the founders of the Quiverfull movement, the anti-feminism author of The Way Home, or the publisher of the wildly popular magazine “Practical Homeschooling.” But she also wrote a lesser known book in 1985 entitled The Child Abuse Industry: Outrageous Facts About Child Abuse & Everyday Rebellions Against a System that Threatens Every North American Family. It is a remarkable read that calls for a “Second North American Revolution” — namely, having babies, abolishing no-fault divorce, going to church, eliminating foster care, homeschooling, re-instituting “biblical” executions of criminals, and getting rid of abuse hotlines.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
I am currently writing an in-depth, multi-part review and analysis of The Child Abuse Industry, which I will publish on Homeschoolers Anonymous as soon as it is finished. But in the meantime, I want to share with you the 10 best — and by “best,” I mean most disturbing — quotations from this book. (And just to make this more tolerable, I added some gifs.)
Trigger warnings for abuse apologism, abuse denialism, and a racial slur.
Also: As a child abuse survivor myself, I find the gifs make reading these ideas more tolerable. However, another child abuse survivor told that, for him, the gifs make the ideas feel more intense. I want to respect everyone’s different ways of processing, so: if you’d like a gif-free version of this list, click here.
And now, without further ado, I will let Mary Pride speak for herself…
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10. “The major problem is that the public has been convinced that child abuse is a major problem.”
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9. “Are one out of four adult women (or one out of three, or two—the statistics keep getting wilder) really the victims of savage lust perpetrated in their youth? Isn’t it possible to organize a bridge party without staring at an abused woman across the table? Where do these wild statistics come from?”
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8. “Never vote for a candidate whose campaign promises include ‘doing more for children.'”
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7. “Child abuse hysteria is a self-righteous coverup for anti-child attitudes.”
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6. “If [child abuse prevention programs] are allowed to proliferate, we will produce for the first time an entire generation of males who have been trained to consider raping their sons and daughters as passably normal behavior.”
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5. “If sex has nothing to do with having babies, you can have sex with anyone or anything. Including children.”
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4. “We need to stop allowing the unsupported testimony of children who are of an age where they can barely distinguish fantasy and reality.”
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3. “Don’t hotline anyone.”
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2. “A retarded daughter told contradictory tales of sexual abuse by her step-brother and other male relatives… So here we have a girl who probably made up the story in the first place.”
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1. “Age segregation increasingly alienates children and adults. Children are the ‘new n*****s.'”
(Not censored in Mary Pride’s version.)
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Homeschoolers Anonymous 
Holy cow! And for the record, it IS difficult to get a group of women together (even just 4 or 5) without at least one of them having been sexually abused as a child. I learned this from experience. Every time the subject comes up among women who trust each other, terrible stories are told. 😦
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I agree Sharon.
I have grown cold to cut and past quotes. I would need to read some in context. Other are completely stupid no matter what is around them. This greatly saddens me.
Abuse is wide spread through out the public school and home school world because abuse is just wide spread. So terrible!
Thanks for sharing.
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Reblogged this on Jessica Veldstra and commented:
Wow… just… wow. As someone who works in child protection the quotes out of this book, by Mary Pride, one fo the founders of Quiverfull are horrific and disgusting. Just because you don’t want a problem to be real, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist and not reporting it just perpetuates the problem.
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I don’t know how you could read that book. I would have been so angry with each reading that I would have thrown it across the room and it would have split apart by the time I was done.
Blindness, ignorance, and delusional denial to a problem does not make the problem right. I believe that is one reason why Jesus separated the sheep from the goats in his story.
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I think I speak for a lot of people when I say WHAT THE @#$%!? Those quote were hair-raising! Denying abuse survivors a voice is not going to make abuse go away, which she fails to realize.
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What is “n*****s” ?? I haven’t a clue.
And, this article makes me so very sad.
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Think racial slur.
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lynnieP: “N*****s” the same as saying “the ‘N’ word.” Before the Civil Rights Movement, even in the North, saying “niggers” was common in public because decent, non-racist white people were too cowed to protest. After our Civil Rights Movement, that was no longer allowed without immediate condemnation. Southerners tried to say “nigrahs” as though nobody understood what they really meant, but they didn’t get away with it. That’s why we now say “blacks” and “African-Americans,” terms that racists think are “politically correct” (aka “PC”). I personally think of PC as “polite and considerate.” The language is still evolving.
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R.L. Stollar, I wonder if Mary Pride would stand by her 1985 statements if asked about them today.
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Not sure. Good question!
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Why do people buy this stuff? I’m so confused…
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It’s not just the CHRISTIAN patriarchs who use scripture to justify their brutally; it’s all men with a “patriarchal” viewpoint. The current issue of “Free Inquiry” has several excellent articles outing abuse by Muslims, Jews and Hindus. Google Free Inquiry Magazine to find them.
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