The following excerpt is from HSLDA founder Michael Farris’s 1996 book How A Man Prepares His Daughters For Life. Farris has his patriarchal beliefs on full display in this book, including such passages as: “I am very supportive of the concept of the authority of fathers in their home…It’s important to be right…It is appropriate to simply say to your daughter, ‘Because I’m the dad, that’s why‘” (page 21); “a woman should be submissive to her husband” (page 96); and “husbands are ultimately responsible for family decisions” (page 101).
He defends “a very traditional view about the role of women in churches” (page 27) and later explains that he means “a doctrinal position of male-only elders” (page 55). Farris says he is “a firm believer in—dare I say it?—spanking,” that fathers “should be in charge of all discipline,” and boasts that he spanked his daughters until they were 13 (page 30). He even dedicates an entire chapter to straw-manning feminism (Chapter Seven, “Solving the Feminist Paradox”), featuring lines like “Lesbianism is considered by many to be the apex of feminism” (page 96) and “Feminists prey on daughters of under-appreciated mothers” (page 105).
But what stood out the most to me was the following 3 paragraphs with which Farris begins Chapter 5, “Guiding Your Daughter Toward Positive Friendships.” The tone-deafness, minimization, and victim-blaming Farris engages in regarding this very clear situation of domestic abuse — and the fact that he provided legal defense for a domestic abuser — goes to show that child abuse is not the only type of abuse Farris does not seem to take seriously. (For those unaware, a quarter-size bruise is a serious indicator of abuse, both for child abuse as well as domestic violence cases.) From page 77:
When I was a very young lawyer in Spokane, Washington, I was assigned to defend a case in which two professing Christians, “Steve” and “Lana,” were getting a divorce. Lana was seeking a divorce because of the advice of her “friends.” She and Steve, my client, got into an argument one evening and he grabbed her by the arm and squeezed. He left a bruise on her arm about the size of a quarter. He was ashamed of the action—as he should have been—and he apologized. But it was a far cry from the “battered-woman syndrome.” Lana was told by her friends, however, that she was a victim of wife abuse and she should seek a divorce. Believe it or not, she did.
A few weeks later her friends advised Lana that she should start dating, even though Steve was actively seeking to reconcile the marriage. One night when Lana was out on a date, their two-year old son fell behind the bunk bed and died from strangulation.
Lana knew what God expected of her regarding forgiveness and reconciliation, but she listened to her friends instead. She paid a terrible price for the wrong advice from the wrong kind of friends.
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Vincepal. Image links to source.
Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Sarah Morgan” is a pseudonym.
I wish I had known they did not have to stay in my world.
I wish I had known that answers can be found for the very real problems I was begging god to fix.
I wish I had known that the threat of hell is illegitimate.
I wish I had known that, if I wanted, I could succeed at getting away: because, no, god was not on their side. I didn’t learn to drive because it was hell to try, with one of my parents in the passenger seat telling me my every wrong move. If I had known that driving is a ticket out, I could have pushed through that or gotten driver’s ed. I wish I had known that out is doable.
I wish I had known that it is okay to both earn and spend money on the things important to me, and that loving things simply because I love them is okay.
I wish I had known it is okay to be beautiful on purpose, and that putting effort into looking pretty does not make me stupid.
I wish I had known that strangers are some times much, much kinder than my family. (Strangers often don’t know differently than to threat you like a person. They also can have the capacity to act more objectively towards you, unlike the family friend whose vested interests include staying in your dad’s good graces by disbelieving you. It was another six years before I started to realize how it felt for someone who didn’t know my parents to hear my story.)
I wish I had known that sex has the potential of being good and non-painful, and can be had without jailing yourself in a submissive relationship for life or trampling on the Only One who truly defines true love. I wish I had some inkling that said One was made up by people to control me, and that this was unhealthy.
I wish I had known that it was okay for me to exist, and that being me was an appropriate goal to strive for, rather than a bad thing to extinguish.
I wish I had known that it was okay to find a boyfriend. I wish I had known to calculate my risks based on the things I could see and perceive, rather than factoring in the supernatural things I had been taught to fear. I wish I had known that my body was my own, and understood my options when it came to birth control and hair styles. I wish I had known I didn’t have to let my parents control me, that the terrible darkness I fought was not my fault, and that it was possible to find something different.
I wish I had known that college can be a ticket out. I wish I had known it was okay to plan a career based on a practical job combined with my passion, and the sooner the better.
I wish I had known that it was okay to love what I love, and hate what I hate, and that I don’t have to announce it to anyone or trust this information to anyone I don’t feel safe around. I wish I had known that I knew both far more and far less than I thought, and I could be wrong about significant things without my value as a human decreasing. I wish I had known that, as a girl, I could have as many options and was at least as smart as my brothers.
I wish I had known it was okay for me to have friends, and to pursue hobbies and interests and adventures; that time has the value we humans give it, and none of my activities were inherently a “waste of time” — except perhaps exerting effort whose sole return is the pleasure of people who didn’t even like or want to know me. I wish I had known that I deserved respect.
I wish I had known that what I grew up with was messed up; that I was not crazy, but my surroundings may have been. I wish I had known to see my anger and discomfort with my upbringing as a sign it was drastically skewed, and that there is zero merit in lying to say a parent is a better person than their behavior has shown them to be. I wish I had known that I had far more power in my own life, and far less in the broader sphere of my family, than I had the capacity to comprehend.
In summary:
I wish I had known that, if I wanted a hero, it was going to have to be me.
No one, human or divine, was coming to my rescue. I wish I had known that I was capable, that escape was morally okay, and that it was up to me.
The impact of attitudes towards education, especially higher education, and its impact on adult life, has recently come up in discussion in the home school survivor community. We all have different experiences and heard variations of different messages while growing up in homeschooling families. Here is my experience:
My parents didn’t place much value on education. We were homeschooled in a way, meaning we were at home and some effort was made to buy books and teach lessons. But the underlying organization and structure wasn’t there, and they didn’t have the motivation or follow through to make it happen. We received a relatively decent education in the first few grades, I assume; we learned to read and do basic math in those years. But no one received any education past about grade 6-8, depending on the subject.
They taught that you didn’t need college or university to succeed in life. They said that because we were homeschooled, we were special, and people would understand that and recognize the extraordinary intelligence we were gifted with, without needing a diploma to prove it. They talked about the bullying and abuses that were perpetrated by public school and high school teachers. My mother described at length times that she was publicly humiliated in class by her teachers, and how she could not stand the public schools and that they were protecting us from those abuses.
As a girl though, there were really no plans for me to have a future at all.
Other than vague mentions of a husband and kids in my future, it wasn’t discussed. Even the emphasis on me needing to be able to cook, clean, and help raise my siblings was mainly openly rooted in my parents’ need for my help, and it was not even masked as ‘training for the future’ except to outsiders (conservative fundamentalist outsiders). Oddly, sometimes when I talked about wanting a career, it wasn’t really shot down, and my parents told me to trust their education system and I would get where I wanted. They brought back the line that I was incredibly smart and special, and that satisfied me and I believed it.
My brothers were told they could have any career they wanted, without college. They were told that someone would hire them or they could have their own businesses, all without college or even finishing high school. They said that years of education was part of the new age government control system and we needed to break free.
Due to the chaos in my childhood home, both of my close in age brothers did not achieve more than an average of a grade 8 or 9 education. They have spent time as adults earning a GED, with various rates of success. They most certainly were not granted excellent careers on the basis of being special and homeschooled.
Because I attended high school against my parents’ wishes and also went to university, my story is different, however I can still speak to the impact of the anti-college attitude.
Because there was no direction in my life, with no real hopes and dreams, until I was 17, I didn’t see the point of pursuing much education at all. What line should be drawn on when to end the homeschooling process when the goal is not college? So I did not resist when my parents stopped making an effort to educate me. I did not advance at all academically between age 10 and age 12. I made some more progress at age 12, but once I was 13 or 14 their impact on my education was pretty much over. I continued to read Bob Jones textbooks until I was 15, and wrote down answers on my own, but it was for myself, no one checked them.
I did not complete a grade 8 education at that time. I was not taught math past grade 6 until I went to high school at age 17. I never had any intention of pursuing a high school education until the year I turned 17, although I had a vague plan to go to university. The year I turned 17, my grandparents told me that I wouldn’t be able to go to university without a secondary education.
So I went to school, and I struggled. I struggled with ambivalence, knowing that it wasn’t what my parents wanted me to do, and some doubt because of the message I had received that I was special and shouldn’t have to prove it. But the courses were hard and unlike my experience with the Bob Jones textbooks, guessing didn’t work, especially with math. I had two dear math teachers who did a phenomenal job, but it’s hard to describe the crushing feeling of inadequacy you experience when you find out at age 17 that the 14 year old students are more educated than you.
The ambivalence followed me into university. I was only at the highschool for two and a half years, not nearly long enough to reverse all the messages about how unnecessary higher education was. I still tried for a while to guess and at least prove to myself that I already knew everything and didn’t need to learn. Because I didn’t learn how to build and maintain a career from my parents, since they did not do this, I felt guilty about having that as a goal. I felt guilty because it somehow felt arrogant, and I still had some feelings of inadequacy. I felt guilty because I was also proud of myself and felt guilty about the pride. I was also a bit afraid, because people warned me that higher education corrupts; although they seemed just as worried about the high school being corrupting as they were about university.
I finished university, and it turns out I was quite academically inclined. But not special. I still needed to learn, and to do that I had to learn how to learn first. I think that some people who are believers in homeschooling might read this and think that I needed to learn how to learn to fit into the public school mold, but that is not what I mean. I was able to learn as much as my mother was able to teach me; basic reading, writing and arithmetic. I believe there is such a thing as academically successful homeschooling, and in those cases those students continue to learn how to learn as their ability to process increasingly more complex information progresses. When children are not taught how to learn, or when there are other circumstances that disrupt that process, such as abuse, their progress can become stalled.
Growing up with parents who have negative attitudes towards education can remove motivation from bright young students, when there is nothing to strive towards.
It can create confusion when students do decide to pursue education. And for those that internalize those messages, and do not pursue education, the cost is high. Without an education, it is hard to get jobs. Where I live, even Subway and McDonald’s ask that you either have a high school diploma or show that you are working on one. Getting into a trade can also be difficult, as most of the trades jobs eventually require you to get a “ticket” which means going to school, and if you haven’t learned how to learn and test, you won’t be able to succeed in the trade program either.
Although some workplaces look at experience, moving up in companies and getting promotions can be heavily based on education as well, meaning that even those with experience can stay in entry level positions (at entry level wages) because of lack of education. Saying that one was homeschooled will not get someone a job or a promotion, and if people have not excelled in the learning process and become critical and reflective thinkers, their people skills and self management will also suffer.
Even a girl who is raised in a conservative home and wants to be a homeschooling mother needs to know how to learn, and has to have learned enough to effectively homeschool her children. She needs to be reflective and a critical thinker in order to manage a home and a family, and to juggle the responsibilities of teaching and parenting effectively. She will need to be able to learn how to parent, and how to deal with it if a child has special needs.
The stakes are high, and an education holds more weight than just a piece of paper.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on December 17, 2014.
In 2013, Alabama legislators introduced a mandatory reporting law. While all states require teachers and certain medical professionals to report suspicions of child abuse, some go further and make all individuals mandatory reporters. The Alabama bill read as follows:
Any person who knows or has reasonable cause to believe or suspect that a child has been abused or neglected or who observes any child being subjected to conditions or circumstances that would reasonably result in abuse shall report the same . . .
In other words, the bill would have required “any person who knows or has reasonable cause to believe or suspect that a child has been abused or neglected or who observes any child being subjected to conditions or circumstances that would reasonably result in abuse” to report their concerns. HSLDA objected. Their position was as follows:
This bill is well-intended, but it is much too broad. It would require even children of all ages to make reports of abuse or neglect and subject them to prosecution if they failed to do so. Young children should not be responsible for making a determination of whether abuse or neglect has occurred and then reporting it to authorities.
Another problem with this bill is that it requires reporting something that is not even abuse or neglect. Families will be investigated because someone reported “conditions or circumstances” that in the opinion of the reporter could result in abuse. Persons should be investigated only if there is evidence of actual abuse, not conditions or circumstances that might lead to abuse.
This bill should be opposed.
From where I’m currently standing, I don’t see a problem with requiring people to report “conditions and circumstances that would reasonably result in abuse.” Not all social services visits are investigations. It is not uncommon for social workers to offer at-risk family resources or tools, helping them along and preventing things from descending into legal abuse.
As for children being required to report, I did some digging and found that the language in the bill is typical for universal mandatory reporter states, which require any “person” who suspects abuse to report it. So while I would have a problem with penalizing children for not reporting their own abuse, that’s not what’s going on here.
But I promised you more than this, didn’t I? HSLDA goes further—much further.
Colorado—Senate Bill 220: Expands Definition of Mandatory Reporters
Summary:
Senate Bill 220 expands the definition of mandatory reporters for potential child abuse or neglect to include emergency medical service providers.
HSLDA’s Position:
Oppose.
No explanation is given, as though no explanation is needed. The bill ultimately passed through the legislature and were signed by the state’s governor. But HSLDA’s opposition to the bill makes it clear just how far its opposition to mandatory reporting laws goes—all the way. What possible reason could you have for not requiring emergency medical personnel to report suspected child abuse or neglect?
Ostensibly, HSLDA opposes mandatory reporting laws out of concerns about false reports. But then, both Alabama and Colorado already penalize knowingly false reports. Perhaps the concern is accidental false reports. But then, that is why there are investigations—to determine whether a tip can be substantiated.
What is the practical effect of opposing a law that would make emergency medical providers mandatory reporters? Well, without this law emergency medical providers would not be required by law to report suspicions of child abuse and neglect. In other words, it would be legal for an emergency medical provider to notice evidence of abuse or neglect and yet choose not to report it. In other words, the practical effect of opposing a law like this would be to make it harder for child abuse and neglect to come to light.
From what I’ve read of their materials, it appears that HSLDA would like to prevent social services investigations in all but the most severe cases—cases where an investigation hardly need take place at all, so obvious is the evidence. The organization manifests a lack of understanding about how abuse manifests itself and how it affects children. Abusers are generally very good at hiding their abuse—and there is no dichotomy of 100% good parents on the one hand and 100% evil parents on the other. When HSLDA defends child abusers—and they do—they likely do so in part because they have a caricatured image of what an abusive family looks like.
For HSLDA, social services investigations are primarily something that get in the way of parents doing their thing. They are an annoyance to be avoided. By opposing mandatory reporting laws, HSLDA works to cut down on the number of child abuse and neglect reports made. This makes sense in terms of their longterm vision—HSLDA would like the state to have as little power over parents as possible. As a result, the organization seems to weigh these child abuse reports in terms of parental inconvenience, ignoring the negative affect their efforts to cut down on reports made may have on the children involved.
One final note. It is worth asking why an organization whose mission is keeping homeschooling legal would insert itself in mandatory reporting laws. One reason is that homeschooling parents may be reported for educational neglect. But there’s something else involved too: HSLDA defends its member families against accusations of child abuse. Cutting down on child abuse and neglect reports furthers their organizational interests.
Whatever the precise reason for HSLDA’s involvement in mandatory reporting laws, this is another example of HSLDA taking positions that affect far more children than those who are homeschooled.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on December 10, 2014.
Ostensibly, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) works to keep homeschooling legal. In practice, the organization does much, much more than that. Over a year ago, I wrote a a series on HSLDA and Child Abuse,but HSLDA does more than oppose mandatory reporting laws. The organization also opposes the UN disabilities treaty and Common Core. HSLDA claims to involve itself in these issues out of concern that they could be used to restrict homeschooling. But while HSLDA’s opposition to the UN disabilities treaty and the Common Core is well known, its opposition to other measures and programs is less well known.
Today I am beginning a new series: Things HSLDA Opposes. I will go through HSLDA’s positions on state legislation over the course of 2013 to examine the breadth of programs and measures HSLDA opposes. This series will have relevance far beyond homeschooling, because HSLDA is intertwined with conservative politics and is part of a conservative mentality that is less about protecting parental rights than it is about imposing a laundry list conservative ideals on families whether parents like it or not.
*****
In 2013, Arkansas legislators introduced a proposal to create voluntary home visitation programs, which would allow parents to request home visits from nurses, social workers, and other professionals to promote child health, effective parenting, and school readiness. Here are some relevant excerpts from the bill:
(2) “Home visitation” means voluntary family-focused services that promote appropriate prenatal care to assure healthy births, primarily in the home, to an expectant parent ora parent with an infant, toddler, or child up to kindergarten entry that address:
(A) Child development;
(B) Literacy and school readiness;
(C) Maternal and child health;
(D) Positive parenting practices;
(E) Resource and referral access; and
(F) Safe home environments;
20-78-902. Home visitation programs — Oversight
(a) A home visitation program under this subchapter shall provide face-to-face home visits by nurses, social workers, and other early childhood and health professionals or trained and supervised workers too:
(1) Build healthy parent and child relationships;
(2) Empower families to be self-sufficient;
(3) Enhance social and emotional development;
(4) Improve maternal, infant, or child health outcomes, including reducing preterm births;
(5) Improve the health of the family;
(6) Increase school readiness;
(7) Promote positive parenting practices;
(8) Support cognitive development of children; or
(9) Reduce incidence of child maltreatment and injury.
The bill was so well liked in Arkansas that it passed both houses of the state legislature unanimously. And it’s easy to see why. Studies have found that home visits from a nurse reduce the number of emergency care episodes in infants by 50%.
Summary: This bill would create a voluntary home visitation program that provides face-to-face home visits by nurses, social workers, and other early childhood and health professionals to teach parents how to be effective according to state standards. While this would begin as a voluntary program, it is very intrusive and comprehensive and could become a mandatory program for all families in the future.
HSLDA’s Position:
Oppose.
This is a theme we’re going to see in this series: HSLDA claims to protect and promote parental rights, but in fact works to impose its ideas on parents. Note that HSLDA opposes the voluntary home visitation programs because they are “very intrusive and comprehensive” (isn’t this for the parents themselves to decide) and because it “could become a mandatory program.” But by opposing a voluntary program because they don’t like it and because it could in the future be made mandatory, HSLDA is in practice working to deprive parents of access to a program they might want to access.
In other words, HSLDA is advocating not for widening parents’ range of choices and options but rather for restricting them.
It’s worth noting that I can’t think of any reason to oppose making programs like this mandatory. Parenting young children is a lot of work, and having access to support is important. When I take my children in for checkups, their doctor asks questions about their development and my parenting and answers any questions I might have. Provided a program like this had accountability and proper funding and supervision, it would provide similar support. But HSLDA sees programs like this as such a threat to parents that explaining why they’re a problem is completely unnecessary.
HSLDA appears to have a very individualistic approach to families. In HSLDA’s view, it seems that families should go it alone, or find support in family, church, and community. Finding support in government programs is an automatic problem, a view likely grounded in HSLDA’s extreme small government conservatism.
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Catarina Oberlander. Image links to source.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on November 28, 2014.
Cynthia Jeub touched on this in the first part of her post “Freeing Self-Deceived Fundamentalists“. My family has glorified death for a really long time. I remember Columbine, like she was talking about – being something almost revered – not remotely tragic. When things were shitty(-er than normal) or if I was making a life choice my mom didn’t agree with she would say “well the end times are coming and we’ll be raptured soon [so we won’t have deal with XYZ]”. Going to heaven was all my parents really cared about, they instilled a sense of life being almost useless into me, unintentionally.
Why bother living here when life will be so much better after you die?
When parents neglect or kill their children because they think god told them to or that they’re saving them.
When parents talk about how brave Abraham was for almost murdering Isaac.
When I remember that my parents coped with my two still-born siblings by talking about how lucky they were that they got to be in heaven while we had to suffer on earth…
I used to be afraid, or worried sometimes……..that something like that would happen. That “god” would tell my parents to murder us, and they would. Or that I would be murdered (martyred) because I was a (true) christian in America, and I would look down that gun barrel at Columbine and say “Jesus will save me” or “Get behind me satan” or whatever clever bible phrase I could come up with before my imminent death.
And my parents wouldn’t mourn – they’d talk about how much better off I was dead than alive, how everyone needs to be a christian so they can wait out their miserable existence and go to paradise.
It’s really depressing thinking about it. But it explains a lot about why, I guess, I’ve rarely been afraid of dying and have always just been kinda nonchalant about it.
It’s not a good thing, because it adds intensity to depression: why bother living, anyway? Now that I don’t believe in god and don’t believe that suicide would nullify my non-existent salvation.
But when I was a child…
The emphasis my parents put on dying and going to heaven always bothered me.
It was like they were so ready for our lives to be over.
They didn’t want to live.
They communicated that living was a waste of time. After all, we’re citizens of heaven, not earth, so why care about the world?
And that always fucked with me because I wanted to live, and I felt guilty for wanting to live, fully, and make the most of my time and help people while I was here, and even, (gasp) enjoy my life here. Because some part of me understood that being here mattered, even though I didn’t – and sometimes still don’t – know why.
I was so hurt when my mom would rather I die/be raptured than marry my spouse. She said, hopefully, that Jesus would probably come back before I even had that chance.
I can’t explain to you with words how much that messes with a person. When your parents whole life revolves around the end of their, yours, and everyone else’s life………when rapture is the answer to things that you don’t like…and pretend like everyone who wants to live and love now is silly because obviously they should just be working on getting into heaven.
Everything my parents do is motivated by being the best christians so they get all the heavenly kudos.
I think my parents were really really depressed.
And I think that messed with me in a lot of ways, too.
There is a parenting paradigm I’d like to talk about. It begins with the idea of “parental authority”, which begins with the idea that there is a hierarchical authority structure in life that everyone must fit into and children are at the bottom. I’m the parent, you’re the child. I’m the boss, you have to obey. Everything in this paradigm is based on the idea that some of us have positions of authority and submission to authority is good, right, orderly, and “God’s plan” for all of us.
But what if it isn’t? What if it’s just a model of how we’ve set up our relationships, a pattern to follow, that may or may not work out the best for everyone involved? What if there’s a better model to follow? I mean, in a hierarchical model, with people on top and people on the bottom, it seems that the ones on the bottom get the short end of the stick. And all too often, when applied to parenting in an authoritarian manner, children are the ones that have the most to lose.
It is often taught in conservative circles that parents have to right to require what they want of their children, and children must obey no matter what. It is even encouraged to set up arbitrary “training sessions” to “test” a child’s submission and obedience to authority, for no other reason then to condition them to follow your every command. Children are set up, and if they do well, they pass, but if they succumb to temptation, they get thwacked and punished, thus enforcing the idea that Mom and Dad are the boss and need no other reason to be obeyed other than their perceived authority over the child. If I say jump, I don’t owe you an explanation nor do I need a reason because *I’m the Mom*, you are the child, I have the power over you, you must learn to submit. And all of this is justified by invoking “God’s will for your life”.
In this paradigm or parenting model, children are expected to obey, to suppress their emotions, to never voice their own opinion because all that matters is their obedience to authority. They have no autonomy, their feelings don’t matter, they have no freedom to choose for themselves, and they are at the whim of their parents, their authorities.
But what if children are people too?
What if parenting is less about obedience and more about instilling The Golden Rule?
What if good parenting is about producing adults that know how to make wise choices and respect other people?
What if, instead of seeking ways to prove “I’m the Boss and you will obey me”, I’m instead seeking out ways to teach them how to choose for themselves? To let them learn how to express themselves in a healthy manner? Teaching them that their choices have consequences in life? What if I include them in decisions that will affect them? Teach them their thoughts and feelings matter to me?
What if I even *gasp!* teach them to question authority? To think for themselves? Even if that means questioning me?
I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is this: What is my parenting goal?
Because, for a long time, my goal was incongruent with my parenting methods. My parenting philosophy was contrary to my goals for my children. I just didn’t realize it. I was so focused on the here and now, I forgot to see the big picture…the one where my kids end up as adults and are a product of my parenting.
“Parental authority”, the idea that we are the boss and they must learn to obey without question purely because of our position over them, goes against everything I believe in and desire to instill in my kids. I don’t want to raise little robots! I want to produce smart, thinking people, that can recognize bullshit from a mile away. That stand up to evil and fight for justice, even against “authorities”. Teaching a child to obey “authority” without question is dangerous. Because “authorities” are human and can be evil. Matter of fact, power corrupts and it seems to me that those who are in authority over other people are often the very ones from whom we must protect our children. I *want* my kids to question everything and everyone. What better place to model and teach this than with me, where they are safe and loved and their hearts treasured?
So I give them options. I do what I can to let them make their own choices about their lives. There are going to be times when I have to set boundaries that they can’t have a say in and don’t understand because they are young and immature in many ways. So how much more should I be celebrating the times when they CAN have a say? Seeking them out, even. And those times are much more numerous than I previously thought. For instance, I don’t believe that it is my choice to needlessly and permanently alter my sons’ (or daughters’) bodies by cosmetic circumcision. It’s their body, their choice; not mine. I don’t believe I should be the only one to choose what church we go to and not give heavy consideration to my children’s thoughts and desires; they are part of this family too, after all, and the decision affects them. It’s my job to make sure my kids are dressed appropriately for the occasion and the weather, but the details are always up to them. I think that by letting my children know that they have a voice that will be heard, that I value their input, that I respect their autonomy, that I celebrate their individuality, that they won’t be ignored or brushed off or their ideas considered less important than mine, I will be forming a relationship of mutual trust and respect that will last a lifetime. It helps them to listen better on those times when I need to put my foot down if those times are few and far between. I need to model respect if I want respectful children. I need to honor their personhood and their autonomy.
I think the biggest step is to be able to see our children as people.
It’s a simple as that. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Children aren’t our possessions. They aren’t property to do what we want with. They’re people. Little, unfinished people, but still people, with all the thoughts and feelings and desires and conflicts that you and I have.
I have nothing to prove to my children. I don’t need to “show them who’s boss”. That’s not the kind of relationship I desire with them. I desire for them to be wise, independent, compassionate, passionate, lovers of justice and mercy, capable, respectful, and strong. If I want them to value others, I must value them. If I want them to be kind to others, I must be kind to them. If I desire respect, I must show respect. I do not see respect as something I am entitled to because “I’m the mom”, but something I’ve earned because I have shown respect to my children. This seems very simple to me. As simple as “do unto others as you want others to do unto you”.
See your children as people, change the way you look at them and change the way you see yourself in relation to them, and I guarantee you will change the way you parent them.
Look at the end goal and think about whether your parenting philosophy is going to get you there or if it needs some major overhauling.
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Eric Magnuson. Image links to source.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Cynthia Jeub’s blog CynthiaJeub.com. It was originally published on November 24, 2014.
Trigger warnings: Christian martyr culture, child abuse
“Maybe I’m mistaken, expecting you to fight
Or maybe I’m just crazy, I don’t know wrong from right
But while I am still living, I’ve just got this to say
It’s always up to you if you want to be that
want to see that
want to see that way.” -Supertramp
“Do you remember wanting to die?” My housemate asked.
“Yep,” I replied. “After Columbine, they made all those kids heroes, and we 90s kids grew up just wanting someone to hold a gun to our heads and ask if we believed in Jesus. It should have just been what it was – a tragedy. They made it into an aspiration.”
“I always wanted to go to China, and for them to kill me for my faith. That was the best thing that could possibly happen to you.”
“I thought for sure I’d be killed for being a Christian by now. I never thought I’d reach adulthood.”
The other people in the room were shocked, and her boyfriend had lost his appetite.
The thing is, we were being mild. I could easily have gone into detail about the books I read and loved from very young – I read Joan of Arc when I was five, Samuel Morris when I was nine, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Jesus Freaks, and Tortured for Christ as a teenager. The Left Behind: The Kids series, which I read at age ten and eleven, described Christians being lined up to be guillotined after the Mark of the Beast appeared. My family never subscribed to the Voice of the Martyrs magazine, but I still found enough of those to mix the fictional Left Behind stories with real life.
The best literary example I’ve ever seen of the fundamentalist child’s mindset is in Orson Scott Card’s book A War of Gifts. While it’s disappointingly inconsistent with the book Ender’s Game, it’s worth the read as its own story. The main character, Zechariah, is seven years old when the government takes him to train for space warfare. He hates the government, and pushes his religion on everyone in the space school. When the other kids complain, Zech says he’s being persecuted. His father beat him, and he thinks he deserves it because of his rebellious spirit.
I remember being that seven-year-old who wanted to be persecuted and to die. It’s hard to describe what the dedication is like. I was spanked, and I thanked my parents for it. I wanted to die, and I thought that made me a hero. I thought I was happy. I thought I was doing the right things. I was willing to suffer and die for what I believed. Today, remaining a Christian is something so rife with conflicted emotions that I can’t even talk about it. My Christianity and the Infinite One can wait for me to process the manipulation and self-deception, no matter how long it takes.
When you’re willing to die for something, it’s very hard for people to reach you. That’s why I don’t know what would have worked when I was younger. Getting out was a process. The “breakthrough moment” couldn’t happen until I learned how to recognize what was wrong.
My sister Alicia tried to reach out to me many times, but I could not be reached. That’s the power of living in a manipulative household. I believed that she was a bad influence, and that she had abandoned me.
Now, looking back, I understand why my siblings have the same mistrust for me as I did for her.
If anyone tried to tell me that it wasn’t normal to set aside my schoolwork to bathe seven kids, or to dedicate my weekends to scrubbing all the floors in the house on my hands and knees, I would have just said they didn’t understand. My family life was different, so outsiders would of course be judgmental. When I found people with genuine concerns about my family online, my parents would write them off as “the haters,” and I believed that’s what they were.
If anyone had told me it wasn’t my job to keep everyone in my house happy, I wouldn’t have listened. I was an empowered, virtuous girl. I hated the phrase “it’s not your job.” I was capable of making the house relatively peaceful, so why shouldn’t I? It’s not like anybody else was going to do it. Meekness and self-deception gave me small comforts.
When people tried to tell me there was something wrong, it was always in a condescending tone. I was told I’d understand when I was older. I was dismissed as naïve, and my choice to embrace my lifestyle was treated like stupidity. Condescension never worked. You can’t tell someone who’s willing to die that they’re stupid or misled. The persecution complex plays into that perfectly: you’re insulting me, good for me, I’m suffering for doing what is right.
If you know anyone who’s immersed in fundamentalism, you need to know that we’re not stupid. We’re surviving, and we don’t know it. We will dismiss your condescension and shut you out, and honestly, you’ll deserve it. We’re told that we can fight and lose, or we can succumb and survive, and the latter is only acceptable if it’s convincing. And the easiest way to be convincing is to convince yourself.
People asked if I felt abused. I said no. People asked if my family felt like a cult. I said no. People asked if my life was bizarre because I was one of fifteen kids. My answer was always, “This is normal for me. What’s it like to be one of two kids?”
What did work was being recognized for who I was, and that happened when I made friends in college. Before that, I was praised all the time for the right things: I was great at cooking, cleaning, baking, sewing, caring for children.
When I got to college, I didn’t have to fear losing friends because I liked rap music and symphonic metal. Instead, my friends said I had good taste. When I got to college, my friend Cynthia saw a rebel in me because I was constantly criticizing the education system.
My old friends were “exhorters and encouragers,” who helped me on rough days. This life was holier, it was supposed to be difficult, it was the narrow path. It never occurred to me that maybe the difficulty of my life was an indication that something was wrong. It wouldn’t have helped if someone told me it shouldn’t be so hard.
I got out because people knew me for me, not what I was supposed to be. They didn’t talk about what was wrong with my lifestyle, they just encouraged what I didn’t know was okay.
So if you know someone who’s still in the world of self-deceived fundamentalism, please, please don’t condescend or even try to convince them that there’s something wrong with the world they know. Criticism is easy and it makes sense, but it doesn’t work.
Just listen and find out what makes us individuals, the part of us that’s not accepted in the world we know. Prize that. Nurture it. Let us be ourselves. We carry intense shame for it and we’re afraid to show it. We’re very good at hiding it. Help us be ourselves, and the pressure to be what we’re not will help us find freedom.
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Patrick Gannon. Image links to source.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on November 10, 2014.
I recently came upon a post titled 3 Ways Homeschoolers Socialize Differently than School Kids. Curious, I clicked. I should have known better. Predictably, the post was written by a homeschooling mother who has no idea what it’s like to actually be a homeschooled child. In this post I will respond to the points made by blogger Jennifer Fitz, speaking from my experience as a homeschool alumna.
1. Homeschool kids break their own ice.
I picked up my son from his Confirmation kick-off event, a true microcosm of suburban 9th grade living. We were delayed in departing, and I noticed he was chatting with a boy I’d never met before, who had “Chris” written on his name tag. We got in the car. “So I saw you were chatting with, um, Chris? Is it? Nice kid?”
Usually the boy has a few interesting stories to share about the people he meets. This time he shrugged. “I don’t know. I just started talking to him when you showed up. We were so busy doing ice breakers we didn’t get to actually meet anybody.”
Yeah, homeschool kids don’t get ice breakers. You show up at a new event with people you’ve never met, and your parents leave you to the wolves. “Go find some kids. Or make yourself useful somewhere.”
They always do. It can take as long as five or ten minutes, if it’s a large group event the kids are joining midstream. But my kids never sit in a corner neglected. They are in the habit of introducing themselves, striking up a conversation, and finding something, anything, in common with whomever is tossed their way.
Some children are more extroverted and others are more introverted. What exactly does this have to do with homeschooling? My public schooled daughter walks right up to other kids and introduces herself. My shy homeschooled little sister does not, preferring to hang back much longer until she feels comfortable. Trust me when I say that this isn’t about homeschooling.
2. Homeschool kids spend the bulk of their time with people different from themselves.
Sitting at a lunch table with the same five friends every day, exactly the same age, same academic track, same clubs, and same fashion tastes? Yeah, that never happens in homeschooling. Mixed-age, mixed-neighborhood, mixed-ability social circles are the norm among homeschoolers. Cliqueishness is a no-go, because 1) the parents lose patience with that nonsense fast and 2) on any given day, you might have to be friends with exactly that one person you would have happily excluded if only this were the lunchroom and you had the choice of your favorites.
Growing up, I never, ever had a friend who was not also able bodied, middle class, white, evangelical, and the child of two married heterosexual parents. Heading off to college came as a huge shock because I was suddenly thrown in with people who were completely different from me. But this makes sense, if you think about it. When you are homeschooled your social world is whatever your parents choose to give you. Some homeschooling parents will expose their children to a wide diversity of people, but others will keep their children in a homogenous bubble.
My daughter is only in kindergarten, but already she has been exposed to more different people than I was through high school. There are black and white kids in her class, middle class and poor kids, children with Christian and atheist parents, children with single parents and children with parents who never married, and disabled children. My public schooled daughter is experiencing more different people in kindergarten than I experienced until college.
Jennifer adds this:
From there, it only gets more different: Homeschool kids spend a lot of time with grown-ups. Not just their parents. Not just teachers. (As a kid writing fiction, I could only ever think up “teacher” for a profession for my adult characters, because that was the only profession I was ever exposed to enough to have an idea of what the job entailed.) Homeschool kids spend their formative years going wherever their parents go, doing all the adult chores that grown-ups do. The people who live and work in their community aren’t stage hands for a me-centered teenage drama; they are the community. Homeschool kids get used to having spur-of-the-moment adult conversation with grown-ups of every age, profession, and cultural background.
Actually, socializing with adults is very different from socializing with other children. As a homeschooled child, I never had a problem socializing with adults—I knew they would praise me for how mature and smart I was, how hard working and diligent. Other children, on the other hand? Haha, nope. I got on fine with the other homeschooled children in my social circle, but I was literally afraid of public school children. They were so different from me that I had no idea how to relate to them. They were scary. I had to enter a public high school to take the PSAT, and I was so anxious I was sick that morning—not because of the exam, I wasn’t worried about that in the least, it was the entire idea of being surrounded by public school kids. I couldn’t handle it.
Now I am not saying that every homeschooled child is afraid of public school children, or that this is the natural product of being homeschooled. Absolutely not! But Jennifer makes a mistake in generalizing from how she is socializing her son to how every other parent out there socializes their children. What kind of socialization homeschooled kids get is almost entirely dependent on their parents. Some parents are absolutely crippled by the lack of socialization they have in their homeschooled upbringing while others thrive and develop healthy social skills.
You cannot look at one homeschooled child and predict another’s experience, because the only thing different homeschooling families have in common is that the parents are in sole control of their children’s academic and social development.
3. Homeschool kids form deep, lasting relationships with the people they treasure most.
A reality of homeschool life is that you might have certain very dear friends you only see a few times a year. Of all the many friendly-acquaintances you gather everywhere you go, a few really resonate. They’re ones who understand you. They’re the ones you could spend hours talking to, and when you pick back up again six months later, it’s like you just saw each other yesterday.
School friendships are a little bit like this, in that you socialize all year with whomever is at hand, but very few of those friendships carry forward once you’re no longer in the same class or club. It’s easy to imagine at school you’ve got a real friendship going, when really those friends will drop you as soon as they find something better.
The homeschooling difference is that there’s never any illusion that you’ve got five best friends sitting next to you at lunch each day. You have to be intentional about cultivating your friendships, and you’ve got the mental space to do it in. When you find that one good friend, you make an effort to stay in touch. You learn to use whatever resources you have at hand to arrange a way to get together more often. Sometimes you discover that the friendly acquaintance was only ever just that, or the friendship wanes as your values and interests diverge later in life. But it’s not uncommon for homeschoolers to have multiple deep, lasting relationships that endure for years despite distance and long separation.
Does Jennifer have any idea how hard it was to be 16 and only see one of my closest friends four or six times a year? It wasn’t even that they lived far away, it was just that we weren’t in any of the same activities and we were completely dependent on our parents for transport. Jennifer thinks this is some sort of positive benefit of homeschooling? Does she have any idea how hard it was to go on stating that this person was one of my best friends even as I had no clue what was going on in her life because I hadn’t seen her in months? I just can’t here. Jennifer may look at the five best friends she had at lunch in middle school as only temporary friends, but at least she actually had friends she saw regularly. I didn’t.
Jennifer seems to be applying “absence makes the heart grow stronger” to children’s friendships. It does not work like that.
It’s absolutely true that out of a large group of people you will only resonate with a few. The problem was that, as a homeschool kid, I didn’t have a large group of people to draw from. I had to take whatever I got. Now yes, I had some good, solid friendships. I had to, because if I didn’t I would have had no one. But there were also times I hung on to a friendship with someone who didn’t really fit because, well, they were the only option I had. I read one study that said that homeschooled children have fewer friends than their peers, but that they value the ones they have more. Well duh, I thought.
So what if my public schooled daughter has five best friends sitting by her at lunch who will move on and change and grow different and branch off in different directions as they grow? At least she sees them more often than once every three months. And you know what? My friends from childhood grew and changed too, as did I. Being homeschooled didn’t magically make all of my friendships last forever.
If I had to come up with a list of how homeschoolers actually socialize differently than school kids, what would I include on the list?
1. They more dependent on their parents. While children who attend school see other children daily as a matter of course, homeschooled children only see other children as a result of involvement in various activities or making plans to get together with another family. These things rest solely in the hands of the parents.
2. Keeping up friendships takes more effort. I cannot even begin to count the number of times my siblings and I begged to have a friend over or to become involved in an activity so that we would see a friend. Public school children may be able to fall into friendships, but we didn’t have that option.
3. They can’t afford to be as picky. Mostly, I was friends with the children of my parents’ friends. After all, if our parents weren’t friends it was unlikely we would see each other often enough to have anything you could give the label “friendship.” In other cases, homeschooled children are forced to turn to the internet to find friends.
“What about socialization?” Homeschooled parents have been asked this question over and over again for decades. I understand finding it annoying to get this question so many times, but it’s a good question, and one homeschooling parents should take seriously. I’m really tired of reading blog posts by homeschooling parents arguing that homeschooled children are actually better than public schooled children. Trust me, I heard this growing up, too! Hearing this didn’t make me any less afraid of public schooled children, and it didn’t magic me more friends.
Look, if you are a homeschooling parent, your children’s socialization is up to you. If you do your job right, your children will have a large pool to draw their friends from, have close friends they see regularly, and be comfortable around a wide range of different people. But this is not guaranteed. It’s something you have to work for.
As a final note, I am aware that not all children who attend school simply fall into friendships, and that there are children who attend public school and are still profoundly lonely. I don’t think parents of children who attend school should assume they don’t need to pay attention to their children’s social needs. All I’m saying is that when parents homeschool, they take their children’s social needs solely into their hands, and that’s not a responsibility they should take lightly.
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Macroscopic Solutions. Image links to source.
Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Starshine” is a pseudonym.
The war that our parents waged was not just on our selfhood or security or sexuality—it was on our biology. Things we couldn’t change; physical survival and reproduction patterns that couldn’t be completely or permanently killed unless we died too.
We fought—some internally, some externally. Some broke. We’re still trying to find pieces of ourselves, pieces that our parents beat or rejected or threw away. Some we will find. Others seem gone forever.
But ultimately our parents failed. We are not what they planned for us to be. Our biology reacted and protected ourselves once we could and once we knew we could. They didn’t win, even if we carry evidence of their war for the rest of our lives.
He defends “a very traditional view about the role of women in churches” (page 27) and later explains that he means “a doctrinal position of male-only elders” (page 55). Farris says he is “a firm believer in—dare I say it?—spanking,” that fathers “should be in charge of all discipline,” and boasts that he spanked his daughters until they were 13 (page 30). He even dedicates an entire chapter to straw-manning feminism (Chapter Seven, “Solving the Feminist Paradox”), featuring lines like “Lesbianism is considered by many to be the apex of feminism” (page 96) and “Feminists prey on daughters of under-appreciated mothers” (page 105).
Homeschoolers Anonymous 