S2 E1: Religious Authoritarian Parenting with D.L. Mayfield

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02]: This is a Dauntless Media Collective Podcast. Visit dauntless.fm for more content.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And Dobson and other religious authoritarian parenting experts, they knew that this is a reaction people had and so they had to spend a lot of time in the materials teaching parents how to override their own impulse and instinct. And to say like, it does feel bad, you have to do this if you want to raise godly kids.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello Deconstructionists, this is Maggie, the host of our podcast where we'll collectively share our stories and experiences of leading high control religion along with what it's been like for us to find new practices that help us feel good and confident in ourselves. I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid and most of all that you are not alone on this journey. You are good, you are loved and you are worthy. Just love.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: As you are. Hello Deconstructionists.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_02]: My guest today is D.L. Mayfield who uses they them pronouns. D.L. is a writer who authored three books in Christian publishing. Their current project is a sub stack and podcast centered on helping survivors of religious authoritarian parenting called Strong Willed. They also have a newsletter focused on late diagnosed neurodivergence called Healing is My Special Interest, which I love. That's so great. So thank you for being here D.L. This is so exciting to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_04]: It's very good to be here.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02]: So I was just saying most of our episodes are about people's deconstruction experiences and I'd love to hear a little bit about yours, but you have done so much wonderful work diving into James Dobson and all of the harm that he has perpetuated from the work that he's done.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'd love to hear a little bit about you on the podcast. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your church experience and a little bit about your deconstruction experience.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. So my story and I feel like I've shared a bunch, but for this crew that's listening, I think what's important are these certain things that qualify my life.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_04]: One being I was a pastor's kid my whole life, an evangelical pastor's kid.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_04]: So lots of pressure to uphold the family biz is how I think about it now, you know, and I really took on the role of like the golden child who took religion extremely seriously.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So that was my role in the fam. And I played that role pretty well. I actually ended up going into missionary work and I was homeschooled for most of my life. So I was very sheltered, very naive.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was always a gender nonconforming kid and in, you know, conservative evangelicalism, right? If you are socialized as female and you're super into God, like what do they tell you to do? They tell you to be a missionary. There's like no other option, right? Because you can't be a pastor. You can't do that stuff.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And Jesus, you know, in the scriptures had certain things that he said that I was like, damn, this is good. Like this is amazing. Like Jesus really loves the poor. Like Jesus thinks we should overthrow these oppressive systems. Like I'm vibing with this, you know?

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And then I was shocked that my parents were like super threatened by that. And other Christians in my life were super threatened by that. And I was like, wait a minute, I'm taking it literally. Didn't you teach me about biblical literalism?

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, and they're like, no, you're turning into a socialist, right? And that was like the big thing I got from my dad in particular. And that was really hard.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And all this, I'm doing a lot of this work publicly because I started freelance writing about 14 years ago for Christian publications.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Writing about taking Jesus seriously.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And again, thinking my parents will be so proud of me. I'm just, you know, I'm writing for Christianity today. I'm writing for all these places they loved.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_04]: But they got more and more troubled by what I was writing.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And I just slowly had to come to terms with like, it seems what they're really disappointed about is they think I'm a liberal.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Like it was very politically minded.

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Like they would bring up socialism.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_04]: They would bring up you're being indoctrinated by the liberal media.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, I am literally hanging out with refugees because that's what Jesus told me to do.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm reading my Bible every day and I'm reading Christian books.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Like I'm not being indoctrinated by the left, you know, they were the ones who kept saying that.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_04]: So eventually I was like, oh, one of these things is more important to them than following Jesus seems to be.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And I just slowly had to finally come to terms with that.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_04]: And that took me decades if I'm being perfectly honest.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_04]: So that's a very condensed version of my story.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And we can talk about all the reasons why I ended up quite suddenly deconverting from Christianity.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_04]: But I think the deconstruction was happening through a pretty, not a typical, but like, I know lots of other people did the same thing.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Whereas you get really into Jesus trying to make Christianity good.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And then you realize like none of the Christians care.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Like the people in my life.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_04]: They don't care.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_04]: They say they care, but they don't.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I think so many of us have just followed Jesus right out of the church.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the church isn't actually practicing what Jesus preached.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we can see that because Jesus was a socialist by all, you know, by all of our definitions of the word.

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is the worst of the worst.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_02]: To be a socialist, to be a liberal, to take care of the poor.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_02]: That is not what the church is doing.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: That's everything that the church does is bad and wrong.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And you've kind of like gone off the deep end if you've ended up in these liberal spaces, you know.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just so sad.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, again, I – so part of my deconstruction journey is tied to several different realizations I had sort of later in life.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_04]: One was being diagnosed autistic, which really came out of left field for me.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Autism has been a part of my family for a long time.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_04]: One of my kids is autistic.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I should have been more aware that that could be a possibility for me since it's genetic.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_04]: But, again, I was so sheltered and a lot of my intense special interests were around God and religion.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_04]: So it just kind of flew under the radar, you know what I mean?

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And so that was like the first real thing where I had a therapist tell me, like, I think you might be autistic.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And that was the first time I really allowed myself to start to reflect on my life and reflect on my childhood because that is a reframe, right?

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I had to allow into myself was like, okay, if I'm autistic, what does that mean for how I've been operating in the world?

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_04]: The first thing I did was I just stopped doing all my public speaking, a lot of my public Christian writing because I thought I have been stressing myself out so bad to do these things because I thought that's what God wanted me to do.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_04]: If I'm autistic, maybe I could actually take my sensitivities, my social anxiety, my huge fear of public speaking.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe I can start to take that seriously instead of just saying this is what God wants me to do.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_04]: But then I started thinking about my childhood, which then started me thinking a lot of other things about my childhood, you know.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And we'll get into this with the James Dobson stuff.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_04]: But I just want to say if you come from a white evangelical or like a high control religion or a religious authoritarian background in childhood,

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_04]: you do not want to think about your childhood, right?

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_04]: You have a few options.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And one of them is you can just take as gospel the narrative that your family was amazing.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Your family was the best.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Your family was following God.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what I did up until I was 38 years old, at which point I, in therapy, right, started to process like,

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, shit, like some stuff went down.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, some of this was fucked up.

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe it's not great to view myself as a horribly sinful person who must, you know, dedicate every waking thought, every action to God.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_04]: So all that meant that I eventually was also diagnosed with religious OCD, which again helped make a lot of sense of my life and the amount of mental suffering and anguish I was in,

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_04]: which had been really celebrated within evangelical Christianity and especially in the writing world.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_04]: If you're a progressive Christian writer, they love it if you have some moral scrupulosity and you are just obsessing about how to follow Jesus more perfectly

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_04]: and where to buy clothes and how to be perfect.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, they love that.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And my OCD loved that too.

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So it really served you for a while in this role that you – like in your profession, in this role that you were in.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Because it was serving the institution, yeah, of the church.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Not served you as a person, but served this role that you were in because it served the institution.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm sure that that made it maybe not harder to take in, but like it really probably turned your whole world upside down

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_02]: because you had to kind of think about what you were doing in a different way now.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Like all of the things that you've been doing for work that were praised.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like maybe I'm not doing that because I want to.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm not doing that because God wants me to.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm doing that because somewhere inside of me it's wired for me to do that.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Does that seem true?

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_04]: It really does.

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think my story is slightly weird because I was doing this on a public level, right?

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm writing articles.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm writing books, doing all this stuff.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And in all my writings, like of course there's things I regret writing, but I was totally in the cult.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was trying to wrestle with things.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think you can see that in my writing.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_04]: But anybody who's a part of the church, right, they have the same experience of one day waking up and being like the church, the institution keeps running on the backs of people who are just hurting themselves to keep this going.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_04]: It's built on the backs of glorifying suffering and telling people, especially marginalized people, like your suffering means something and your suffering matters.

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_04]: So keep going.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Keep pushing through.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And I just, you know, a lot of us reached that point where we're like, I need relief now.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_04]: I can't wait till heaven.

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Like I need to experience like wanting to be alive now.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And that was totally what ended up happening to me.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And turns out it's really fun to be alive right now.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's a lot of shit going on.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't get me wrong.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_02]: But like, but there's also a lot of ways that we can enjoy life.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean.

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think this is like the perfect time to want to be alive.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Like I wish I had done this years earlier, but I'm glad it's happening now because I don't know how I would have made it through our current reality if I was still a Christian.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_04]: None of the coping skills I had been given actually helped me.

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And now I have coping mechanisms that do help.

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm just, but I thank you for naming that tension because I'm like, I kind of want to be alive now.

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And the world is like totally shitty.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And yet life keeps happening.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm also a parent, right?

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_04]: So I, it's very good that I want to be alive because I am in charge of these young people, right?

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And I want them to have hope for the future.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm so happy to be here now.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_02]: We should want to make the world a better place.

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that is what Jesus did in theory.

[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if I believe he was a real person or not, but like that is what the character of Jesus did.

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And he helped people.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is what we can do.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I have this verse coming to mind, like I think it's from Esther for such a time as this, you know?

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, yeah, the world is shit, but that means that we have even more to do to work toward, to help other people.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Like we better, we better work, you know?

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think just knowing who you are and operating out of a place of like, I'm actually operating out of my core values and not because I'm obsessed with being a good person or of salvation.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, one thing that's tricky for me growing up in evangelicalism, being a missionary is like the savior complex thing is real.

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And I thought I had a lot more power over people and over the world and politics than it turns out I do.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_04]: And so my focus has gone much smaller and local and, you know, all that.

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's where we see a lot of really cool movements happening is at the local level.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And national politics continues just to feel more and more to me like just a theater of the rich, you know, getting people to be divided.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_04]: I think if we're talking about Jesus, like more than anything, he seems like an anarchist, you know?

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Not even a socialist.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm like, got a touch of that anarchist in me now.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_04]: So.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, everyone.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Maggie from the Hello Deconstructionists podcast.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for tuning into this show.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_02]: We're so grateful that you decided to spend your time with us.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Seriously, Cortland, Dan, Gail, Jessica, Megan, Nate, Scott, and the rest of us here at the Dauntless Media Collective

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[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I'd also like to invite you even further into the conversation.

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Right now, there are some great discussions happening over in the Dauntless Media Collective Discord server.

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[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_02]: please feel free to stop by the server.

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[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_02]: See you there.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so can we talk about James Dobson?

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear all your thoughts.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Can I give you a little bit of my own background about James Dobson first?

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, please.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Because I actually don't have – I kind of have peripheral experience with him.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So I remember in our church bulletin every week there was an insert of like James Dobson and Focus on the Family

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_02]: and like family values probably – probably like shitty family values and like how to raise your kid were on there.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember looking at it, reading it.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember that it was like a glossy texture compared to like the matte texture of the normal bulletin.

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_02]: But like I wasn't really taking any of the information in and I'm very thankful that my parents were not –

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_02]: they did not seem to subscribe to his ideas and his teachings.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So my mom was a public school teacher and she just like – she was never going to fall for the homeschooling bullshit

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_02]: that he talked about and like encouraged people to do.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_02]: She was never going to fall for the hitting your kids and like any of that stuff.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_02]: It just didn't – it wasn't in line with who my parents were.

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if they – I should ask them.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if they read a lot of his stuff or not, but it definitely was not part of like my own upbringing.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: I did see it in other people's families in our churches.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So I definitely know that like other families in my church, there was definitely some physical abuse that I'm sure stemmed back to James Dobson

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_02]: or other, you know, teachers and authority figures like him.

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that for sure, but I – but I do know that that was happening in families

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_02]: and I'm sure that it was for religious reasons somewhere.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And I certainly have family and friends who have talked about these experiences and talked about his teachings having such a negative impact on the way that they were brought up.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, just a little background about some of that.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of looking at the James Dobson stuff I feel like from the outside in, which I feel very privileged and thankful to be able to do that.

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But I also know how harmful it is and so I'm so thankful for all the work that you've done around this and yeah.

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's really interesting for me to hear about because sometimes I – doing the research on Dobson and his methods

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_04]: and like how pervasive they've been in, you know, Christian publishing and in a lot of Christian churches,

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I do sometimes have this thought that like everybody utilizes methods.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_04]: But even you talking about your parents, it's like, oh yeah, there's like – everybody has agency.

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And the tricky thing when talking about like high-control religions is like, well,

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_04]: how much agency does a person have once they join a high-control religion?

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think how you parent your kids and how you raise your kids is a really interesting way to kind of observe like what level of agency are people operating under?

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Because like you said, it was in the bulletin every week, right?

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's just like this is how you parent your kids if you want your kids to be godly.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_04]: That's just what everyone believes.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, of course, there were some people that were like, I'm not going to do that to my kids.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_04]: But then a lot of people were like, okay, this is what you say to do.

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_04]: We'll do it.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And some people were like, this feels really bad.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I do not want to spank my two-year-old.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And Dobson and other religious authoritarian parenting experts, they knew that this is a reaction people had.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And so they had to spend a lot of time in their materials teaching parents how to override their own impulse and instinct.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And to say like, it does feel bad.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_04]: You have to do this if you want to raise godly kids.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Because for them, the thing was you had to get your kids to obey immediately, which is why you had to follow this program.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_04]: So at its core, even though it said it was about raising godly kids and building godly families, it was about can you instill like immediate obedience in your children, right?

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_04]: So the children will obey the parents.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And then when the kids grow older, they will obey their pastors, they will obey the police, and they will obey the godly political authority in their life.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is all stuff that's said over and over again.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not hidden.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_04]: But of course, they focus on if you can get your kid to immediately obey to parental authority, those skills transfer, right, for the rest of their life.

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's why my partner and I are calling it specifically religious authoritarian parenting methods.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Because, you know, you could call it abusive.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_04]: You could call all these things, which I'm like, go for it.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Call James Oswald or whatever you want.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm looking at what is the core ideology underneath it.

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And it is rooted in politics.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's rooted in a political agenda to make people easier to control and that they will unquestioningly and immediately obey authority.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_04]: With a smile.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_02]: The strong-willed child is all about how to break their strong will so that they follow and obey whoever's in charge of them.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like that's the point of it.

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's written in the thesis statement, you know?

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And so Dobson's first book came out in 1970.

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_04]: It was called Dare to Discipline where he's like, hey, all these white kids are like protesting Vietnam in the streets and they're marching for civil rights.

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's like so embarrassing and so horrifying.

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Like what we need to do is we have to go back to disciplining our kids how Christians always have, which is corporal punishment, right?

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Starting when they're two, starting when they're toddlers.

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_04]: He did that whole thing.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, the foreword to that book was written by his mentor and boss, Paul Popeno, who's like the most famous eugenicist in American history.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And he kind of taught Dobson everything he knew about positive eugenics, which is how do you get white women to marry white men and have a ton of kids and then indoctrinate them to do the same thing, right?

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And to carry on the patriarchal hierarchy.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_04]: That was the underlying goal of this whole thing.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So Paul Popeno was an atheist, not even a Christian.

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_04]: But Paul Popeno really loved the white supremacist patriarchy.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's also what James Dobson loved.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_04]: So Popeno wrote the foreword to Dare to Discipline.

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_04]: And then Dobson's second book on parenting came out called The Strong-Willed Child because you're absolutely right.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_04]: In these homes, in these frameworks, there are some kids, right, for whatever reason, they don't immediately comply to authority.

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Even if you spank the shit out of them.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's just something in them, right?

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And so Dobson's like, yeah, we have compliant kids and we love them.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_04]: We love them.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have The Strong-Willed.

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And the thing he taught parents was this isn't like just developmental.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_04]: This isn't neurodivergence, which again, if you read The Strong-Willed Child, it seems like a lot of those kids were autistic or ADHD.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And he was like, no, no, no.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_04]: It's none of that.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_04]: It's sin and it's willful defiance and it must be stomped out.

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just classic authoritarianism, right?

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_04]: If someone's resisting authority, what do you do?

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_04]: You squash them.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_04]: You squash their spirit.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's kind of what The Strong-Willed Child is all about.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And so what's sad is, again, thinking about back to these like church bulletin inserts.

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Because Dobson, these books sold so many millions of copies.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And then he eventually started Focus on the Family and he had this radio program.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And so he would send out the books.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_04]: He would send out his tapes.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_04]: He would send out his teachings to just churches all over America.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And people started buying into this and families started modeling themselves after this authoritarian patriarchal framework.

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And families started to be divided, right?

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Kids would be labeled as compliant or as strong-willed.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And that just led to like so much dysfunction.

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just really sad to think about the long-term impacts of that.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Even in my own family, my younger sibling was the strong-willed child.

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_04]: I was the golden child.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_04]: We still deal with the ramifications of that to this day.

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I'm squarely the strong-willed child now.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_04]: But there's still a lot of resentment for the early years, right?

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_04]: When she was getting spanked constantly while I was praised for being compliant.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, there's real downsides to being the compliant one too.

[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_04]: But for people listening, it's just interesting.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_04]: If you grew up in a home that utilized Dobson or was influenced by him, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And as a child, you were intimately aware of where you fell on that compliant or strong-willed spectrum because your parents, the church community, people were reminding you of that constantly.

[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think – I'm not a therapist or a psychologist, so like I don't know if this is true.

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_02]: But it seems like being what he calls strong-willed and being what he calls compliant are both some kind of survival mechanism that kids are using.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Like you're complying because you've seen what's happening to the strong-willed kid or you're being strong-willed because you don't want to give in like the compliant kid is.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Like something is – something in you is saying like this isn't right, stop.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's – whether that's coming out as like pushing back or coming out as fawning and doing what your parents want you to do and then being labeled compliant and you get praised for that and so you keep doing it.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Like all of this I feel like can come back to these survival tactics or something from really probably a traumatic home situation.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, totally.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_04]: I think being a two-year-old and having your parent hurt you because you asked for something you wanted and then telling you I'm hurting you because God wants me to.

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing this out of love.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_04]: This hurts me more than you.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_04]: You're not allowed to cry more than three minutes or I'm going to hurt you again.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, that is stressful like from a nervous system level.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And so you're exactly right.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Our nervous system responses get triggered.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And so compliant children, golden children, they're people who their nervous system response is fawning.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Where you appease the person in power to be safe, right?

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_04]: You learn to mirror their emotions.

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_04]: You learn to care what they care about.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_04]: You learn – right?

[00:26:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And you dissociate from your own needs and what your body is actually saying and that can have extremely bad long-term consequences.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, again, politically, authoritarians, what response do they most want in a population?

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_04]: They want fawning.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, they'll take freeze, right, if people are just totally stuck and can't do anything.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_04]: They'll take that.

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_04]: But what do they want?

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_04]: They want people who are like, you're the best leader.

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_04]: You'll keep me safe.

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll do whatever you want.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, what do they not want?

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_04]: They do not want the fight response.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_04]: So that is the strong-willed response is the fight one.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, there's also flight.

[00:27:13] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think for a lot of people, flight and freeze just showed up in really random ways in our life.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And we probably were in those states too.

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_04]: But the ones that were most talked about were the fawn response and the fight response.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And again, we can think politically authoritarians do not want people who know how to utilize the fight response, which is why it's targeted specifically in Dobson's teachings.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_04]: You target the fight response in toddlerhood.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you can get a kid to suppress that and eventually go into the fawn response, you've got it made.

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_04]: You will have a person, an adult, who is always under the thumb of godly authority.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And this was literally his plan.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So I kind of sound like a little bit of a kook.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_04]: But I mean, Dr. Dobson had a doctorate of child psychology.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Like he knew what he was doing.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I don't think he was an evil genius or anything like that.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's a lot going on.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_04]: But he 100% had an awareness of key developmental stages and how to target them for political purposes.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I interviewed Mariah Conan recently and she had just graduated from Fuller Seminary.

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think someone asked a friend of theirs, like, what is it like to be at Fuller?

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And they said, John Piper and Rob Bell both graduated from here.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of sums up like what it's like.

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_02]: There's just such extremes.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think about, like, Rob Bell and John Piper being kind of like James Dobson and Fred Rogers, you know?

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And, like, you could have gone a different way with that.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And, like, you chose this terrible path when, like, there was a better one there, you know?

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, he could have done what Fred Rogers did.

[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_02]: But he did Dare to Discipline and Strong Willed Child.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is an important part of the conversation because they were peers.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_04]: I think a part of me always hoped, like, this just came out of nothing.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_04]: But the more research I've done, right, it's not that they were just peers and they disagreed.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_04]: It's that Dobson believed that the methods that Fred Rogers utilized.

[00:29:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And, again, Fred Rogers, right, he was best buds with Margaret McFarland, who was in a cohort with Dr. Spock and Eric Erickson.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And Eric Erickson came up with these child developmental stages, right?

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, Fred Rogers was in the thick of this groundbreaking psychological research on how to help kids have a sense of self and a sense of safety.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And Dobson was like, I do not want kids to have that.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what kids who have that grow up to do?

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_04]: They grow up to protest the United States government in the streets.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_04]: We cannot have that.

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And so he actually blamed them for all the problems America was facing.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And he taught Christians to do the same, right?

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just so sad.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And, again, think about Dobson, you know, started Focus on the Family, growing the white family.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_04]: This was his whole deal for decades and decades and decades.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Then in, I believe it was 2000.

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I'm going to get the dates wrong.

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_04]: It was in the 2000s that Dobson steps down from Focus on the Family and he begins the next phase of his life, which is becoming basically the most prolific conservative political lobbyist in American history.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, he created so many different organizations and so many different, like, I don't want to call them shell companies, but they all have extremely similar sounding names.

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_04]: They're confusing on purpose.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, almost every single bill could be traced back to an organization that Dobson helped start.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just so disturbing.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_04]: So many of the organizations that are on the advisory board of Project 2025 were started by Dobson.

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_04]: The main ones were started by Dobson.

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And I would say over 40 states at this point have something called a Family Policy Council that is modeled after the Family Policy Alliance that Dobson helped start.

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And they are basically have mini Project 2025 in the works going already for over 40 states.

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And again, this comes back to Dobson.

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_04]: So, of course, he's this politically minded.

[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_04]: He's this obsessed with instilling a religious, patriarchal, white supremacist authoritarian state.

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Why do we not think he was doing that with his parenting books?

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what launched him and his career.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And the second half is not an aberration.

[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_04]: He taught parents how to create kids that would be conducive to authoritarianism.

[00:32:24] [SPEAKER_04]: And now he's implementing it.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And America has a problem.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_04]: We have lots of people who are ready and willing to vote for an authoritarianism, you know, in the fall.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And they've done it before.

[00:32:34] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm like, I do think the childhood stuff is a bit more important than we want to talk about.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And I have a few ideas why I think that is.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_04]: But I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you kind of rephrase the question one more time?

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Why do we not think that parenting methods, specifically parenting methods in Christian fundamentalist spaces,

[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_04]: like why are we unwilling to kind of look at the long-term impacts of that?

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's interesting because I feel like we are, like in our spaces here we are, but like in the broader scheme we aren't.

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like outside of these kind of deconstruction spaces, being a Christian is a good thing.

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Like you're a family that has good values if you are a church-going family.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So nobody really wants to like question that.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And also because it's hard to look at our own past.

[00:33:30] [SPEAKER_02]: You were saying this earlier.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_02]: It takes a lot of work to look at our own childhood and call out the things that are bad and the things that were not as perfect as we thought they were.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think very few people in the overall scheme of things, very few people actually sit down and do that and are willing to call it out.

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_02]: That's where my mind went.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm curious now what your thoughts are.

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_04]: No, I think that's exactly right.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_04]: There's like so many personal reasons why people would prefer not to unpack their childhood.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_04]: And as somebody, right, who was so all in in the Christian world, I was in the Christian writing world.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_04]: I look at Christian publishing and this is like the last thing that people cannot touch with a 10-foot pole is you cannot say,

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I think my parents indoctrinated me, right?

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I think I was indoctrinated as a child.

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_04]: You just can't say that in Christian world.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, outside of it, I found it sort of like some deconstruction places can say that and some don't.

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like for me, I know why I never thought about it or brought it up is I thought everyone was raised like that.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't until I had my own kids and was parenting them and I was like, I don't want to do any of this stuff.

[00:34:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Like then I had to start rethinking my own childhood.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if I would have deconstructed if I hadn't had kids.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm really in awe of people who can do that work without having that triggering thing happening in front of me all the time.

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, I'm just really in awe of people who are able to get to that place on their own.

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I know there are a lot of people like me though, for them becoming a parent is when they were like, wait a minute.

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_04]: The way I was raised, it's not just like a weird, funny, quirky story.

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's real.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Just on my Instagram this week, I was talking about being raised fundamentalist and being taught that the Loch Ness Monster was real

[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_04]: and was actually a plesiosaurus, a dinosaur because, you know, the earth is only 6,000 years old.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_04]: So the dinosaurs are still around.

[00:35:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Still around.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And I gave a report on that when I was like eight years old and I was so proud and I like did investigative, you know, reading.

[00:35:42] [SPEAKER_04]: And just like that's a funny story.

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_04]: But then think about what does that mean?

[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Like this was in like the early 1990s, y'all.

[00:35:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Like and this is still happening to this day.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Most of the Christian curriculum used in Christian schools, Christian high schools.

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And actually at the Bible college I went to here in Portland, Multnomah University, it's all six day creationist, literal earth,

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_04]: which the whole point of it is to get people to distrust science and distrust the media.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I'm like, it's such a bigger problem than we want to, you know, we'd like to just have a funny story about Nessie.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And then actually it's like, oh no.

[00:36:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like it is a funny story about Nessie.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And also it's led to the election of Donald Trump.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's like really big implications here.

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Or even like thinking about COVID.

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And how so many evangelicals refuse to trust the science.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And that is directly related to this literal, you know, biblical creationism.

[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_04]: My own parents, I had to just beg and cry and like threaten that they would never see their grandkids if they didn't get the vaccine.

[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_04]: It was such an ordeal.

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And I know, you know, I'm not the only person who had to deal with that.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you an alumnus of an evangelical college or university?

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Or have you ever wondered what attending or working at one of those schools is like?

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: The Chapel Probation Podcast brings you the stories from students, faculty, and administration who experienced all the racism,

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_00]: the queer phobia, the misogyny, and purity culture weirdness that are kind of the hallmarks of these schools.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Scott Okamoto, author of Asian American Apostate, Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University,

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_00]: which tells my story of teaching English at an evangelical school and realizing I didn't believe in God or the Bible anymore.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I created Chapel Probation as a compliment to my book, but this podcast has become its own community of people who have stories of hurt and pain

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_00]: and stories of triumph during and after their time at evangelical schools.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the guests you've probably heard of, but most of them you probably haven't.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_00]: But all the stories are incredible examples of surviving Christian schools and finding ourselves.

[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You can find Chapel Probation wherever you listen to podcasts, and I hope you'll join us.

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I'm really curious if you know about who influenced James Dobson.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, where did he get – I know you mentioned like the Hitler connection that's kind of spooky and –

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_02]: The Hitler connection.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_02]: A little wild.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So I know that there was that.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a little more complicated than just the Hitler connection, but that's how I think about it in my mind.

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Do you know of other people who influenced him?

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm curious about like Bill Gothard and looking into like IBLP, shiny happy people stuff.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_02]: His ideas were very similar in a lot of ways, and I'm wondering if they had like a similar kind of root mentor or like if there's any connection or if it just happens to be that, you know, when you believe these things, the ideas kind of come out in a similar harmful way.

[00:39:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, such a great question.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, there's a few ways I can answer it.

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_04]: One of the things is think about these heroes of the faith, even thinking about Billy Graham, thinking about James Dobson, probably Bill Gothard.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_04]: I haven't done a ton of research into him just because there's so many amazing people that are talking about him and shiny happy people so amazing.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, one thing – I couldn't watch shiny happy people just because I was in a place where it would be too triggering at that point.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_04]: But my partner watched it.

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of people watched it.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And what I was hearing from people who were raised white evangelical and were just like, well, you just read the Bible and believe it.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we don't come from anything.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_04]: We're not like them.

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_04]: We're not a cult like them.

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_04]: When they watched that documentary, they were like, this is not that different than how I was raised.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_04]: We didn't wear denim jumpers, but, you know, the spanking, all of that was like exactly the same.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_02]: It feels – when I watched it, I was like, this feels like James Dobson.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_02]: It is.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_04]: It totally is.

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think he was probably copying from Dobson because Dobson is the one who wrote the book in 1970 and 1977.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm assuming that Gothard sort of pulled that and people like James MacArthur and others, they've all come after Dobson.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm like, he sort of is the first one who put down in writing and popularized these methods of parenting.

[00:40:39] [SPEAKER_04]: But the whole like you have to explain to the kid why you're doing it.

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Tell them it's because God – like all that seems to be from Dobson first.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, where did this come from?

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_04]: The truth is Dobson's mom beat the shit out of him.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_04]: He writes about that in his books and he's like, I'm so glad she did.

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And his dad was a preacher but was never home.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And Billy Graham talks about his dad beating him.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler got the shit beat out of him if we're going to be honest.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Like violence against children is at the root of so much.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry, I get very passionate when I talk about this because violence against children has consequences.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_04]: It has consequences.

[00:41:19] [SPEAKER_04]: If you're the parent doing this to an innocent child, it has consequences to you.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_04]: You have to learn, do I dissociate from this?

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Do I lean harder into this to trust that this is going to help my kid?

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Because of course parents are doing this because they do think it's going to help their kids, some of them.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_04]: But the bigger thing unifying all these men is they love the patriarchy.

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is the way to get kids to go into their roles, their assigned roles in the patriarchy, which is why a hallmark of these movements is gender essentialism.

[00:41:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And you have to spend so much propaganda teaching boys are boys and this is how boys act.

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Girls are girls and this is how girls act.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is why they hate queer people.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_04]: They really hate trans people because trans people fuck up the patriarchy, right?

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Like if gender is a construct, then one gender doesn't get to be in charge.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And the other one loves helping people.

[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And so that's why they've been their ideological enemies from day one.

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And I just think it's so sad.

[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, yeah, these people were beat by their parents and they really love the patriarchy.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_04]: They also love white supremacy.

[00:42:36] [SPEAKER_04]: But to get into power, they always have to find a scapegoat, right?

[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, we know who the scapegoat was in Germany.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And in America, right?

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_04]: The scapegoat has been liberals.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_04]: But more specifically, it has been immigrants.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_04]: It's been queer folks.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And authoritarians just need that to whip people up to vote.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_04]: So those are all the things I see.

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_04]: But we can't discount the person that Dobson learned about positive eugenics.

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_04]: His role, Paul Pupino's role in American eugenics, the Nazis actually got a lot of their ideas from him.

[00:43:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just such a sad cycle that continues on to this day.

[00:43:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And one thing I guess with my project Strong Willed that I'm trying to help people come to terms with is

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_04]: if you were raised white evangelical or in a religious authoritarian household,

[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_04]: like you were born into a positive eugenics movement.

[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Your role as a child was to conform to the role set for you and to uphold and even replicate

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_04]: the patriarchal religious hierarchy you see modeled in your home.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_04]: You're supposed to start your own family, do the exact same thing.

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And of course, everybody votes for the Republican.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:43:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And it just sucks to be like, wait, that's really what was happening?

[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I thought this was like a religious movement and like the Jesus movement.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And like we have David Crowder band.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, like it's we have cool stuff.

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_04]: What would Jesus do?

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And DC talk.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, like, but really, when you peel it all down to the root,

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_04]: it's a positive eugenics movement for the white supremacist patriarchy.

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_04]: So what a bummer.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_04]: I want to be my own person, you know, like, yeah, well, I want to be my own person.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And they don't want that at all.

[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And to think back to your question, like, why don't we look at it?

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's a terrible realization to be like, I was born to be another white Republican

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_02]: voting person in this country.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that that is my main purpose.

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And these authors and pastors, they just use so many fear tactics to get people to buy into this.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I don't know if I asked my parents, like, do you know that this is a white, you know, positive eugenics movement?

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_04]: They'd be like, oh, absolutely not.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're not racist or whatever they would say.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm just looking at the history.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking at the actual ideology.

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what it is.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I'm like, I don't know what to say to folks except, like, it's going to be a huge muddle because we're real people with complex lives.

[00:45:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And the truth is, there's in my mind, there's sort of a spectrum of people who are drawn to being an authoritarian parent.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_04]: And so some people who got into Dobson were so authoritarian, right?

[00:45:31] [SPEAKER_04]: And just wild.

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And then others were less.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And the people who stayed in tend to be people who were more drawn to authoritarianism, where the people who weren't, they ended up leaving.

[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, there's plenty of people who used Dobson books with their kids and eventually were like, oh, I'm sorry, guys.

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_04]: This was not great.

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And then they end up repairing and having a great relationship with their grown children.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:45:53] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's not like a one-size-fits-all story.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_04]: But if people are clinging to this, like, I raised you God's way, I did it out of love, like, all that, you're like, okay, then you have some authoritarian leanings.

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_04]: You know?

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm actually not going to pass that down to my own kids.

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_04]: So, okay.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And good job for not passing it down.

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's also encouraging that, like, some people were raised like this, but, like, look at you.

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_02]: You were raised in this, but you have come out of it.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So just because these families are having kids who then they expect to go vote this way or live this way, it's like there can be healing after that.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't – people won't necessarily continue the cycle, you know?

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's encouraging to think about, too.

[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like people are getting out.

[00:46:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_04]: At the cost of families.

[00:46:44] [SPEAKER_04]: So this is something, right, that we're going to be talking about at Strong-Willed More in the fall is basically – you know, the way conservatives frame it is there's this trend of family estrangement, right?

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_04]: And adult children going low or no contact with their parents.

[00:46:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And actually, Focus on the Family has started, like, capitalizing on this.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course they have, right?

[00:47:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And they're having these workshops and seminars, like, what to do when your adult child doesn't want to hang out with you.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course you have to pay money and buy a book.

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_04]: I want to go and hear what they say.

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I'm so curious.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_04]: You should go – you can watch some of the videos for free online.

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_04]: They're not, like, horrible, as horrible as you would think.

[00:47:21] [SPEAKER_04]: But they're still, like, keeping people in this fold where it's like, eventually I'll get my adult child to see that I've been right this whole time.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just – and I just think it's so sad.

[00:47:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, Focus on the Family is the one who created these dynamics, which if you toe the party line and never resist, yes, you'll have a great, happy family, whatever.

[00:47:45] [SPEAKER_04]: If one of your kids decides to live their own life and lean into their autonomy, then you're going to have a lot of conflict.

[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And there's no way to resolve that conflict in an authoritarian patriarchal framework, right?

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_04]: It's – you do what the patriarch says.

[00:47:57] [SPEAKER_04]: If you don't, oh, you're still the strong old child even though you're a grown-ass adult.

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_04]: So what we want to say is, like, of course everyone in America is thinking about November and what's going to happen.

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_04]: But the truth is this conflict is happening in families.

[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_04]: It's happening in this divide.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm a millennial, like an elder millennial.

[00:48:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And I just see a lot of millennials kind of shouldering this huge seismic shift, like, on our shoulders.

[00:48:26] [SPEAKER_04]: We all know Gen Z is not super into authoritarianism.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_04]: But I was raised to accept it with a smile.

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm the one that has to stand up to the older people in my life and say, actually, we're not doing this anymore to protect the younger folks.

[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's what more and more of us are doing.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just led to a ton of conflict.

[00:48:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's not easy.

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_04]: So if anybody is listening and you're in a tough spot with your parents, with family members, I just want to say you are not alone.

[00:48:58] [SPEAKER_04]: This is happening to so many people.

[00:49:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's unfortunately just the logical conclusion to these kinds of parenting methods.

[00:49:07] [SPEAKER_04]: In religious authoritarian parenting, there's no end date for when the child is a fully formed adult and can do what they want.

[00:49:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Because to Christian parents in particular, right?

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Humans are sinful.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_04]: We always need godly leadership.

[00:49:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, the conservative politicians have really taken that up.

[00:49:26] [SPEAKER_04]: You'll only be safe, right?

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_04]: If you vote conservative, there's a conservative leader.

[00:49:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of us are like, I don't think that's how we're safe, you know?

[00:49:36] [SPEAKER_04]: I think we're safe by showing up for each other.

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what a lot of us are doing.

[00:49:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything else about James Dobson or your own story that you want to share or how they intertwine or anything else that you want to share with us?

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:49:56] [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like this is always like a bit of an afterthought to me.

[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_04]: But I will say that another hallmark of these homes, and I kind of already brought it up, the gender essentialism.

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_04]: There's just so much going on that for me, I didn't realize I was non-binary until right around the time I deconverted from Christianity.

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_04]: So again, I think I was 38 years old.

[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Right now, I always had perceived to myself as like, I'm not, I don't identify very much with being a girl or a woman, but I have no choice.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I just also kind of want to share that part of my story to normalize late in life discoveries.

[00:50:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Everybody's doing it, you know what I mean?

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Like everybody's like, I guess I'm a little queer.

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And that is just so normal.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And of course, we have all this like conservative rhetoric, right?

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_04]: You're just jumping on the trend.

[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_04]: You're just doing all that stuff.

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, actually, we were indoctrinated as children to have developmental delays, including in the area of sexuality.

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Think about purity culture.

[00:51:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Think about all this.

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, no, these were intentional delays put on us.

[00:51:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Think about the shame of being gay.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Think about all this.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_04]: So if you're late in life, if you're like, oh my God, am I, maybe I'm bi, maybe I'm all this stuff.

[00:51:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you are.

[00:51:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you're genderqueer.

[00:51:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you're gender nonconforming.

[00:51:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you're nonbinary.

[00:51:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, who knows?

[00:51:21] [SPEAKER_04]: You get to decide.

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's actually quite fun.

[00:51:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Once you're off the roller coaster of trying to get your parents' love and approval, you can actually start to get in touch with who you are.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And it starts small.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Some people who grew up in these homes, they don't even know what color they like.

[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_04]: They don't know what foods they like.

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_04]: They don't know what music they like.

[00:51:41] [SPEAKER_04]: So start small if you need to start small.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_04]: But if you're ready for the bigger things, it's like, jump on in.

[00:51:47] [SPEAKER_04]: The water's fine.

[00:51:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And we get to play.

[00:51:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I have something in my home that I look at every day and it says, being a silly Billy is my birthright.

[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_04]: When you are born into these homes, you are born to your role.

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_04]: You are born in debt to a God that your parents keep telling you is good.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Even though you have to serve this God and you can't do anything you want or your own.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?

[00:52:13] [SPEAKER_04]: You're born in debt.

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I think the best thing we can do is just to be free.

[00:52:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Free to explore.

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Free to be silly.

[00:52:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Free to be playful.

[00:52:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Even when the world is going to hell, we still get to be silly every day.

[00:52:27] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, every evening I watch something funny with my partner and I laugh my ass off before going to sleep.

[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Then I wake up really upset about the world of James Dobson and I perpetuate the cycle over and over again.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_04]: But I just love laughing in the evenings.

[00:52:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I need that.

[00:52:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I'm sorry that was my little rant, my little ramble.

[00:52:50] [SPEAKER_04]: But I hope people can just play.

[00:52:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Play with your gender expression.

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Play with your sexuality.

[00:52:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Play with your preferences.

[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Do all that stuff.

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_04]: And in case nobody's told you, like, you get to do that just by being a human.

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_04]: That is for you.

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[00:53:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel, like, invigorated and, like, excited.

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh, I'm going to go do something fun where it's going to, like, make me laugh.

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Watch a show.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Play a game.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_02]: You've inspired me.

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_02]: That's so wonderful.

[00:53:15] [SPEAKER_02]: What a delightful conversation this was, even though we were talking about kind of shitty things the whole time.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_04]: That motherfucker James Dobson.

[00:53:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Somehow still delightful when you talk about it.

[00:53:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I've been in therapy for many years now.

[00:53:29] [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, that's helped.

[00:53:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much for being here.

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_02]: This was such a delight.

[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_02]: What can I link so that people can find you quickly?

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:53:38] [SPEAKER_04]: So the main thing I want to direct people to is a substack called Strongwilled.

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_04]: So you can find it strongwilled.substack.com.

[00:53:44] [SPEAKER_04]: We also have a podcast we're putting out.

[00:53:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Same title, Strongwilled.

[00:53:48] [SPEAKER_04]: You can find that wherever.

[00:53:49] [SPEAKER_04]: I make TikTok sometimes.

[00:53:51] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm on there as DL Mayfield.

[00:53:53] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm on Instagram and Threads.

[00:53:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And then I do have another writing project called Healing is My Special Interest, which is more

[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_04]: personal and it's about autism and healing from high control environments.

[00:54:05] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm busy and you can find me in all those places.

[00:54:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.

[00:54:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll link them all in the show notes so we can find you quickly.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you so much for being here, DL, and we'll see you on the internet.

[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening to another episode of Hello Deconstructionists.

[00:54:22] [SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoyed this episode or any others, please follow, subscribe, rate, or review the

[00:54:27] [SPEAKER_02]: podcast wherever you listen.

[00:54:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And if you can, share this episode with a friend who might enjoy the conversation as well.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't forget that you can join the conversation in the Dauntless Media Collective Discord server

[00:54:38] [SPEAKER_02]: by clicking the link in the show notes or heading to dauntless.fm and clicking the link

[00:54:43] [SPEAKER_02]: in the top banner.

[00:54:44] [SPEAKER_02]: As always, you can find me over on Instagram at hello underscore deconstructionists, where

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_02]: together we are building community after evangelicalism one story at a time.

[00:54:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Huge thank you to Amy Azera for writing the theme song for this podcast.

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And when this sweet little bop inevitably gets stuck in your head, I hope it reminds you of

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_02]: this wonderful community that's here with you.

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to all our guests for sharing these parts of their stories with us.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, to you for listening.

[00:55:12] [SPEAKER_02]: See you next time.