Episode 297: The Myth of Good Christian Parenting

It's The Great Sex Rescue--but for parenting!

The Christian parenting industry has been feeding us garbage for decades, and Keith and I sat down with Marissa Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, authors of "The Myth of Good Christian Parenting," to talk about how we got here.

THE MYTH OF GOOD CHRISTIAN PARENTING

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LINKS MENTIONED:

• Instagram: @mburtwrites | @kelseykmcginnis
• Threads: @mburtwrites | @kelseykmcginnis
• Facebook: @mburtwrites |  @kelsey.kramermcginnis
• Bluesky: @mburtwrites |  @kkramermcginnis
• TikTok: @mburtwrites |  @kelseykmcg
• Substack: @mburtwrites | @kelseykramermcginnis
• YouTube: @mburtwrites
• Website: Marissa 
• My article on spanking and sexual arousal
• My article on the research on spanking effects
• The article about those who hid Jews during the Holocaust
  
  

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Course Update
• 2:13 Meet the Authors: How This Book Came About
• 6:51 The Impact and Reach of the Christian Parenting Industry
• 13:03 The Carrot And The Stick of Christian Parenting
• 16:42 The Doctrine of Parental Authority and Instant Obedience
• 30:42 How a generation of uncredentialed “experts” were platform in place of actual experts
• 35:54 Children as Sinners: The Toxic View of Childhood
• 50:45 Bad theology leads to detached parents and continued cycles of abuse
• 1:01:05 We’re told that Christian parenting in Biblical - but it’s not
• 1:12:03 Spanking grooms children for abuse
• 1:17:12 Research Shows That Authoritarian Parenting Limits a child’s ability to be altruistic. But there is a Better Way
• 1:22:46 The Overwhelming Reaction to James Dobson’s Death From Adult Children Who survived His Teachings

Transcript

Sheila

What does it mean to be a good Christian parent and does it involve spanking? Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And today we're talking about healthy Evidence-Based Biblical Advice for Your Sex Life, marriage, and Your parenting.

So I'm joined today by my husband, Keith. 

Keith

Hey, everybody.

Sheila

Whose a pediatrician. 

Keith

Yeah. Yeah. 

Sheila

And I'm excited about this conversation because we have two of my online internet friends who I know for a couple of years have just, written a new book, which is out in just a couple of weeks, The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, where they're looking at some of the really bad advice that was given to Christian parents and how that impacted us long term.

So great conversation coming before we get to that. I just want to say thank you to everyone who got our course. The Whole Story. We had our special annual sale last week. So we do have a puberty course. It's a video based online, so the parents can talk to their kids about puberty and sex. It's a super fun course.

And, yeah, I've just been having fun getting some feedback on that. So remember that we have it because I'm constantly getting emails saying, Sheila, how do I how to my kids about puberty? And I'm like, we have a course. So I don't think anyone always remember. So there you go. There's your reminder when you need it and when you buy it, you have lifetime access so you can use it with multiple kids whenever it'll it'll always be there.

And a special thank you to those of you who support what we do, who give money through our patron group. And as patrons are going to get a special podcast at the end of this one, so they get to listen to an even longer version of this conversation, or who give money to a nonprofit, through the Good Fruit Initiative.

And they have helped us create some new videos which are up on our YouTube channel, just explaining some basic concepts about why it's bad to talk to teen girls about modesty, what women mean when they say that, and spiritual leader why complimentary wisdom doesn't work, and all kinds of different things. So you can check that out on our YouTube channel.

And now, babe, should we get to it?

Keith 

Absolutely. 

Sheila

All right. Here we go with our interview. Well, I am so excited about this book, The Myth of Good Christian Parenting and and having Marissa Burt back on the podcast. 

Marissa

And delighted to be here. Thank you. 

Sheila 

There is Kelsey Kramer McGinnis. This is awesome. And welcome, Kelsey. 

Kelsey

Thank you so much.

It's so great to meet you virtually and talk with you about this project that is so related to your work. 

Sheila 

So I am so excited that it is. It's kind of like the Great Sex Rescue, but for parenting in a lot of ways, which I love because it means I don't have to write it. So that's always good when someone else does it.

And I know, Marissa, you were on the podcast. Gosh, must be a year ago talking about the Excellent Wife. Oh, maybe not that long. I don't know, it was a while ago. Anyway. 

Marissa

Yeah, it was last summer, I think. Yeah. Yeah, great. Great. But so much overlap, right? Because has family life teaching is this big. It's all tied together.

Sheila

Yeah. So I met you first on social media, I think, and I started noticing this woman who keeps talking about all of the problems with the Christian parenting resources in the same way that we did of the of the marriage and sex resources. So how did the idea for this book come about? 

Marissa

Yeah, very organically. But social media was a big factor in it.

We both and and I'm sure Kelsey will add her story of where we met up until where we met, we both had been thinking through this idea for a variety of reasons. I had been thinking of it. I'm married to a pastor, so I'd been in church communities for a couple decades. So seeing family life, teaching, seeing the fruit had explored some of these themes in a novel I wrote set in the stay at home daughter movement.

So was really interested to kind of analyze and get in there and say, what? What have people been taught and how have these teachings directly and indirectly enabled harm? Because I had seen some of the fruit, kind of curious to look at the teaching. And one day on Twitter, back when it was still Twitter, someone had, asked if you could, you know, if you had all the time in the world, what's a book you would write?

And, I kind of floated the idea out for this book. I might have even said kind of like the Great Sex Rescue but for parenting or something like that. And the response was immediate, I think. I'm pretty sure I was in the comments on that forum. Yeah, so many people we we I would buy that. We need that.

And, and the more we began engaging in those comments, I thought, how is this book not out there? You know, you know, how have we not, revisited. And I think some of it is because you, you rarely go back and reread parenting teaching once you've moved past it. But certainly as a number of people become parents themselves, they reflect back on their own experiences and kind of think critically about it.

So. So that was the beginning. And then Kelsey reached out, and I'll let you take it from there. 

Kelsey

Yeah, yeah, I saw this post and I, at this point I was writing primarily about music and culture for Christianity Today. I'm also an adjunct professor here in Des Moines. And parenting is not my not my area of expertise.

I'm not a child development specialist or anything, but, I was raised what I would call normie evangelical and would still would still call myself an evangelical in many ways. But a few years prior, when my first, who's now almost eight, was a toddler, I found myself having to look for parenting resources for the first time and started just keeping some, like, running documents and notes, because as I started visiting, some of the resources that my parents recommended, I was I was just confused because I did not see of my whole childhood in them.

I was disturbed by some of them. So this is like Ted Tripps Shepherding a Child's Heart. Some older Dobson and I, I just found it so out of step with anything else kind of in the mainstream I was seeing about parenting, and I did not see any Christian parenting resources that did kind of align with some of the ideas about child development in the mainstream.

And so I found myself just looking at who is the person who's talking about this. And there was really nothing, and I just kind of kept that to myself for years. I'm not the person to write about this. This is my area. And then when Marissa's message or her tweet popped up, I just thought we the message this person and say, here I have all this random stuff.

This is not what I do. But if you ever like a conversation partner, here's what I've been thinking through. And so we just started going back and forth and developed the idea for the book. 

Sheila

I love it, I love it. One of the things she said early in the book, and I'll just quote it, you said we do think that it is high time to hold the teachers, pastors, writers, influencers, and self platformed Christian parenting experts accountable for propagating some sweeping myths about parenthood and in some cases, about Christian faith itself.

And that's that's what I want to talk about in this, in this podcast. That's kind of like the big picture thing of where I want to go is, is how what did they do? What did they do to our our ideas of faith? What do they do to our ideas of parenting, of what do they do to our ideas of what is the essence of childhood, you know, and how can we hold them accountable?

But the Christian parenting industry, I don't know which one of you wants to jump in. Kelsey, do you want to jump in first or, how did it begin?

Kelsey

Well, so I'll say in the book, we put the beginning, at least our beginning at James Dobson's Dare to Discipline in 1970. So this is a timely conversation. I'm not sure when this is going up, but the week of recording this, James Dobson died last week.

And, we put the beginning of the Christian parenting book market in 1970 because James Dobson proved basically that there was a market for Christian parenting resources marketed specifically to conservative American evangelicals who were motivated by culture war issues. We could say. And it is not that there hadn't been Christian parenting books before. We talk about some of those in our book, but James Dobson's was a runaway bestseller, and ushered in an era of family resources that was unprecedented and novel in many ways.

I mean, focus on the family was a media empire that I think now we forget how huge it was in the context that it was in the 80s. And 90s, especially. And so James Dobson is not the only character. He is certainly a main character, but he sort of helped show how profitable this stuff could be and how many parents were hungry for information about how to parent the right Christian way.

And he proved that it was very easy to market material. If you told parents here, let me tell you how to parent the correct Christian way, that was a good way to sell resources. He he did similar things when it came to selling media for, for children. Right. Like here is media that is safe for your children.

He sort of proved that that was profitable as well. So there are a lot of ways that he I, I hesitate to make him too much of a main character, but in a lot of ways we kind of make him a marker in our book.

Marissa

And he really he paved the way for so many after him who followed that same example and because I think something we talk about in the early part of the book is that the other things that were going on around this time, Kelsey mentioned the culture war, the political elements.

There also were things like the inerrancy movement, the rise of complementary and thinking, the prosperity gospel teaching, the neuthentic movement that kind of said biblical counseling and in place of secular voices of authority, kind of a skepticism for that. So all of that kind of creates this really perfect storm that has people looking for trusted spiritual authorities to say, here's the biblical way to do things.

And so certainly, yeah, focus on the family. Dobson. They are the ones a lot of people think of. But after them come the Essos, and they built an international global ministry. You have Bill Gothard. 

Sheila

And that was that was specifically growing kids God's way. Some of you may recognize that title. 

Marissa

Yeah, Yeah or Baby Wise. They also went for the secular market, too.

So, you have of course, Bill Gothard is doing this in the 70s and 80s as well. And then once influencer culture begins in the 2000, you have kind of little offshoots, people doing mini Christian parenting empires because the information, access for information is changing, but the formula is still kind of similar. You know, here's the biblical way to do things.

And then someone becomes a trusted voice. They build a platform. People are looking to them for advice, often self platformed, often self credentials, often no, no accountability in the sense that down the road, who's going to go back and talk to these? Who's going to challenge these teachings? They a lot of times they just kept being recycled.

Sheila

Yeah. I remember in the mid 90s, we Keith, you and I were in Toronto. Yeah. And you were doing a residency at the hospital for Sick Children in Pediatrics, and we were having our babies. Yes. And that idea that there is a Christian way to do parenting and then there is the secular way to do parenting, like we still did buy into that.

Keith

Oh, yeah. Well, that was that was a huge part of the culture back then. People don't realize that. And you're right, Dobson was a big figure, like, I mean, my secular training, they talked about Dobson. They. Because because they saw him as a very dangerous movement, because he was basically, presenting as truth that this is the way to do things when all the evidence and science was in the other direction.

Right. And, and I remember at the time, like, you know, pastors were saying, well, eventually science will catch up to the Bible and will, you know, like I said, well, just just as the evidence kept pouring in and pouring in, like it's just everything was based upon their preconceived notion of how to interpret the Bible. And they just decided to ignore the evidence to preserve that interpretation rather than helping kids.

Marissa

Yep, yep. And you still see it in resources. And people say, you know, God's ways are highers higher. Take this on faith. Even if you don't, you know, whatever the evidence is, take this on faith. And you're right, it's the preconceived idea. And it's such it has such a stranglehold on the on the evangelical community in particular, I think.

Sheila

Yeah, I think I think Christian parenting resources, you know, they tapped into a market like James Dobson tapped into a market of a culture that was scared. You know, you had the Vietnam War, you had all this cultural upheaval. It's like, how do I make my kids not weird and not do something terrible? And so I think the Christian parenting market had it had a carrot and a stick, right.

Like they had they had the threat and then they had the promise. And, I'll read what you said about the promise. You said in your book. And again, the book that we're talking about is The Myth of Good Christian Parenting. It's out October 14th. I think it is very, very soon. Yes. Around then. And here we go.

The promise was Christian parenting resources depend on promises made to parents. If you get it right, then there will be desired results. If not now, then somewhere down the road, the expectation for children to be discipled into right belief and right practice from infancy on up keeps families working hard powered by everything from board books about systematic theology to prayer guides for grandparents.

Christian experts, often self credentialed and self platformed, explain how to bring meaning to the mundane, to wrangle the chaos of family life, and to do parenting with excellence. Yeah. And so that's the promise. Like, we can we can give you those desired results. The threat, of course, is if you don't parent in the right way, your child is going to go to hell.

They won't be right with God. They won't be a Christian. The world is going to get Ahold of them, insert whatever threat you want. But that was very present too. 

Kelsey

Yeah. The threats vary and it's interesting to see which kind of threat. If you don't do this then this, which authors are concerned about which ones. You know James Dobson dare to discipline written in 1970.

He is really not going after the your children's eternal souls are at risk. He's going at the American society is at risk. Like we have these anti-authoritarian children who do not respect authority. And this is the problem, right? Like the world are like very the, the, the fabric of American society is, is crumbling. And it's because parents are afraid to discipline their children.

So there is that's like a common theme of Dobson's work. His going like they're they're delinquents, they're anti-authoritarian. Funny enough, the another book that came out that same year, that was less popular but still very popular was Larry Christensen's, the Christian Family. He was, a charismatic Lutheran. And he wrote and he was highly influenced by the the book The Cross and the switchblade, which is about sort of gang activity in the inner city.

And similarly, that book, you know, your children are going to join gangs, they're going to get addicted to drugs, your daughters are going to get pregnant like in the 70s. The flavor really is like your children are going to be criminals. 

Sheila

And then as they're going to be the type of kids who go to Woodstock and there's thousand percent.

Kelsey

Yeah, exactly. They're going to be hippies. They're going to all of these sort of, you know, cultural, fears of that moment. And then as you get further into like the 80s and early 90s is when you start to get this almost more like spiritually self-serious, like you are the spiritual mediator for your children. You do the act, you do this, this work of the Holy Spirit for your children.

And so it is interesting to me to see how different authors zoom in on different threats over time, and how even some of those, those perceived threats change with like, political and cultural currents as well. 

Sheila

Yeah, that is fascinating. But I think the one overarching thing that I think and tell me, if you agree with us, that you see throughout what what makes Christian parenting, specifically Christian parenting is the idea of parental authority.

Right. That it all starts from parents having authority over their children and needing to control them, disciple them, break their spirits, insert whatever verb you want here.

Keith

Right. Well, and I think the thing for me is that use the word disciple like gets used in a negative like or even just discipline mean spanking like like all these things.

So like we think, I think that parents supposed to disciple their children. I just don't think we should disciple them the way that Christian parenting books say, yes, because it is, like Sheila said, all about authority and obedience, as opposed to shepherding your child. 

Sheila

And one of the things you talked about, which I think is so interesting, is the idea of instant obedience, how obedience isn't real unless it's it's instant.

Tell me about that Marissa. 

Marissa

Yeah. So it's sometimes referred to as first time obedience or you'll hear these little kind of jingles that are taught to children right away all the way with a happy heart. That kind of obedience and it. Yes, it absolutely ties in with ideas about authority, the hierarchy in the home, like maybe some of us are familiar with the umbrella we've seen from Gothard ministry, but it's that idea circulates in many forms.

Ted Tripp calls it a circle of blessing. Others use other names, but the idea is there is a place and hierarchy where you need to submit to the authority above you without question, instantly. And it's important for parents to teach children to do that. Often they're told you need to do this so your children will know how to obey God instantly.

So it comes with this spiritual catechesis kind of as well. That takes it from I mean, it's interesting to read. Yeah, some of the, some of the early Dobson books, early focus on the family books that are much more pragmatic, kind of like we just want the household to run smoothly, you know, like it's important to kind of it's almost behaviorist stick like, just conditioned your child to obey.

And then later you get this sense of like, you really need to plumb their hearts. You really need to teach them to obey. Every moment becomes this moment to share the gospel or take your children to the cross. And often those language, those kinds of phrases are used in the books that I think makes it very difficult for devout, sincerely devout Christian parents to walk away, because, of course, they're concerned about their child's spiritual well-being.

Of course they would like their child to obey God someday. And so this idea that if I let that tantrum slide, I might be jeopardizing their spiritual well-being down the road or I might be endorsing rebellion becomes really motivating for a lot of a lot of parents, particularly when experts are kind of saying, yeah, it's that's your job.

Your job is to get that first time obedience, that is your primary job. And then right off, of course, the the primary tool that's often given is spanking. What I find so interesting is like if you look at Jesus's teachings instead of obedience, isn't there really like how many parables are there right about hey, that to me is a parable about that, right?

The two says, the one who says all the way and doesn't, the one who doesn't, which which truly obeyed. Yes. Well, and that's that's worth noting, because, as we say in our book, many of these resources, sermons, conferences, all of them have a lot to say about Christian parenting and little to say about Jesus, little to say about the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus.

Sheila

Remarkably so. I wish I could underscore for people that reality like, well, let's give an example. Let's give an example, shall we? Sounds great. I have a clip from Nancy Wilson, who is the wife of Doug Wilson, who hit the news a couple of weeks ago in early August. When the interview went live on CNN. Whose church argues that slavery wasn't that bad, that women shouldn't have the right to vote, that women should obey their husbands, etc., etc., etc..

Just lovely all round. And here is Nancy Wilson explaining how she dealt with the fact that when she arrived at a playdate to pick up her daughter, her daughter wasn't happy to see her. 

Nancy Wlson CLIP

Rachel was visiting a friend. She's probably 3 or 4 and that's that. Before school age. And our neighbor had a little kids and so we would trade back and forth.

So I went over to pick her up, and when I walked in, she said, is it time to go? So I thought, perfect opportunity. I got her home. I didn't address it there, but, I did give her a spanking. It's true, I did, but I just said, when I come in, you're going to say, hi, mom. You know, that's how we do this.

So the next time she went over there, I did the review. And I remember when I come, you're going to say hi, mom. You're not going to say, oh, I don't want to go. So beautiful. Because then when I picked her up, it was just all that. Hey. Yes? Mom is here at last. Yeah, yeah, but it's just that training.

Sheila

All right, Kelsey, what do you think of that?

Kelsey

I oh. I mean, I laugh and I, I don't think it's funny. I've seen this clip so many times now. I laugh because having written this book now and spent so much time in these books, it's comical how recycled this idea is, how far removed it is from the example of Christ, and just how it displays this adversarial relationship between parents and children that we see figures like this creating.

And we don't reference that a lot in our book because it's a little afield. But there's Jason Blakely is, is a philosopher, political philosopher who has a book called Lost in Ideology, and he talks about how sometimes we basically create our reality out of our ideology. And that is what these people are doing, is they're saying, you are in a battle of wills with your child, and you must win every time, and everything is potentially, potentially an affront to your parental authority.

And you need to be there, right, right, right there every time to to answer it. And I when we were reading these interviews that we did with, with people who we got in touch with for this book, you can see the fruit of that just growing up in a household where you and your parent are at odds because your parents saw you as a threat to your authority all the time.

It just makes me sad, so I, I shouldn't laugh, but at the same, it's unoriginal. It shows up every time. And it's a problem of of our own making. It's a problem of our own making. 

Sheila

Do you think she really thought that was beautiful, Marissa? Like she says. Oh, it was beautiful like that. Her daughter said, hi, mommy.

Like, do you think she really thought it was? 

Marissa

I think it is in the water in Wilson. Doug Wilson's community and communities like that, because that is the way everyone is treated. Like I will often say, the way children are treated in a church system will be the way individuals in that church family system will be treated. And when you're in a community like that that says you choose joy, you put the smile on like you obey.

You know what I mean? There's where feeling is suppressed. I think that is a marker of the desired goal that they they perceive is sanctification or Christianity. What so unfortunate is it's incredibly shortsighted because it's training children. Yes, and training parents, training everyone in this kind of performative ness, performative joy that says, oh, well, everything is right. This, this inauthentic relationship.

And it down the road. I mean, it's hard to think of a more accurate, like a more powerful recipe for inauthentic connection and estrangement than that where you say, I will spanked you into being happy to see you act that out, and then down the road, people are wondering, well, why does my child, who did finally reclaim their autonomy?

Why do they want nothing to do with me? How can we not have a connection? I, I don't even know them anymore. Because. Or why does why does my child, who maybe still does talk to me? Why does my child keep getting into abusive relationships and not seem to not seem to ever stand up for themselves because they've so disconnected themselves from their own emotions that they can't recognize red flags?

Sheila

You can't. Right? And or identify their own desires or their own emotions and all the other things that I mentioned earlier that play into this new static biblical counseling bolster this. And it is just devastating, devastating fruit. And so I think, you know, that clip went viral a couple years ago and they doubled down. They yeah, they doubled down and defended it.

Marissa

So I think absolutely they are pleased with that. It's so it's it's really tragic I think because it continues to rob families of, of authentic connection that could be theirs when those kind of recipes are presented as like that's, that's good, this kind of robotic cheerfulness out of fear of punishment. Well, and I think, I mean, I think she was referring to it to when Rachel was like 3 or 4, like it sounded like from from the context and like, just let's just take a step back here.

So what she's saying is I, as a mother, am upset when my child doesn't show joy. And so my child has to be disciplined and changed so that my child can coddle my feelings, and so that my child can attune herself to my feelings. Yes, I was just going to say, and Holbert has written a history of Christian or a History of parenting in the US, and she refers to James Dobson as parent centered and evangelical parenting as parent centered parenting.

That's a label she gives it. And that's because that is exactly what you're pointing out is the outgrowth is how I feel my authority is being respected or not. Tells me how I should parent like I need to parent in whatever way makes my child make me feel like I am being respected. And that's exactly that's exactly what what we're seeing there.

Kelsey

And it just you can just see in that description of that interchange how that child that is going to grow up feeling, they are seen by their parent. Right. And and also how parents see their children. I mean, it's just it's so tragic for everyone. Like I, you know, we respond differently to our kids when we perceive them as a threat to us.

Marissa

Right? Like that robs parents of a different view of their children as well. Yeah, yeah. And it and it also it creates this, this dynamic where parents perceive their children as extensions of themselves. So this and I think Wilson's community, you see this really, really powerfully in that those adult children are all grown. They are in the community producing content that says the same thing for the next generation.

And in the recent CNN interview that Wilson did, he said that his father, who was a pastor, said that if any of his kids departed the Christian faith, he would step down from ministry. So this incredible pressure on everyone that says, I can and should shape my child into this thing, I think they should be, and they are a reflection of me.

They are. They are my testimony in the world. I mean, it's just it it's coming at families from all angles and then the people for whom it works, which I question, in a lot of ways, but they are platformed so that everyone thinks, oh, well, that is the goal. If I do this right, I can have a generational legacy where everybody's a Christian and everybody's cheerful and joyful and close and, you know, whatever is being presented as the desirable legacy, which is why we use the language of of myth, because it it appeals to understandable longings.

But it it doesn't hold up. I find this so funny because like in Scripture, even God has a prodigal son, right? Like in that story of the prodigal son, the father represents God. So even God didn't have like a little legacy with. Absolutely. And I mean, like the heart of God is for us, right? Like, like and the parents heart toward their child is a theme throughout the Bible, right.

Like God uses that as an example. So to me, it's like I want what's best for my child. So when you train me as a parent to think about me and my getting my respect and authority, you were telling a part of me that would be a good parent, to force it into your theological constraints to produce the kind of person you want to produce, which is an unhealthy person in the end, it's so sad.

Sheila

But, like, we know this, right? We know this because so much research has been done on what phrase is healthy kids? How did we get to the point? And this is the question that keeps me up at night when Christians just decided to ignore all that and platform people with no credentials.

Yeah, I don't even know who wants to answer. 

Kelsey 

Dobson did have credentials. I mean, that's part of what made him so winsome. Was it like he was Doctor James Dobson? He worked at Los Angeles Children's. He had some kind of credential and also experience in the classroom, and was sharing all these stories of these children, who he was working with.

He seemed so, so trustworthy. And he was also a very good communicator. I was just recently listening to, something sky Brittany, who is a co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, said evangelicals have often been discipled by media and and Dobson was discipling people through media, starting in the 70s. And I think as evangelicals have gotten so comfortable being discipled by media, they ask less and less of experts, especially when it comes to parenting.

I think we see it now with parenting influencers. Gosh, there's a lot just to be said about Instagram parenting influencers and the perceived authority that they have based on attractiveness, wealth, race, the the looks of their children, esthetics. I mean, all of these things are things that are kind of giving authority to people and helping them build these massive platforms.

How I mean, how we got here. It's been a long process, but I do think Dobson was a start, and he was sort of a soft start because he did have those credentials, but he very quickly started distancing himself from his credentials and to give up like 

Sheila

He left the American psychological Association in the early 70s. Right.

Marissa

Yep, yep. And that really play and and I'm sure you see this all the time in marriage, the marriage teaching Sheila that, Jay Adams was also in 1970 competent to counsel came out. 

Sheila

And so this idea just just for our listeners, Jay Adams was the founder of the biblical counseling movement. It was called New Threat Counseling at the time.

But that biblical counseling movement is the idea that the Bible is sufficient for everything we need for counseling. And, we need to ignore, secular counseling or any kind of mental health or psychology, research. Yeah. 

Marissa

Yeah. So that that is happening along with this reassertion of the idea of inerrancy and the countercultural movement of people like Francis Schaefer and people like that who are saying, look, we need to be skeptical of humanism, secular humanism, and these external voices of authority and I think the way that trickle down in, you know, to the people sitting in the pews is they did not believe other, other voices of experience.

You know, instead of saying all truth is God's truth, they said, no, my, I need someone to say, what's biblical for me. And it's going to be coming through specific voices of authority and anybody else. I'm I'm going to reject what they're saying. And you see this very much either or you still see it today, right. Like, oh, well, that person's progressive.

So they can't have anything good to say. I'm not going to listen to them or this person takes that pol- or whatever the insider outsider markers become. And so it created know it's a prototype for what we see now. It created echo chambers even before we had social media, where people were in this kind of like closed off publishing, ministry, resource, environment and just were set up to reject anything that could have contradicted the narrative that was that was being presented by people whom they trusted.

That's a big piece of this, too, because there was an audience for them. People trusted James Dobson. 

Sheila

Well, I know, and one of the questions that I get, and this is in the parenting realm, but I'm constantly getting pastors emailing me, saying I need a good marriage book to recommend to people, but I don't have anything. And now, of course, we have the marriage you wanted, which was that this year.

So now they can they can have that. But until the marriage you want, there just weren't like Christian marriage resources that were safe. And I would often say, well, you could do John Gottman like it's secular, but it's based on research. But a lot of people said no, we have to have something as Christian or people don't read it.

Right. And and I think that's what's happened is like, we have to go for the Christian parenting as opposed to realizing that Jesus is the truth. And so when we find truth about humanity, about child development, it is true, you know, and I and I'm and yes, we need information on how to disciple, literally disciple our kids, but how to potty train or how to handle temper tantrums is is actually quite consistent.

Whether you you're Christian or not. And the idea that Christians have a different way of doing all of this and that we have the right way has really hampered, I think, people's curiosity to actually listen to evidence, which I think is too bad. And speaking of that, let's do another clip, shall we? I want to talk about I have two clips here on how a lot of parenting, quote unquote experts see the essence of childhood.

So because this dictates everything about how we approach parenting, right? Is, is what do we think our children are? And so I'm going to play this one first from an influencer. I don't even I don't even understand her significance. I this clip has gone viral lately. But, Marissa, do you want to explain this on Ally Beth's Stuckey's podcast?

Marissa

And who is the one talking in this clip? Yes. So Allie Beth is interviewing Abby Hulbert, who's also her handle across social media is M's for mama. She's written several books that, are bestselling books for mothers in particular, she's a mother of ten. She's an influencer who began in, like, the mommy blogging days. But yeah, she.

So that's who she's Allie Beth is interviewing and I think they've they've had multiple conversations over the years on Alibaba's podcast and things like that. 

Sheila

Okay. So let's listen in on this. 

Clip speaker #1

You, gentle parent.

Clip speaker #2

What do y'all think? I really want to encourage you to look closely at the undergirding of the philosophies that are behind a movement that essentially tells you you do not need a savior, because the gentle parenting movement, one of the biggest accounts within it's their tagline is good inside you are not good inside, and neither are your children.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And the Bible tells us this explicitly. It does not mean that our children don't have some element of innocence in which they have not enacted sin as babies, in the same way that you and I have actively chosen said, it does not mean that there isn't some sort of age of accountability, although I think it can vary per child.

However, if we are to deny the fact that we are capable of anger and jealousy and strife and envy and selfishness from such an early age, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to share the gospel with our children. And if you think I'm exaggerating, all you need to do is go on a gentle parenting forum during Easter and watch them tie themselves in knots by calling themselves Christians, but not being able to say that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

Because substitutionary atonement is anathema to the philosophy of gentle parenting, which says you do not need. 

Sheila 

All right, so children aren't good inside. 

Kelsey

Yeah. Well, I mean, so for those who aren't familiar, this is a direct reference to Becky Kennedy, who is a kind of a popular mainstream parenting podcaster, writer. And her platform, her platform is called Good Inside.

She has a book called Good Inside. So this is really like a push against her specifically. And yeah, there are a lot of folks, especially in the reformed kind of circles of evangelicalism, who really dislike Becky Kennedy often, I think simply because of that title, I wonder how much of her content they have interacted with, because I think they would find most of it is very straightforward, authoritative parenting stuff that is neither kind of touchy feely and permissive nor authoritarian.

I think, you know, that's that's just my view. But I think that tie that good has become good inside has become this boogeyman. People are like, well, see, the world is going to tell your kids that they're perfect, that they're like, they're just good inside. So that's why I write about sin to anything they would say, what about you?

Sheila

And I find this fascinating because a little bit of understanding of Christian history might show people something different because like, what's the Eastern Orthodox view of.

Keith

Oh yeah, this, this whole this is a such a distorted version. It's like there's this extreme they go to that we are wicked evil in the core of our being, which is not the Christian viewpoint.

Sheila

I mean, that that complete. Well, it is it is like the it's a form. It's a, it is a slippery extreme. 

Keith

Yeah. And it it basically says there is no image of God in us anymore. Like, like like it's it gets rid of that completely. Right. And if you don't think that you are in all ways evil, then you think we're perfect just the way we are and we don't need Jesus.

And it's like, what a distortion that that's that's not that's not reality. And even even Paul talks about, you know, the good I want to do, I don't do. But like inside there's a good he wants to do like he's still a sinner but like inside there's good right. Like and so saying that to kids is positive right.

Like we want you to be the best you can be, you know? 

Sheila

And like the Eastern Orthodox view is not the original sin. You, I'm not Eastern Orthodox, but like, I'm quite aware that that within the Christianity there is multiple ways of understanding our nature, our fundamental nature. And I think what, what what Abby is doing here is setting up a strawman, which is, you know, either you are perfect or, you know, you are a three year old who suffers.

Well, she listed all kinds of sins there. What is envy and strife and these things that, like a two and three year old, are supposed to have, like what is going, what is what is there, as opposed to saying, okay, you know, our children just want connection. They want like a baby wants connection with you. You know, a toddler wants connection.

And they also need to learn emotional regulation. And they need to learn how to exercise autonomy in the world. And they're still learning this at a young age. Yeah. But kids kids can be very good. They just they want love. 

Marissa

Yeah. Yeah I mean this this kind of teaching is so problematic for what it says and also what it misses out on which is an understanding of child development so often whatever theological framework the parent is working from or the community they're in is all of that's going to be projected onto a child, which is how you end up with someone thinking, well, what's the sin in my child's heart that they threw their

food on the floor or something? And, sometimes the experts will be saying directly those things. I mean, shepherding a child's heart is still one of the most popular Christian parenting resources, and Ted Tripp does this throughout. He talks about six year olds, as kind of like sex addicts. He talks about seven year olds as little hypocrites.

He just he normalized, I think, for a whole generation, this idea that parents should be the Holy Spirit, plumbing their depths of their child's heart for sin and calling that out and responding to it, and kind of like putting that off again that often think he was he was very much, trained up in the biblical counseling movement.

So I think it's become so normal for a lot of families, particularly second generation evangelical families. The idea that that is a very unique and new and specifically white American evangelical way of thinking about parenting is not even on their radar. So the idea that, yes, children are good insight or the idea that, yes, Genesis one and two talks about to humans that imago day as as good, the idea that that it could be anything but what they've what they're holding on to of like the it's a primary importance to tell young children that they're sinful so that they can say the sinner's prayer.

And I do think you see this teaching much more popular in, believers baptism communities. I mean, it's elsewhere as well, but you see it much more popular because the the pressure is really on, like you need to as soon as you can tell your child this message so they can understand their sins, so they can understand the need for the Savior.

So they can say the prayer and they can they can be saved. And as you pointed out, Sheila, the the historic position of the church across the century centuries has not been that, but that is the loudest voice in Christian parenting resources. 

Sheila

Yep. And what happens when you see your children, like when when you look at your child and your first thought is they are essentially evil.

And I, I need to I then what's what happens is every time your child has a meltdown, you view that through a sin lens instead of oh, maybe they're tired, right? Or maybe they're needing more attention. Or maybe we've been too busy today and I haven't sat down and just looked at them eye to eye and spent some time with them or, you know, whatever it might be.

Marissa

Yeah. And it's so dangerous. Yeah, yeah. 

Keith

And again, all these things are things that natural, regular people would naturally think. And what our Christian resources have done is trained people to be worse parents than they would have been just following their heart and doing what came naturally as a parent. Because we're taking theology and we're using it to twist people's way of looking at things in a way that makes them worse than they were before.

Sheila

Yeah, we get it. You think about Jesus saying, you know, which one of you fathers, if your child asked for bread, would give them a stone, right? Or if your child was asked for an egg, would give them a serpent or something like that, right? Like he's like, no, like you obviously parents want to do good for their kid.

Like you want to love your kid. That's the natural bent. And yet these Christian resources can't say that. They can't say your natural bent is to wanting to get for your kid, because our natural bent has to be to see our kids as evil. And so let's play another clip. This one's from Vodi Boccom, who is a pastor.

Sheila

At one point, he was potentially going to run for leadership of the SBC, but he's he's said some pretty controversial things. 

Vodi Boccum

And here's one of them for and I'll say it again, it's not a little angel that's a viper in a diaper.

You come into this world, you can barely open your eyes. For months, barely hold up your head. And hold. Grab his hand. You can't sit up. You can't talk. You can't play. You can't walk. But you can let everybody know. That you're running things. 

Sheila

Okay. Viper in a diaper. 

Kelsey

Yeah. This is become this quote that Reese circulates over and over again.

And it's an example of a couple of things. One is this this trying to get parents very early on comfortable with this. My child is a center. My child is the center. Ken Hamm does this, Ted trip does this. It's everywhere. So there's this attempt to kind of desensitize parents to, I think the needs of their children, the immature early express needs.

It's trying to kind of prime parents to see all this is selfishness or manipulative. Your child crying in the night, it's because they are selfish. It's because they are manipulating you. Look even even from the womb, they know how to do this. You know that's how endemic sin is and humanity. So it's that it's also this humor that we often see these pastor teacher writers use, I think, as a way to kind of endear themselves to the audience and also take the edge off to kind of make it seem not so serious.

Like, this isn't that big of a deal. There's so much joking out there about spanking, which I'm convinced is there, so that parents just don't think it's that that serious, you know, like it's it's just this desensitizing. And so, when you hear that preached to a roomful of people and you hear chuckles, it's kind of like drops for a laugh, you know, that's what's going on there.

Marissa

I think it's so dehumanizing and it's incredibly dangerous because particularly parents who are overwhelmed are in the overwhelming season of parenting, then absolutely do look at their child who can't sleep through the night as an antagonist and also in a dehumanized way. And we saw this about a year ago. There was a popular influencer on Twitter who said that about his, I think, four month old son who wasn't sleeping like, Lord, give me grace to discipline him.

You know, like this idea that, rather than the invitation for the parent to grow in the face of discomfort or to cultivate patience or long suffering or any number of fruit of the spirit in what could be a hard circumstance, the parent stays in their position unchanged and says, this child who, according to Christian beliefs, God designed to develop from immaturity to maturity.

God designs dependent and needy and immature to look to a parent. So kind of looking at God's design is flawed in that sense and saying, why isn't this child performing the way I expect, more mature adults should perform? And then perceiving that as sin and often as sin that needs to be punished or atoned for in some way.

It's and it's incredibly dangerous and it's how Vodi then goes on and talks about all day spanking sessions or spanking five times by breakfast. And I do think the humor cloaks the abuse, because, that kind of teaching directly enables abuse. Like whatever the person saying it means. That is what will happen behind closed doors when frustrated parents look at their child who's having a hard time, who can't comply in the way the parent wants, when the parents simply overwhelmed and they now are empowered to respond in this way.

It makes me so angry when I see it because it continues to come in different forms, in different ways. We saw influencers a couple of weeks ago, Gen-Z influencers saying this, and it will it will just propagate. And I think Christians need to be the loudest voices saying, no, no, no, no more of that. 

Sheila Yeah, yeah. I I think one of the things to when I think about, you know, what Vodi Boccum said is that idea that that baby who's crying in that crib is trying to control the family.

And it reminds me of something that Doug Wilson said. And I saw this clip on your on your, Instagram feed, Marissa, from about a year ago where he was talking about how to spank, you know, and when and how you used an implement and the reign of terror that children can have and and how sometimes when a child, when a baby and he was talking specifically about babies, when they're just crying and there's absolutely nothing you can do.

You've tried changing the diaper, you've tried everything and they're still crying. Then you just leave them in another part of the house and let them cry because you're not making a difference anyway. Yeah, and it's like, wow. So. So you're really teaching parents to unattached from their children. 

Marissa

Yeah. Yeah, it's teaching detachment. And it's it's also gives a glimpse.

All of this, right, is wrapped up to people's view of God to them. And it it really reveals the theology there that God is detached, that God doesn't care about people suffering. He's not going to come when you call. You should cheerfully comply in your hardship. That's what he's most interested in is your behavior, not in connection with you.

And and so this idea that that is what parents would be offering as well. Like you're right, I think I think in that clip he says jokingly, of course the baby should learn early on that man is born to trouble to count it all joy. So it's it's very much wrapped up in an entire worldview that sees that as the human condition as well.

And yeah, it's cultivating detachment. And parents are training themselves to do that day in and day out. 

Sheila

And I think one of the appeals of this stuff of like Doug Wilson saying, you don't have to pick up your kid, they'll be perfectly fine if you leave them on the other side of the house or, think Nancy Wilson telling you just to spank your kid when they make you feel bad about yourself, so they'll stop making you feel bad about yourself, is that it does work so you get overwhelmed parents like it works in the short term, right? You get. You get the the kids still crying, the baby's still crying. But at least they're not in the same room as you. So it's not like, new as much. This child now smiles when you want them to, even though it's not genuine. But you feel placated. And I think one of the problems and maybe, Abby, M for mama was getting at some of this.

And this is maybe why she is so popular. Is that actual parenting? Healthy parenting takes time. It's hard if you have a baby who's four months old and not sleeping, that is hard. It's exhausting. You know, I I've gone through that. My kids have gone through that, it's really, really rough. And you feel sometimes like you're losing your mind.

Marissa

Yeah, yeah. 

Sheila

And when a Christian gives you what looks like a relatively easy answer, you know, like the ads, those telling parents just not to get kids out of bed the middle of the night anymore when they're crying and make them sleep, force them to sleep through the night. Even if they wail all night. I don't know how young they did it.

Marissa

Two months old, they said. They said you could. You could have your child sleep trained by eight weeks. They said start in the second week postpartum. Right. Bananas.

Sheila

Yes. And, Keith, what does the Canadian Pediatric Society say about you? 

Keith

Yeah. Yeah.

I think the thing I was thinking of, like when I first saw that clip of, you know, the child knowing they can control the whole household from birth.

My thought was, what kind of person sees a baby crying? And the first thought is that they're trying to control. Right. And I was so angry. But then, then I thought actually the kind of person who was raised like that. Yeah. Because, because your parents didn't love you. Because I'm sorry. But ignoring children, not attending to children when they're crying when they need you is not love.

And so if you're not loved, you don't like this seems natural. This is the way that the world works. And it's just so sad because. Because it's like like I said earlier, you've killed a part of your heart. This is this is just not what God wants for for us. And the Bible is so full of other examples of how to parent your children.

Then this is, this is such a devastatingly horrendous misreading of God's view of what it means to be a parent. And it's just so sad. So sad.

Marissa

And almost, almost. 201 The Christian parenting experts offer anecdotes from their own childhood that reveal that, you know Douglas and talks about his father with his fist in front of his face and spanking him up the stairs.

And and Ted Tripp talks about a chaotic background and, you know, so I do think there's something there where, Dobson does as well, a number of them do. And that is, I think, what they received. And part of why they're so able to say that's that's what should happen. 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. When you, when you grew up with anxious or avoidant attachment yourself, you think that that's normal.

Yeah. And and yeah you're going to perpetuate that. And if you can call it Christian, then you have a way of, of convincing yourself that you're healthy when you're not.

Kelsey

Yeah. Right. And that seems to be so much of what's happened. Yeah. And I think sometimes when I read these I can see, you know, they're just, they're just is some baby and child behavior that is triggering as a parent that makes you angry or makes you anxious or makes you feel like something is wrong, like, and if you are someone who grew up in a household that was chaotic, or someone who did have an anxious or detached relationship with your parent, that

feels bad and it feels really hard. And I think for some parents, these resources offered an answer to who sinned that this is so hard, like who sinned that this parenting moment is so difficult. Right? It's like this question being posed to Jesus who sinned. But this is happening right now, and it gave the answer, your child, your child, who's a sinner?

Who you need to kind of help get into shape here. And I think for some parents who are really struggling, that felt good. It felt like it gave their discomfort a place to land. It made them feel like their anger was a righteous anger that was somehow reflective of God's anger. Like, I think when these when these resources put parents in the position of God, they can very quickly feel that, okay, I'm angry because God would be angry at this.

Like God, if God were sitting right here and this was, you know, that was this relationship, God would not let this slide, you know, and I think that that I, for some parents, is appealing and can be even a balm when you feel like something is going wrong here and I don't know what to do, it can feel like an answer and a very satisfying, correct answer that then gives you this tool.

Then, you know, then the tool is sort of and that's why you must spank your children. That's why you must discipline decisively and immediately. Yeah. And as soon as you see your child as that sinner, the one who's caused this, then the whole concept of breaking their spirit and seeing a child as someone who has to be defeated and broken down so that they can be rebuilt in your image, that's how this this can happen.

Sheila

And that that idea of breaking their spirit, I mean, the pearls did it and to train up a child. But they're not the only ones, right? Like that. Children need to be broken. Because of this terrible sin nature, does just appear over and over again. You know, as opposed to understanding. Children need connection so they can learn emotional regulation.

Kelsey

Yeah. Yeah. I mean even adjusting by the standards of different conversations for different eras. Yeah. This, this was intentionally marking a different choice, a different anthropology of children primarily around sin and misbehavior. And, and I think it, it really appealed to a lot of new parents and new converts to, something we found, like a lot of people were drawn into this because they came back to faith once they had kids or were coming to faith for the first time and thinking, I want to do this the Christian way, like I want to please God.

And they were handed, handed these resources, and many of which were written by by people who had very young children at the time, as well. So when people realized that James Dobson was writing Dare to Discipline when he had like, toddlers, wasn't he? Yeah, he had a baby and a preschooler when he wrote that. So it's almost entirely theoretical.

Sheila

And as you mentioned it, it may work for a time or appear to work with certain children, but it doesn't. It doesn't. And, it certainly doesn't hold up long term. And which is which is why I think you see less material from talking about those older years or things like that. So much of it is focused on like the first 5 or 6 years.

Marissa

Well, and again, because the aim of this is the instant obedience and to get kids outward behavior to be what I want it to be. It's not actually about training character, no matter how much they may say it is, because you can't train character unless you give children autonomy. You have to give children autonomy to choose, because that is that is the basis for character.

Yeah. And trying to control them eradicates that. The other thing that I find so interesting and we touched on this already, but is the complete lack of Bible in all of these biblical books and this special child. Yeah. Like they all say, they're biblical and they'll just prove text out of a proverb or two or out of Hebrews or something.

And none of it has anything to do with the character of Jesus. And I have a clip to prove this.

Sheila

Okay. So I, I've taken this is a six minute. John Piper's answering a question. Would Jesus spank him? And his his answer is yes, Jesus absolutely would spank. And in fact, the fact that she is asking the question or that this person is asking shows that they have a wrong view of God.

And so I'll put a link to his whole six minute answer, but let's just listen to one minute of it, okay? I mean, I can give a whole theology of spanking here, but maybe, maybe boil it down to why? Why does this person feel squeamish? And my guess is it's a wrong view of God. I mean, deep down, does this person believe that God brings pain into our lives because Romans I mean, the Hebrews 12 makes the direct connection between God disciplines every son whom he loves and spanks everyone that he delights in.

But paraphrase and to the point there is suffering. God brings sufferings into our life, and the right of the Hebrews makes the connection between the parenting of God and His children through suffering. This is a wrong view of God. God uses suffering to discipline his children. So do we now. You don't damage a child. You do like that.

John Piper Clip

And big a big guy or break his arm. Or the children have little fat bottoms so that they can be walloped.

Sheila

All right, so we have the wrong view of God because we need to realize that God causes our suffering. Yeah, yeah. People, I want you all to listen, okay? Everyone is listening. Can you see how that view of God, the only thing that God is worried about, is making us obey him.

And so he is going to hurt us so that we obey him. And so we would we should absolutely assume that Jesus would spank babies. Can you see how that view of God influences how we see parenting? 

Kelsey

Oh man. Yeah, I have heard so many really contorted explanations of why this is the case. Like why spanking is Christ like.

This is one of them. Another one that when someone said to me once was, well, spanking is like how, how how Jesus dealt with us one and done like saying like spanking was like the crucifixion. It was like a one and done. But it's when you take like two seconds to dig underneath that and think about what does that say about atonement and sin?

And it was Christ's work on the cross. Not for all sit like, not for the sins of my child. Or am I not supposed to let them think that it was for their. I might not supposed to let them think that their sins are covered? It's so strange. And people do all kinds of strange theological gymnastics to get there.

I am not a theologian, so I'll let Marissa speak more to that. But I even as like a lay person and the researcher reading all of these different examples, I just find myself pulling my hair out because they just morph and change and people bend the person of Christ and Christ's work to suit the case they want to make before us.

Sheila

Even before Marissa comes in, you guys have a free, preorder bonus about what John Piper was talking about. So I just want to get I just want to plug that somewhere. So don't lose your train of thought because you're going to come back to the second. But, what he was saying about Hebrews 12 being about spanking, you guys have some preorder bonuses, and one of them, I think three one of them is about how Hebrews 12 is not about God spanking us.

Yes. So if you preordered the myth of good Christian parenting, where can people go to get the preorder bonuses? 

Marissa

We will give you a link to put in the show notes, because we can set up a little page. And even if you preordered earlier this summer, you can you can still get the bonuses. Yeah. So just go in and put your input then and there and we'll, we hope they'll be a help for you.

We tried to do kind of the facts of the Christian case against spanking in these downloadable resources. So share them widely please. With with people who you think might benefit. But yeah, I mean, this is not unusual. There are I have a picture book on my shelf that's that's got this idea that that God took my licking for me.

And the idea that Jesus, God spanked Jesus in some form, shows up in, in sermons and a number of things in the popular Christian conversation, even outside of parenting resources and, it's so unfortunate because it is a distortion of a very rudimentary reading of what's called penal substitutionary atonement, which is a theory of atonement, a relatively recent theory, one among many theories.

And I say that because I, I often hear from people pretty regularly that my discussion of Christian parenting resources, the very first time they've heard that there's multiple theories on the atonement, they have been in corners of the church where they have only been presented with this kind of like, very simplistic version of this one that is, you know, God's wrath needs, needs to be meted out on somebody.

So Jesus took our place so we didn't have to receive it. And that that's the good news for everyone. And then, of course, that that rudimentary version of this gets correlated over to what we call liturgist spanking. And in our book, because often it comes with a lot of liturgy and ritual, so that then the parent is role playing, the role of God, and, the child is being spanked to atone in some way.

And that brings about the reconciliation that can happen after. And, it is distorted theology, I think it's not good news. And, it is bananas to me how how widely this has been propagated, how many people have been spiritually formed by this. And you see it even in Abby's clip earlier at the very end of it. Yeah.

I was going to mention that. Yeah. She says, she references substitutionary atonement. I think she means penal substitutionary atonement specifically. But the idea being if we if we don't, you know, get serious about sin in our children, they will miss the entire gospel because in that, framework, the entire gospel is this idea that sin, punishment, substitutionary atonement, and, yeah, it has long term repercussions.

As we surveyed and interviewed people, for many of them, their, current adult relationship with God is this idea if they still retain faith, is this idea that he's just waiting for them to mess up? He's just waiting to punish? Or if they experience suffering or sorrow, they perceive it as because of something they have done to step outside the circle of his blessing.

So it really ties in with these other distorted theologies that are not true. They're not in alignment with, the life and teaching of Jesus. They're not in alignment with the good news or even the historic teaching of the Christian church. So, I found myself often, like when I read Ted Tripp's book for the first time in researching this, I thought, where are the where were the pastors?

Sheila

Yeah. And that book is shepherding a child heart

Marissa

Yeah  shepherding a child's heart. Like, where were the pastors? Because even just a a brief reading of this should have shown him so many problems. And I don't know if pastors just weren't reading these resources and were just handing them out or I don't I don't know what happened that the people who should have been able to say this is not responsible theological perspective or a good hermeneutical or exegetical approach.

There was a failure there in the way some of these continue to circulate, without people who could have said, no, no, this isn't sound. You know, being able to identify that. So, yeah.

Sheila

And if you, if you don't know what we're talking about when it comes to different ideas of atonement, and he writes book, the Day God Became King is really good about that.

Zach Lambert's new book, Better Ways to Read the Bible. Yeah. So just there's there's there's there's other, other avenues. Christianity has 2000 years of history. 

Marissa

Yes. And I like to recommend Fleming Rutledge's book The Crucifixion. I love it. It's a it's a big one, but it covers all the major theories of the atonement and the biblical motifs of atonement.

So if you're listening and thinking, oh my gosh, that's something I've never heard, that's a really good one. If you want to dig deep and see a number of the different perspectives. 

Sheila

Yeah. I think to one thing that you said in your book is that people are saying that spanking is supposed to be teaching kids the gospel, but if Jesus was supposed to pay the price for our sins, yeah.

Why then are you saying that he didn't pay it for children? 

Kelsey

Yeah. Right. People get really inconsistent when you ask that question. Understandably. I don't want to blame people who have practiced this for kind of trusting these teachings, but it's there's this idea that we can't give sin a pass. I can't give sin a pass. And my children.

But then you ask the question, but is spanking punishing you? Do you see spanking as punishing sin? Is that what you're doing? People will backpedal pretty quickly and say, well, Jesus died for sin, that that atoning work is done. Well then that then why? Well, they need to understand the weight of their sin. Like in the same way that God makes us understand the weight of our sin.

So then God causes us pain. Well, it just starts to fall apart really quickly. But I think you know the uncomfortable truth. I think for a lot of people is that, again, spanking gives parental anger a place to land. It makes you feel like you've done something. It makes you feel like you haven't given sin a pass, even though the actual breakdown of what you're doing doesn't hold up the way that you might think it does.

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. You know, Marissa, you're talking about the liturgy of spanking. And I thought, of course, as as we're recording this, James Dobson's death is still very fresh. And so my threads is all Taylor and in Travis are engaged and Dobson died, thank goodness. 

Marissa

Right. Same right now. 

Sheila

And yay, Taylor and Travis, by the way. But but, one of the things that one of the recurring themes that I've seen is, people criticizing the fact that Dobson made it so clear that you should never spank in anger, right?

That it had to be very deliberate. You couldn't be angry. And Piper says this too, like in the in the longer clip that we just the longer clip that we that I just played, and that afterwards you, you give them a hug and you tell them that you love them. And the comments from people who grew up in that are saying so basically, my parent was a psychopath because I could understand them spanking me.

If they were angry. I could understand them losing control, but to deliberately hurt me while they were in control of themselves was was awful. Yeah. 

Keith And then to make them and then to make me hug them afterwards, make me hug. 

Marissa

Yeah. Well, and these are part of the really made up rules for that were offered to so many parents to say, here's what will magically turn hitting your child into compliance, into something godly and good.

Like if we're being really truthful, I do think in the early Dobson resources, it comes across very much just as child conditioning, right? Like you are spanking to inflict pain, to just get them to stop an undesirable behavior. But as like I think as research demonstrated the harm in that as American society and other other nations moved away from that Christian parents, the Christian Insider group needed to offer different reasons for this, right?

And one that they pulled on was, oh, there's a right way to do this, this godly way to do this. Be calm, go pray. And yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to say which is worse for a child to be spanked by an angry, raging parent or a calm, collected one who's prayed beforehand. In both cases, the child is getting hit by a caregiver or the caregivers inflicting pain.

But I do think the one that then required, force connection and reconciliation afterward to make the parent feel better, I think for what had happened, certainly was a recipe for grooming abuse. I mean, it's there on the page when you look at the steps, this idea that an adult can tell them God wants them to hurt your body can take you somewhere private, can do that, and that you need to hug afterwards and pretend to be joyful.

Like this is training children up in an incredibly dangerous ways that says, that's that's right. You can expect that to happen. 

Sheila

And especially because so often it was done on the bare bum to right smack their bottom. 

Marissa

Many, many children experienced it as child sexual abuse. And and we have plenty of adult children now naming the harm of that too.

Sheila

So absolutely there's there's been some days I wrote an article about this while ago. I'll put the link in the podcast notes, but, how so many people grew up and their arousal pathways were actually really impacted by spanking. And now as adults, you know, they crave that in order to have an orgasm, to get aroused during sex, whatever it might be, it's become part of their of their sexual pathway, their sexual story.

Because, you know, the buttocks are very close to the genitalia. And when you spank, blood rushes to that area. And so you get these tiny, small children with blood rushing to that area, and they can experience arousal without knowing what it is at all. And then later they find that they can't get aroused unless they're hit. Yeah.

And this isn't I'm not trying to say that the entire Bdsm community is like this. I'm not making a statement on the Bdsm community. I'm just making a statement on what a lot of research has found in 

Marissa

A lot of a lot of adults named that even to us, and said this was confusing. So confusing for them as children and then particularly people who are still in Christian communities, it comes with so much shame as adults because it's confusing.

And who can they speak to about this? And then a number also connected the beginning of self-harm practices to spanking. To say I felt like I needed to hurt myself, to feel forgiven or feel, clean again, or to ask an intimate partner to hurt me so I could feel okay again. So it definitely ties into, you know, how it could have impacted different people, could be varied, but it can tie into some of those really deep seated things as well.

Sheila

Yeah. And the big thing you're teaching kids is that people who love you will hurt you. Yeah. Yeah, that love hurts, right? So, I think the other issue is that so many people conflate spanking and discipline. So they think that if we're saying you shouldn't spank, we're therefore saying there is no more discipline. And so people will say, well, you know, life was so much better when parents disciplined and now there is no discipline and they're talking about spanking, but you can still have a lot of discipline.

And you must teach this in the office with all of that. 

Keith

Yeah. Yes. There's and that's the tragic thing is there's so many good ways to help kids because basically the goal of a parent is to help this child grow into a healthy adult. Right. And the goal of discipline is to teach a child self-discipline so that they will do what is good and right when they're when they're an adult, because they know what's good and right, because they've internalized that morality that we're trying to teach about how to be a good human right.

And there's so many good ways to do that that don't involve inflicting pain, and that are better at generating that kind of intrinsic motivation to do the right thing and just without all the psychological trauma of spanking. And it's just it just takes a bit more work. It's not quick. It's not easy. You can't do a five second Instagram clip on it and, and and, you know, and it's, but it takes a bit more work.

Marissa

It takes more work. And I would highly suggest to for some of these parenting experts, the goal isn't healthy autonomy, though. The goal is compliance with authority. And and I do think if if people are honest with that, I hope if there are parents listening to try and think, what is my goal? Because we heard from a lot of people who there was no off ramp to this, right?

So as an adult, if they found a different denomination to participate in and if they voted differently than their parents at any, any sort of like separation and individuation was perceived as rebellion and lack of compliance. And then that, that, stick came out again typically with like relational, relational costs. But I totally agree with you. There are so many more healthy tools available and certainly available to parents now. But, that also involves the some of the stuff we've talked about earlier, perceiving children as human beings, separate, worthy of dignity, having their own autonomy, some of the other things that are missing from the world view. 

Sheila

Someone on Instagram sent me this amazing, article about a book. So this this article or the book was written in 1988.

It was called The Altruistic Personality Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. And they they had done this big study on what are the characteristics of the kind of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and during the, during World War two. And I just want to read to you, this paragraph, where we go, oh, here we go.

They said, no less striking is the author's evidence that rescuers, far more than bystanders, came from close, loving families where discipline was light and based on talking and reasoning as opposed to physical punishment. Rescuers reported having learned a value on caring from their parents. Bystanders were more likely than rescuers to report having learned values of obedience and economic competence.

It's fascinating. Yeah. So corporal punishment resulted in raising a personality type that is less likely to be altruistic. That is less likely to act like Jesus. That maybe would see empathy as a sin. Yes. Imagine that. You know, we talked about this in in the very first podcast when we came back of the season in August on, the Authoritarian Personality, which is super interesting and how linked that is to physical punishment as a child.

Kelsey

You know, because when your goal is to is to force kids to obey you, we shouldn't be surprised if those same people grow up to gravitate towards authoritarian governments. Yeah, they see goodness as compliance, like they're just there is no like, compliance and conformity. And, yeah, I mean, it's just so amazing how cyclical that is too, because when you go back and read the early Dobson stuff, it is this like real intense fear of social disorder, of like civil disobedience of all of these things.

And, yeah, there is this, this really high value on compliance and conformity. Even from someone like Chuck Swindoll, who you might not expect, like, man, that guy was all about authority in his writing, you know, compliance authority. The orderly household leads to an orderly society. There is this very clear belief in those things being in lockstep with each other.

Orderly households equals orderly society. Yeah. 

Marissa

And of course it is patriarchal and it is always presented as, yes, the God man, woman, children. Right? Yes. And you have more of that in your book that we've talked about in this and in this, podcast. But yes, you do talk a lot about that, about how complementary and ism really goes hand in hand with this kind of parenting resources.

Sheila

Okay, so as we're wrapping up, I have a question. Okay. Were you surprised by the response to Dobson's death? Because what I saw was I was surprised at the vehemence and just the sheer volume of it, of of how upset people were with him. 

Kelsey

Yeah. I was not surprised. No, I was not, I mean, I think just the the two year process of researching for this book and asking people what their experiences were, just the countless people who shared their stories with us or just commented on social media or said, this happened to me, or my parent believed this.

I was not surprised by it. And I was seeing both, you know, like I kind of saw both sides, the defenders and the, the people who were kind of cheering at my, my feeds are very kind of both worlds, which is makes it an interesting experience to sort of watch it. And it's been interesting to see people who are a little bit confused by the celebration of his death.

Sheila

But I have to say, I was not surprised. Also, I think what I think what surprised me, and let me just clarify, was just I didn't realize how many people attributed their negative childhood to Dobson. Like, I know people were upset at the church in general or at their parents spanking methods or whatever, but I hadn't realized how much people connected the dots.

Marissa

Yeah, well, and I think one of the one of the biggest myths that Christian families are served, which is so ironic, painfully so, given everything we've talked about here, is that there's not consequences for the parents or the systems. And I think what what what you see in that conversation. Yeah. I don't think it's surprising. And I don't think the divide is surprising because this is what has been happening for the past ten, 20 years with people, with abuse response in the church, with people talking about religious trauma, with people, raising any concerns whatsoever.

There is a parental and systemic incapacity to listen. And instead there has been an elevating of the people at the top of the hierarchies, like, don't touch them, don't touch them. Like we cannot honestly reckon a a defense of the people who have perpetrated harm. And so I think this is the inevitable response. This is the consequence for people self platforming themselves to millions of families and then wanting to step back and say, no, no, that was user error.

If you're a family experienced of all that that was on you, because we did it the biblical way and there can be a plugging, you know, kind of like, I'm not going to listen to everyone, you know, crying out their perpetual victims or their progress or whatever. There will be an othering of the people, as there always is, of survivors of religious abuse.

To say they are really the problem. We do not want to hear the children talk back, right? Like they should be seen and not heard. They failed to obey, you know. And you see so you see this writ large systemically and it is a brutal reckoning for the church. If we could have the courage to face it, because in the same way that this happens in families where parents double down in fragility and defensiveness and won't listen to their children naming harm, like if we collectively are doing that as a Christian community, there is no way forward in, in, in authentic, in in to authentic relationship, without listening and bearing witness to that.

And so I think it's it's like the bottled up pain of a generation, like how many millions of families were flocking to focus on family. Yes, they implemented it differently. Yes. You will meet people who say, you know, my my family was a Dobson family and it didn't cause significant harm that that story is there to. But for those who experience just the gutting, devastating fruit of this and are still picking up the pieces or are estranged or in pain in their family relationships, I think it's just like this primal howl you're hearing from those people in often very young, young places because it happened so young for so many people.

And then you can also see the predictable defenders of the institution. And my theory is many of the people kind of just kind of saying, oh, well, Dobson was a friendly voice on the radio in the morning or something. Maybe you've never read one of his parenting books to begin with, you know, just have never even read it.

And so it's this idea of like, just defending evangelicalism rather than an honest accounting. So, so yeah, I think it's understandable. And I think it we'll see more of it. I think more and more will just unfold over the coming years. I think so too. All right. So October 14th, October 14th, your book is that or sorry Kelsey, do you want to say something else.

Kelsey

No, I, I was just going to add because of Dobson's political activism later in his life, I think there is a connection between Dobson, our political moment too, in the US, that people are also angry about, but that feels like a maybe another conversation, another time to talk about. Yes. Yeah. 

Sheila

Okay. So The Myth of  Good Christian parenting is that October 14th.

Oh. So eager. Yes. And if you did it, print and audible will have it as well. Yes. And I read an early copy, I endorsed it. I am so grateful that you that you did this research, that you read through all the crap. I know what it's like to have to read through crap book after crap book. It is exhausting and demoralizing and depressing.

And you wonder what is wrong with Christians and how can I still be a Christian? And then it does a whole faith thing on you and then you realize, no, wait, I follow Jesus. And so I'm going to come back to him. So yes, it's hard, I know, but thank you for doing that work. So that we didn't have to and other people didn't have to.

And he took one for the team. And, it's it's it's really good. It's just it shows what, how we got here. And then it offers it offers some hope, for where we go from here. So I really appreciate that. It's it's not you're not yelling at people who spank either. I know that we've we've kind of done that a bit on this podcast, but that's not the the thrust of your book.

You really are making the case. Well. So it's accessible even for people who might still be in it. That's what we hope we hope for. And yeah, we do. We don't want to heap more shame on people and say, you screwed up parenting. There's some punishment waiting for you. But an invitation we'd really love to see some people freed up, freed up from this.

Marissa

So thank you so much for this conversation.

Kelsey

Thank you for reading and for your generous endorsement. We just so appreciate yeah, getting to talk with you about this too. There are just so many common threads, and I think people will see that when they read the book. The chapter on complementary doesn't. There's just a lot of common ground here.

Sheila

Absolutely. And of course, if you preorder now, so just go right to your favorite bookseller. Baker books probably has it at 30% off. They usually do for they get a good price. 

Marissa

And yes, he guarantees they guarantee release day delivery. So that's good if you want to get it right away. Yes. So and and so you can get it there.

Sheila

I will put a link in the podcast notes. And if you order it now instead of wait until October 14th. So you can also get those free downloads on spanking which are awesome. So go check that out. So thank you. And Marissa, Kelsey, where can people find you on social media. 

Marissa Yeah, you can find me across social media sites

On all the platforms. 

Kelsey Yeah. Say well not same, but you can find me on all the platforms. I have a Substack. Just under my name, Kelsey McGinnis. You can also find a lot of my writing at Christianity Today. I write on music and, Christian culture. I have some writing, trad lives and some adjacent subjects there as well.

A lot of my content is on Instagram. Kelsey McGinnis okay.

Sheila

And I will put those links to you so people can find you. All right. Thanks, ladies. 

Kelsey

Thank you. 

Marissa

Thank you. 

You know, Keith, I am just so glad that this conversation is happening right now. And it seems like there's a whole bunch of different forces that are converging to make this

Keith 

To make the evangelical church finally, look at the science from the last 40 to 50 years.

Yeah, about how there's better ways to discipline your kids than spanking. Yeah.

Sheila

And that's spanking. It's harmful. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like, you know, Europe figured this out a long time ago. And the evidence was there, and the research has been there and the research for a long time, but it was largely a debate. And evangelicals kept saying, well, you know, they're they're measuring people who spank in anger.

They're not measuring people who spank nicely. They're not measuring people who spank when they're not angry. And so in 2000, I think it was 16. It may have been 14. But Elizabeth Gershon did her huge meta analysis of 160,000 kids and answered that question, finally, and that it doesn't matter whether you're kind when you spank, whether you hug your children at the end, whether you're whether you're using an implement or not.

Spanking is spanking, and it is either harmful or neutral, but not positive. Yeah. So the best you can hope for if you're using spanking as your main form of discipline, is that your kids won't turn out any worse than anybody else. 

Keith

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And there's a good chance that you may hurt them like psychologically as well as physically.

Like psychologically. There's a lot of bad things that can come out of it as well too. Yeah. So it's either neutral or it's bad. It's never good. Right. Which means that if you were spanked and you're like, well, I did fine. You know, my parents were great with me. Just please realize you did fine despite the spanking, not because of it.

Sheila

Yeah. And that's an important distinction. And I'm not saying that to shame people who did speak because honestly, like, maybe not for our generation of parents, but the people who were ten years older and older than that, I think I think among our peers, there was a lot of there were people who didn't spank, you know, but in our parents generation, almost everybody did.

And so we're not trying to shame people. It's just. Don't you want better? 

Keith

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I, I think that it's like Maya Angelou says, right. When you know better, you do better. Right? So maybe you grew up listening to all these teachers telling you if you don't spank your kids, they're, you know, bad things will happen because that's what a lot of Christian Resources said.

But we know better now. We need to do better. And if you did that and your kids are grown up now and you think, maybe I shouldn't have done that, maybe you call and say, yeah, it's the best I knew at the time, but I'm sorry, I should have. I wish I had known then what I know now.

You know, because I think a lot of kids would value that. A lot of adult children who went through that would value that. Hearing that and having that put to words might be helpful in, you know, bridging some gaps. Yeah. Because none of us want it. None of us want generational trauma to continue. You know, we all want to want to see a person and so let's just do that.

Sheila

There's better ways. And we can we can find that out. So take a look at the myth of Christian parenting. I will also put some links, to some of our articles on spanking and the research around spanking. And of course, if you preorder the book, you can get their downloads too on on Christian Spanking. So really helpful.

So glad they wrote this book and thank you for listening in and we will see you again next week on the Bare Marriage Podcast. Bye.