I grew up in this same milieu. It later occurred to me that the claim 'delayed obedience is disobedience' was contradicted by the parable Jesus told in the Gospel of Matthew (21:28-31):
'“What do you think? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘My son, go work in the vineyard today.’
'“He answered, ‘I don’t want to,’ but later he changed his mind and went.
'Then the man went to the other and said the same thing. ‘I will, sir,’ he answered, but he didn’t go.
This is a really thought-provoking article! This bit in particular "There’s a reason the moniker “G.I. Joe” became synonymous with Army service. What you had was a process that made men into “General Issue” tools- in one sense nameless, person-less instruments that could be fitted in almost anywhere to run the industrial modern war machine." and your discussion about the "raising arrows" language really spotlights the ways this kind of parenting machine dehumanizes children and imagines them as tools. And, ooof, the "shut up" and learned dissociation - wow. Thanks for this!
As someone who grew up in a Quiverfull family, the military context you offer makes so much sense. We weren’t just trained to be arrows in a culture war—we were prepped to be unthinking cogs in a machine.
As you read I totally sympathize with your background. I’ve been doing a bunch of writing on things like “worldview” and how that affected our upbringing. If you go back in my archive I’d recommend my series on Galatians and the one I did on Worldview at the beginning of the year. Thanks for reading and I’m glad I could help!
Thank you for this piece. I grew up with the "delayed obedience is disobedience" and it produced unimaginable suffering in my adult life. This in particular was 100% true: "Many women especially are trained to respond to particularly men in power with instant, self-ignoring capitulation and a desire to please." And the decades -- DECADES -- spent dissociated. Its tragic. I did my level best to raise my two daughters exactly the opposite way, with agency and a strong "NO" and a vision of adulthood that didn't require marriage and motherhood to receive God's best for them.
I grieve to this day that I was raised White Evangelical. I know my parents did the best they could, and they were wonderful parents in all sorts of ways. But the damage of this for me will haunt me my entire life.
My hubs came out of a very bad lifestyle when he became a Christian in a Gothard based church. He so desperately wanted to be right with God and knew had failed as a parent so turned hungrily to anything to save his family. You can only imagine the disaster by implementing Gothard teachings to 2 teens whose dad used to buy the pot snd booze for parties! My story similar.
Taken decades to rebuild healthy relationships for ourselves and with my stepkids.
I’m so sorry to hear that’s been your story. It’s very sad when these things are offered to desperate people with promises they just don’t deliver. Thanks for reading!
Thank you for this. I've been following Marissa Burt on this subject and it's interesting to read someone else's take on this too. Found your comment on the suppression of part of a person that most reflects the image of God very moving. This sort of parenting does not encourage creativity does it! I have often wondered if the idea of authoritative parenting had gained ground when so many more people became familiar with military authority during WW2 and either genuinely thought that it was what was good for children too - or wanted to take out on their children what they'd had to endure themselves. Anyway, thank you, I appreciated your article!
Don't forget the regimentation of public schools, orphanages, and the business world are harmful as well, some of this comes from British boarding school ideas and Prussian schooling--this isn't only a religious problem, and many secular writers have exposed it, like John Holt and others.
Ironically I began homeschooling as way to avoid the regimentation and assembly line of public school (as a lot of us homeschool pioneers did) and to grow real creative humans, but fell into too much of the Christian garbage, although never as much as others did. Many of us veterans are now trying to undo the harm we caused or supported in fundagelicalism. 😪 And then there's the fact that college campuses and liberals used to be freethinking positive, but now many often are as propagandist as the far right is. But I actually have pretty high hopes for the younger generation forging a healthier path. There are many good ideas percolating thru society, from emotional intelligence to multi-generational community living.
Thanks for reading! I had a conversation with someone older and we mused about how much of their experience being parented by the WW2 generation was influenced by that generations seemingly universal military experience. It’s a good question.
I really appreciate your thinking. I have definitely encountered this perspective in Christian parenting literature, but I had never considered the militaristic origins of it. And I totally agree that it can train kids to dissociate and develop a fawn response, which is so unhealthy, both in the parental relationship and in future relationships, too. Thanks for writing this.
I grew up outside the church, and was never in the military, and we have no children: even so, or perhaps because of this, this has given me a great weight of material to think about and consider as I live among younger families, watching them, and wondering.
Thank you for sharing this and your story! (I grew up with the “I’m in the Lord’s Army” song as well.) Melissa Burt and her coauthor are doing good work, and their upcoming book is an important one.
Absolutely fantastic expose of this topic—one that I lived through and survived, finding personal agency in my middle-age has been the most life-giving, spiritual experience I've ever had. Thanks Jay!
Such a great post, Jay. We were encouraged towards this type of parenting early on (“slow obedience is no obedience”). I’ve also heard friends use the phrase “obey with a happy heart” — it’s always made me uncomfortable, and what you’ve laid out here is so helpful in spelling out what that does to someone’s emotions and individuality. I’m so grateful we started to see the problems with that approach and have left it behind.
Wow, so good. I literally just sent a question about this very thing to Melissa Burt, and I so appreciate the answer and the history lesson from a real former military person. This same idea came to me both as a result of some things Burt and Co have said, and also because my non-military ex had gone to a boot camp style training for men who were working with youth, and thought it was great. I saw that he was enamored of the military from a distance, and he liked Gothard, and was influenced quite a bit by him as a new believer. He turned out to be an abusive husband and father.😪 As the mom who read all the books, and who assimilated the fawning idea as virtuous, I was alternately trying to protect the kids from him, and also at times attempting to implement some of these terrible parenting ideas myself. At least I got them away from him eventually and we were much happier and laid back after that. I always valued nurturing individuality and questioning everything too much to completely buy into the system.
Yeah there’s something to this kind of training that is VERY attractive to men who haven’t had much structure in their lives. THEN they figure out how much power these systems give them and they’re hooked. Glad you got out of there. Thanks for reading!
I grew up in this same milieu. It later occurred to me that the claim 'delayed obedience is disobedience' was contradicted by the parable Jesus told in the Gospel of Matthew (21:28-31):
'“What do you think? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘My son, go work in the vineyard today.’
'“He answered, ‘I don’t want to,’ but later he changed his mind and went.
'Then the man went to the other and said the same thing. ‘I will, sir,’ he answered, but he didn’t go.
'Which of the two did his father’s will?”
'They said, “The first.”'
I always had that story agitating in the back of my mind as well!
This is a really thought-provoking article! This bit in particular "There’s a reason the moniker “G.I. Joe” became synonymous with Army service. What you had was a process that made men into “General Issue” tools- in one sense nameless, person-less instruments that could be fitted in almost anywhere to run the industrial modern war machine." and your discussion about the "raising arrows" language really spotlights the ways this kind of parenting machine dehumanizes children and imagines them as tools. And, ooof, the "shut up" and learned dissociation - wow. Thanks for this!
Thanks for reading! Glad you liked it.
As someone who grew up in a Quiverfull family, the military context you offer makes so much sense. We weren’t just trained to be arrows in a culture war—we were prepped to be unthinking cogs in a machine.
As you read I totally sympathize with your background. I’ve been doing a bunch of writing on things like “worldview” and how that affected our upbringing. If you go back in my archive I’d recommend my series on Galatians and the one I did on Worldview at the beginning of the year. Thanks for reading and I’m glad I could help!
Thank you for this piece. I grew up with the "delayed obedience is disobedience" and it produced unimaginable suffering in my adult life. This in particular was 100% true: "Many women especially are trained to respond to particularly men in power with instant, self-ignoring capitulation and a desire to please." And the decades -- DECADES -- spent dissociated. Its tragic. I did my level best to raise my two daughters exactly the opposite way, with agency and a strong "NO" and a vision of adulthood that didn't require marriage and motherhood to receive God's best for them.
I grieve to this day that I was raised White Evangelical. I know my parents did the best they could, and they were wonderful parents in all sorts of ways. But the damage of this for me will haunt me my entire life.
My hubs came out of a very bad lifestyle when he became a Christian in a Gothard based church. He so desperately wanted to be right with God and knew had failed as a parent so turned hungrily to anything to save his family. You can only imagine the disaster by implementing Gothard teachings to 2 teens whose dad used to buy the pot snd booze for parties! My story similar.
Taken decades to rebuild healthy relationships for ourselves and with my stepkids.
I’m so sorry to hear that’s been your story. It’s very sad when these things are offered to desperate people with promises they just don’t deliver. Thanks for reading!
Thank you for this. I've been following Marissa Burt on this subject and it's interesting to read someone else's take on this too. Found your comment on the suppression of part of a person that most reflects the image of God very moving. This sort of parenting does not encourage creativity does it! I have often wondered if the idea of authoritative parenting had gained ground when so many more people became familiar with military authority during WW2 and either genuinely thought that it was what was good for children too - or wanted to take out on their children what they'd had to endure themselves. Anyway, thank you, I appreciated your article!
Don't forget the regimentation of public schools, orphanages, and the business world are harmful as well, some of this comes from British boarding school ideas and Prussian schooling--this isn't only a religious problem, and many secular writers have exposed it, like John Holt and others.
Ironically I began homeschooling as way to avoid the regimentation and assembly line of public school (as a lot of us homeschool pioneers did) and to grow real creative humans, but fell into too much of the Christian garbage, although never as much as others did. Many of us veterans are now trying to undo the harm we caused or supported in fundagelicalism. 😪 And then there's the fact that college campuses and liberals used to be freethinking positive, but now many often are as propagandist as the far right is. But I actually have pretty high hopes for the younger generation forging a healthier path. There are many good ideas percolating thru society, from emotional intelligence to multi-generational community living.
Thanks for reading! I had a conversation with someone older and we mused about how much of their experience being parented by the WW2 generation was influenced by that generations seemingly universal military experience. It’s a good question.
I really appreciate your thinking. I have definitely encountered this perspective in Christian parenting literature, but I had never considered the militaristic origins of it. And I totally agree that it can train kids to dissociate and develop a fawn response, which is so unhealthy, both in the parental relationship and in future relationships, too. Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for reading!
I grew up outside the church, and was never in the military, and we have no children: even so, or perhaps because of this, this has given me a great weight of material to think about and consider as I live among younger families, watching them, and wondering.
Thank you for sharing this and your story! (I grew up with the “I’m in the Lord’s Army” song as well.) Melissa Burt and her coauthor are doing good work, and their upcoming book is an important one.
Absolutely fantastic expose of this topic—one that I lived through and survived, finding personal agency in my middle-age has been the most life-giving, spiritual experience I've ever had. Thanks Jay!
Thanks for reading! Glad I could help!
Such a great post, Jay. We were encouraged towards this type of parenting early on (“slow obedience is no obedience”). I’ve also heard friends use the phrase “obey with a happy heart” — it’s always made me uncomfortable, and what you’ve laid out here is so helpful in spelling out what that does to someone’s emotions and individuality. I’m so grateful we started to see the problems with that approach and have left it behind.
I’m glad I could help put words to it. That’s mainly why I do this so thank you for that. And for reading!
Wow, so good. I literally just sent a question about this very thing to Melissa Burt, and I so appreciate the answer and the history lesson from a real former military person. This same idea came to me both as a result of some things Burt and Co have said, and also because my non-military ex had gone to a boot camp style training for men who were working with youth, and thought it was great. I saw that he was enamored of the military from a distance, and he liked Gothard, and was influenced quite a bit by him as a new believer. He turned out to be an abusive husband and father.😪 As the mom who read all the books, and who assimilated the fawning idea as virtuous, I was alternately trying to protect the kids from him, and also at times attempting to implement some of these terrible parenting ideas myself. At least I got them away from him eventually and we were much happier and laid back after that. I always valued nurturing individuality and questioning everything too much to completely buy into the system.
Yeah there’s something to this kind of training that is VERY attractive to men who haven’t had much structure in their lives. THEN they figure out how much power these systems give them and they’re hooked. Glad you got out of there. Thanks for reading!
MARISSA Burt, sorry about that...
So good and insightful!