Was it a Choice?

I’d like to go back and revisit a couple of ideas that I’ve touched on in the past. I had someone reach out to me and point me towards a recent newspaper article about Ballerina Farms.¹ She also commented that a good subject line for a potential post would be “Fundamentalism and the Illusion of Choice.”²

If you haven’t read the The Times article it discusses “Ballerina Farms” and the life of the woman behind the homesteading / tradwife account. Hannah Neeleman is a Mormon influencer that works as a stay at home mom (and influencer). The article discusses Hannah’s choices as she left a career as a ballerina to marry and settle down as a stay at home mom. The article seems to imply that many of her choices and dreams as a college student were ignored or pushed aside by her husband.

Recently, I’ve been working on reposting some of my content up on substack. And I’ve posted up until my Growing Kids God’s Way content. One of the posts I reread was my part on how Gary Ezzo discusses obedience to authority in a child’s life. The direct quote that made me think again on the topic of choice was as follows.

“Free will and choice on the child’s side is entirely conditional on them making choices that align with what their parents expect of them.” Direct quote from my post from early 2022.

Children within fundamentalism are given very little room for discussion or disagreement with their parents. A child must simply accept that their parents have the final say and that god wishes for them to submit to the authority in their lives.

Numerous verses are given to back up this line of thinking. Parents are told that they have been placed as god’s authority over their children. And children are told that they are to submit to the leadership that god has placed in their lives. Children learn verses such as “Children obey your parents”³ and “Honor thy mother and father.” Songs and morality tales from the Christian entertainment and publishing industry enforce this mentality.^{4 5}

Children learn to quickly submit to their parents (and to other authority figures) or face physical consequences for their disobedience. This truly does become ingrained in you as a young child. And most children will generally submit rather than face increasing levels of physical punishment.⁶

However, this isn’t something that just goes away when you become an adult. Even Gary Ezzo in his book “Growing Kids God’s Way” insisted that respect for and deference towards your parents should be a lifelong commitment. Children and then those in their late teens and early twenties are still expected to differ to their parent’s judgements. As I wrote earlier, they’ve learned that they must make choices that align with what their parents expect of them.

Very little distinction is given for when a child should leave their parent’s authority and when they should move towards independence and making their own choices. I highly recommend reading the substack “Strongwilled” for more on this topic. ⁷

This difference to parental authority clouds a lot of what is typically expected of normal developmental milestones. What happens when what you want to do with your life was decided by or heavily influenced by your parent’s choices for you? Or even who you want to marry? Many fundamentalists have a type of half courtship / half dating experience where the father suggests and guides the choices of the aspiring couple. Some fundamentalists have completely embraced courtship, and the father completely makes all of the decisions for the couple. ⁸

One of the big choices that was decided for me was that I would be attending a fundamentalist college. And PCC was pushed as being the proper choice.⁹ While my parents both deny they pressured me in any way their choices were a major factor in my life. There was also a lot of pressure with that fundie community to marry young and have kids early in your marriage.

It becomes very difficult in fundamentalism to extract yourself from the pressures of the authority figures in your life and make your own choices. I know for much of my life I would have said that I solely make the choice to marry and have kids right away. But looking back now, I can see a steady torrent of questions about “meeting someone” at college. “When are you going to ask her to marry you.” “Oooh you’re engaged now. When are you going to marry and have some kids?” While the exact quotes would vary, this was the exact type of constant questions and pressure to marry and have children that both my church and my family placed on me and my spouse.

While my parents have backed away from pressuring me and my spouse to have more children (They tried for a while after we had our second. But eventually realized that we weren’t going to have more.)¹⁰ I’ve still heard them try to pressure my sister towards having more children. “When’s the next announcement coming?”¹¹ And the pressure works, she’s expecting her third child at the end of this year.

Complicating a lot of these issues are the very narrow options forward for anyone who does desire to break free from the expectations and plans of those in authority around them. Even within my own life one¹² of my siblings does not have a high school education. My sister in law has chosen not to procure social security numbers or birth certificates for her children. My SIL has also chosen to have her children participate in “unschooling” without a formal structure to their education. This style of neglect is not unheard of in more extreme fundamentalism homeschool environments.¹³ And it can be very hard for a child to leave a family unit when they have no official identity or education.

AFAB (Assigned female at birth) individuals are also left with very few options when it comes to leaving their fundamentalist families. My spouse (as a 22 year old woman) was told that she could not live in my hometown until we planned to marry. She was told that she would have to remain at her father’s house until we were married. Which was a 5hr drive from were we planned on living. Marriage is often the only way out of your families home.¹⁴

And within Christian fundamentalism she didn’t even have it the worst. The stay at home daughter movement was popular within patriarchal families and vision forum promoted the idea broadly.¹⁵ I’ve directly spoken to AFAB individuals that were told that they couldn’t attend college because they were a woman. Or if they were allowed to attend college they were only allowed to pick from “female” jobs such as a nurse, secretary, or teacher.^{16 17}

Can you see a cycle appearing here? A child has no control over their own life until they marry¹⁸ and leave their parents home.¹⁹ Increasing the already high social pressure to marry young. After you marry, pressure to have children is placed on the couple. Once children enter the picture AFAB individuals are then told to become stay at home moms (SAHM).

If the couple does anything to upset this plan then they risk loosing their social circles and family units. A change of faith, divorce, or even choosing not to have kids is enough to cause disunity. From my own experience families and religious social circles are quick to distance you if you make “worldly” choices. One of the oddest things me any my spouse faced a lot of push back was on our choice to send our daughter to public school. My mom would try to argue with both me and my spouse about our “poor” choice to allow our daughter in such a “worldly” environment.²⁰ We also received a ton of comments from my family about how we were “abandoning” our children when my spouse went to work full time.

We lost our family and friends when we chose a different path forward. And I suspect that’s why a lot of young fundamentalists choose to stay. The formula of young marriage and having kids at a young age works to emmesh you into a fundie community. And as I’ve pointed out earlier many of these individuals have very few options presented to them as they grow up. With many young fundamentalists having fewer resources (than their “secular” peers) to make their way on their own. If it looks like your only option is it truly a choice?

Is it freewill or a choice if all other options are expressly forbidden? Is it a choice if all other options are presented as wicked or sinful.²¹ Is it a choice if your entire family and community will abandon you otherwise? Is it a choice if you’ve been conditioned to obey and please those in authority your whole childhood or face physical pain?

Whether it’s a young Christian homeschooled kid trying to find their way in the world. Or a tradwife social media influencer with millions of followers.²² How much freewill do any of them really have as they navigate life? And how much are their choices influenced and pressured by their communities and families?

1. https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-sunday-times-magazine/article/meet-the-queen-of-the-trad-wives-and-her-eight-children-plfr50cgk ↩︎
2. https://strongwilled.substack.com/p/chapter-8-adolescence-and-the-illusion See also this “Strongwilled” substack post with a similar premise. Though that article discusses much more about the media that adolescent evangelical children consume. ↩︎
3. Eph 6: 1-3 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. ↩︎
4. I can think of multiple stories like Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey where the point of the story was that rebellion against god’s authority in your life would end in destruction. ↩︎
5. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/parents-require-obedience-of-your-children (Note that the “morality tale” used a sermon illustration mentions the possible death of a child if they do not obey. Dobson would use the illustration of a child wandering towards a busy street and being struck by a car if they didn’t immediately obey. Michael Pearl uses a story of how his kids jumped from a car that was about to explode when he commanded obedience. The general idea is that you need full control over your child and if you don’t you may be condemning them to death.) ↩︎
6. If you want an example of a kid that doesn’t submit and their parent does not back down from physical punishment (and abuse) read Hannah Prosser’s book Beat. CW for sexual abuse and abuse of a child. Hannah grew up in a fundie family that eventually moved into a plain community (Holdeman Mennonites). ↩︎
7. https://strongwilled.substack.com/archive ↩︎
8. See the book Rift by Cait West ↩︎
9. My spouse was not given a choice at all. She was told she would attend Pensacola Christian College and her parents signed her up for it. No decision there for her. ↩︎
10. Ironically they only backed off after they realized both of us had moved away from fundamentalism and no longer identified as Christian. Can’t encourage more grandchildren if you believe their parents are leading them on a path towards hell. ↩︎
11. She’s been dealing with a stressful marriage and a high needs child. Maybe pressuring her to have another child right now isn’t the best idea. ↩︎
12. I would argue that my youngest sister also lacks a high school education. ↩︎
13. https://homeschoolersanonymous.net/2015/09/04/alecia-pennington-the-girl-who-doesnt-exist-can-now-prove-she-does/ ↩︎
14. Our compromise was to instead marrying earlier than we planned. Just 2 days after we graduated college. ↩︎
15. Once again I recommend Cait West’s book Rift or Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce http://kathrynjoyce.com/books/quiverfull/ If you read fiction Quiver by Julia Watts is also a good depiction of a patriarchal quiverfull family. ↩︎
16. All were extremely popular career options at Pensacola Christian College. Women were rarely enrolled in STEM related degrees at PCC. ↩︎
17. Many AFAB individuals were also told that their careers would only be a temporary stopping place until they had children. Once they had children they were expected to abandon their careers and become fulltime stay at home moms.
    Many of the AFAB individuals in my graduating nursing class quit their nursing careers 1-2 years after graduation to work as SAHM. ↩︎
18. Opposite gender only folks (fundamentalism relies on traditional marriage being the norm). ↩︎
19. Even then that doesn’t always stop a parent from trying to control their children’s lives. ↩︎
20. I never tried to start arguments. But my mother and family would constantly attack the quality of the education my child was receiving. And would call her education “worldly” and indoctrination. I’ve said it before but it’s ironic that most of my child’s teachers attended local churches and would agree politically with my mother’s right wing views. (Small town everyone knew each other). ↩︎
21. Something as simple as sending your child to school could be “wicked.” Or a woman taking a part time job could also be “sinful” or “selfish” ↩︎
22. Hannah Neeleman grew up as a homeschooled conservative Mormon kid. And while I don’t have experience with being a Mormon. Mormons would often fall under the banner of Christian fundamentalists. With many of the same themes common to Protestant / evangelical conservatives. ↩︎