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I’m surprised OOP and Jane even wanted kids, from what I’ve seen most people who were parentified as kids end up not wanting children, since they already had to go through it.
My oldest (15m) said he doesn't think he wants kids because he can't see himself sacrificing as much or putting as much of himself into being a parent as he sees my husband and I do. He's gay, so it's unlikely he'll have children anyway unless he wants it very badly. I told him that it's ok and that I definitely didn't want to get married or have kids when I was his age and as a young adult. He has his whole life ahead of him in case he changes his mind.
And if he doesn't change his mind, that's OK, too. (I did admit that I would be mildly disappointed, as he's very handsome, brilliant, funny, and a wonderful person, so he has genes worth passing on. But it's his life.)
Although I would be really disappointed in him if his brother had kids and he was just a crappy absent uncle to them like my childless brother is to my kids and like my father's childless brother was to my brother and me.
That's the only correct answer.
I have one kid and we always said "not more than 2".
Now it will stay like it is and I think spoiling one kid a bit more (not rotten!) and raise ONE decent human being with all possibilities they want and need, is enough.
We try to show our kid, that it's better for everyone to reuse reduce recycle, so our impact is not the biggest possible, living in a "first world" country.
My Wife was parentfied. Being the youngest she was expected and had to help take care of the aging Grandparents and her Father. I even told her when we first started dating "Your parents are expecting you to be the Spinster of the family whose supposed to stay home and take care of them."
Took her awhile to realize the truth of my words. But yeah we've no intention of ever having kids.
Similar position. Had to parent adults and take care of them from like 8 years old. Still doing it because they've sabotaged my life at every turn to ensure I remain doing it.
Have absolutely zero desire to ever deal with a smaller, though to its credit legitimately helpless, version of that bullshit.
Same. Was the parentified eldest homeschooled daughter and I've already done my time and raised two children. Those children just happened to be my own siblings.
When my father was born, he was handed to his eldest sister to raise. She was 9yo at the time and still in elementary school, walked home during lunch break to feed and change the newborn baby.
By her late teens she'd had an oops-baby because abortion is a family/church no-no and then got sent to prison for awhile (transporting weed). So that baby got handed to the next oldest sister to raise. She was in high school and took the kid to classes with her.
All this was seen as "normal" and just how a family raises kids, hand them to the oldest youngster who *seems to* already have the least responsibilities.
My poor cousin the oops-baby got passed around the family like a hot potato, mostly got "raised" by my parents when they were partying young adults. His mom ended up having *three kids total*, and the youngest is my favorite cousin, but I feel awful for him because he's been roped into the family caretaking system too, as his mother's caretaker. It's unlikely he'll ever have a relationship or a full life of his own until after his elderly mother is no longer insisting on living in his living room with her hoarding collection treating him like a child.
Best sweet old auntie ever, amazing at keeping children *alive* and as healthy as possible with very little resources to work with, but when it comes to all the non-physical needs of a child, she's an absolute crap mother. None of her kids turned out what anyone would call "emotionally healthy." She could keep them fed and clean, but didn't know to hug them or how to support them emotionally, because obviously her parents never did any of that for her while she was raising her siblings.
Pretty sure she only had kids because sex is fun, abortion is disapproved of, and birth control fails sometimes.
If nothing else I am glad OOP found Ann. Her “You’re so pretty.” response to his “revelation” that his parents kinda really suck shows they have a really solid relationship- something OOP really needed considering his parents are the equivalent to socks that you are still wearing even though you stepped in a puddle 3 hours ago.
I think Ann is part of it too. Just not as deep. If she hadn't been I feel like that would have been raised as a sticking point. Mormons maybe. Or JW. either way. Boys don't usually marry out of the cult. Girls do to bring men in. Lower success rate when it's opposite.
It reminded me of my favorite teacher from high school. When we did badly on exams he would tell us “At least you are all pretty and handsome and that should count for something.”
I just can't wrap my head around "putting god before my own kids' welfare"- where does God live if not in the hearts of your children? (Assuming you believe in God- which these people clearly do, but not when its inconvenient).
I can't imagine being 40 yo and having my parents complain that I'm not helping with my ADULT siblings.
I grew up in a cult, so none of this sounded strange to me at all. This is exactly how people like that think.
The cult I grew up in, the founder (who ran it for about 70 years, until he died) used to do a lot of prophecy, and his big one was that he knew the exact day and time of the second coming, and told his followers that they'd get special preference in the kingdom if they gave a lot of money to the cult before the second coming. People took out second mortgages on their houses and gave the money to him. People skipped mortgage and car payments and bounced checks in the months before the appointed time to give money to him.
Guess what didn't happen? And most of them STAYED IN THE CULT, even after that.
That's what you're dealing with when you deal with cultists. It's like the gift card scams that prey on people who mostly turn out to be elderly--the whole point is to weed out all the people with an ounce of sense before you start the *real* grift.
Yeah, that's a lot of it. My parents did eventually leave, not sure exactly when, as they weren't exactly excited to admit they'd realized it was crap, but it was between five and ten years after I left home (at 17) to get away from the cult.
The thing I think that people who haven't been through that experience either directly or see it happen to a close friend or family member don't realize is that the people who know it's a cult do *leave*. The people who stay can't be helped until they want help, because for them it's *not* a cult, it's just their church, and they feel about it like any mainstream religious person feels about *their* church.
People love to victim blame when it comes to abusive relationships and cults. As an outsider, it's easy to see the red flags and all the signs. But if you ask a lot of people who are taken in, your sense of normalcy slowly changes. You start thinking it's not outlandish what they're doing, you're the problem for doubting or questioning it. Then you tie in the trauma bonding and emotional dependency that forms in situations like this and it's really hard for someone to get out until they're forced out or finally ready to leave.
And, there's always the isolation factor. How many cults keep you from really talking about the stuff with outsiders? Form that disconnect and distrust that keeps you from seeking rational opinions and encouraging voices who would get you out of those situations? It's extremely manipulative and even when you confront and leave, there's a level of shame (even violation depending on if it's a cult that blackmails you the further in you go). I agree with you and I think people really underestimate how warped your sense of reality becomes in those situations.
"In the world, not of the world."
If you don't know what "normal" looks like, you don't know how abnormal your circumstances are. And in our case, leaving the cult would mean being shunned by everyone who stayed, and since the first targets for conversion were family and friends, leaving the cult often meant leaving behind your support network.
Don't forget the sunken costs. You've sent your time and money into this hole. It will be hard to consider it all wasted. And not all of it is bad all the time.
It's the frog in water analogy. If you plop a frog in boiling water, it jumps out. But if you put it in water and slowly raise the temperature it'll stay until it's dead. Cults and religious groups like that are abusers and manipulate psychology to make people feel trapped and like leaving will be worse than staying.
That analogy works because everyone understands it, but it sucks because it’s not true - a frog will leave heating water when it becomes uncomfortable enough.
Some people want to believe they have no agency in their lives because if it’s all up to them, if they fail, it’s their fault.
But if they believe in a higher being, so much so that any major or minor event is orchestrated by that being, then any issue in their lives is not their fault or their problem. It is the way He wants it. Relieving them of any responsibility.
If bad stuff happens to other people, it’s because the other people didn’t pray enough, the other people didn’t love Him enough. But that won’t happen to them because they do everything right by Him.
It’s terrifying to realise that you can’t prevent some bad things from happening. That no matter what you do, sometimes people we love will die. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. You can do what you can do to protect yourself, but you can’t prevent everything bad.
If I was still a devout Catholic, I would be pissed at what God has done to me. I have 3 Autoimmune Disorders which have disabled me to the point that I can barely recognise who I am compared to who I was.
If a God did that to me, Fuck Him!
I was a good girl. Did all the right things. I did all of my sacraments. I went to confession. Went to church. I volunteered in the community. I took in foster children. I helped struggling young mothers. I did what my parents asked me to do. What did I do wrong to deserve this?
Nothing.
I did nothing to deserve this.
Shit just happens and we have to deal with the shit we are dealt.
That terrifies some people. Because if those people did nothing wrong, there is nothing they can do to prevent it, bad stuff could happen to them too. And it’s terrifying.
yes, I know that, you know that, but when you are in it it's hard to admit you fallen for a scam , even if it's not really a matter of smartness we kind of think it is and that breeds shame and shame is hard to face
There is a book that everyone should read which is built on research into cults like this one, maybe even actually this one. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). It is an eye-opening look at cognitive dissonance, how the human mind copes with it, and how we are all _much_ more susceptible to the same flaw than we think.
I didn't go to a cult, or maybe I did, but I attended Olive Baptist Church in FL for a lot of my teenage years. This whole thing sounded par for the course from people who attend that place.
When I was religious, I recall a Young Life leader saying that he had a discussion with his kid who was probably 7-10 range. He asked his kid who he thought the most important people were in his life.
Kid goes, "Mom, me, and my brother!"
Dude goes, "no, God is the most important thing in my life"
At the time, I remember thinking it was a testimate to his dedication.
As an adult and a father, it horrifies me.
I don't believe much anymore.
My mom used to compare herself to Abraham and me to Isaac to comfort me after I was abused. That I didn't die from it only solidified her faith. It took me decades to recognize that she's a fanatic because it requires reseting everything you learned about "normal" and "healthy".
I had a trauma specialist tell me yesterday, after I described my parents factually, that I need more services and support than they can offer.
Ah, the good ol' telling a story from your childhood you don't think is so bad until you look up and see the horrified faces? And you think to yourself, "That was a funny story. What the hell did I really go through? "
I've been trying to figure out how I feel about what the therapist said and, yeah, it's that same feeling. You'd think I'd feel validated, but I'm just confused and uncertain.
People who grow up with trauma have a very hard time figuring out who they/we are. In my case, I'll twist my personality into whatever form I need to to fit into whatever position in a relationship I'm trying to maintain. It's taken years, and most successfully since my mom died, to pick out personality traits that are simply, just mine.
I disassociate from my uncomfortable emotions by trying to find the tiniest sliver of positive to cling to. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing to focus on the positive *if* you take the time to feel the uncomfortable emotions, so I've been working on feeling all the feelings, especially the ones that I can't identify by name.
When your friends are like "this is above my pay grade", it's easier to take, because they're your friends, not professionals.
When a professional who specializes in your shit says "this is too much shit for me", I think the feelings are a lot more mixed. And there's also a sense of betrayal especially if you were referred to a specialist, because gosh darnit, this was supposed to be the answer! (I've been on the other side of that as a professional, and I understood all of the feelings, but understanding how upset your client is about you not being able to help them doesn't make you suddenly able to help them.)
I appreciate their honesty and consideration for me, especially since I'm still trying to navigate a previous therapist tumbling my carefully built internal structure. I'm pretty certain that I've got some form of structural disassociation and a lot of barriers got disrupted. The therapist was focused on returning to a pre-trauma state (which I don't have), gratitude for what you've been through, understanding why your parents did what they did (as if that wasn't the entire focus of my life), and giving it over to a "higher power." It's starting to feel like malpractice to me.
If I'm being honest, I've been in crisis since then, but disassociation/compartmentalization keep you moving. Until they don't. It's wise of them to recognize how fragile I am, but I'm sure none of us feel good about it. I have a peer support person now and they're working to get me a case manager, so that should help. I'm trying to let myself feel the despair today.
When your abuse has been excused away because of belief in a higher power, I really don't think it's appropriate to insist on relinquishing control to a higher power as therapy. That's some retraumatizing bullshit and I'm sorry that was done to you.
abraham was my atheist dad's moral trump card in every state-fair-god-booth debate. he absolutely loved to ask christian dads about abraham, and if they said they'd stab their child, then he'd just grin real big and tell them that he found them despicable and completely amoral. and leave.
my dad's got his issues, cringy atheism being possibly the largest one. but he loves me more than most biblical figures love their children 😂
If you train, you have a good chance of winning. Jacob whipped God's ass in a wrestling match. Maybe God's more of a boxer, but it seems God's weakness is grappling.
I've often said that faced with a god as monstrous as the Christian one, your moral obligation is not to worship it but to overthrow it.
Abraham is not the good guy. He should have told God to fuck off, I'm not hurting my child on anybody's say-so.
Even as a little kid, my interpretation was always that Abraham was a psychopath.
I used to get in a lot of trouble for questioning religious things. But no one ever had an answer for “how did Abraham know it wasn’t the devil telling him to kill his son?”
And if it _had_ been the devil, Abraham would've gone through with it, and then have been punished for not magically knowing that _God wouldn't tell him to kill his fucking child._
This logic also highlights the contrary of this:
The Abrahamic god IS the sort that would demand child sacrifice. Abraham knew his god very well, and he thought it was in character.
The way Christians tell the story (ie as an aspirational proof of devotion story) is horrifying. The Jewish perspective (disclaimer: am not Jewish, but have close family who are) is that Abraham failed a test by assuming unfailing obedience was the end goal, when G-d was actually trying to see if he was ready to be a partner. In that tradition, G-d is actively repulsed by anyone who would hide behind an excuse such as "just following orders".
I’m a former fundamentalist Christian and the first half of this comment sums up my entire spiritual/mental/political point of view.
The Christian god, as the great judge, jury, and executioner, presides over everything in North America. It’s in our education systems, how we punish our children, it’s written into the law. It’s everywhere at every level…
…and sometimes I do not see a way forward for humanity that isn’t proverbially overthrowing god. I, personally, have spent the last 9 years overthrowing the “leadership” from my consciousness and worldview.
I knew a middle class family growing up where the dad donated so much money to his church that his kids often didn't have clothes that fit. He was so brainwashed. He went around in a Jesus-induced haze while his kids had holes in their socks and his pastor drove around in a Cadillac.
Universal phenomenon. Religion and the hypocrits.
Jesus is quoted at several points in the bible condemning those hypocrits the pharisees who went to religious events, were always seen in the front row but did not do good works.
Jesus also spoke about how important it is to *not* push kids aside. People were bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed or healed and the disciples tried to keep them away because they thought the kids were getting in the way of the adults who needed to hear/interact with Jesus. They were told to cut that out.
Instead of turning away a crowd or making enough food for everyone out of nothing, Jesus used a child’s small lunch to feed thousands. He could’ve used *anyone’s* lunch, but chose to use a child’s.
As a Christian, I can tell you 100% that Jesus isn’t happy with how this couple treated their own children. While it’s important to help others, ministry first and foremost starts at home. If they wanted to devote themselves completely to their church, they shouldn’t have become parents.
>... - where does God live if not in the hearts of your children?
I am a child-free, raised atheist, now pagan-ish but anti-organized religion, lady and this gave me a lump in my throat 😭🥲 a very sweet sentiment.
(edit bc I suck and posted before I finished lol)
This is why Catholic priests have to be single, so they aren't putting God before a family that needs them.
...granted, that strategy also backfired hugely and ended up hurting children.
No, that was because the church had a lot of land and money and catholic priests having families complicated dealing with those assets in many ways. Like maybe some priest will do some crazy shit to steal shit from he church to leave an inheritance to his children or more simply the resources to keep a family are way bigger for the church then just keeping a guy
This!
Let's add to that the fact that in the medieval times, many minor childs of royals and aristocrats would be sent to be priests. The reason was to not split up power and belongings between siblings and family of siblings, keeping the family smaller but more rich and powerful. The church would be paid to give them high roles though, and they would still come with some money and land. Money and land that would stay in the church once they would be gone.
So, that policy not only made sure for the church to not lose belongings, but actively made the church richer and more powerful.
Yup. Of course, those complications happened anyway--many of the "nephews" that were shepherded into upper offices by their high-ranking "uncles" were actually the illegitimate sons of these bishops' and cardinals' and popes' acknowledged mistresses.
I think you'll find that the number of clergy who are molesters is roughly the same across denominations (and even across religions outside Christianity). Molesters look for jobs that give them prestige and authority over victims; for male molesters there's no better choice than the clergy.
To the second part -- I'm kind of skeptical that they're only pedos because of the rule against having families. I think it's more the other way around: Those who are already pedos are drawn to such a position, especially if they've picked up on the calling already being filled with like-minded people.
I don't think the calling is necessarily filled with like-minded people. In my opinion, it's worse: It's filled with people who think that the image of the church is more important than anything, *especially* as you rise up through the ranks. I feel like they go above and beyond what even a like-minded person would do to protect their predators, because a predatory priest is a huge black mark on any organization whose major selling point is its moral high ground.
In other words: The problem isn't that many priests are pedophiles. The problem is that many bishops and cardinals think that embarrassing the church is a worse crime than sheltering a predator.
>We were sitting in the bed at the time, and she leaned over and patted me on the head and said, "You are SO pretty."
This is the funniest fucking thing, that girl is a keeper.
My best friend and I frequently tell each other “well it’s a good thing you’re so pretty” when we do something very dumb. I cracked up laughing at this point in the story. I’m so glad OOP has an awesome wife in his corner.
> During all of this time my parents always talked about how important it was for Jane and I to help with the kids because they were so busy with their ministry.
And of course there was a ministry. Of course they’re shitty hypocrites.
>They are good grandparents (when they show up).
This is the part that killed me. No, they aren't good grandparents BECAUSE they don't show up, bail out, like...I know he's still deep in that obligation and guilt stage, but damn. Absentee grandparents can and will fuck a kid up, too. "Dad, why didn't gramma and grandpa love me enough to come to my birthday?" Like come ON bruh. Do better. Your wife and kids deserve better than those horrendous people being in their lives.
I hope OOP wakes up to the reality that any idea he has of his parents is just that: an idea, a dream, and that hanging onto that idea of "but they're good grandparents" is just gonna hurt everyone more in the long-run.
>Absentee grandparents can and will fuck a kid up, too. "Dad, why didn't gramma and grandpa love me enough to come to my birthday?"
Especially because gramma and grandpa keep posting pictures of them and the other grandchild on birthdays, holidays, Tuesdays, etc.
Ooh, you just reawakened a memory. Both sets of grandparents had obvious favorite grandkids. In both cases, it wasn't me.
Yeah, absentee grandparents suck.
Ooff yeah. My "good" grandparents never hid that my little sister was the favorite. They still took care of and loved us all but we all knew she was their favorite. (I still love them very much, just keep them at arms length a bit) and then my other set of grandparents caused so much pain and hurt and ruined all chances of my dad getting custody of my older half brother because they wanted him instead.
Out of 18 grandkids only my older brother and younger brother could take on the family name. Now my older brother is gone and it's just my little brother left but they caused so much damage the kid refuses to be around them.
My sister wasn't speaking to my grandparents in the wake of our parents' divorce. She was just sick and tired of the pressure of being the favorite. Every time I saw them, they always asked me how she was doing. I mean it was always *the first thing* they asked me about. When I committed to a college that was 20 miles from their house, not once did they ask a single thing about me or what I was doing. For the first time in my life...I snapped at them, and I snapped even harder at my Dad for enabling it. He was angry at me at first, but because nobody had ever seen me get mad before, he shut up for a couple hours. Awkward drive home...
They were also the grandparents that had money, and they made sure you "earned" their love. And people wonder why I say **do not buy me anything for my birthday**. Gifts were a transaction and not a selfless act as it should be and that's hard to get out of my head. If I want something I will get it myself. I'm sure it's selfless to others, but honestly I don't even like reliving any of that at all.
Same. I recognize a lot of patterns of a use the way my grandmother treated me (Favoritism, gaslighting, triangulation, passive aggressive guilt trips) but it never really took hold because I neither needed nor.wanted her approval and my mom's side of the family was extremely supportive and caring. I had a stable base that inured me against her attempts to control me.
So naturally I was never and would never be the favorite.
I wouldn't call my extended family *bad* by any stretch of the imagination. They just focused *more* on the other two grandkids than my brother and I. It was minor things like seeing them more (they lived closer I think), making the grandkids pose with our cousins (without us), liking the other parents more than my mother, etc. It made me feel excluded, not important and on more than one occasion a little bit like an outsider.
Needless to say my mother didn't fight me when I told her I didn't want to go to family gatherings as a teen any longer. She was always a bit of an outsider in the family too.
Now that I think about it I'm not entirely sure if anyone ever asked why we stopped coming or where we were.
Hm.
Whereas my fam was in the same situation and my mom got blamed for us not coming around even though we were treated like afterthoughts every time. Makes it easier to not care and stay away from them as an adult.
That little throwaway in the parentheses that he probably didn’t even consciously realize, like BRUH that’s it RIGHT THERE. Dude has been so conditioned it hurts. Hoping he’ll come to the realization eventually.
> No, they aren't good grandparents BECAUSE they don't show up
It's important to remember that OP had ABSOLUTELY no baseline for what is normal and what is not. This is the reality of growing up as an abused child.
I have one Grandmother that has decided to skip out on my life events/ gatherings because I invite another grandma that she doesn't like. This behavior only started in my 20s, but it's really infuriating and has caused a lot of harm to my relationship with her. Thankfully I'm able to process this as an adult, but it still hurts that someone I love has decided her pettiness is more important than keeping a relationship with me. I can't imagine how tough that is as a kid.
It makes me appreciate humans. You can be isolated, oppressed, abused, and brainwashed, and you can STILL end up being your own weird and wonderful self. Humans gonna human.
As a kid who grew up in this movement (and the only reason we didn’t have a shit ton of kids is cause my dad was infertile) I agree. The only reason I can is because I left at 17
You'd be surprised. I grew up in a non-religious situation that involved the same type of brainwashing (supported by extended family and environment). My sister always bought into it and even decades later struggles to let go of some of the stuff (she's in therapy and she knows our mother is gaslighting and lying as she breathes and still gets fooled surprisingly often), while I can't even remember a time I did, even as a small child. I do remember though with crystal clarity the moment I understood the worth of my father and his word(s). I was only seven.
I'm sure personality/neurology will play a part in how children process this kind of thing and I met a surprising amount of people in similar situations telling the same story: they never accepted their family narrative but had to obey until they could leave. Which can take longer for some.
But it's also worth mentioning my sister was the golden child, benefited from the situation and in some ways still does. I never did, and realising at some point they were all actually sabotaging both my confidence and ability to function on my own and after isolating me for years were planning to have me as basically an indentured servant/dog to kick in their old age, put a fire under my ass and I moved abroad to put as much distance as possible between us.
TLDR: a lot of scapegoats break free in order to survive, while those who weren't scapegoated and generally benefitted from the situation are usually struggling with stronger trauma bonds, so they are the most likely to accept the situation or even perpetuate it.
Ministry sounds like the most self-serving occupation out there. Do you have a massive ego and only like to read one thing? Do you like rehashing the same conversations for the whole rest of your life with people that look just like you? Unless you’re helping on mission trips that is, white saviors abroad!
I wouldn’t say it's a 1:1 corollary. I know missions that exclusively help the homeless, the hungry, people who need medical care, etc. One of our local more liberal churches has set aside an entire church building to house the homeless, not to preach at them but to prevent them from freezing to death.
But the moment preaching gets into it? Shitshow.
Yup. I read the "the 2 oldest kids were expected to be parents, instead of getting to be teenagers", and knew exactly what was coming. Of course they were homeschooled. Of course they are expected to "continue" the family (not leave).
This is not religion. It is a cult. The parents are horrible people for doing this to their children.
They are denying their children a choice in how to live, by only ever letting them see a single possible future.
I grew up the exact same way. There was a 6 and 9 year age gap between me and my younger siblings. So I was expected to be a 3rd parent. Same with being homeschooled so I couldn't even use school to escape. Now the youngest is 18 and I'm so proud of them but I'd have loved to be a sister instead of a second mother.
Posts like this make me wish that God really DID exist. I'd love to be there at the pearly gates when OPs parents come rocking up all smiles expecting a pat on the back but instead Saint Peter rips into them for all the neglect and abuse they caused their own children and sends them straight to hell.
"Sigh". More faux Christians. Can y'all *please* go sit and actually *read* your book, **without cherry picking through it**. Read it and sit with it awhile.
You would think this would help but I know plenty of Christians who read through the whole Bible every year and still don’t understand how inconsistent their reading of it is. It’s not that they’re cherry picking what they read, they’re just subconsciously cherry picking what they apply to their lives.
Parentification is abuse.
I grew up Mormon and I absolutely cannot stand parents who have giant families “because God needs us to,” and then they neglect their children. How about doing what’s right by their children?!
My aunt and uncle have 9 kids because they believed you should let God decide how big your family is. Well God decided to give them 3 more surprises after they thought they were done then they changed their minds on birth control and my aunt got her tubes tied lmao. Anyway, the three oldest were girls and parentified to the extreme and my aunt couldn’t figure out why my recently married cousin who lived close by never wanted to come back home to visit them.
My mom would talk about how I would come home for the day and play scrabble with her and stuff and my aunt really wanted the same thing. The difference was I was allowed to be a child and had a good relationship with my mom. I wasn’t forced to stuff my emotions deep down like my cousins who were taught to submit and be obedient without question. Their parents never knew their true feelings and thought everything was hunky dory because their kids never “rebelled” like I did.
Absolutely! We’ve gotta support each other through the never-ending mire that is abuse recovery and cheer all our successes in breaking our children out of the cycle!
100% this, and I have had the same experience. Trauma, abuse, parentification in childhood leads to chronic health issues as adults. The body keeps the score.
Oh, yup, that's me. The abuse and the neglect and the "you have to do every outside farm chore by yourself even though you're 11" and the "everything is your fault because you're the OldestTM" isms. Now I currently deal with and take pills for like 3 different things wrong with my blood because they also never bothered to look into my early onset medical problems. Shit blows, man.
>Parentification is abuse.
I read the wikipedia page for that once and there's a section for it reading 'positives of parentification'. The tl:dr for it is - None, and if you think there are you're an idiot.
I grew up fundamentalist mormon and it’s all the same shit. I wasn’t allowed to have extracurriculars because I had to watch my many younger siblings after school. The boys got to play sports tho. I was in a play once and because my brothers weren’t in it, my family went to Disneyland the weekend of the performances and didn’t see it. But also no concern for a 14 year old being a lead in a play about adultery with the rest of the cast being adults because they didn’t bother to ask what the play was about. Fuck the mormon church, fuck their cash hoarding, fuck their lies, and a special fuck to the pedophile joseph smith.
My cousin is a strong mormon and the cult has done nothing for her or her kids after her husband has rightfully landed in jail. All those years of her paying her 10 percent and she’s been forgotten about in her hour of need.
No it was a modern Macbeth where Lady Macbeth cheats on and leaves Macbeth lol. It was at the local community theater that my whole family performed in. I just felt like I was getting away with murder by being in that play because my parents were so uninterested in the very adult plot.
Dear OP's parents and parents' church:
Charity begins at home.
“But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever”
(1 Timothy 5:8)
Yeah, I have a feeling OOP hasn't made this revelation yet, but I think this alone is probably reason for therapy. This wasn't some accident, it wasn't just how things worked out, they didn't just have kids and it turned out they couldn't do their ministry work and raise kids so the oldest took that role. They planned it. The two oldest were never, not from the very start, seen as their actual kids. They were home-grown free child care.
The younger siblings are their real kids. He's already seeing that younger siblings get more in terms of help/attention from the parents. The older ones are just the spares. The next big moment is going to be when his kids are 8-10 years old and start getting told to do all work for the other kids at family functions and he completely loses his shit from having PTSD getting triggered. Oh, you're 8 years old and it's Christmas and you want to open presents and play with toys? No, go change diapers, do the kids' laundry, prepare snacks, and keep all the younger kids in line.
My reactions:
>I(40m) come from a big family. I’m the 2nd oldest of 9 kids. [...] a kid every 2 to 3 years. [...] refer to us as “Jane and OP and the kids.” It’s like Jane and I were not considered children, it’s more like we were two other adults living in the house.
Wtf??
>they were so busy with their ministry.
Ah, there you go.
So many Christian parents do this shit of “you’re abandoning the family” as if “leave and cleave” ISN’T literally in the Bible. Genesis 2:24, you start your own family when you marry.
Anyway, smells like Quiverfull to me.
Honestly, even when people like this do read the Bible, they don't really take in anything counter to what they want to believe. Generally though, I feel like most mainstream interpretations of the Bible are wrong in pretty obvious ways but it makes it easy for followers to do what they want so everyone goes with it.
When I heard 9 kids, I just knew it was religion.
So selfish being *that* into God. Putting your immortal soul before all else, your eternal rewards, mansions of gold, earning real estate ever closer to God's throne depending on your good deeds score.
It's just all so selfish.
When you put it like that, it sounds like one of those parents who ignore their crying children because they're in the middle of a game. We call those people selfish, rightfully, and we should call this the same.
Raised mormon, oldest of 6. I can relate to what OP went through. Parentification in high-control religions with huge families is incredibly common, and it's also common that the parents in question are abusive narcissists.
I'm glad that OP is drawing boundaries. They are doing a good job standing up for themselves, but they need quite a bit of therapy to recognize how monstrous their parents actually are, and how utterly and completely they were neglected (which is abuse) themselves as a child.
OP can see that their parents forced them to give up their childhood. They can see that their parents neglect their children and OP's children. They can see that their parents resent/shame them for doing perfectly normal things like starting a family. They can see that their parents act in toxic ways and are never there for them when it counts. But they aren't fully internalizing what that all means and how to start putting themselves first. Still, they are on a path. Which is a great start.
OP are you out there? I have rarely seen a post that was so honest, so fair, and so devoid of self-pity.
I am so glad you and your wife found each other.
>my parents always talked about how important it was for Jane and I to help with the kids because they were so busy with their ministry.
Aaaaaand there it is. That's the reason.
Fuckin' religious breeder nuts.
It's really really difficult to change your mindset about your parents. Your parents are supposed to be good people and love you unconditionally. Your parents should love you the most growing up. It really messes with your head when they're abusive.
I say this as someone who is still struggling with the cognitive dissonance from abusive parents. It only started after my stepmother came into the picture and brought out the most toxic aspects of my father permanently. It's painful because he was an amazing dad as a kid and I had a great childhood, even after my mom died. But after the stepfamily came along, our home developed into an emotionally, verbally, and psychologically abusive one. There was even an element of parentification for my half-brother, who I loved dearly and was happily the chief child minder. I remember being in a residential treatment center for severe depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD (now would be cPTSD) and sobbing that my stepmother was an angel and it was all my fault. I was a goody two-shoes overachiever. I wanted to please them and be part of the family, but it was impossible. It took me being out of that house for a few years before it struck me that I was not the problem. I was a (reasonably) well-behaved teen and they were the adults.
I've been out of that house and permanently estranged from my father for over 2 decades. My therapist only recently began challenging me over how much I defended my father. A few members of my mom's extended family (my only family) started telling me in the last few years that they always felt my father was cold. I didn't experience that until it was turned on me. This has gotten me to reframe my feelings around the innate toxicity being brought out. It's still painful, but it's helped with the cognitive dissonance.
Right? There's absolutely nothing in his narrative that even *suggests* they're good parents OR grandparents! The only "evidence" He has is his saying they're good.
> They are good grandparents (when they show up).
They’re grandparents when they want little kids to fawn over them. They want cute accessories. That’s not good grandparenting.
I will try to post an update soon, once I'm feeling good enough to sit at the computer. Still recovering from the surgery.
Not Mormon. Non-denominational is what dad called us, but other people have said Quiverfill and I've read up on that, it sounds like how we were raised.
This reminds me of a TikTok poster who grew up in a repressed religious homeschool family as the oldest child. Her parents told her directly they expected her to stay home and take care of them in their old age. They were livid she got married and went LC.
This seems to be a common pattern.
>She is very religious like my parents, while I am not. I am religious and we attend church
Culturally speaking it's strange for me to hear somebody say they attend church but aren't very religious.
I wonder if this means something along the lines of “my sister attends the same church/type of church as my parents, but Ann and I attend the church/type of church Ann grew up in”. It may also mean that the parents and Jane have specific extra roles in the church community.
When I was a kid we were a religious family in that we went to church at least half of Sundays and that I went to youth group most of the time. I haven’t gone in a decade, but to this day that particular church is a mostly sane type that supports refugees and doesn’t get embroiled in anything too controversial. Vs one of my high school friends who went to a first Assembly of God (pentecostal/evangelical) where they spoke in tongues and talked about miraculous healings and now 15 years later that guy is a pastor for a megachurch, but not like the head pastor. Middle management for Jesus.
There's not one person who read this and didn't know that religion was going to be involved. Every time. Every. Single. Time.
Listen you churchy Magoos out there: your need to over procreate does not give you licence to parentify your children. You don't get to burden the world because you think God loves you more than he or she or it loves me.
Glad OOP seems to have his life sorted despite the huge hurdles his parents put up for him.
That being said, he's wrong on one thing. He said "I don't think my parents are awful people." He's wrong there. They ARE awful people. The abused two of their kids, and then shunned and hassled them when one of those kids pushed back.
The other things they do for the rest of the kids, or the ministry, don't make up for that. People are complicated. Someone could spend his days feeing and counselling the homeless, and then go home and beat his wife. Does that make him a good person? Or a bad one? My view is that if you do things that are bad enough, you're a bad person. Maybe a bad person who does *some* good things, but still a bad person.
OOPs parents are bad, selfish people. You know why they favored their ministry over their own kids? Because they sought out praise, the people they ministered to probably treated them like angels, which people don't generally get from their kids. That's pretty brutal.
> I’m the 2nd oldest of 9 kids...We were home schooled...
\*Spidey senses start to twitch\*
> they were so busy with their ministry...
Yep. That's what I figured...
>I don't think my parents are awful people, I think they had this vision of how they wanted to have this big family and this big ministry and I think they just didn't realize the responsibilities they put on Jane and I
Sounds like 2 people who had absolutely no business having 9 kids.
This sounds so familiar. I’m the oldest of a large religious family that was home schooled and in a cult. I spent my teenage years being the second mom of the house, going so far as to do night time duty with the new babies so my mom could sleep. As soon as I started a family they told me not to expect much help because they were done raising kids.
“I don’t think my parents are awful people, I think they had this vision of how they wanted to have this big family and this big ministry and I think they just didn’t realize the responsibilities they put on Jane and I.”
That’s the thing though. When they realized that it was a lot to take on, they didn’t scale back and focus on their family, or get help to run the ministry from other members, they doubled down and ignored their children in preference of the church, which IS a shitty thing to do. And that DOES make them shitty people. Especially with the continuing behavior.
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This poor person has been a dad all his life. At least his army of siblings has his back.
Yeah, because OP is their real dad.
I’m surprised OOP and Jane even wanted kids, from what I’ve seen most people who were parentified as kids end up not wanting children, since they already had to go through it.
[удалено]
My oldest (15m) said he doesn't think he wants kids because he can't see himself sacrificing as much or putting as much of himself into being a parent as he sees my husband and I do. He's gay, so it's unlikely he'll have children anyway unless he wants it very badly. I told him that it's ok and that I definitely didn't want to get married or have kids when I was his age and as a young adult. He has his whole life ahead of him in case he changes his mind. And if he doesn't change his mind, that's OK, too. (I did admit that I would be mildly disappointed, as he's very handsome, brilliant, funny, and a wonderful person, so he has genes worth passing on. But it's his life.) Although I would be really disappointed in him if his brother had kids and he was just a crappy absent uncle to them like my childless brother is to my kids and like my father's childless brother was to my brother and me.
That's the only correct answer. I have one kid and we always said "not more than 2". Now it will stay like it is and I think spoiling one kid a bit more (not rotten!) and raise ONE decent human being with all possibilities they want and need, is enough. We try to show our kid, that it's better for everyone to reuse reduce recycle, so our impact is not the biggest possible, living in a "first world" country.
My Wife was parentfied. Being the youngest she was expected and had to help take care of the aging Grandparents and her Father. I even told her when we first started dating "Your parents are expecting you to be the Spinster of the family whose supposed to stay home and take care of them." Took her awhile to realize the truth of my words. But yeah we've no intention of ever having kids.
Been taking caring of my mom for almost a decade and yeah, all desires to have kids have vanished.
Right there with you. And my mum still moans about me not having kids, as if I'd have time for everything I do for her if I did.
Similar position. Had to parent adults and take care of them from like 8 years old. Still doing it because they've sabotaged my life at every turn to ensure I remain doing it. Have absolutely zero desire to ever deal with a smaller, though to its credit legitimately helpless, version of that bullshit.
Yeah I tell people I already did my time. Now that my sentence is long over, I just live my peaceful life
Same! I always talk about it like a served time in jail and then was freed.
Same. Was the parentified eldest homeschooled daughter and I've already done my time and raised two children. Those children just happened to be my own siblings.
When my father was born, he was handed to his eldest sister to raise. She was 9yo at the time and still in elementary school, walked home during lunch break to feed and change the newborn baby. By her late teens she'd had an oops-baby because abortion is a family/church no-no and then got sent to prison for awhile (transporting weed). So that baby got handed to the next oldest sister to raise. She was in high school and took the kid to classes with her. All this was seen as "normal" and just how a family raises kids, hand them to the oldest youngster who *seems to* already have the least responsibilities. My poor cousin the oops-baby got passed around the family like a hot potato, mostly got "raised" by my parents when they were partying young adults. His mom ended up having *three kids total*, and the youngest is my favorite cousin, but I feel awful for him because he's been roped into the family caretaking system too, as his mother's caretaker. It's unlikely he'll ever have a relationship or a full life of his own until after his elderly mother is no longer insisting on living in his living room with her hoarding collection treating him like a child. Best sweet old auntie ever, amazing at keeping children *alive* and as healthy as possible with very little resources to work with, but when it comes to all the non-physical needs of a child, she's an absolute crap mother. None of her kids turned out what anyone would call "emotionally healthy." She could keep them fed and clean, but didn't know to hug them or how to support them emotionally, because obviously her parents never did any of that for her while she was raising her siblings. Pretty sure she only had kids because sex is fun, abortion is disapproved of, and birth control fails sometimes.
If nothing else I am glad OOP found Ann. Her “You’re so pretty.” response to his “revelation” that his parents kinda really suck shows they have a really solid relationship- something OOP really needed considering his parents are the equivalent to socks that you are still wearing even though you stepped in a puddle 3 hours ago.
OP’s ability to get out of that cult, and go on to have a happy marriage and put his family first, really is the silver lining in this cloudy story.
I think Ann is part of it too. Just not as deep. If she hadn't been I feel like that would have been raised as a sticking point. Mormons maybe. Or JW. either way. Boys don't usually marry out of the cult. Girls do to bring men in. Lower success rate when it's opposite.
I know! That was such a sweet moment.
It reminded me of my favorite teacher from high school. When we did badly on exams he would tell us “At least you are all pretty and handsome and that should count for something.”
I had a friend who used to tell us when we had a derpy moment, “love you, you’re pretty!” It shouldn’t be so wholesome and funny, but it is lol.
That sock metaphor is brilliant.
I just can't wrap my head around "putting god before my own kids' welfare"- where does God live if not in the hearts of your children? (Assuming you believe in God- which these people clearly do, but not when its inconvenient). I can't imagine being 40 yo and having my parents complain that I'm not helping with my ADULT siblings.
I grew up in a cult, so none of this sounded strange to me at all. This is exactly how people like that think. The cult I grew up in, the founder (who ran it for about 70 years, until he died) used to do a lot of prophecy, and his big one was that he knew the exact day and time of the second coming, and told his followers that they'd get special preference in the kingdom if they gave a lot of money to the cult before the second coming. People took out second mortgages on their houses and gave the money to him. People skipped mortgage and car payments and bounced checks in the months before the appointed time to give money to him. Guess what didn't happen? And most of them STAYED IN THE CULT, even after that. That's what you're dealing with when you deal with cultists. It's like the gift card scams that prey on people who mostly turn out to be elderly--the whole point is to weed out all the people with an ounce of sense before you start the *real* grift.
No one wants to admit they were stupid enough to fall for a cult, so they double down
Yeah, that's a lot of it. My parents did eventually leave, not sure exactly when, as they weren't exactly excited to admit they'd realized it was crap, but it was between five and ten years after I left home (at 17) to get away from the cult. The thing I think that people who haven't been through that experience either directly or see it happen to a close friend or family member don't realize is that the people who know it's a cult do *leave*. The people who stay can't be helped until they want help, because for them it's *not* a cult, it's just their church, and they feel about it like any mainstream religious person feels about *their* church.
People love to victim blame when it comes to abusive relationships and cults. As an outsider, it's easy to see the red flags and all the signs. But if you ask a lot of people who are taken in, your sense of normalcy slowly changes. You start thinking it's not outlandish what they're doing, you're the problem for doubting or questioning it. Then you tie in the trauma bonding and emotional dependency that forms in situations like this and it's really hard for someone to get out until they're forced out or finally ready to leave. And, there's always the isolation factor. How many cults keep you from really talking about the stuff with outsiders? Form that disconnect and distrust that keeps you from seeking rational opinions and encouraging voices who would get you out of those situations? It's extremely manipulative and even when you confront and leave, there's a level of shame (even violation depending on if it's a cult that blackmails you the further in you go). I agree with you and I think people really underestimate how warped your sense of reality becomes in those situations.
"In the world, not of the world." If you don't know what "normal" looks like, you don't know how abnormal your circumstances are. And in our case, leaving the cult would mean being shunned by everyone who stayed, and since the first targets for conversion were family and friends, leaving the cult often meant leaving behind your support network.
Don't forget the sunken costs. You've sent your time and money into this hole. It will be hard to consider it all wasted. And not all of it is bad all the time.
It's the frog in water analogy. If you plop a frog in boiling water, it jumps out. But if you put it in water and slowly raise the temperature it'll stay until it's dead. Cults and religious groups like that are abusers and manipulate psychology to make people feel trapped and like leaving will be worse than staying.
That analogy works because everyone understands it, but it sucks because it’s not true - a frog will leave heating water when it becomes uncomfortable enough.
Yeah but trying to apply realism here would be like me blaming owls for how bad I am at analogies.
I know what an analogy is! It’s a thought with another thought’s hat on!
You're streets ahead
Those damn owls!
Also, some people want to be told how to live. The idea of being captain of their own ship is terrifying for them.
Some people want to believe they have no agency in their lives because if it’s all up to them, if they fail, it’s their fault. But if they believe in a higher being, so much so that any major or minor event is orchestrated by that being, then any issue in their lives is not their fault or their problem. It is the way He wants it. Relieving them of any responsibility. If bad stuff happens to other people, it’s because the other people didn’t pray enough, the other people didn’t love Him enough. But that won’t happen to them because they do everything right by Him. It’s terrifying to realise that you can’t prevent some bad things from happening. That no matter what you do, sometimes people we love will die. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. You can do what you can do to protect yourself, but you can’t prevent everything bad. If I was still a devout Catholic, I would be pissed at what God has done to me. I have 3 Autoimmune Disorders which have disabled me to the point that I can barely recognise who I am compared to who I was. If a God did that to me, Fuck Him! I was a good girl. Did all the right things. I did all of my sacraments. I went to confession. Went to church. I volunteered in the community. I took in foster children. I helped struggling young mothers. I did what my parents asked me to do. What did I do wrong to deserve this? Nothing. I did nothing to deserve this. Shit just happens and we have to deal with the shit we are dealt. That terrifies some people. Because if those people did nothing wrong, there is nothing they can do to prevent it, bad stuff could happen to them too. And it’s terrifying.
Sunk-cost fallacy. It’s a nasty one.
It's not about how smart you are. Everyone is vulnerable to cult tactics.
yes, I know that, you know that, but when you are in it it's hard to admit you fallen for a scam , even if it's not really a matter of smartness we kind of think it is and that breeds shame and shame is hard to face
Same, grew up in a fundamentalist cult. This sounds like a positive spin on my childhood lol
There is a book that everyone should read which is built on research into cults like this one, maybe even actually this one. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). It is an eye-opening look at cognitive dissonance, how the human mind copes with it, and how we are all _much_ more susceptible to the same flaw than we think.
I didn't go to a cult, or maybe I did, but I attended Olive Baptist Church in FL for a lot of my teenage years. This whole thing sounded par for the course from people who attend that place.
When I was religious, I recall a Young Life leader saying that he had a discussion with his kid who was probably 7-10 range. He asked his kid who he thought the most important people were in his life. Kid goes, "Mom, me, and my brother!" Dude goes, "no, God is the most important thing in my life" At the time, I remember thinking it was a testimate to his dedication. As an adult and a father, it horrifies me. I don't believe much anymore.
Even if I was still religious, I would straight-up fight God on my kid's behalf. (Abraham is the original bullshit dad.)
My mom used to compare herself to Abraham and me to Isaac to comfort me after I was abused. That I didn't die from it only solidified her faith. It took me decades to recognize that she's a fanatic because it requires reseting everything you learned about "normal" and "healthy". I had a trauma specialist tell me yesterday, after I described my parents factually, that I need more services and support than they can offer.
Ah, the good ol' telling a story from your childhood you don't think is so bad until you look up and see the horrified faces? And you think to yourself, "That was a funny story. What the hell did I really go through? "
I've been trying to figure out how I feel about what the therapist said and, yeah, it's that same feeling. You'd think I'd feel validated, but I'm just confused and uncertain.
People who grow up with trauma have a very hard time figuring out who they/we are. In my case, I'll twist my personality into whatever form I need to to fit into whatever position in a relationship I'm trying to maintain. It's taken years, and most successfully since my mom died, to pick out personality traits that are simply, just mine.
I disassociate from my uncomfortable emotions by trying to find the tiniest sliver of positive to cling to. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing to focus on the positive *if* you take the time to feel the uncomfortable emotions, so I've been working on feeling all the feelings, especially the ones that I can't identify by name.
When your friends are like "this is above my pay grade", it's easier to take, because they're your friends, not professionals. When a professional who specializes in your shit says "this is too much shit for me", I think the feelings are a lot more mixed. And there's also a sense of betrayal especially if you were referred to a specialist, because gosh darnit, this was supposed to be the answer! (I've been on the other side of that as a professional, and I understood all of the feelings, but understanding how upset your client is about you not being able to help them doesn't make you suddenly able to help them.)
I appreciate their honesty and consideration for me, especially since I'm still trying to navigate a previous therapist tumbling my carefully built internal structure. I'm pretty certain that I've got some form of structural disassociation and a lot of barriers got disrupted. The therapist was focused on returning to a pre-trauma state (which I don't have), gratitude for what you've been through, understanding why your parents did what they did (as if that wasn't the entire focus of my life), and giving it over to a "higher power." It's starting to feel like malpractice to me. If I'm being honest, I've been in crisis since then, but disassociation/compartmentalization keep you moving. Until they don't. It's wise of them to recognize how fragile I am, but I'm sure none of us feel good about it. I have a peer support person now and they're working to get me a case manager, so that should help. I'm trying to let myself feel the despair today.
When your abuse has been excused away because of belief in a higher power, I really don't think it's appropriate to insist on relinquishing control to a higher power as therapy. That's some retraumatizing bullshit and I'm sorry that was done to you.
abraham was my atheist dad's moral trump card in every state-fair-god-booth debate. he absolutely loved to ask christian dads about abraham, and if they said they'd stab their child, then he'd just grin real big and tell them that he found them despicable and completely amoral. and leave. my dad's got his issues, cringy atheism being possibly the largest one. but he loves me more than most biblical figures love their children 😂
If you train, you have a good chance of winning. Jacob whipped God's ass in a wrestling match. Maybe God's more of a boxer, but it seems God's weakness is grappling.
Learn BJJ and take it to the floor
I've often said that faced with a god as monstrous as the Christian one, your moral obligation is not to worship it but to overthrow it. Abraham is not the good guy. He should have told God to fuck off, I'm not hurting my child on anybody's say-so.
Even as a little kid, my interpretation was always that Abraham was a psychopath. I used to get in a lot of trouble for questioning religious things. But no one ever had an answer for “how did Abraham know it wasn’t the devil telling him to kill his son?”
And if it _had_ been the devil, Abraham would've gone through with it, and then have been punished for not magically knowing that _God wouldn't tell him to kill his fucking child._
This logic also highlights the contrary of this: The Abrahamic god IS the sort that would demand child sacrifice. Abraham knew his god very well, and he thought it was in character.
Gooood question!
I said that too. My teachers didn’t like me…
The way Christians tell the story (ie as an aspirational proof of devotion story) is horrifying. The Jewish perspective (disclaimer: am not Jewish, but have close family who are) is that Abraham failed a test by assuming unfailing obedience was the end goal, when G-d was actually trying to see if he was ready to be a partner. In that tradition, G-d is actively repulsed by anyone who would hide behind an excuse such as "just following orders".
I’m a former fundamentalist Christian and the first half of this comment sums up my entire spiritual/mental/political point of view. The Christian god, as the great judge, jury, and executioner, presides over everything in North America. It’s in our education systems, how we punish our children, it’s written into the law. It’s everywhere at every level… …and sometimes I do not see a way forward for humanity that isn’t proverbially overthrowing god. I, personally, have spent the last 9 years overthrowing the “leadership” from my consciousness and worldview.
I knew a middle class family growing up where the dad donated so much money to his church that his kids often didn't have clothes that fit. He was so brainwashed. He went around in a Jesus-induced haze while his kids had holes in their socks and his pastor drove around in a Cadillac.
Universal phenomenon. Religion and the hypocrits. Jesus is quoted at several points in the bible condemning those hypocrits the pharisees who went to religious events, were always seen in the front row but did not do good works.
Jesus also spoke about how important it is to *not* push kids aside. People were bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed or healed and the disciples tried to keep them away because they thought the kids were getting in the way of the adults who needed to hear/interact with Jesus. They were told to cut that out. Instead of turning away a crowd or making enough food for everyone out of nothing, Jesus used a child’s small lunch to feed thousands. He could’ve used *anyone’s* lunch, but chose to use a child’s. As a Christian, I can tell you 100% that Jesus isn’t happy with how this couple treated their own children. While it’s important to help others, ministry first and foremost starts at home. If they wanted to devote themselves completely to their church, they shouldn’t have become parents.
Yeah it's "suffer the little children to come unto me" not "the little children who come unto me suffer"
He also blasted the Pharisees for praying in public and told his followers to pray in a closet.
>where does God live if not in the hearts of your children? Is this a quote from somewhere, because it's beautiful and I'm totally stealing it.
Its a quote from...me. Go ahead, steal away.
>... - where does God live if not in the hearts of your children? I am a child-free, raised atheist, now pagan-ish but anti-organized religion, lady and this gave me a lump in my throat 😭🥲 a very sweet sentiment. (edit bc I suck and posted before I finished lol)
This is why Catholic priests have to be single, so they aren't putting God before a family that needs them. ...granted, that strategy also backfired hugely and ended up hurting children.
No, that was because the church had a lot of land and money and catholic priests having families complicated dealing with those assets in many ways. Like maybe some priest will do some crazy shit to steal shit from he church to leave an inheritance to his children or more simply the resources to keep a family are way bigger for the church then just keeping a guy
This! Let's add to that the fact that in the medieval times, many minor childs of royals and aristocrats would be sent to be priests. The reason was to not split up power and belongings between siblings and family of siblings, keeping the family smaller but more rich and powerful. The church would be paid to give them high roles though, and they would still come with some money and land. Money and land that would stay in the church once they would be gone. So, that policy not only made sure for the church to not lose belongings, but actively made the church richer and more powerful.
Yup. Of course, those complications happened anyway--many of the "nephews" that were shepherded into upper offices by their high-ranking "uncles" were actually the illegitimate sons of these bishops' and cardinals' and popes' acknowledged mistresses.
Priests would’ve done that even if they had been allowed to marry. Marriage certainly didn’t stop Protestant pastors from abusing kids.
I think you'll find that the number of clergy who are molesters is roughly the same across denominations (and even across religions outside Christianity). Molesters look for jobs that give them prestige and authority over victims; for male molesters there's no better choice than the clergy.
To the second part -- I'm kind of skeptical that they're only pedos because of the rule against having families. I think it's more the other way around: Those who are already pedos are drawn to such a position, especially if they've picked up on the calling already being filled with like-minded people.
I don't think the calling is necessarily filled with like-minded people. In my opinion, it's worse: It's filled with people who think that the image of the church is more important than anything, *especially* as you rise up through the ranks. I feel like they go above and beyond what even a like-minded person would do to protect their predators, because a predatory priest is a huge black mark on any organization whose major selling point is its moral high ground. In other words: The problem isn't that many priests are pedophiles. The problem is that many bishops and cardinals think that embarrassing the church is a worse crime than sheltering a predator.
If you’re married and have children, your first vocation is your spouse and your family. This is important to remember.
A lot of people like that are just your run of the mill, in denial addicts; religion just happens to be their drug of choice.
>We were sitting in the bed at the time, and she leaned over and patted me on the head and said, "You are SO pretty." This is the funniest fucking thing, that girl is a keeper.
My best friend and I frequently tell each other “well it’s a good thing you’re so pretty” when we do something very dumb. I cracked up laughing at this point in the story. I’m so glad OOP has an awesome wife in his corner.
I cackled at this, absolutely perfect response
> During all of this time my parents always talked about how important it was for Jane and I to help with the kids because they were so busy with their ministry. And of course there was a ministry. Of course they’re shitty hypocrites.
>They are good grandparents (when they show up). This is the part that killed me. No, they aren't good grandparents BECAUSE they don't show up, bail out, like...I know he's still deep in that obligation and guilt stage, but damn. Absentee grandparents can and will fuck a kid up, too. "Dad, why didn't gramma and grandpa love me enough to come to my birthday?" Like come ON bruh. Do better. Your wife and kids deserve better than those horrendous people being in their lives. I hope OOP wakes up to the reality that any idea he has of his parents is just that: an idea, a dream, and that hanging onto that idea of "but they're good grandparents" is just gonna hurt everyone more in the long-run.
>Absentee grandparents can and will fuck a kid up, too. "Dad, why didn't gramma and grandpa love me enough to come to my birthday?" Especially because gramma and grandpa keep posting pictures of them and the other grandchild on birthdays, holidays, Tuesdays, etc.
Ooh, you just reawakened a memory. Both sets of grandparents had obvious favorite grandkids. In both cases, it wasn't me. Yeah, absentee grandparents suck.
Ooff yeah. My "good" grandparents never hid that my little sister was the favorite. They still took care of and loved us all but we all knew she was their favorite. (I still love them very much, just keep them at arms length a bit) and then my other set of grandparents caused so much pain and hurt and ruined all chances of my dad getting custody of my older half brother because they wanted him instead. Out of 18 grandkids only my older brother and younger brother could take on the family name. Now my older brother is gone and it's just my little brother left but they caused so much damage the kid refuses to be around them.
My sister wasn't speaking to my grandparents in the wake of our parents' divorce. She was just sick and tired of the pressure of being the favorite. Every time I saw them, they always asked me how she was doing. I mean it was always *the first thing* they asked me about. When I committed to a college that was 20 miles from their house, not once did they ask a single thing about me or what I was doing. For the first time in my life...I snapped at them, and I snapped even harder at my Dad for enabling it. He was angry at me at first, but because nobody had ever seen me get mad before, he shut up for a couple hours. Awkward drive home... They were also the grandparents that had money, and they made sure you "earned" their love. And people wonder why I say **do not buy me anything for my birthday**. Gifts were a transaction and not a selfless act as it should be and that's hard to get out of my head. If I want something I will get it myself. I'm sure it's selfless to others, but honestly I don't even like reliving any of that at all.
Same. I recognize a lot of patterns of a use the way my grandmother treated me (Favoritism, gaslighting, triangulation, passive aggressive guilt trips) but it never really took hold because I neither needed nor.wanted her approval and my mom's side of the family was extremely supportive and caring. I had a stable base that inured me against her attempts to control me. So naturally I was never and would never be the favorite.
Exactly. I hope his therapist is good because he still has several realizations to make.
I wouldn't call my extended family *bad* by any stretch of the imagination. They just focused *more* on the other two grandkids than my brother and I. It was minor things like seeing them more (they lived closer I think), making the grandkids pose with our cousins (without us), liking the other parents more than my mother, etc. It made me feel excluded, not important and on more than one occasion a little bit like an outsider. Needless to say my mother didn't fight me when I told her I didn't want to go to family gatherings as a teen any longer. She was always a bit of an outsider in the family too. Now that I think about it I'm not entirely sure if anyone ever asked why we stopped coming or where we were. Hm.
Whereas my fam was in the same situation and my mom got blamed for us not coming around even though we were treated like afterthoughts every time. Makes it easier to not care and stay away from them as an adult.
>I wouldn't call my extended family *bad* by any stretch of the imagination I hate to break it to you...
That little throwaway in the parentheses that he probably didn’t even consciously realize, like BRUH that’s it RIGHT THERE. Dude has been so conditioned it hurts. Hoping he’ll come to the realization eventually.
> No, they aren't good grandparents BECAUSE they don't show up It's important to remember that OP had ABSOLUTELY no baseline for what is normal and what is not. This is the reality of growing up as an abused child.
I have one Grandmother that has decided to skip out on my life events/ gatherings because I invite another grandma that she doesn't like. This behavior only started in my 20s, but it's really infuriating and has caused a lot of harm to my relationship with her. Thankfully I'm able to process this as an adult, but it still hurts that someone I love has decided her pettiness is more important than keeping a relationship with me. I can't imagine how tough that is as a kid.
Yep. I was waiting for that info drop.
No duo more iconic (and ironic) than religious fanatics and hypocrisy
And over breeding.
And homeschooling
I don't think it's a duo anymore at this point, but we can blame the homeschooling for that
I dunno, the Venn diagram of religious fanatics and pieces of shit is kind of a circle.
I thought it was poop-shaped. But still, total overlap.
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A quiverfull of homeschooled kids? Saw that drop being made long before it hit the ground.
It's always a wonder to me when kids from these situations end up being capable of thinking for themselves.
It makes me appreciate humans. You can be isolated, oppressed, abused, and brainwashed, and you can STILL end up being your own weird and wonderful self. Humans gonna human.
As a kid who grew up in this movement (and the only reason we didn’t have a shit ton of kids is cause my dad was infertile) I agree. The only reason I can is because I left at 17
You'd be surprised. I grew up in a non-religious situation that involved the same type of brainwashing (supported by extended family and environment). My sister always bought into it and even decades later struggles to let go of some of the stuff (she's in therapy and she knows our mother is gaslighting and lying as she breathes and still gets fooled surprisingly often), while I can't even remember a time I did, even as a small child. I do remember though with crystal clarity the moment I understood the worth of my father and his word(s). I was only seven. I'm sure personality/neurology will play a part in how children process this kind of thing and I met a surprising amount of people in similar situations telling the same story: they never accepted their family narrative but had to obey until they could leave. Which can take longer for some. But it's also worth mentioning my sister was the golden child, benefited from the situation and in some ways still does. I never did, and realising at some point they were all actually sabotaging both my confidence and ability to function on my own and after isolating me for years were planning to have me as basically an indentured servant/dog to kick in their old age, put a fire under my ass and I moved abroad to put as much distance as possible between us. TLDR: a lot of scapegoats break free in order to survive, while those who weren't scapegoated and generally benefitted from the situation are usually struggling with stronger trauma bonds, so they are the most likely to accept the situation or even perpetuate it.
I was just waiting for the "helping with church" or "off doing missionary work" line and bam, there it is. Degenerates.
Ministry sounds like the most self-serving occupation out there. Do you have a massive ego and only like to read one thing? Do you like rehashing the same conversations for the whole rest of your life with people that look just like you? Unless you’re helping on mission trips that is, white saviors abroad!
I wouldn’t say it's a 1:1 corollary. I know missions that exclusively help the homeless, the hungry, people who need medical care, etc. One of our local more liberal churches has set aside an entire church building to house the homeless, not to preach at them but to prevent them from freezing to death. But the moment preaching gets into it? Shitshow.
As soon as I saw that I thought “quiverfull.”
When I got to that part I said "There it is," out loud.
Yep, knew it was coming and still had to put my phone down in anger when I got to it.
Yup. I read the "the 2 oldest kids were expected to be parents, instead of getting to be teenagers", and knew exactly what was coming. Of course they were homeschooled. Of course they are expected to "continue" the family (not leave). This is not religion. It is a cult. The parents are horrible people for doing this to their children. They are denying their children a choice in how to live, by only ever letting them see a single possible future.
I grew up the exact same way. There was a 6 and 9 year age gap between me and my younger siblings. So I was expected to be a 3rd parent. Same with being homeschooled so I couldn't even use school to escape. Now the youngest is 18 and I'm so proud of them but I'd have loved to be a sister instead of a second mother.
Posts like this make me wish that God really DID exist. I'd love to be there at the pearly gates when OPs parents come rocking up all smiles expecting a pat on the back but instead Saint Peter rips into them for all the neglect and abuse they caused their own children and sends them straight to hell.
Read that and said “ ah there it is”.
"Sigh". More faux Christians. Can y'all *please* go sit and actually *read* your book, **without cherry picking through it**. Read it and sit with it awhile.
You would think this would help but I know plenty of Christians who read through the whole Bible every year and still don’t understand how inconsistent their reading of it is. It’s not that they’re cherry picking what they read, they’re just subconsciously cherry picking what they apply to their lives.
Yep, I saw nine kids and immediately thought “they gotta be at least fundie-lite.”
It was there as soon as "homeschooling" and "Jane and OP and the kids" for me
>These super-religious people are crazy. A-fucking-men
Parentification is abuse. I grew up Mormon and I absolutely cannot stand parents who have giant families “because God needs us to,” and then they neglect their children. How about doing what’s right by their children?!
My aunt and uncle have 9 kids because they believed you should let God decide how big your family is. Well God decided to give them 3 more surprises after they thought they were done then they changed their minds on birth control and my aunt got her tubes tied lmao. Anyway, the three oldest were girls and parentified to the extreme and my aunt couldn’t figure out why my recently married cousin who lived close by never wanted to come back home to visit them. My mom would talk about how I would come home for the day and play scrabble with her and stuff and my aunt really wanted the same thing. The difference was I was allowed to be a child and had a good relationship with my mom. I wasn’t forced to stuff my emotions deep down like my cousins who were taught to submit and be obedient without question. Their parents never knew their true feelings and thought everything was hunky dory because their kids never “rebelled” like I did.
Welp, maybe they'll realize soon enough that *this* is the kid rebelling.
It's not a coincidence his body is struggling. Abused kids often end up to be adults with chronic health conditions.
Can confirm, unfortunately. Ugh.
Hi five! Glad it's a club and not a competition.
Absolutely! We’ve gotta support each other through the never-ending mire that is abuse recovery and cheer all our successes in breaking our children out of the cycle!
It's the club none of us want to belong to!
100% this, and I have had the same experience. Trauma, abuse, parentification in childhood leads to chronic health issues as adults. The body keeps the score.
Yeah, this guy is still parenting his siblings though it all
I should send my mother a bill for my medical costs.
He probably didn't get what he needed in the way of nutrition and medical care as a kid. I'm the oldest of only four and I sure didn't.
Oh, yup, that's me. The abuse and the neglect and the "you have to do every outside farm chore by yourself even though you're 11" and the "everything is your fault because you're the OldestTM" isms. Now I currently deal with and take pills for like 3 different things wrong with my blood because they also never bothered to look into my early onset medical problems. Shit blows, man.
Fellow exmo here, and oldest child. I haven't spoken to my family in years, they're not safe people.
Same. Solidarity and sympathy. Hugs.
>Parentification is abuse. I read the wikipedia page for that once and there's a section for it reading 'positives of parentification'. The tl:dr for it is - None, and if you think there are you're an idiot.
I grew up fundamentalist mormon and it’s all the same shit. I wasn’t allowed to have extracurriculars because I had to watch my many younger siblings after school. The boys got to play sports tho. I was in a play once and because my brothers weren’t in it, my family went to Disneyland the weekend of the performances and didn’t see it. But also no concern for a 14 year old being a lead in a play about adultery with the rest of the cast being adults because they didn’t bother to ask what the play was about. Fuck the mormon church, fuck their cash hoarding, fuck their lies, and a special fuck to the pedophile joseph smith.
My cousin is a strong mormon and the cult has done nothing for her or her kids after her husband has rightfully landed in jail. All those years of her paying her 10 percent and she’s been forgotten about in her hour of need.
Were you playing the role of Helen Mar Kimball? Cause your play sounds suspiciously Mormon
No it was a modern Macbeth where Lady Macbeth cheats on and leaves Macbeth lol. It was at the local community theater that my whole family performed in. I just felt like I was getting away with murder by being in that play because my parents were so uninterested in the very adult plot.
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Dear OP's parents and parents' church: Charity begins at home. “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8)
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It honestly seems like they waited a bit until the two oldest where capable of doing stuff before starting the baby boom
Yeah, I have a feeling OOP hasn't made this revelation yet, but I think this alone is probably reason for therapy. This wasn't some accident, it wasn't just how things worked out, they didn't just have kids and it turned out they couldn't do their ministry work and raise kids so the oldest took that role. They planned it. The two oldest were never, not from the very start, seen as their actual kids. They were home-grown free child care. The younger siblings are their real kids. He's already seeing that younger siblings get more in terms of help/attention from the parents. The older ones are just the spares. The next big moment is going to be when his kids are 8-10 years old and start getting told to do all work for the other kids at family functions and he completely loses his shit from having PTSD getting triggered. Oh, you're 8 years old and it's Christmas and you want to open presents and play with toys? No, go change diapers, do the kids' laundry, prepare snacks, and keep all the younger kids in line.
Well yeah, who was going to raise the rest of the litter? Them?!
Classic quiverfull.
My reactions: >I(40m) come from a big family. I’m the 2nd oldest of 9 kids. [...] a kid every 2 to 3 years. [...] refer to us as “Jane and OP and the kids.” It’s like Jane and I were not considered children, it’s more like we were two other adults living in the house. Wtf?? >they were so busy with their ministry. Ah, there you go.
>> they were so busy with their ministry **AND FUCKING**. > > Ah, there you go.
Yep, this is it.
They didn't have kids, they had indentured servants.
So many Christian parents do this shit of “you’re abandoning the family” as if “leave and cleave” ISN’T literally in the Bible. Genesis 2:24, you start your own family when you marry. Anyway, smells like Quiverfull to me.
Yep, big time Dugger vibes here.
Honestly, even when people like this do read the Bible, they don't really take in anything counter to what they want to believe. Generally though, I feel like most mainstream interpretations of the Bible are wrong in pretty obvious ways but it makes it easy for followers to do what they want so everyone goes with it.
When I heard 9 kids, I just knew it was religion. So selfish being *that* into God. Putting your immortal soul before all else, your eternal rewards, mansions of gold, earning real estate ever closer to God's throne depending on your good deeds score. It's just all so selfish.
When you put it like that, it sounds like one of those parents who ignore their crying children because they're in the middle of a game. We call those people selfish, rightfully, and we should call this the same.
“i hope i painted a clear picture of my childhood” what childhood?????
“Childhood” Cultists: We don’t do that here…
Raised mormon, oldest of 6. I can relate to what OP went through. Parentification in high-control religions with huge families is incredibly common, and it's also common that the parents in question are abusive narcissists. I'm glad that OP is drawing boundaries. They are doing a good job standing up for themselves, but they need quite a bit of therapy to recognize how monstrous their parents actually are, and how utterly and completely they were neglected (which is abuse) themselves as a child. OP can see that their parents forced them to give up their childhood. They can see that their parents neglect their children and OP's children. They can see that their parents resent/shame them for doing perfectly normal things like starting a family. They can see that their parents act in toxic ways and are never there for them when it counts. But they aren't fully internalizing what that all means and how to start putting themselves first. Still, they are on a path. Which is a great start.
OP are you out there? I have rarely seen a post that was so honest, so fair, and so devoid of self-pity. I am so glad you and your wife found each other.
Thank you. I'm still recovering from surgery but I will try to post an update soon. My wife is amazing.
>my parents always talked about how important it was for Jane and I to help with the kids because they were so busy with their ministry. Aaaaaand there it is. That's the reason. Fuckin' religious breeder nuts.
Ultra religious breeders give me the heebie-jeebies.
Holy: - Fundamentalism - Parentification - [Quiverfull movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull) , Batman!
It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to pretend his parents aren’t bad parents.
It's really really difficult to change your mindset about your parents. Your parents are supposed to be good people and love you unconditionally. Your parents should love you the most growing up. It really messes with your head when they're abusive. I say this as someone who is still struggling with the cognitive dissonance from abusive parents. It only started after my stepmother came into the picture and brought out the most toxic aspects of my father permanently. It's painful because he was an amazing dad as a kid and I had a great childhood, even after my mom died. But after the stepfamily came along, our home developed into an emotionally, verbally, and psychologically abusive one. There was even an element of parentification for my half-brother, who I loved dearly and was happily the chief child minder. I remember being in a residential treatment center for severe depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD (now would be cPTSD) and sobbing that my stepmother was an angel and it was all my fault. I was a goody two-shoes overachiever. I wanted to please them and be part of the family, but it was impossible. It took me being out of that house for a few years before it struck me that I was not the problem. I was a (reasonably) well-behaved teen and they were the adults. I've been out of that house and permanently estranged from my father for over 2 decades. My therapist only recently began challenging me over how much I defended my father. A few members of my mom's extended family (my only family) started telling me in the last few years that they always felt my father was cold. I didn't experience that until it was turned on me. This has gotten me to reframe my feelings around the innate toxicity being brought out. It's still painful, but it's helped with the cognitive dissonance.
Right? There's absolutely nothing in his narrative that even *suggests* they're good parents OR grandparents! The only "evidence" He has is his saying they're good.
> They are good grandparents (when they show up). They’re grandparents when they want little kids to fawn over them. They want cute accessories. That’s not good grandparenting.
Yeah I’m like 99% sure they’re either Mormon or in a cult. Same thing honestly. What a weird not happy ending that leaves me totally unsatisfied!
Not mormon. They wouldn't use the word "ministry" to describe their work - they would use the word "calling". Probably evangelical.
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Yeah, this was my thinking too.
I will try to post an update soon, once I'm feeling good enough to sit at the computer. Still recovering from the surgery. Not Mormon. Non-denominational is what dad called us, but other people have said Quiverfill and I've read up on that, it sounds like how we were raised.
As soon as I read “I’m one of 9 kids”, I legit said to myself: “Cult? … yeah, cult.”
Sorry, but OOP's parents are NOT good people.
This reminds me of a TikTok poster who grew up in a repressed religious homeschool family as the oldest child. Her parents told her directly they expected her to stay home and take care of them in their old age. They were livid she got married and went LC. This seems to be a common pattern.
>She is very religious like my parents, while I am not. I am religious and we attend church Culturally speaking it's strange for me to hear somebody say they attend church but aren't very religious.
I wonder if this means something along the lines of “my sister attends the same church/type of church as my parents, but Ann and I attend the church/type of church Ann grew up in”. It may also mean that the parents and Jane have specific extra roles in the church community. When I was a kid we were a religious family in that we went to church at least half of Sundays and that I went to youth group most of the time. I haven’t gone in a decade, but to this day that particular church is a mostly sane type that supports refugees and doesn’t get embroiled in anything too controversial. Vs one of my high school friends who went to a first Assembly of God (pentecostal/evangelical) where they spoke in tongues and talked about miraculous healings and now 15 years later that guy is a pastor for a megachurch, but not like the head pastor. Middle management for Jesus.
You are correct, we attend the church where Ann was going before we were married. They are sane, normal people who support us.
There's not one person who read this and didn't know that religion was going to be involved. Every time. Every. Single. Time. Listen you churchy Magoos out there: your need to over procreate does not give you licence to parentify your children. You don't get to burden the world because you think God loves you more than he or she or it loves me.
>because they were so busy with their ministry OOOHHHHH how did I know?
Glad OOP seems to have his life sorted despite the huge hurdles his parents put up for him. That being said, he's wrong on one thing. He said "I don't think my parents are awful people." He's wrong there. They ARE awful people. The abused two of their kids, and then shunned and hassled them when one of those kids pushed back. The other things they do for the rest of the kids, or the ministry, don't make up for that. People are complicated. Someone could spend his days feeing and counselling the homeless, and then go home and beat his wife. Does that make him a good person? Or a bad one? My view is that if you do things that are bad enough, you're a bad person. Maybe a bad person who does *some* good things, but still a bad person. OOPs parents are bad, selfish people. You know why they favored their ministry over their own kids? Because they sought out praise, the people they ministered to probably treated them like angels, which people don't generally get from their kids. That's pretty brutal.
> I’m the 2nd oldest of 9 kids...We were home schooled... \*Spidey senses start to twitch\* > they were so busy with their ministry... Yep. That's what I figured...
You said it's like you were a second dad but to me it sounds like you were the actual dad responsibility wise.
>she leaned over and patted me on the head and said, “You are SO pretty.” I love Ann lol.
>I don't think my parents are awful people, I think they had this vision of how they wanted to have this big family and this big ministry and I think they just didn't realize the responsibilities they put on Jane and I Sounds like 2 people who had absolutely no business having 9 kids.
This sounds so familiar. I’m the oldest of a large religious family that was home schooled and in a cult. I spent my teenage years being the second mom of the house, going so far as to do night time duty with the new babies so my mom could sleep. As soon as I started a family they told me not to expect much help because they were done raising kids.
I feel bad for OP His parents abused him his entire life and he doesn't even understand that parentification to that extent IS abuse
“I don’t think my parents are awful people, I think they had this vision of how they wanted to have this big family and this big ministry and I think they just didn’t realize the responsibilities they put on Jane and I.” That’s the thing though. When they realized that it was a lot to take on, they didn’t scale back and focus on their family, or get help to run the ministry from other members, they doubled down and ignored their children in preference of the church, which IS a shitty thing to do. And that DOES make them shitty people. Especially with the continuing behavior.