In Chapter 3 of the recovery book, Take Back Your Life,
Lalich and Tobias explain the additional pressures that children face
from childhood into adulthood, all of which tend to keep them silent and
powerless. I’ve listed only some of these pressures, personalizing them
for those who grew up in the Quiverfull/Patriarchy Movement. To that
list, I would add the lifelong physical consequences and the profound psychological toll associated with Developmental Trauma Disorder.
- The group’s world and perspective may be all that they’ve ever known. (How does a child do something that they have never experienced and lack the skills to accomplish and perhaps even the vocabulary to describe these tasks?)
- They fear the unsafe and evil outside world, both physically and in terms of ideas which are seen as more destructive. (See writings concerning young women in patriarchy.)
- Restricted self-determination, particularly for daughters, at the discretion of the visionary patriarch of the family for whom they exist to serve until given in marriage to their own new male covering.
- Unmarried girls are the de facto property of their parents, as the wife is considered the property of her husband.
- Self-concept rooted in vilification, from the diabolical child concept of the Pearls to an aberrant, pessimistic view of total depravity in children *(particularly in females)*.
- Because of the mandated submission and authority structure, children are also subject to the requirements of the leader who acts for God as His mouthpiece, superseding their own judgment and conscience. (Review Voddie Baucham’s material on “multigenerational faithfulness, especially this mp3 download about Baucham’s duty to do what neglectful parents will not; and summary One , Two, and Three.)
- Exiting one’s authority structure results in punishment as God himself retaliates against them for their rebellion (which is qualified as witchcraft).
- Children adopt a black/white, all good/all bad sense of understanding and lack the reasoning enjoyed by adults, often learning nothing else, as the same is demanded of their parents.
- Children are taught blind obedience as opposed to critical thinking and the challenging of ideas from within their system (a punishable offense).
- Unreasonable expectations which build anxious and dependent traits into a child’s developing character.
- The pragmatic limitations of provisional and dependency needs.
- The long-term emotional and psychological constraints experienced as a consequence of mandated enmeshment.
- Medical neglect and untreated illness within some subgroups (As a random example, aside from the Luddite tendency in some groups to prefer health food store cures in place of traditional medicine, I recall a now deleted blog post of a patriarchy leader who bragged about saving money by taking her child to a vet.)
