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Question:
Can
you elaborate on the experiences you've heard from survivors of the
QF cult? The lack of healthcare, emotional and physical abuse, risks
of so many pregnancies and births, girls being robbed of their own
childhoods, shame surrounding bodies and sex et cetera. It would be
great to flesh those as a little so the readers can really understand
the terrible impact of these on the women that you've helped.
Raising
Children, Response Part One:
The
challenges of living and the recovery issues of the children of the
QF/P movement differ greatly from their parents who willingly elected
to follow the lifestyle. Those raised under such beliefs and demands
did not choose this worldview but were consigned to become the living
proof of their parents’ success and the validation of the worth and
truth of the system. In the study of cult recovery and the
discipline of caring for those who recover from cults, these adult
children have been named “Second Generation Adults” (SGA).
Parents’
choices burden their children with concerns and issues that people
outside of their religious culture do not share. Because of the high
demands of the belief system, parents must burden their children in
ways that restrict and alter a child’s normal psychosocial growth
and development as well as their personalities. These deficits in
development emerge in adulthood in predictable ways creating lasting
patterns which profoundly affect SGAs for the rest of their lives.
Instead of learning to balance inferiority against initiative or the struggle to balance healthy autonomy necessary for self-care and survival against appropriate guilt, adults who are raised within cultic systems find that they must go back to attend to what adults from “good enough” childhoods take for granted.
Instead of learning to balance inferiority against initiative or the struggle to balance healthy autonomy necessary for self-care and survival against appropriate guilt, adults who are raised within cultic systems find that they must go back to attend to what adults from “good enough” childhoods take for granted.
Consider
a household where anger may not be expressed because it is deemed
sinful. The adult who never learned emotional self-control as a
toddler because they were beaten into suppressing all free expression
must learn the discipline as an adult. The emotional, psychological,
and spiritual toll — and in some cases the physical toll — that
such restrictive living creates for children sets them up for a
lifetime of “catching up” and adapting.
Though
SGAs tend to be resilient and accomplished, the price that they pay
often goes unnoticed by those who take their own “good enough”
childhoods for granted. Rather than spending their time and energy
learning how to adapt and grow into a healthy adulthood, the demands
of the cult and the traumas suffered as a consequence deprive them of
the opportunity to learn healthy coping and living.
JillMytton who grew up as an SGA has said that, “When we leave, we actually don't have what we need to survive outside. And yet when we leave, we should have the right – the right to choose to leave.” But many often remain trapped, dependent upon and enmeshed with their families. Perhaps the worst consequence faced by SGAs involves shunning by their families when they leave the ideology.
JillMytton who grew up as an SGA has said that, “When we leave, we actually don't have what we need to survive outside. And yet when we leave, we should have the right – the right to choose to leave.” But many often remain trapped, dependent upon and enmeshed with their families. Perhaps the worst consequence faced by SGAs involves shunning by their families when they leave the ideology.
~
Cynthia Kunsman
The
view of Quiverfull from my vantage
