Oof. Evangelical child here to say the only thing my parents wanted for me was to get marry and produce grandchildren. But then rather than making that a viable option they both gave up on the work of parenting when I was fifteen and would never have offered childcare if I had kids. The advice or feedback my parents gave often fell under…
Oof. Evangelical child here to say the only thing my parents wanted for me was to get marry and produce grandchildren. But then rather than making that a viable option they both gave up on the work of parenting when I was fifteen and would never have offered childcare if I had kids. The advice or feedback my parents gave often fell under the umbrella of spiritual bypassing: God has a plan for you. Pray on it. I’ll pray for you. I cannot imagine either of them taking an interest in me. We still keep in touch occasionally, but the advice hasn’t changed. I would say this falls under the hard parenting, but still not quite in the way described here. Both sides of my family were farmers, so while I grew up seeing and hearing a need for collectivism, so rugged individualism never resonated with me. So despite the discernible shift to (or demand for) grit and resilience in the larger culture I could never get on board the way I’m expected to because it never seemed to fit.
Just sending you a bucket of ex-vangelical love...I ended up more religious than my parents (youth group!) and my whole family is now non-religious, so my adult experience is very different, but I ache for the loneliness and pain of this for you. There are few philosophies crueler than this supposedly love-based one.
Oof. Evangelical child here to say the only thing my parents wanted for me was to get marry and produce grandchildren. But then rather than making that a viable option they both gave up on the work of parenting when I was fifteen and would never have offered childcare if I had kids. The advice or feedback my parents gave often fell under the umbrella of spiritual bypassing: God has a plan for you. Pray on it. I’ll pray for you. I cannot imagine either of them taking an interest in me. We still keep in touch occasionally, but the advice hasn’t changed. I would say this falls under the hard parenting, but still not quite in the way described here. Both sides of my family were farmers, so while I grew up seeing and hearing a need for collectivism, so rugged individualism never resonated with me. So despite the discernible shift to (or demand for) grit and resilience in the larger culture I could never get on board the way I’m expected to because it never seemed to fit.
Just sending you a bucket of ex-vangelical love...I ended up more religious than my parents (youth group!) and my whole family is now non-religious, so my adult experience is very different, but I ache for the loneliness and pain of this for you. There are few philosophies crueler than this supposedly love-based one.