'Family is Everything' as Hostage Situation

'Strongwilled' and evangelical parenting with Krispin Mayfield.

Here is Part 2 of my interview with Krispin Mayfield. Krispin Mayfield, LPC, is a therapist in Portland, Oregon, who specializes in working in religious trauma recovery and supporting neurodivergent clients. He wrote a book on attachment theory and Christianity in 2022 (and has since left the faith). He loves photography, music, and most anything creative. Part 1 of our interview, which delves into Krispin’s personal history with estrangement, is here. In Part 2, we discuss Strongwilled, a project founded by Krispin and his partner D.L. Mayfield.

Maggie:

Tell me about Strongwilled.

Krispin:

Initially, we wanted it to be a book, and then we decided to make it a Substack instead, partially because we wanted to get it out there sooner rather than later. Strongwilled is looking at this movement that happened in conservative communities, starting in the 1970s, where parents were instructed how to discipline their kids. Really, it came as a backlash movement to the ’60s, when you have women starting to have rights, you have black folks starting to have rights, and you also have protests against the Vietnam War.

In response, you have these conservatives saying, “The reason that all these young people are protesting is because they weren't spanked enough as kids.” Growing out of this backlash, you have all these books that are released, like Dare to Discipline by James Dobson. These books focus on teaching parents how to raise their kids to obey authority, which really means discouraging your kid from setting boundaries for themselves or from saying no. This parenting advice preferences automatic obedience over everything.

For many of us that grew up under that, we were discouraged from practicing our own autonomy or individuality. It was just “my way or the highway.” That insistence on obedience was undergirded by corporal punishment.

This is important to examine because it applies to a big chunk of the population. In the ’90s, I think almost a third of the U.S. identified as evangelical or born-again. So if we're looking at the height of these books, their “lessons” are being absorbed by a lot of American parents and their children.

So when these kids who are raised to submit to authority grow up, they’re primed to be OK with authoritarianism. Because what is authoritarianism? It’s a belief system in which obedience is what's most important.

With Strongwilled we are connecting this parenting philosophy and the rise in acceptance of authoritarianism.

When you’re raised to obey, to disconnect from your needs and wants, how does that affect you as an adult?

The idea was to raise your kids so that they would not protest, but that they would enter straight, white, heterosexual marriages, replicate those, vote conservative. And they didn't say this in this books, but the idea was to raise your kids so that they would continue the white race. James Dobson, who wrote the first of one of these books, his mentor was Paul Popenoe, who was a positive eugenicist. So those motivations were definitely there.

I’ve written in the newsletter about the “hot takes” after the election that people were cutting off their Trumpy evangelical relatives. There’s a certain kind of take that examines the shock from some of these Trumpy relatives. They act as if they’re blind-sided. “Family is everything! This is ‘just’ politics! I can you give up your family over politics?”

Two questions: First, do you think that's a real trend? And second, I think it's very interesting, even if it's not a real trend, to think about this as a natural consequence of raising your kids with “my way or the highway.” Because when your kids grow up, they move out, they become financially independent, and they have every right to say, “I’m choosing the highway.” But then these authoritarian parents are like, “No! You can’t do that.”

I don't know if it's a trend or not; there are lots of different theories about that. But Focus on the Family is the organization that James Dobson started. I'm on their mailing list, and they've been sending out these emails to their base post-election saying, “Hey, has your adult child stopped talking to you? We will help you.” Which is ironic, because in all their books, they promise that if you follow their parenting instructions, then you'll have great relationships with your kids once they grow up. But now they're like, “Hey, don’t worry, now you can pay us to help us reconnect with your kid.” So they’ve turned it into another product they can sell.

Another thing to consider is that in one of Dobson’s parenting books, he talks about how it's not good for kids to negotiate with their parents. He says it's unreasonable to think that a child who negotiates with his parents and teachers has been learning to submit to the authority of the Almighty. But what he doesn’t say, but what I think is obvious is that it's unreasonable to think that a child who never negotiated with his parents in childhood wouldn't suddenly feel free or know how to talk through issues with their parents in adulthood. If their only choice has always been, “You submit to me,” and they grow up and don’t want to do that anymore, and they have been taught there is no room for discussion, then they don’t have a lot of other options.

Even so, so many people actually do try to have discussions, to find some kind of compromise, sometimes for years, like you did with your dad.¹

Yeah. It went on for years, and it was really hard when I cut them off to figure out what to do with my relationship with my mom. And what it came down to is as much as I love my mom and I was very close to her for several years, I couldn't maintain a relationship with her that was not tainted by the rest of the family culture.

Say more about that.

Well, she would say something like, “Hey, I don't think that you're a vengeful person, but other people in the family are saying you are. Can you explain to me why you're not a vengeful person?” She felt caught in the middle between me and my dad, me and my other family members. But she was also pulling me into that dysfunctional dynamic.

She went to see a therapist for a few sessions , and she said, “I get it. I can see that we have some dysfunctional family dynamics, but I think that every family has these. And what are you going to do? Just not talk to your family the rest of your life?”

I said, “Yeah! Until they're trustworthy again I’m not going to talk to them.”

And her face just fell. I realized at that point, she had just been banking on what so many of these family structures bank on, in which they insist that family is all you have.

Yes. Like a hostage situation.

Family is all you have, so you just have to put up with it, no matter what. My response really burst that bubble. I could see it on her face. Before that moment she thought in the end I would come back around. That was one of the last interactions I had with her.

Wow. That’s so tough.

The conversation around estrangement and boundary-setting right now is really important because as we've done our research for Strongwilled and looked through just these different forms of control, estrangement comes up again and again. And so I think as people are finding ways to practice their own agency and set their own limits and boundaries in their families and with their parents, it parallels so many other aspects of society right now. Being able to express your own opinion and individuality is really important work on so many levels: the family level and the societal level. So I'm glad that you're having these conversations. I'm glad that you're doing what you're doing. I think it's amazing.

Thank you for talking to me.

PS:

To my fellow writers and aspiring writers, Jenny Bartoy is editing an essay collection about estrangement to be published by Catapult, and she is looking for contributors! Get more details here. The deadline to submit is March 9.

1. Lots more details are in Part 1.