Purity Culture is Pedophile culture
For this series we at STRONGWILLED are exploring how purity culture, as prescribed by so many religious authoritarian parenting authors, created the ideal conditions to enable predators to sexually abuse children. This is part one in a weekly series on this topic. In typical STRONGWILLED fashion, we’ll be weaving together the history of this movement, the politics undergirding it, as well as analysis of evangelical books, and exploring the impact of those who grew up in purity culture. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon or Substack, and sharing this content if you find it valuable.
TW: sexual abuse, incest, child pornography (child sexual abuse materials)
Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture
Part 1: It’s Not the Man in the Trench Coat
“In the United States, society’s historical attitude about the sexual victimization of children can generally be summed up in one word: denial.” —FBI Special Agent Kenneth Lannings (1)
“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried.”— Judith Herman, M.D. (2)
The responsibility of keeping children safe from sexual exploitation belongs to all of us. And yet, in the United States there is still a shroud of mystery surrounding the scope and scale of the victimization of children. The loudest voices proclaiming they keep children safe — conservative Christians, in particular — are often the very communities where abuse of all kinds passes down from generation to generation. But before we talk about this unspeakable reality, perhaps it would be best to start outside the US with the so-called father of modern psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud.
In the late 1800s, Freud was one of several therapists interested in understanding hysteria in women. He asked his patients about their inner worlds and childhood experiences and in the process discovered that many of his patients recalled being sexually abused by their fathers or other men in the community. Freud was shaken by what he was hearing. As Judith Herman writes, “his correspondence makes it clear that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications . . . if his patients' stories were true . . . he would be forced to conclude that what he called ‘perverted acts against children’ were endemic, not only among the proletariat of Paris, where he first studied hysteria, but also among the respectable bourgeois families of Vienna.”(3)
Freud decided that intra-familial sexual abuse (incest) couldn’t possibly be as pervasive as his female patients from the upper and middle classes described. He eventually discredited these “hysterical” women, writing, “I was at last obliged to recognize that these stories of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up.” As Herman writes, “Recognizing the implicit challenge to patriarchal values, Freud refused to identify fathers publicly as sexual aggressors.” In fact, he preferred to reverse course on his own findings rather than name the well-known secret that many psychologists, social workers, and police detectives know all too well: the shocking prevalence of father-daughter incest and acquaintance molestation, and the life-long consequences of this kind of abuse.
Several decades later, Freud was almost glib in his attempts to cover-up what he had found. Writing in his textbook, Introductory Lectures of Psychoanalysis in 1933 he said: “Almost all of my women patients told me that they had been seduced by their father. I was driven to recognize in the end that these reports were untrue and so came to understand that the hysterical symptoms are derived from phantasies and not from real occurrences . . . It was only later that I was able to recognize in this phantasy of being seduced by the father the expression of the typical Oedipus complex in women.”
It’s hard to put into words the horror of what the “father” of modern psychotherapy did to our collective ability to name and face trauma in our families. Freud actively collected the stories of child sexual abuse and incest survivors and then promoted a theory that it was actually the children who desired their fathers. He buried the truth of what was happening in the homes of the well-connected and the powerful, and he set the course for over a century of psychologists trained to downplay and belittle the stories of child sexual trauma survivors, especially if they implicated the fathers in a patriarchal society. But he was not the first, nor was he the last, psychologist who would do this kind of work —the damaging work of obscuring the truth of who was actually hurting children, all while claiming to protect them.
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In the 1950s America was starting to hear more and more terrifying stories of children who had been sexually abused. The FBI responded by putting out posters warning children to stay away from strangers. The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in 1997 describes how “the primary focus in the literature and discussions on sexual abuse of children was on ‘stranger danger’—the dirty old man in the wrinkled raincoat. If one could not deny the existence of child sexual abuse, one described victimization in simplistic terms of good and evil.” This method was incredibly popular in the 1950s and 60s because it soothed the minds of the public. Sexual abusers were painted as outsiders and social pariahs, preventing society from investigating abuse perpetrated by those within their own trusted communities. (4)
Over time, however, people slowly became aware of the truth that had been deemed unspeakable: the prevalence of intra-familial sexual violence. “By the 1980s child sexual abuse for many professionals had become almost synonymous with incest, and incest meant father-daughter sexual relations; therefore, the focus of child-sexual-abuse intervention and investigation turned to one-on-one, father-daughter incest,” wrote FBI special agent Kenneth Lannings. “We began to increasingly realize someone they know who is often a relative — a father, stepfather, uncle, grandfather, older brother, or even a female family member — sexually molests most children.” Slowly, society showed an increased awareness that most sexual abuse was not perpetrated by an unknown stranger, but by trusted adults in the lives of children.
With this understanding that abusers were often operating within plain sight, eventually the FBI added one more important category to their study of child sexual predators: acquaintance molestation. It became more and more apparent that there was a subset of serial child predators who sought access to children by seeking out respected positions in the community. The Boy Scouts, churches, sports leagues and more found themselves in the position of having to contend with a type of predator who sought out access to youth while being well-liked and well-known, and who abused large numbers of children if given the opportunity.(5)
But a true reckoning with this reality was cut short before it even gained widespread acceptance. In the 1990s cultural awareness returned to a focus on stranger danger, and alongside it,
Satanic Panic — a now-debunked conspiracy — which again shifted the focus from intrafamilial sexual violence and acquaintance molestation towards a stereotyped scapegoat. (6)
This turns out to be a common pattern regarding the issue of systematic child sexual exploitation: whenever people try to bring up the unspeakable reality of who is sexually abusing children, society reverts to beliefs that protect the powerful abusers who remain in good standing in communities. Like in Freud’s time, if abuse is most often perpetrated by prominent men who are at the center of a society, the systems in these communities will protect those in power. Instead of focusing on the family as a place of possible sexual, physical, and emotional violence against children, loud voices wove myths about stranger danger that caught on like wildfire: Satanic Panic, immigrants, drag queens, and queer folks. But the current statistics on the profiles of serial child sexual offenders paints a completely different reality than the one being constantly broadcast on FOX News.
The statistics (from the 1980s on) have shown a different pattern: Most child sexual assault materials (CSAM, commonly referred to as child pornography) are made by the child’s biological father or stepfather. Only 1% of CSAM are made by someone who is outside of the home of the child. The average serial child sexual predator is statistically most likely to be male, married or formerly married, identifies as religious, and seeks out positions where they can be around children, including Christian churches. They are often people who are well-liked in the community, and they most commonly abuse the children of family and friends.(7)
While these sobering statistics are well known to sexual crimes detectives, forensic psychologists and social workers — and have been for decades — the average person in America is not aware of these realities. In general society it is still considered taboo to identify that a married Christian husband and father is much more likely than a transgender person to sexually abuse children. Why is this? Is it simply because we find the truth so horrifying that it is unspeakable?
Or have there been people along the way who have done everything they can to hide the truth from us in order to protect those who abuse?
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In 1985, Dr. James Dobson took on a very different role than he had previously as the mild-mannered family life advice coach of Focus on the Family fame. He proudly joined Ronald Reagan’s administration to be a part of an investigation into the dangers of pornography on American society. His one year serving on the Meese Commission on Pornography (named for then Attorney General Edwin Meese) was a story Dobson pulled out time and time again in his books, on TV interviews, and on his radio show. He alternately bragged about his important role in warning America about the dangers of pornography and bemoaned all the hours and hours of “research” of viewing pornography that he had to undertake in order to serve his country properly.(8)
The entire Meese Commission on pornography is a fascinating subject in and of itself — examining issues of media access right at the dawn of the personal computer. First Amendment rights of free speech were under fire by religious conservatives, and liberals were worried that they would maintain and gain more power over the US. A member of the ACLU named Barry Lynn was doing his level best to garner media attention around the event and bring free speech issues to the forefront. James Dobson in particular hated Lynn, declaring that he was undoing all the good work the commission was undertaking. Lynn joined Dobson and the 10 other commission members at some of their field trips, including pornography shops and public hearings.
According to Lynn in his autobiography, “Dobson and (Catholic priest) Father Ritter were the most traditionally ‘religious’ members, often voicing their religious beliefs during business meetings.” Lynn goes on to write: “I was a little late to one afternoon session and found myself listening to a discussion, led by Ritter, of whether Michelangelo’s statue of David could be considered pornographic. By a narrow vote, the Commission decided the answer was “no.”(9)
Publications like the Washington Post found this juxtaposition of serious religious men deciding on what was or wasn’t pornographic on the taxpayers dime almost hilarious. To Dobson, however, it was all business. "We often worked 11 or 12 hours a day with a 30-minute lunch break and a very meager meal served because of the tight budgetary constraints," Dobson says. "We received no compensation. I haven't even received a refund for my expenses for some of the trips. At one point they were $1,500 behind on paying me and not in a terrible hurry about it. Let me tell you, it was all give." But he also liked to bring up the process of having to watch, catalogue, and identify various kinds of pornography. "There is a desensitization process that takes place," says Dobson. "The human mind has an incredible capacity to adapt to whatever is shocking in the beginning."(10)
This would be a continued theme from this point out for James Dobson — the desensitizing and progressive nature of pornography. Dobson wrote and spoke often about how pornography incited a portion of the population to engage in incredible violence against women and children. The crowning moment of Dobson’s pet theory occurred in 1989 when he was granted the last interview with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy, playing into Dobson’s theory, declared that pornography is what made him kill women. Dobson was thrilled, and sold exclusive videotapes (called Fatal Addiction) of his conversation with Bundy for a suggested donation of $25 to Focus on the Family. People close to Bundy and criminologists alike were all sceptical of Bundy’s deathbed confession. Bundy was a serial liar, so why believe him when it came to this point? But Dobson had no qualms about using this national tragedy to direct people to his work at Focus on the Family, where he said they were all about keeping children safe.
But if keeping children safe was Dobson’s true aim, why didn’t he use his large network and platform to educate and inform people about the realities of child sexual abuse? Why did he latch on to stories and narratives that blamed pornography (and eventually queer people) instead of encouraging parents to talk with their children about consent, bodily autonomy, and safe and unsafe adults?(11)
We know that Dr. James Dobson was aware of the true dangers facing children — serial child predators and intrafamilial incest — because this was one of the topics talked about extensively on the Meese Commission. In the section of the published report titled Child Pornography, they wrote: “this Commission . . . has devoted a very substantial proportion of its time and energy to examining the extent and nature of child pornography. Indeed, one set of the Commission's hearings was devoted almost entirely to the problem, while extensive oral and written testimony on the subject was received throughout the year.”(12)
In one example, Lois Harrington, assistant attorney general of the United States, told the commission: “contrary to the popular stereotypes the child molester is not a stranger wearing rumpled raincoats passing out candy to children on street corners. He is a generally known and trusted and loved adult who has cunningly sought employment with children so he will have a steady source of victims. Many people who truly love children want to be their teachers and their coaches and their school bus drivers. But unfortunately, so do those who seek to exploit a child’s unquestioning love to satisfy their perverted urges.”(13)
Mitch McConnell (yes, that Mitch McConnell), who testified as an expert on child sexual exploitation, made a point to identify the average profile of a pedophile to the commission: “He is most likely a middle-aged white male living in the suburbs, married, [and] has children. This type of person is usually reasonably well-connected. The typical child molester is not some shiftless bum in a trench coat.” McConnell, who made a name for himself in the area of child protection before being elected to Congress in 1985, suggested much harsher sentences for child molesters, be they strangers or family members, due to the prolific nature of these types of abusers. As he told the commission: “Let me say that the child molester is five times, I repeat, five times more likely to repeat the crime than any other criminal. Here we are talking about a criminal activity in which the rate of recidivism is much more pronounced than virtually any other area of crime.”(14)
Dobson also heard testimony of a polygraph expert Detective William J. Phelps, who shared that he believed the sexual abuse of children was for many people, “the perfect crime,” in part because it was so underreported that there was a high likelihood of getting away with it. Phelps shared statistics that matched his findings: “The National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect showed that 1 out of 4 girls is sexually abused before age 18 and 1 out of 7 boys. The average age of the child abused was 11 . . . 80% of the abusers in the study were the child’s own parents.”(15)
Again and again the experts and victims who testified for hours in front of the Meese Commission focused in on the harms of child sexual assault materials, and the reality of who was creating these materials and sexually abusing children in the United States. Thousands of pages of testimony were submitted, and from FBI Detectives to feminist scholars to state senators, in the early 1980s there was a sense that the general population might finally be ready to have the conversation it had been dreading. Thanks to the feminist movement, abuses of all kinds were finally being addressed in the public square. As America struggled to think through the issues of pornography, free speech, the computer age, and child sexual exploitation, there was a sense of relief at finally looking at the issues in the light of day.
So why do we find ourselves here, in 2025, with almost no conversation, research, or discussions on the wide-spread problem of intrafamilial sexual violence, father-daughter incest, or even acquaintance molestation? Why do the myths around stranger danger, queer people, and trans folks in bathrooms capture the public imagination in ways that do not match up to the reality of who is sexually abusing children in America?
Once again, we can look to popular psychologists for the answer. We can look to those who focused on replicating the patriarchal family in American society, and who did everything in their power to convince the American public that strangers were the real dangers to us all. We can look to the psychologists who heard the stories of harm, abuse, and incest repeatedly, and did nothing to stop it — and who in fact helped create the conditions where these abuses could thrive and flourish.
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As a part of the Meese Commission, Dobson penned a personal statement that addressed the issue of child pornography, writing: “I look back on this fourteen-month project as one of the most difficult, and gratifying, responsibilities of my life . . . sifting through huge volumes of offensive and legally obscene materials has not been a pleasant experience. Under other circumstances one would not willingly devote a year of his life to depictions of rape, incest, masturbation, mutilation, defecation, urination, child molestation and sadomasochistic activity.” He evidently was paying attention during many of the hearings, since he wrote: “fathers, step-fathers, uncles, teachers and neighbors find ways to secure photographs of the children in their care. They then sell or trade the pictures to fellow pedophiles.” Dobson then went on to describe in graphic detail some of the child sexual assault materials (CSAM) the commission was shown, positioning himself as a person who truly cared about women and children. (16)
Interestingly enough, he also made his personal case against legalizing any kind of pornography he felt degrading by stating “For a certain percentage of men, the use of pornographic material is addictive and progressive…it is my belief, though evidence is not easily obtained, that a small but dangerous minority will then choose to act aggressively against the nearest available females. Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice.” This was a stance Dobson taught over and over again: pornography made people act out their violent fantasies in real-life. This narrative created an us/them framework, between the religious community and broader culture (including sexual liberation movements), placing the threat of sexual abuse outside of religious communities. The Commission, however, could not find substantial enough evidence to support this claim that pornography directly contributed to sexual violence.
One of the people who testified multiple times to the Meese Commission was FBI Special Agent Kenneth Lannings. As a part of his work to educate the US government on the realities of who was sexually exploiting and abusing children, agents like Lanning had to become experts in identifying the profiles of people who abuse children. He testified before the Meese Commission in 1985 on pedophiles and started by explaining that this is a group of people who collects images, artifacts, and any materials that justify their obsessions: “a lot of this stuff they save and collect to validate their behavior, as a part of their attempt to convince themselves and others that they are really good people . . . and for that reason, they often collect academic and scientific material.” Lanning then went on to make a startling assertion, theorizing that that there were pedophiles in the room as he spoke:
“It is for that reason why, that in this audience today, there are probably pedophiles . . . any time there is a public presentation about this, you can be sure pedophiles will come. Because they want to hear what people are saying about them or what behavioral scientists are saying about them — they collect this kind of material.”(17)
And Lanning turned out to be right. There was a pedophile, serving on that very commission, obsessed with the discussion of pornography and positioning himself as a beacon of moral authority and a champion of the heteronormative Christian family.
Within the year of the Meese Commission being published, commissioner Father Bruce Ritter, who had been in lockstep with Dobson throughout the proceedings, would be accused of sexually abusing at least 15 of the young boys he was in charge of at Covenant House.
The person to be worried about abusing children wasn’t a man in a trench coat, it turns out. But a man who was obsessed with appearing as a good and godly man, all while abusing the vulnerable children in his care.
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Stay tuned for part 2 — on Father Bruce Ritter, James Dobson, and their refusal to take what they learned on the Meese Commission about keeping children safe from predators and instead created the perfect conditions for children to be exploited in religious authoritarian communities.
Many thanks to STRONGWILLED member Elizabeth Gonzales, who was able to access and photograph transcripts from the Meese Commission hearing at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Endnotes:
1. Lanning, Kenneth. Child Molesters, a Behavioral Analysis. Updated 2010. P 4. Accessed here.
2. Herman, Judith,Trauma and Recovery, p 1.
3. Ibid, p. 14
4. In 1997, the FBI put out information to combat the Satanic Panic era. In it, they write: “The FBI distributed a poster that epitomized this attitude. It showed a man, with his hat pulled down, hiding behind a tree with a bag of candy in his hands. He was waiting for a sweet little girl walking home from school alone. At the top it read, "Boys and Girls, color the page, memorize the rules." At the bottom it read, 'For your protection, remember to turn down gifts from strangers, and refuse rides offered by strangers."
5. Some organizations – like the Boy Scouts of America -- did contend with the prevalence of acquaintance molesters, often as the result of lawsuits, while others have ignored this reality.
6. Satanic Panic in many ways originated with the book Michelle Remembers written by a psychiatrist who married his former patient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
7. For more on these statistics, see our interview with R.L. Stoller.
8. Meese went on to have a cozy relationship with various conservative Christian political movements, serving as a trustee of the Heritage Foundation from 2017-2024
9. Lynn, Barry, Paid to Piss People Off: Porn (Book 2) p. 39.
11. We know one reason why Dobson and other Religious Authoritarian Parenting experts did not teach about consent or bodily autonomy is because that would negate the entire structure of corporal punishment. For more on this topic, please see Chapter 15 of the STRONGWILLED project entitled A Recipe for Abuse
12. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Final Report Part 1 (1986). P. 405 Accessed Here.
13. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Washington DC, June 19th 1985. P. 12
14. Ibid, Pp. 56-57
15. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Miami, November 19th 1985 p. 284.
16. To read more, see Dobson’s personal statement, page 76 of part 1 of the Meese report
17. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Miami, November 19th 1985 p. 236
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
Dr. James Dobson has died at age 89. Why are the victims of his methods celebrating?
Yesterday morning, on August 21st, I woke up to the news that Dr. James Dobson — who we credit with starting the modern Religious Authoritarian parenting movement here in the US — had died.
My social media feeds slowly filled with exvangelicals who were rejoicing at the news — but after the initial euphoria, there was a quiet sadness in our reflections. Yes, we are happy that a man who caused so much harm is now dead. But what does this mean for us, today? How does this undo the damage this man wrought — now just in our childhoods, but for American politics in general?
I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but his death is as good of a time as any to name the harms he perpetuated in the name of Christianity on millions of innocent children. So to that aim, today I am writing this short post that summarizes some of his harmful beliefs that we have written about in our 15 published chapters (you can read them all here).
1. He pioneered the modern Religious Authoritarian Parenting movement.
Dobson built a marriage and family empire on his parenting methods he popularized in a series of televised lectures (and then later books) called Dare to Discipline and the Strong-Willed Child that were seen by 80 million people (1/3 of the US population) by the 1980s. Despite being a child psychologist in a time when the experts were warning people of the long-term impacts of corporal punishment and advocating for emotional intelligence, Dobson did the opposite of what was good for children, and he was clear that he disregarded the psychological research available to him, in favor of his interpretation of the Bible . He encouraged a generation of parents to spank their children early and often, equating it to being a Bible-believing Christian. He has been very upfront that his parenting methods had political aims, as he was incensed by the civil rights movements, feminism, and the protests against the Vietnam War erupting in the United States in the 1960s. In order to “take America back” he believed children needed to be disciplined into immediate obedience to authority. Thus, the modern religious authoritarian parenting (RAP) movement was born.
2. He taught parents that little children were sinful, manipulative, and that their wills needed crushing.
Dobson took the Christian doctrine of original sin and used it to convince parents that they must hurt their children in order to save them. In reality, his aims were to create children who were easily controlled and who would immediately comply with “godly” male authority the rest of their lives. The way he writes about children in his books — especially toddlers — makes it clear that he detested (disobedient) children and loved insulting them (calling them dictators, manipulative, and sinners). He taught parents to view their children as sinful as fully grown adults and demonized normal developmental milestones and neurodivergence as willful defiance that could only be corrected by ritualized punishment.
3. He taught parents how to abuse their children in a ritualized manner.
Dobson, with his soft-spoken radio persona, assured parents over and over again that his methods would leave no long-lasting damage to children. He taught that if parents hurt their children in a calm manner, than it wasn’t abuse. He advocated for parents to tell their children they were being punished for their own good, use wooden implements to strike their children on the buttocks over and over again and to ensure that it inflicted pain, and then force the children to repent, say thank you for the abuse, and hug the parents afterwards. Dobson claimed this method would lead to a life-long close-knit family dynamic where the children would always be grateful for their chastisement and would grow up to replicate these methods with their own families. In reality, he was setting children up for a lifetime of equating abuse with love, and being forced to be grateful for it. Research clearly shows that corporal punishment, no matter how “calmly” it is administered, impacts both the brain and the nervous system in detrimental ways. Not only that, but his enthusiastic support for corporal punishment led to countless instances of abuse in families, including sexual abuse.
4. He learned everything he know about marriage and family counseling from a known white supremacist eugenicist.
Dobson got his start after college as the assistant to positive eugenics guru Paul Popenoe (who inspired some of the policies of the Third Reich). You can read more about this connection here, but Popenoe was the father of modern marriage and family counseling in the US, where he worked to help white women remain married to white men and have lots of children. Dobson become focused on how to raise the children of these families in such a way where they would replicate the white, conservative, patriarchal values he was obsessed with, which is where his parenting methods came into play. Despite being an atheist, Popenoe even wrote the forward to Dare to Discipline, praising Dobson’s “Bible-based” methods. For many of us who grew up with these RAP metohds, we had no clue we were pawns in a positive eugenics movement aimed at keeping power within white, male, conservative hands.
5. He was one of the most influential far-right political lobbyists in American history.
It’s hard to adequately convey how many pieces of legislature or policy in the United States have been impacted by Dobson’s political lobbying career. While he never ran for office, in the latter half of his career he became obsessed with creating organizations that would implement on a state and federal level his white supremacist patriarchal ideology. He viewed himself as the savior of white patriarchal America, and was a ceaseless advocate for anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-trans policies in particular. If you look at the organizations that are on the board of Project 2025, for instance, almost 1/3 of them either started by or were supported by James Dobson. We hope that journalists and historians will research this particular element of Dobson’s life and make it more public.
TLDR: Dr. James Dobson was a known animal abuser, child abuser, bigot, racist, misogynist who made millions (tax-free!) off of his right-wing white supremacist empire.
And millions of us are left to pick up the pieces after being punished constantly in childhood for having normal developmental responses or any kind of emotions at all.
There is no way to convey in this short post the amount of harm he has done or the scale and scope of those affected. For more information on these methods, how they targeted specific developmental stages, and how they lead to estrangement within families, please see the rest of our work.
For everyone who survived these methods and is reading these words today, I want to tell you: you are not alone, and your strong inner will is a beautiful part of you. We do this work at STRONGWILLED because we want the survivors of Dobson’s RAP methods to find solidarity with others and also do the deep work to build up our connections to our bodies, ourselves, and our own autonomy.
As we celebrate the death of a dangerous and damaging person, we are also celebrating ourselves. We are here, despite everything. And we will continue connecting to our strong wills and resisting religious authoritarianism wherever we might find it. And we are grateful to be doing this work in community with you.
5 Myths about Rifts Between Exvangelicals and Their Parents
“Don’t cast aside family members and lifelong friendships. Politics is not worth it, and I think if we follow that principle, we’ll heal the divide in this country.”
-J.D. Vance1
Political rifts in families are not new and they have the potential to slowly — or rapidly, ferociously — undermine the safety and connection in a relationship. While political is an easy term to throw around these days, perhaps ideology is a more accurate way to describe the all-encompassing oppressive worldview of people like white evangelicals. So why isn’t this talked about more often? What happens when parents hold different — and damaging — political ideologies rooted in the oppression of others?
By and large, family therapists in the United States have tried to find ways for parents and their adult children to maintain connection despite political, religious, or other differences.
For example, Karl Pillimer, PhD, author of Fault Lines, a book about family estrangement, has said:
“If the prior relationship was relatively close (or at least not conflictual), I think there is evidence that many family members can restore the relationship [around political differences]. It does involve, however, agreeing on a ‘demilitarised zone’ in which politics cannot be discussed.”2
Kathy McCoy, Phd author of, We Don't Talk Anymore: Healing after Parents and Their Adult Children Become Estranged wrote: “Relationships are precious. Political crises pass. It's the love in our lives that needs to be treasured and nurtured,” suggesting an approach where, “I don’t want to know your political beliefs and I won’t tell you mine…I just want to focus on love and peace and the memories and beliefs we do share. Nothing else is truly important.”3
And just after the 2024 election, heading into the holiday season, Kimberly Horn Ed.D wrote in a PsychologyToday article:
“Protect your peace by steering discussions toward shared interests or holiday traditions…Politely request upfront that the family agree to keep politics off the table...If someone brings up a contentious topic, redirect the discussion to something neutral or joyful, such as reminiscing about past holidays, sharing funny stories, or talking about plans for the new year.”4
These all reflect a cultural bias, a version of “blood is thicker than water,” based on the belief that it is better to focus on good memories, shared “love” and relationship rather than materially harmful ideologies. This bias in effect makes a cultural value judgment promoting the idea that biological ties are more important than politics when it comes to healthy, safe, and secure relationships. For so many children of religious authoritarian parents, the cultural discourse that is biased towards biological ties adds to the confusion as they try to sort out what kind of relationship they want with their parents — or if they want one at all. Many of us have a voice in the back of our minds, asking us: Are you really going to let politics get in the way of your relationships?
But to prioritize “unity” over politics preserves the status quo and supports existing power structures. This mindset not only downplays politics’ impact on marginalized groups but also allows those who “don’t let politics get in the way of relationships” to feel morally superior while actively upholding oppressive systems.5
There’s also an element of emotional gaslighting that arises with the idea that politics don’t have to impact your relationships. It’s a confusing message because for most of us, politics very much do impact our relationships. As much as we might wish otherwise, ideologies and their political implications inevitably shape relationships and society as whole. Pretending politics can be set apart from relationships demands compartmentalization, leading to internal conflict and a denial of the real impact. Trying to exclude politics from personal connections creates emotional and mental dissonance that contradicts the reality of our lived experience, and it always ends up benefiting those who are abusing and oppressing others in an unjust system.
When it comes to the conversation about estrangement and politics, at least in the context of white evangelicalism, there are five common myths that we regularly come across:
Myth #1: The United States does not have a totalitarian problem.
Discussions about estrangement and family rifts often overlook the profound influence of high-control religion and its totalizing nature on family systems in the United States. We have not, as society, recognized that large portions of the US population hold a robust totalitarian ideology, and that this ideology impacts all arenas of a person’s life6.
Totalitarianism is often talked about in the context of governments, but on an individual level it is a worldview/ideology that is concerned with taking over every single element of a person’s life. It aims to rule not just the outward behaviors of a person but the inner world as well — policing people from without and from within (often utilizing terror7). At STRONGWILLED, we believe white evangelicalism is a totalizing worldview and we focus on just one element of it here: namely, parenting methods. In this evangelical world, parenting methods were rigidly geared toward raising obedient children that would take on the worldview of their parents. But parenting is only one aspect of the all-encompassing control that white evangelicalism enacts on its members. Every element of their life is connected to their beliefs about themselves, God, and the world.
Here is a 4 minute long video that explains how totalizing an evangelical worldview is — from Focus on the Family itself.
From the video:
“One of the effects of a comprehensive and systematic Biblical worldview is that you are not as easy to fool. The effect we want to have on people is that they have that ability to discern and to be able to fend off those lies and illusions that bombard them in every corner of life.”
“I guess in the end what we are really after is that we will see God’s people hunger after him. That they will continually be formed more and more to the image of Christ. And what that means is, when He weeps, we weep. What He calls evil, we see as evil. What He calls glorious and good, we see as glorious and good.”
The effect of these stated goals is that any information conflicting with Focus on the Family’s ideology is preemptively framed as deceptive, dangerous, or evil. By positioning their “Biblical worldview” as the ultimate safeguard against being “fooled,” they use a rigid framework where those who accept their teachings are deemed discerning and wise, while those who question or challenge them are seen as misled, deceived — or evil. This framing discourages critical engagement with outside perspectives, making it difficult for followers to entertain alternative viewpoints without feeling they are compromising their faith.
This demanded loyalty to a “biblical worldview” has a huge impact on family dynamics: white evangelicalism’s totalizing ideology operates as more than just a set of beliefs — it functions as an active force within the family structure, an invisible yet dominant participant shaping relational dynamics. Often, it acts as a triangulating presence, pulling family members into alignment with its values and creating loyalty binds that prohibit parents from truly engaging with their adult children. When this influence goes unrecognized, common advice about reconciliation or boundary-setting fails to address the deeper systemic pressures at play. Understanding estrangement within this framework requires acknowledging not just individual conflicts but the ways in which totalitarian ideology itself structures family roles and power, and limiting open dialogue and options for reconciliation.
Myth #2: Politics are not personal.
Following the 2016 election, I (Krispin) spent an evening with an extended relative that I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. We’d grown up together, but despite living near one another, didn’t find many occasions to spend time together. We caught up quickly on jobs and family, and soon found ourselves talking about politics.
At that time, I was connected with our refugee neighbors, and the Muslim Ban was impacting these friends. My relative wanted to debate the merits of the ban, and talk about the “pros and cons.” He was a big fan of the current president, and talked in broad sweeping statements about policy on the world stage, while I pleaded with him to grapple with the stories of suffering people hoping to escape war and find safety for themselves and their families.
At the end of the night he said, “This was really fun, we should do it again some time. I really enjoyed the back and forth and hearing both sides.” It didn’t feel fun to me at all. Having a theoretical debate about people that are actually suffering was not my idea of a good time, and I decided that night that it was not a relationship I wanted to continue to invest in.
To me, reducing groups of people to political talking points felt dehumanizing and deeply unsettling, and I couldn’t ignore that aspect of the interaction. (Even as I pointed out this dynamic to my relative, I was only met with more “logic” and theoretical situations). Political ideologies centered on dehumanizing others are personal and to pretend otherwise for many of us requires the suppression of our core values. This constant repression will inevitably impact our relationships and connections with others, and can even impact our relationships with ourselves.
If you are someone with a marginalized identity in the US today, you already know the truth of this in your bones. If you don’t — we hope you can listen to those of us who are telling you that political ideology is incredibly personal, and to pretend otherwise is to protect an oppressive system.
Many evangelical teenagers were exposed to “worldview” indoctrination sessions at their churches, youth groups, and special conferences (or simply in the curriculum their parents used at home)
Myth #3: We can find a way to come to a common understanding.
Lots of therapy content about reconciling political differences includes suggestions of active listening, empathy, giving one another the benefit of the doubt, and finding common ground where you can. This might work in some communities, and we’re not all-out disregarding the need for dialogue around important issues. However when it comes to a totalizing ideology like white evangelicalism, it simply does not work this way.
While there might be intentions on all sides to listen and engage, for people within a totalizing worldview, whenever an idea comes into opposition to doctrine (or the politics associated with the religion), it cannot be considered. If you grew up in evangelicalism, you know personally what it is like to listen intently to an “outsider's” views — all the while, filtering the information through “what the Bible says,” only agreeing with that which doesn’t conflict with your worldview. In this way, there’s an unspoken premise that says: “I can listen to you, take in your perspective and possibly agree with you — so long as it doesn’t conflict with my conservative reading of the Bible or what my religious leaders tell me is true.” And without naming this aspect of the conversation, engaging with those in this totalizing worldview can feel like running in circles.
For some of us, you might have conversations that move the needle slightly with your parents or others on certain issues. But more than likely, you will eventually hit a brick wall when your ideas of equity and justice conflict with their notions of biblical truth (“Truth with a capitol T”) or God’s ways (“The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”) Unfortunately, many of us have spent countless hours engaging in conversations trying to come to a common understanding on issues like systemic racism, climate catastrophe, LGBTQIA+ equality, trans rights and more, while our parents or other loved ones not only disregard us but are unable to even listen and engage with any conversation that threatens their sense of self and worldview.
We find it best to take people at their word: when they say that they believe the Bible (the conservative patriarchal interpretation they’ve been given most if not all of their adult lives), above all else, it’s pointless to try to change that view. Perhaps you’ve seen proof of this: when progressive Christians cite the Bible or Jesus’ words in an attempt to prompt conservatives to reconsider their beliefs, these conservatives dismiss it as “liberal propaganda” if it challenges their conservative Republican politics.
Although it is incredibly painful, we need to believe people when they tell us they will choose their ideology over us and other marginalized peoples. But the positive news is that once you have accepted the totalizing element of conservative Christian ideology you get to decide how you want to interact in a relationship with someone who holds these oppressive religious and political beliefs — without expecting that they will ever change.
An insert from the Worldview Academy workbook. The path was always to start by molding the individual as a child/teen, with the ultimate aim of controlling the civil government according to God’s laws
Myth #4: Avoiding the topic of politics is the solution.
As mentioned above, many therapists have suggested focusing on points of connection rather than politics as the solution to our current situation. In that same vein, this Focus on the Family article suggests that parents deal with relational rifts by expressing their opinions less, and focusing instead on spending “neutral” time together, like going out to dinner. It seems this has been a common approach for many conservative parents and their adult children (and grandchildren): simply withhold their views and pressure everyone to gather together and pretend that everything is fine as a show of normalcy and having a “healthy” family.
But for many adult children, their parents being suddenly silent on politics doesn’t actually change anything. If the conservative parent has spent decades investing in anti-queer, capitalistic, and white supremacist ideology — whether listening to Rush Limbaugh or through countless Bible study groups soaked in this type of rhetoric — the adult child knows their real views intimately. In fact, this is exactly what makes evangelicals tick — the constant need to evangelize, or to make others know that their worldview is the only one that is true.
To make it concrete, let’s focus on one particular example common in our STRONGWILLED community: For most queer adults who were raised with religious authoritarian parenting methods, there is a deep pain of having a parent who believes your gender expression or sexual identity is sinful and something to be cured. That pain is not erased by your parents simply not talking about it, or by ignoring the reality that your parents voted for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people to be restricted across the nation.
Avoiding politics altogether often turns into a way to help conservative parents not feel discomfort by having the “goodness” of their worldview challenged. It allows them to spend time with their adult children, pretending that they are loving, kind people, never having to face the actual impact that their politics and religious ideology has had on their adult children and other marginalized populations.
For many RAP survivors, their childhoods were shaped by intense worldview indoctrination. Simply asking people to ignore this reality for the sake of “unity” doesn’t actually work.
Myth #5 Everyone’s allowed to have their own viewpoint and beliefs (and stay in relationship).
Lastly, there is a cultural assumption in the US that freedom of thought means that everyone can hold their own beliefs — without it impacting their relationships. At least, that’s often what both these family therapists and Focus on the Family believe. It’s also the message you’ve probably gotten too.
It’s not fair to ask someone to give up their religious beliefs.
We have to be able to agree to disagree.9
Can’t there be space for different opinions?
It’s controlling to ask someone to change their political beliefs.
These are problematic statements in general, but when they are coming from people who have loudly and proudly insisted on their totalizing worldview for decades, they especially fall flat. White evangelicalism teaches people that believing its doctrine is the most important part of life, and that a person should be able to hold its doctrine without recourse. But what does this actually mean?
This means asking adult children to keep someone in their life who actively works against their well-being and the well-being of people they care about. It means allowing someone into your life who thinks you or the way you navigate the world is inherently bad or broken. It means overlooking a large point of pain: to know that your parents think your relationship, gender expression, or concern for marginalized people is wrong and bad. It means repeating the patterns of childhood, where you are shamed or punished for being your true self, and all of your energies go towards upholding the worldview of your parents as “good” or “correct” — either explicitly or implicitly.
Close relationships are supposed to be places of refuge, safety, and belonging, where you can be yourself without fear of judgment. Trying to make a space that feels relationally close while maintaining everyone’s conflicting ideology doesn’t actually create the safety we crave. It creates emotional dissonance and internal confusion.
Yes, your parents are free to believe what they want to — and to live with the natural consequences that arise from those beliefs. When people make the decision to put up relational boundaries with their family members, it is almost never a sudden decision. Instead, it is an often agonizing unavoidable consequence of being in a relationship that constantly erodes trust and connection. When your parents have a totalizing worldview where they have to hold certain views on groups of people or parenting methods, it is unreasonable and unrealistic to think that their devotion wouldn't impact their closest relationships.
Yes, white evangelicals who gladly support an authoritarian leader can hold whatever views they want. And just like all other actions in life, it will have consequences.
(the “wizard” is anyone who does not have a Biblical worldview)
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Everyone has the right to determine how they handle ideological divides with family members, and there is no singular “correct” way to address them. You might choose to engage in ongoing dialogue, or you might decide that continuing a relationship under these conditions is emotionally exhausting or even harmful. You might decide that it’s worth maintaining some level of connection, while acknowledging to yourself that the relationship will not feel close or supportive. You might have a direct conversation with family members about how their ideology has impacted the current political moment, and how it impacts you and the people you care about. However you choose to respond, it’s important to acknowledge that politics deeply impacts relationships, and ignoring that reality comes at a cost.
What is Religious Authoritarian Parenting?
First of all, let’s start with a few questions to reflect on:
As a child how important was obedience to your parents / caregivers?
What was your relationship to the term “strong willed” in childhood?
Did your parents make obedience to God / a sacred text an important part of their parenting philosophy?
Have you made major life decisions in order to avoid upsetting your parents or to keep them happy? (marriage, having children, where you live, regularly attending religious services)
Do you avoid telling your parents about your political views because of the conflict it creates?
Do you struggle to be assertive or set boundaries with authority figures?
Do you find it difficult to know your own life goals (or even preferences, like where you want to go to dinner)?
Do your parents criticize you (implicitly or explicitly) for being too permissive with your children?
Have you or are you currently debating going low- or no-contact with your parents due to their inability to respect your opinions, boundaries, and life choices?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have experienced Religious Authoritarian Parenting.
What is Religious Authoritarian Parenting?
Religious Authoritarian Parenting (RAP) is an approach to childrearing that prioritizes obedience to authority over all other aspects of childhood development, utilizing religion as further confirmation of the role humans play in submitting to authority. The goal of religious authoritarian parenting is to raise children who grow into adults that automatically submit to any authority that their parents consider to be God-ordained. This includes religious leaders, religious texts, husbands (in the case of women), and other approved authority figures like the police, government, teachers, and employers. Parenting practices revolve around developing a child’s desire to submit to authority, with a myriad of consequences (including corporal punishment) if the child does not obey immediately.
While healthy parents often teach obedience until their children are developed enough to make their own decisions, the goal of religious authoritarian parenting is to prevent the development of self-autonomy or individuality from happening at all. It aims to ensure that children remain within the religious hierarchical structures from childhood to adulthood, as parents transfer their authority to religious and government authorities. It’s based on the idea that humans, no matter their age, are untrustworthy and evil and require dominance by a deity. This deity uses the government, religious leaders, or family members to control humans, lest they engage in “self-will.”1 This style of parenting is designed to prime a child to stay within the religious community, to submit to the hierarchy of that system, to obey the norms of the community, and to continue on in those values and political identities for life.
Who were the Religious Authoritarian Parenting experts?
The STRONGWILLED project focuses on the time period in American publishing when Religious Authoritarian Parenting methods began to be both popular and widespread (approximately from 1970—present). While there are too many authors to name in this introduction, some of the biggest and best-selling names in this genre include:
Dr. James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family, political lobbyist, and author of books like Dare to Discipline and The Strong-Willed Child
John MacArthur, non-denominational pastor and author of books like Successful Christian Parenting
Bill Gothard, founder of Institute for Biblical Life Principles (IBLP) a patriarchal fundamentalist group
Debi and Michael Pearl, authors of books such as To Train up a Child
Ted Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart
The common link between these authors (and the myriad of copycats they spawned) is a patriarchal Christianity that was interested in helping parents raise children who would know their place in the God-given hierarchy of society.
While we are most familiar with white evangelicals, religious authoritarian parenting can occur in any hierarchical religious setting, and people from other faith traditions may recognize these similar dynamics in their upbringing2.
This book went on to sell over 2 million copies (and is still being sold). According to Dr. Dobson, a series of parenting lectures he filmed on his discipline advice have been seen by over 80 million people in the United States during the 1970s and 80s (which was 1/3 of the population at the time). Notice the balance between “love” and “control”—the perfect image for RAP.
This book went on to sell over 2 million copies (and is still being sold). According to Dr. Dobson, a series of parenting lectures he filmed on his discipline advice have been seen by over 80 million people in the United States during the 1970s and 80s (which was 1/3 of the population at the time). Notice the balance between “love” and “control”—the perfect image for RAP.
The Goals of Religious Authoritarian Parenting
RAP aims to form the kind of adult a child grows up to be, seeking to hold long-term influence over the child. There are four common areas that religious authoritarian parenting targets:
Unquestioning Obedience to God-ordained Authorities. For religious authoritarian parents, home is the training ground to develop obedience and submission to other authorities that the religious group deems God-ordained. Those raised in RAP homes may find themselves submitting to authority figures in a way that feels subconsciously automatic (“fawning” is the term developed by trauma therapist Pete Walker in his book CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)3. This was the goal of religious authoritarian parenting: to develop an automatically submissive response to authority.
Acceptance of Hierarchical Roles. RAP often has a focus on ensuring that children adopt roles that their parents want them to fulfill. Lindsay Gibson, author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents calls this “role coercion”. These roles often include heteronormative gender roles in the nuclear family, like expecting that a child assigned female at birth will grow up to be a submissive wife and mother. Role coercion also often includes religious role expectations (church-goer, regular temple-attender, missionary). There are other roles that religious authoritarian parents may push, including where to go to college (usually a religiously-affiliated institution, or perhaps attending close to home) or what career field their child chooses. The role coercion that occurs in religious authoritarian parenting often seeks to suppress queer sexuality or gender expressions, and instead puts primacy on creating a heterosexual patriarchal nuclear family that raises their children within the religious tradition.
Acceptance and Replication of Political Values. It’s normal to teach children values like honesty, integrity and kindness. However RAP has a focus on ensuring that children grow up to hold the same political values as their parents, often including homophobia, patriarchy/misogyny, and other values that marginalize certain groups. In white religious communities in the US, Republican politics are often emphasized to the point where it becomes hard to discern whether or not RAP is about religion or if it is actually about a political framework. RAP seeks to raise children that view the world identically to their parents, rather than developing their own identity and conclusions about the world.
Acceptance of Life-Long Parental Influence. Religious authoritarian parenting doesn’t have an expiration date, as it aims to ensure that parents hold significant influence over their children even into adulthood. In evangelical circles (which we’re most familiar with) there is slight variation: Bill Gothard and John MacArthuer both taught that parents always hold an explicit authority in their child’s life, even into adulthood. Others, like James Dobson, encouraged parents to create a psychological dynamic during childhood and adolescence that would set the child up to defer to parents no matter their age.
RAP’s Use of Spirituality/Religion
Regardless of the specific faith tradition, religious authoritarian parenting uses religion or spirituality in similar ways to produce submission in their children. Children are taught that their parents are an authority instituted by God, therefore when children obey their parents, they are obeying God (and, perhaps put more succinctly: when they disobey their parents, they are disobeying God). Children are taught that they are sinful and need an outside and external force to make them “good”. Most religious communities that encourage this parenting style have a belief in hell, which serves as an extra layer of control to encourage children to submit to parents. Children learn to squash their own autonomy and submit to their parents as a way of learning to submit to the God they are dependent on for salvation.
Our Thesis: Religious Authoritarian Parenting as a Political Movement
It is our belief at STRONGWILLED that religious authoritarian parenting wasn’t just a trend that dominated much of the religious parenting books in the United States from 1970 on. At its core RAP is a political movement designed to create people who would be responsive to authoritarianism and authoritarian leaders. Hoping to consolidate and maintain white, hereteo-normative, patriarchal power structures that privileged Christianity, the religious authoritarian parenting movement began to teach parents how to raise their children in a world that was increasingly pluralistic and moving towards social progress for minority groups, including Black people, women, immigrants, and the LGBTQIA+ community. The purveyors of this kind of parenting set out to specifically instruct caregivers to raise children who would learn about and embrace their God-given roles in a hierarchical society, and to never imagine “rebelling” the way that young people did during the 1960s4.
It’s no surprise that after half a century of intentionally teaching parents in religious communities to parent with these authoritarian parenting practices, 2024 is seeing a rising wave of authoritarianism across the globe, with the United States leading the way. As people pontificate about why so many people are being drawn to authoritarian leaders and the fear tactics they use to shore up power, it seems that many are overlooking this important and profoundly influential element.
During the second half of the 20th century, conservative leaders taught parents to create an authoritarian home where obedience to authority was the most important aspect of child rearing, priming children to grow into adults who would seek and support authoritarian political leaders5. Religious authoritarian parenting was a wide-spread movement that has wielded incredible political power. Not only that, but RAP methods have also led to long-lasting psychological impact among the millions and millions of children who grew up in an authoritarian family environment. While the parents who bought into religious authoritarian methods were promised a legacy of happy families full of well-behaved kids, the reality is that many of us who grew up in these households struggle with symptoms that match CPTSD: anxiety, depression, an increased risk for suicidality, and mental and physical health disorders, not to mention strained relationships with our caregivers. In future posts, we will unpack the personal impacts of these parenting methods, but for now we will focus on what the stated goals of these parenting methods were.
Parenting Styles & Terms
For the purposes of this project, we recognized we would need to be precise about the parenting philosophies we wanted to unpack. The various terms offered by parenting experts — permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian — didn’t quite seem to fit the lived experience of so many people. So, after years of research, we here at STRONGWILLED created our own term, and we would be curious to know if our definitions and terms fit your lived experience. We use the term Religious Authoritarian Parenting because it is rooted in the political philosophy of authoritarianism: the belief that individuals should submit to the (often God-ordained) authority of society, rather than engaging in personal freedom and individual autonomy.
The purveyors of religious authoritarian parenting — people like Dr. James Dobson, John MacArthur, Bill Gothard, Gary Ezzo and more — always insisted their methods were authoritative and not authoritarian6. We, however, disagree. We believe that RAP is most similar to intrusive parenting, a term used by Brian K. Barber and other scholars to describe parents that use methods to gain psychological control over their children. We’ll be writing later articles about the different types of parenting (permissive, authoritarian, authoritative), and where RAP fits in that framework.
Defining religious authoritarian parenting is just the beginning of naming its long-term impacts, both on political systems and on the individual level. We have a vested interest in not letting religious authoritarians be in charge of political systems, and we are interested in healing from the long-term impacts of having our autonomy and self-will disciplined out of us at key developmental stages. In the coming weeks and months we will release our content on the history of RAP and deep-dive into some of the main purveyors of this philosophy, as well as create community resources and discussions for people to begin the process of healing and reclaiming autonomy. Our hope is that together we can shape this project into a resource that is educational and collaborative.
To that aim, we believe that the most important aspect of understanding the impact of Religious Authoritarian Parenting is hearing the voices of those who grew up under these parenting practices.
Were you raised with a RAP principles?
Understanding whether you were raised with this parenting style and how it impacted you often requires some reflection. We’ve found that the signs of RAP can be seen both in childhood and in adulthood. Let’s go back to some of the questions we posed at the beginning and take some time to sit with them:
As a child what was your relationship to the terms “strong willed” or “obedient” in reference to yourself/ your siblings?
Have you made major life decisions in order to avoid upsetting your parents or to keep them happy? (marriage, having children, where you live, regularly attending religious services)
As a child, did you often feel nervous around one or both of your parents? Do you feel nervous around them today?
Do you avoid telling your parents about your political views?
Do you struggle to be assertive with authority figures?
Do you find it difficult to know your own life goals (or even preferences, like where you want to go to dinner)?
Do you have to protect your parents from your feelings?
Do your parents criticize you (implicitly or explicitly) for being too permissive with your children?