As I’m processing my experience and posting pieces here, I feel it is important to explain exactly what I mean when I say American Evangelical Christianity.
OH MY GOD FUCKING JAMES DOBSON!!! Luckily my brother and I were "easy" kids so this didn't effect us much directly, but when my husband and I were struggling with our newly adopted kid, my mother gave me a copy of The Strong-Willed Child. In perhaps the most honest moment of our relationship, I asked her incredulously "You got me a parenting book???" and proceeded to never open it. Thankfully adoption training, even when religiously affiliated, had progress beyond that style of parenting to more connected attachment-focused models like Karyn Purvis, Ross Greene, and Mona Delahooke, and my mother was happy to learn alternative methods when we explained them. The both/and of doing the best you can with the information you have AND that information being really harmful is such a hard thing to hold.
OH MY GOD FUCKING JAMES DOBSON!!! Luckily my brother and I were "easy" kids so this didn't effect us much directly, but when my husband and I were struggling with our newly adopted kid, my mother gave me a copy of The Strong-Willed Child. In perhaps the most honest moment of our relationship, I asked her incredulously "You got me a parenting book???" and proceeded to never open it. Thankfully adoption training, even when religiously affiliated, had progress beyond that style of parenting to more connected attachment-focused models like Karyn Purvis, Ross Greene, and Mona Delahooke, and my mother was happy to learn alternative methods when we explained them. The both/and of doing the best you can with the information you have AND that information being really harmful is such a hard thing to hold.
That is so wild! Especially to be handed that specific book. I'm glad y'all got to have more options and additional resources for parenting.