The 'trad wives' leaving high-control Christian nationalist communities

[0:00] You were the trad wife before trad wives became a thing online. [0:04] So I was very much like isolated at home. I kept having babies. I was pregnant and or nursing for [0:11] 13 years. And then when my oldest was around four, we started like loosely homeschooling. [0:20] That was one of the things that I argued with my husband a lot about. I was, I'm a very, [0:24] I like very free, creative, like that kind of educational model. And my husband is much more [0:34] academically minded. So I was expected to do it his way. And it was incredibly difficult and [0:45] never went well. But I persisted because that's the Christian thing to do. I would also say that [0:54] a lot of these things are, [0:55] the system teaches you to moralize everything. Everything that you do is life or death, [1:02] all the decisions that you make. So like healthcare for, are you going to vaccinate [1:07] your kids? Which we were anti-vax and we're not anymore. That's a life or death decision [1:12] because your children could be permanently harmed from vaccines. So you better make the [1:17] right decision. And so everything is high stakes in that way. And as someone who's like trying to [1:26] be a good person, trying to follow God, trying to be a good Christian, that was one of the reasons [1:32] that it was so, I was so bought in because I want to be a good wife. I want to be a good support [1:39] person for my husband. I want to serve God well by being a good wife. And that is how I serve God. [1:46] So that affects everything. You just, you want to do these things. And when the system tells you, [1:52] this is how you be, this is how you can be a good person. This is how you can be a good wife. You're [1:56] like, okay, I will do it. And it does. It simplifies it. [1:59] But it's must be so stressful to every day. I think these decisions I'm making are life or [2:05] death and such high stakes and God is judging me. And am I being pure enough? [2:10] You're literally so in your head the whole time, making sure that you're right. And there's so [2:16] many rules to do. And the standard is so high. You're constantly working that you're literally [2:22] too busy to have thoughts outside of just keeping up. [2:26] With your life, with your obedience, you're really performing obedience so much every day. There [2:31] isn't room for you to start to be like, oh, and reflect and, you know, did that feel right? Did [2:37] that, did that have a good outcome? Was that even effective? You know, [2:40] now you're deconstructing from that life. [2:42] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Now my husband jokes that he's the tread wife. [2:46] My family was a small family. Actually, we had five kids. [2:50] That's considered small five kids. [2:52] That's very small. [2:56] I had [2:58] friends and connections throughout like all of conservative evangelicalism, not any one group. [3:05] And oh my goodness, everybody had like eight to 12 kids at least. You know, there's the occasional [3:11] family that they could only have two kids. And so they did. But almost everybody was eight to 12 [3:18] kids or more. More was not uncommon either. So my options with the reformed groups were, [3:28] so my options with the reformed groups were, maybe become a midwife, but get married to a guy [3:33] who's like, eight years older than you. Have a bunch of children, live at home forever and ever. [3:40] And I love education. I love learning. I love science, especially. And I really like grabbed [3:48] on to that in our homeschool group. That was my thing. That was what I enjoyed. Science, chemistry, [3:55] and my best friend's family started going, you know you can go to college, you [4:00] can learn more. I didn't think you would have that option going to college. College [4:06] wasn't an option, no. Get married and then just become a trad wife. Exactly, yeah. [4:15] Have as many kids as possible. Yeah, and that was not my favorite option, but what [4:24] the more charismatic groups were kind of pulling me in for, was more of a [4:31] Christian nationalist leader type. Because women could actually be [4:35] leadership in Christian nationalism if you were the right strain and that was [4:42] better, that was a better option. So I went to the college that essentially [4:48] that family picked out for me. I would not have chosen that for myself, I don't [4:53] think. I compromised with my parents and didn't [4:56] burned bridges and I went for music instead of science or something like that. So in a lot of [5:02] ways, like even if it's not the most, even if my family was not the ones who were driving every [5:10] step of my path, like everything I did was for other people and for other people's expectations. [5:15] I didn't really have autonomy. I didn't have choices. I made the best choices that I could [5:20] without completely burning my life down around me. Could you have gone to make your own money [5:26] and that kind of thing and have your own? That was a constant fight. I didn't. Did they believe [5:33] that girls and women shouldn't work outside the home basically? Yeah. It was not super even heard [5:40] of. Like you can teach music, you can become a midwife. Those are kind of your options. If you're [5:45] a woman, you can't go out and do much else. I'm curious how you were treated differently from [5:52] how your brothers were treated versus you. So I actually had probably the [5:57] best experience as this goes because I only had a younger brother. I didn't have a ton of younger [6:04] siblings. But even that with just one brother who was two and a half years younger than me, [6:09] the work that I was responsible to do versus him, like I was cooking all of the meals, [6:15] like Danny said earlier, I was cooking all of the meals every weekend. My brother wasn't [6:20] responsible to do any of that. I was working a full-time job all through nannying other people's [6:27] kids. [6:28] All through middle school and high school. And I was still being punished for not keeping the [6:35] house clean enough. Even though I wasn't there, I was literally living at a different house four [6:39] days a week. Boys were supposed to be educated, but girls were supposed to learn to be keepers [6:46] at home. And so it was not just help your mom. It was actually like perform being a wife now, [6:55] perform being a housewife now, learn all the skills on the level of being a housewife. [6:58] Learn all the skills on the level that you'll need when you are a mother and need to sew your own [7:02] whole family's wardrobe, make food from scratch. So they were literally going out of their way to [7:09] find more things for us to do, to find more projects and skills for us to learn. So we were [7:14] busy and tired. I mean, just in our country as it is right now, girls' access to leisure time, [7:20] even outside of these circles, is greatly reduced from boys. But in these circles, [7:25] I mean, I've heard you talk about how like the boys would be outside playing. [7:28] For hours and hours when you guys were still inside doing chores. [7:32] Yeah. My older sisters were waking up with babies that night. [7:37] I had the 4 a.m. shift. [7:39] I was changing diapers when I was seven, eight years old of younger siblings, [7:43] feeding them, taking care of them. [7:45] And not just like once in a while for fun. [7:47] No. Like as a general rule. [7:51] Like you got in trouble if you didn't do it. [7:52] Yeah. Like who was going to watch the baby if you don't take care of the baby? [7:55] What was the hierarchy in your households? [7:57] Well, God, Jesus, pastor. [7:59] Olders, dad, wife, older brothers. [8:04] Oh, yeah. Older brothers. [8:05] Older brothers go before the girls. [8:07] Yeah. There was sibling hierarchy as well. [8:09] Like the older siblings could discipline, a.k.a. [8:12] spank the younger kids. [8:14] The siblings could punish each other. [8:16] Like corporal punishment. [8:17] Yeah. We were told to. I mean, as the oldest kid, I was told to. [8:20] Like that's how I was told to handle things. [8:22] I was the black sheep. I wasn't allowed. [8:23] You have 10, 12, 14 children. [8:26] You can't possibly keep track of all of them. [8:29] And so you have to. [8:30] You have to enlist your older children to look out for their younger siblings. [8:35] It's very isolated. [8:38] And so all your entire community, your entire world is the church. [8:44] You are homeschooled almost exclusively. [8:48] And so you're not there's no other basis. [8:51] It's all within the church. [8:52] If you have extracurriculars, you're being taught piano by someone in the church. [8:56] You're being taught another language by someone in the church. [8:58] It's just very insulated. [9:00] So. [9:01] If you leave, you leave everything. [9:04] You leave everything that you've ever known. [9:06] And it really does come down to like a focus on purity. [9:10] It's just everybody's purity is a little different. [9:13] But like you have to be. [9:15] It's not just within the sexual context that like we usually would say purity culture around. [9:23] But it's also within it's within the books that you're reading and the types of Christians you're associating with. [9:31] And the music. [9:32] You're listening to. [9:33] You have to be pure in all of it. [9:35] Definitely a direct demonization of intuition and your feelings. [9:42] So you're just like walking through life, following what you're being told to do when it doesn't feel right. [9:47] And I just I think that the impact of that on maybe especially women and our bodies, the way that so many of our bodies have broken down and there's so much chronic illness has to be that has to be part of that because you are. [10:02] You are required to ignore your natural instincts. [10:07] How many of us disciplined our children in a way that felt wrong? [10:12] And we knew that it felt wrong and it went against our intuition. [10:15] And we did it anyway because we were required to do it to fit in. [10:20] That's like one example of like a grief that you just ignored for the sake of doing what you were told to do. [10:28] What made you finally leave? [10:30] I had a daughter. [10:33] I found out I was pregnant with a daughter. [10:37] And I immediately knew that what hadn't been safe for me for 30 years, but I had ignored, it hadn't been important enough. [10:49] I suddenly realized how important it was for her. [10:52] And I didn't want her to grow up in that environment and in that church because it's not safe. [10:59] They have a really good way of making it sound like really nice. [11:02] You know, like the owner of the home. [11:07] She has these children. [11:08] She gets to like what a privilege. [11:10] Because it is a privilege to be a mother. [11:13] Right? [11:13] We all agree with that. [11:14] It's a privilege to stay at home. [11:15] And it's a privilege to get to stay at home. [11:17] And it's a privilege to homeschool. [11:19] It's a privilege to bake sourdough. [11:21] But it's not a privilege if you're forced to do it. [11:24] And it's not a privilege if you don't get to make decisions about your children without your husband vetoing it. [11:32] It's not a privilege if you don't have a choice. [11:35] It's a privilege if you have a choice and you've chosen to do that. [11:37] I mean, you have a very strong presence and a strong voice. [11:41] Were you ever told to change it? [11:43] I was, I mean, not my voice, but just about everything else about me. [11:47] Yeah. [11:48] You were told to change. [11:49] Yeah, like, definitely. [11:51] And a lot of that, like, the voice regulation, it's very, it's implicit. [11:56] They don't say that necessarily. [11:57] Yeah, it's not like there's classes. [11:59] But they praise attitude. [12:00] But you get in trouble for having an attitude. [12:01] Fix your attitude. [12:02] Fix your attitude. [12:03] Fix your attitude until you get your voice there. [12:05] It's fawning. [12:06] Yeah, yeah. [12:07] And it's also, you're always masking. [12:09] It is literally a mask you put on, and you live it every moment of your life. [12:14] And so the voices you have today, are these your normal voices? [12:18] Or is this from what you've just been conditioned to have? [12:21] I get DMs every time I go back and forth between the voices. [12:25] Because sometimes if I'm thinking of trying to appeal to people who are still in the cold, the voice comes right back. [12:31] And what's the voice? [12:32] Don't make me do it, Karla. [12:34] I can't on cue. [12:35] Are you kidding me? [12:36] It's like, oh, I am so praying for you. [12:40] Like, oh, my gosh. [12:41] And, you know, I know the Lord is going to lead your husband in the correct way. [12:46] Like, and I didn't even ever get the, like, the high voice. [12:48] But it's, it's, you soften it. [12:50] And you really, you are not. [12:53] You're not a threat. [12:53] You're not a threat. [12:54] You're not too powerful. [12:55] You're not too loud. [12:56] You're not going to overstep the bounds. [12:58] You're being so reasonable and so submissive and so willing to comply. [13:01] So kind. [13:02] Like, we would, oh, my gosh. [13:04] No, do not go against your husband. [13:06] But it's more than just the voice. [13:07] I still, like. [13:08] I still, like, find myself seeing a man do the bare minimum and just immediately going into, like, complimenting him and praising him and fawning at him. [13:16] And it's, like, it's just, it's still, I mean, I'm constantly working on the deprogramming from all of that. [13:22] Because it just makes me feel safer when I put the man in front of me who's big and scary at ease and make sure he knows I'm not a threat. [13:29] Have you ever spoken out about your experiences before in this capacity? [13:34] Not like this. [13:35] Not on this level. [13:36] There aren't a lot of opportunities to speak out. [13:39] Especially. [13:39] On this level. [13:40] Really? [13:40] Yeah. [13:41] Wow. [13:42] Have you been wanting to speak out for a while? [13:45] I mean, yes. [13:47] But also, it's, there's a lot that goes into speaking out. [13:52] So, yeah. [13:53] It's like the desire's there. [13:54] But it's, it's, it costs a lot. [13:57] What, tell us more about that. [13:58] The cost and the courage it takes to come and talk about this today. [14:01] I mean, I think when you've grown up in it and then live in it and it has so negatively affected your life, when you get out of it. [14:12] It's, it's something that you want to share with people because, you know, there are so many people still in it that are still suffering and struggling under the weight of the control and everything. [14:26] So when you have an opportunity to speak out, it's, it's very valuable and we care so much for, there's so much empathy for the people who are still in it because, you know, they're in a bubble. [14:37] They don't really know anything else. [14:39] So then being able to, like, make a dent in that bubble. [14:44] That bubble is really valuable, but, but a lot of people don't understand and they feel attacked if you say anything negative about the group or about certain theologies or beliefs about the Bible. [14:57] And so there's, it's a, you can make a lot of people upset very easily. [15:04] I think a lot of our viewers would be curious. [15:06] I mean, how many of you are still Christians? [15:08] You, do you still consider yourself Christian? [15:11] You do, you do. [15:12] Katie, no. [15:13] I, yes, but I don't think. [15:15] I feel like other people are starting to question it, you know, like, I think in some ways I feel like deconstructing was the only thing that got me back there, but that's. [15:24] I would certainly say that some people would think that none of us are Christians. [15:27] And that's the thing is like, I, when people ask me if I'm a Christian, I don't know how to answer because I don't know what people mean by that anymore. [15:35] And in a way I am, but in a way I'm absolutely not. [15:38] Because if you think that's Christianity, if you think sin, empathy is a sin and that's your Christianity. [15:44] That's not my Christianity.