What if our advice actually triggers the behaviour we want to prevent? One of my favourite places on the internet is our private Patreon Facebook group, where the people who support us financially hang out. For just $5 a month people can join our Patreon group, and in...
Let's use a real-life example of purity culture double standards: Brio Magazine Yesterday on the podcast Rebecca and I read excerpts from old copies of Focus on the Family's Brio magazine, aimed at teen girls 12-16. We wanted you to hear first hand what purity culture...
It's our 200th episode! And we wanted to celebrate by doing something that matters to Rebecca--and to so many of you. We wanted to read some back issues of Brio Magazine, the magazine for preteen and teen girls published by Focus on the Family that encapsulated purity...
How does hearing modesty messages as a teen affect you as an adult? We're working through another big chapter in our new book She Deserves Better today! For She Deserves Better, we surveyed 7000+ women to learn how their experiences as teens in church affect them...
In his book Grace-Filled Marriage, Tim Kimmel blames a girl for her own rape.TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of rape as a teen in the rest of this article.I thought today, for International Women's Day, I'd like to look at what Kimmel said, but especially at all the...
What dating rules work best for teen girls? We're so excited that our brand new book She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self and Speaking Up launches next month! Until that launch, we want to take the podcasts to walk you through some...
Adult children can seriously take advantage of their parents–and seriously be moochers. Sheila here! A few weeks ago I started rerunning an important series I wrote six years ago about handling family dynamics as parents age and require care. We're moving the...
We know that parenting is the biggest responsibility we will ever have. But we've been told such different things about the nature of that responsibility. If you grew up in an evangelical church, chances are you were told that a parent's job is to teach them to obey,...
A basic principle in the Old Testament is actually quite a simple one: People of God don't sacrifice children. Read through the prophets, and you'll hear the judgment against nations that sacrifice their kids to Molech, or make children "walk through the fire."...
When my daughter Rebecca was 19 months old, her baby brother died. He was only a month old. We learned when I was about 5 months pregnant about his heart condition, and that things would be very touch and go. We spent the last four months of the pregnancy petrified of...
Christian parenting advice seems to really like discipline and obedience. Rebecca here on the blog today. As I was researching other parenting books and various Christian parenting blogs as I wrote my book, Why I Didn't Rebel, this focus on repentance and obedience...
Is it bad to be your child's friend if you're also their parent? One of the pieces of advice we often hear in parenting circles is: "Remember, you're their parent, not their friend." To be honest, when my children were little and I was immersed in evangelical culture...
What do you wish you could go back in time and say to your husband at 16 to encourage him? Or what do you want to say to your teenage son? I know it's Thursday and it's podcast day, but we hit a technical snag this week and we had to re-record some of it yesterday and...
I've been realizing lately I need to have compassion on younger me who was taught toxic stuff--and didn't know how to reject it. And as I shared yesterday in my "Fixed it for you" posts, sometimes I've even taught that toxic stuff myself! But when you know better, you...
When research is poorly done, and then that research is used to "prove" something in Christian circles, everything can go awry. Over the next few weeks, we'll be telling you some of the things we learned in our survey of 20,000 women last year, leading up to the...