Is being a good wife in conflict with being a good mom? And what does it look like to prioritize your marriage? Episode 270 of Bare Marriage!
All the Latest from "Parenting Young Kids"
How Gentle Parenting and Harsh Parenting can Both Go Wrong
Has gentle parenting been given a bad rap? For good reason? We had an amazing podcast last week with Wendy Snyder from Fresh Start Families, and this Tuesday we're doing a FREE webinar with Wendy to talk about how to parent with both kindness and firmness. It's all...
Discipline That’s Compassionate, Not Punitive: FREE Workshop
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,...
Older posts from "Parenting Young Kids"
Why Do We Ask Women to Choose Between Being a Good Wife or a Good Mom?
Why are we asking women to choose between being a wife and being a mom? One of the themes that pops up often in evangelical marriage literature is warnings to women not to be a mom first and a wife second. It's in almost all of Gary Thomas' books. I used to teach it!...
The Let Men Be Dads Podcast: Why Do Evangelical Resources Make Dads Sound Pathetic?
Let men be dads! It's our third podcast in our let men be men series, and we're finishing that up today with a bang! We often get accused of hating men, which is funny, because we believe men are amazing! Men can be totally emotionally healthy. Men have the Holy...
No More Power Struggles! Parenting with Discipline that Connects
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,...
How Did We Think Calling 8-Year-Olds’ Bellies “Intoxicating” Was Okay?
Why did the evangelical church not recognize pedophilic language? Last week on the Bare Marriage podcast we told you about Dannah Gresh's Secret Keeper Girl curriculum, popular during purity culture, which told 8-12 year-old girls that their bellies were...
What Does Spanking Teach Kids about How Love Should Hurt?
We simply must talk more about how spanking affects children long term. The biggest group of people who still support spanking are evangelical Christians, yet the research about spanking being harmful for kids is overwhelming. I'm not going to rehash that today,...
What My Grandson Taught Me about How God Sees Us
Every now and then my grandkids give me a picture of God’s love for us. Or rather, their parents do. I don’t share about my grandkids very often, but last week, on a private Instagram page, Rebecca posted a series of pictures of my 3-year-old grandson Alex and his dad...
Do You Always Have to Put Your Husband Before the Kids?
When I was speaking back in the early 2000s, I remember asking women if they were a better wife or a better mother. Almost everyone put their hands up to "better mother." And I remember saying, why don't we realize that what kids really need is a strong marriage? Why...
One Woman Shares How Being Spanked as a Child Affected Her Sexually
The harm from spanking doesn't always come from the spanking being done in anger, or by terrible parents. Sometimes the harm comes from good parents who spanked "in love", exactly how the church taught them to. When I wrote about the harms from spanking a few weeks...
The Sexual Element in Spanking Children: Let’s Ask the Uncomfortable Questions
Can we talk about something hush hush? What if spanking kids is also a form of sexual assault? Hear me out on this one, okay? I've shared a number of social media posts and podcasts about spanking lately, including what the large meta-analysis of 160,000 children...
Break the Cycle: Learn Positive Discipline with Kids, Rather than Punitive Control
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,...
On Spanking: When You Think You’re Following the Bible, but You’re Really Following Your Own Interpretation
It's easy to use the "we're just following the Bible!" trumpcard when debating something, and spanking proves an excellent example of how this can go awry. We've been talking about spanking as a method of discipline for a few weeks now, and two weeks ago we did a...
Spanking Fixed It For You: It’s Okay to Change Your Mind about Spanking
I never spanked my kids. Well, there's a funny story about Katie, but I'll leave that for another time. What I did do, though, was write a column in my weekly paper about twenty years ago bemoaning the fact that the Children's Aid Society was taking children away...