archive link: https://archive.is/H0FZY
from Talia Lavin, who’s high on my list of “anything she writes is worth reading” journalists. an excerpt from her upcoming book Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America.
hopefully the title made it obvious, but a big ol’ content warning for explicit and heartbreaking details about child abuse and endangerment.
I grew up in an evangelical family. We had a wooden spoon for punishment. It was used a grand total of twice. My parents made sure never to use it in anger, and never hard enough to actually cause pain.
And after twice, my parents sat me down and told me that there was no useful purpose in violence as punishment for wrongdoing, it wasn’t something Jesus had ever told people to do, there were better ways to discipline than corporal punishment to lead a child in the correct way to go, and they’d never do it again.
I was disappointed at the time because a few thwacks with a spoon was simpler than having actual consequences directly tied to my behavior.
But growing up, I knew other kids who got hit with a stick, spoon or belt in anger by their parents and relatives regularly. Most of them didn’t have religious parents, but some of them did.
Mine were. I got hit with a belt in anger. They had a belt studded with brass. They kept me home to make sure the evidence faded.
They were taught it was right and just and was important to keep me on the straight and narrow.
Good, upstanding folks. Pillars of the community.
…we had spoons, they were broken; i text-message my mom a couple times per year on christmas and mother’s day…
Yeah, the goddamn wooden spoon. I remember being noisy in a crib and my mom storming into the room screaming and busting the spoon in half on the side of the crib. She’d already hit me with it so I knew exactly what it meant. I got spoons, open hand, and hairbrushes for most of my childhood. Hair pulling, pinching, and ear-twisting too if we were in a situation where she couldn’t just haul off and hit me.
The funny thing is, she called me up about a decade ago and asked if I could remember anything about my childhood that was bad. And rather than list everything off, I told her about the time she broke the spoon on the crib. That’s when I found out that it hadn’t happened at all, and in fact if it had happened it was because the spoon was old and brittle and if she’d done anything at all it would have been a light tap on the side of the crib to get my attention, and now that she remembers it yeah that’s exactly what happened. It just fell apart in her hands. We didn’t talk for a few years because of that and other things.
After my daughter was born, she sent us a package that included two beautiful olivewood spoons from Israel. I use the fuckers when I’m making pasta. She calls or texts every once in a while warning me about protecting my daughter dark, evil things in the world. This usually happens when she sees a picture of my kid playing with a toy spider or a halloween skull. And I just chuckle and agree that there are dark, evil things in the world and I’m doing my damndest to protect her from them.
I thought I was being clever as a child, and went and broke all the spoons, believing somehow that the spoons were responsible. I quickly learned that it wasn’t the case.
