So a couple weeks ago, The Website Formerly Known As Twitter discovered a YouTube video from November 12, 2013 of Nancy and Doug Wilson discussing their philosophy of childrearing, specifically, how and why they punish their kids. In the video, at about 15 minutes in, Nancy Wilson describes an incident in which her daughter Rachel didn’t respond to the end of a playdate with the necessary enthusiasm. Nancy explained that Rachel was 3 or 4 years old, and, in Nancy’s own words, stated “aah, is it time to go?” when Nancy arrived to collect her at the end of the playdate. When they got home, Nancy spanked Rachel for this rather natural reaction. Nancy then required Rachel to practice saying “YAY!! Mom’s here!!” so that the next time, Rachel would give the rehearsed response when Nancy arrived to take Rachel home.
In summary, Nancy Wilson spanked her younger-than-kindergarten aged daughter for being sad that a playdate ended. From Nancy’s own description, Rachel did not throw a fit, cry, or was in any way disruptive, just a little bummed that she had to go home. It was, in the most literal manner possible, a beating administered to improve morale.
I watched all of the first two videos in this series to see if there was any context that the viral clip didn’t provide. Honestly, there’s not much context that would have made me less appalled at this, but there’s always the chance that editing removed something from the clip that might ameliorate the horrifying message. There wasn’t. I am not going to discuss the effectiveness of corporal punishment in general. There are other, better sources for that. I would like to demonstrate all the other perniciousness around Wilson’s childrearing advice.
The Wilsons philosophy of punishing children is an extension of their belief that punishment is something God just does. Hebrews 12:6 says “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” I really regret at this moment not taking the summer school course in intensive Greek when I was in college, because had I done that, I would be able to discuss exactly what the unknown author of Hebrews meant by the verse. Sadly, I’ll just have to say that it’s at least possible that this isn’t meant to justify beating toddlers. Wilson adds to this a particularly strict version of Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity, which teaches that all humans are naturally evil. [There are other interpretations of both Hebrews and Calvin on this point, but I’m going to let the scholars deal with those. I’m making a different point.]
Their idea that humans are naturally evil leads them to punish more for attitudes than actions. In the sermon series, Wilson states that he adopted his own fathers three rules: 1. No Lying; 2. No Disobedience; and 3. Don’t Disrespect Your Mother. All spankings result from a violation of one of those three rules. Thus, a kid who broke a plate wouldn’t be punished for breaking the dish, but for disobeying the prohibition on touching it. This might appear on the surface as reasonable; accidents happen, it’s important to have rules designed to prevent accidents. The problem is that punishing kids for ‘disobedience’ sets up kids for being punished for thoughtcrime, which is obvious from other statements the Wilson’s make in these videos.
In the second video in the series, Wilson actually says something that disturbed me a lot more than the Rachel incident. He stated that sometimes kids get fussy and temperamental because “they have unconfessed sin and need the cleansing of a spanking.” He actually thinks that toddlers and kindergarteners get fussy because they suffer overwhelming guilt from some kind of ‘unconfessed sin’ and will misbehave until they get hit, which ‘cleanses’ the kid. I wondered if there wasn’t someone who would hear this and decide to have scheduled spankings just in case the kids have accumulated a bunch of ‘unconfessed sin’ and it would take too long for the parents to get the kids to discuss the problems. Mostly, though, this tells me that it never occurs to Wilson that the kids might not want to talk to him because he spanks them for thoughtcrime.
In the Wilsonian system, thoughts are more of a crime than actions. Nancy Wilson describes how they played ‘the Obedience Game,’ wherein she would give a command and the children would have to follow it completely and cheerfully. She never completely described this in the videos I watched, other than saying she sometimes gave silly commands for the kids to follow, sometimes with treats at the end. In addition to the game, sometimes, as in the Rachel anecdote, she would have the kids role-play cheerful reactions to parental commands or situations. The whole point of their parenting was to create myrmidons, not adults.
That actually is what bothers me the most about Wilsonian childrearing. I’m sure he thinks he’s creating functional adults, but he’s not actually doing that. Mindless obedience and compulsory cheerfulness are quite harmful in the real world. The obvious problem is that a kid, especially a girl, trained to fake her reactions and emotions is a fat target for an abusive man. Beyond that, these kids will have to deal in the world with people who are NOT cheerful or obedient, and who are not in fact under the control of the now-adult. Since the Wilsons have never taught their kids any constructive ways of dealing with negative emotions, they have no methods to solve the problems these people present. Either all those years of repressed anger will explode or the kid will simply endure mistreatment. There aren’t any good options available.
Support for my conclusion that Wilsonian childrearing is, as people say in academia, counterproductive can be found in the fact that his two daughters are married to men who work for him or closely with him, and his son writes books Wilson publishes. None of his kids have managed a life away from Dad’s control. They have never had to work with people beyond the influence of Douglas Wilson. There has never been any test of these methods out in the wild, away from Moscow Idaho. It’s easy to claim success when your kids all work in your own business, but this doesn’t prove that the principles are applicable anywhere else.
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