The Battle of Peer Dependency: Author's Anxiety - Part One

My blog has primarily focused on books that aim to control young women through obsessive control of their sexuality and career paths.   I focused on emotional purity writings (emo-pure) and stay-at-home daughterhood (SAHD) mainly because when I started reviewing Debi Pearl's "Preparing To Be a Helpmeet"  I was a newlywed with an established career in education.   I felt that I had a pretty solid grounding in romantic relationships, male-female relationships and transitioning from a dependent child to a financially independent adult.

I didn't delve much into child rearing manuals (outside of home-based education) because I didn't have a kid.  I'd been around kids much of my life and felt confident when I read manuals about how to avoid terrible advice - but I didn't have any personal parenting experience.

Well, a lot has changed in the last seven years.   I'm still a married woman with a career - and I'm also the mom of a 3 year old who has brought a unique and fascinating set of adventures with him.

Net outcome: I'm over my shyness about blasting the crap-tastically bad parenting advice given out by CP/QF parents. 

I'm gearing up to review two books on the dangers of "peer dependency".   The first book is "The Battle for Peer Dependency" by Marina Sears followed by the Maxwell's book "Keeping Your Children's Hearts".  As I've mentioned before, I grew up outside of CP/QF and only encountered it glancingly as an adult prior to learning more on the internet to try and help students of mine who were dumped into the public school system in their late teens.   Because of that, I had no bloody clue what the term "peer dependency" meant - and reading "The Battle of Peer Dependency" will leave you clueless until the third chapter so that was fun.

For other outsiders, the term 'peer dependency' in the society means the desire that people have to be around people their own age outside of their siblings.   In the larger society, this is viewed as a normal, age-appropriate developmental stage that starts in toddlerhood.  In fact, my three-year old has just started showing increased interest towards other little kids and occasionally makes attempts to play cooperatively!  (I'm just really proud of my little guy). 

I digress.

Practically, the term has some deeper, more sinister connotations surrounding parental control.  In the ideal CP/QF family the patriarch gets his goals for the entire family from God.  The goals are clear, Godly, and intergenerational.   The Botkins have a plan to outbreed us heathens.  The Maxwells are going to support large families in computer-based self-taught careers AND never live farther than 1 mile from Steven and Terri's house.   The Duggars pretty much run the same gig as the Maxwells but they specialize in home rentals and used cars. 

The danger of peers is that being around other families lets the kids see that there are different ways to live - and that could lead to sinful deviations from the plan.   The Duggars have Josh David who refused to follow the Duggar no-touch courtship rules (eek!) and works independently (so much harder for his dad to control him that way....).   The Maxwells have Christopher who wanted to become an EMT (oh, the horrors!) and John whose fiancee announced their engagement online prior to the wedding (Dunno if they will ever forgive Chelsy for that).

So, yeah.  Fighting peer dependency is essentially using emotional, religious, and/or logistical manipulation of your children to keep them firmly enmeshed in their family of origin for the life length of the parents.

Sounds like fun!  *shudders*

Moving specifically into "The Battle for Peer Dependency", the first idea that I wanted to explore is my belief that part of Mrs. Sears motivation for focusing on eliminating peer dependency is a sad attempt to control her personal anxiety disorder.

I struggled with generalized anxiety disorder from when I was 4 until I was in my mid-twenties. 

My younger brother David died unexpectedly and suddenly just before his first birthday - and I became an anxious wreck.   I believed wholeheartedly that my parents and the doctors did everything humanly possible to save my brother - and he still died.   That meant that all the good intentions in the world meant absolutely nothing.  We were all at the mercy of a cruel, capricious and random world that killed people willy-nilly.

Over the years, I kept my anxiety in check by being an overachiever and keeping negative emotions bottled up.   I was very, very good at both things - and far too young to realize that I was becoming a ticking-time bomb for mental illness.

When I moved away to college, my anxiety exploded.  We had moved across Michigan a few months before my brother died  so moving again brought up insane levels of anxiety that something really, really bad was going to happen.   After a few weeks at college, I was diagnosed with depression and started on medication and seeing a counselor.  Unfortunately, the first SSRI I received worked a bit for the depression and actually ratchet my anxiety even higher. 

Compounding the problem was the fact that anxiety had been a part of my life for so long that I didn't know that I was anxious - so no one was really cued in on the fact that my anxiety was driving my depression rather than vice versa.

A few weeks later, I was burnt-out, exhausted and actively suicidal.   I informed my counselor that she needed to help me get in-patient care now because I could stop myself from attempting suicide right now - but I was so exhausted that I might not be able to next time....or the next time....or the next time.

I was hospitalized twice over three weeks while doctors figured out a medicine regiment that worked for me.  The absolute game changer was being prescribed Klonopin for the first time.   For the first time that I could remember, I felt what 0 out of 10 on an anxiety scale felt like.   Plus, anxiety was draining all of my energy.  With an anti-anxiety drug, I could focus on getting my eating, sleeping and exercising habits back to normal and start learning how to treat depression.  The second game changer was determining that the first SSRI was causing my suicidal ideations - and getting off of that made life much more workable.

Learning how to treat my anxiety was the overarching theme of my college and early teaching years.  It was a long slog - but I've come out the far side much more able to care for myself than I ever was before.

I bring this up because there are three stories in the book from before the tragic death of Marina's husband that ring all sorts of "Hello, anxiety my old friend" bells.  Here's one:

The enormity of the horrible road conditions had been confirmed when the children and I accompanied Jeff to retrieve mail from our post office box. Moments of sheer terror overwhelmed me several times when we came very close to sliding off the road or into oncoming traffic. Huge semi tractor-trailers filled the road, and their bulky size seem to take up more than their share of the highway. Their heavy loads made even deeper rivets and gullies in the icy slush causing it to freeze. As each truck or vehicle passed, I believed that we were going to be in a head-on collision. All of a sudden, a thought struck me. If we were all in an accident, the treacherous road conditions were so harrowing that no one would survive the crash. Since all of the children were with us, crashing would not be terrible, because we would all perish and be in heaven together. That's all gave me great comfort, and the fear of dying was instantly gone. (pg. 14)

When you read for facts,  the car ride sounds a lot like an average snowy Thursday in Idaho or one of those rare icy days in Texas.  Jeff, Marina and the kids drove to the PO box.  The roads were slushy and the car lost traction a few times but Jeff was able to steer through it.

If you read for emotion, Jeff Sears risked his entire family's life by driving at breakneck speeds down icy roads on bald tires while playing chicken with semi-trucks!  At any second, the entire family could be annihilated in a massive wreck!

The red flag for anxiety - Marina's level of anxiety is so high that she finds relief by imagining a scenario where she can die without hurting her family at all since no one will feel any pain if they are all killed instantly. 

We've got two more anxiety stories left for later posts.