On this episode of The Fresh Start Family Show, we are getting real with some sex & purity culture talk. Our guests are none other than incredible mom and daughter Christian sexpert duo Sheila Wray Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach of Bare Marriage.
Terry and I chat with them about the powerful topics of their upcoming book She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Self, Sex & Speaking Up.
Whether we grew up in the church that used a shaming purity culture or even a home that didn’t have open and honest conversations around dating, consent, and our value beyond our virginity, this episode will inspire and empower us as we navigate introducing these concepts to our own kids on their journey through puberty and beyond.
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Episode Highlights
- Religion is not the problem, the spread of inaccurate and misused information on different topics is a problem, including around sex and purity culture
- Supporting our girls means opening up the conversation around their feelings and hormones and their value instead of shaming and avoiding uncomfortable or embarrassing talks
- The purity culture movement left women and girls feeling they had to marry the first guy they kissed instead of finding a well matched partner – that their most precious treasure is their virginity
- Purity culture puts the blame on girls for boys’ thoughts and actions based on their bodies being attractive or developing or what clothes they wear, with no responsibility or education on the males’ side. Girls are not “stumbling blocks” for boys.
- The shame cycle girls feel is based on the idea that they give up their rights to say no if they already said yes to dating or kissing
- Empowering girls to have information about sex and consent helps them make their own wise choices for themselves
- -Consent conversations help girls understand that sexually assaulted persons are not damaged goods or even responsible for what happened
- A healthy sexual ethic – vs strict sexual rules -includes wholistic sexual boundaries so that girls can make the decision that is right for them without muddling in judgment and shame
- We can be advocates for truth in our church communities to call out ideas that are harmful
Resources Mentioned
Where to find Sheila & Rebecca:
BareMarriage.com Website
The Whole Story Puberty Course
Pre-Order Their New Book: She Deserves Better
Wendy on the Bare Marriage Podcast:
Ep. 144 How to Misuse Statistics for Dummies
Ep. 145. Connection Not Punishment: A Better Way to Parent
Fresh Start Family Show Episode 53 with Rebecca Why I Didn’t Rebel
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
This episode of the Fresh Start Family Show is brought to you by our Quick Start Learning bundle to raise strong-willed kids with integrity. This two pack learning bundle comes with a downloadable learning guide and also a free online workshop with me all about what to do when your kids say, no, I won’t. And you can’t make me in one way or another. Cuz we all know our beautiful, strong-willed kiddos resist in lots of different ways. Head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/free to grab your quick start bundle and get started learning with me today.
Wendy:
Hello listeners. I’m so happy you are here for a new episode. I’m your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach. And today on the show, Terry and I had the best conversation with Ms. Sheila Wray Gregoire, who is the face behind baremarriage.com, formally known as ToLoveHonorandVacuum.com, and her beautiful and inspiring daughter Rebecca, who considers herself just a girl standing in front of the Evangelical church asking them to please stop promoting abusive theology. But both of these women are just so amazing and we’re talking today about how we can resist or we can raise girls to resist toxic teachings on sex self and speaking up.
So this is a really great episode if you have daughters, and I thought I’d start by just telling you a little bit more about these amazing women. So Sheila is a sought after speaker. She’s also an award-winning author of nine books now, including The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex and The Great Sex Rescue. And now her latest book that she wrote together with her daughter Rebecca, called She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex Self and Speaking Up. So Sheila has a master’s in Public Administration and a master’s of Arts in Sociology, both from Queens University, and she’s spoken at churches and conferences around the globe.
So to have her on the show together with her daughter really was just such an honor because I greatly respect the work both of these women do. So Sheila’s books have been featured on the New York Times book Review Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post, and she has bylines at Religious News Service, Relevant Magazine, and other respectful news sources. Her and her husband, Keith, a pediatrician, live in Bellevue, Ontario, and they have two grown daughters now and one very adorable grandson and a granddaughter who live just down the road. I just love how they just live very close to each other and are very, very close with their kids. She enjoys hiking, bird watching, RV camping trips, and board games, and she knits even in line at the grocery store.
She really is such a hoot. But this mother daughter duo you guys is just a force to be reckoned with. And I know so many of you listening to this show have been blessed by Sheila and Rebecca’s work. Rebecca has actually been on our show before back on episode 53 of the Fresh Start Family Show about the book she published back in 2017 called Why I Didn’t Rebel, which really I think is a must read for every parent. But let me tell you, that book was monumental. That book and the conversation we had with her about it was monumental for me to really just trust that what I was doing with my kids was going to work because Rebecca’s a real life example of how firm kind connected compassionate parenting works.
So just make sure you go listen to that episode too. We’ll make sure we put a link in the show notes or you can just find it at freshstartfamilyonline.com/53 because that that episode with Rebecca was just so, so good. But I am really excited for you to hear us talk today about how to raise our daughters to resist the toxic teachings that a lot of the, you know, some circles I will say of the Evangelical Church have spread and preached around sex self and speaking up. So anytime I get in a room with these two women, I feel deeply inspired and I know you are going to feel the same way today as you listen.
So without further ado, enjoy this episode, parents of the Fresh Start Family Show, and help me welcome Sheila and Rebecca to the show.
Stella:
Well, hey there, I’m Stella. Welcome to my mom and dad’s podcast, the Fresh Start Family Show. We’re so happy you’re here. We’re inspired by the ocean, Jesus, and rock and roll and believe deeply in the true power of love and kindness. Together we hope to inspire you to expand your heart, learn new tools, and strengthen your family. Enjoy the show!
Wendy:
Well, hey, there families. Welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. Terry and I are really excited to have Sheila Ray Gregoire and Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach with us today. And we are going to be talking about raising girls to resist toxic teachings on sex self and speaking up. Welcome to the show ladies.
Sheila:
Hello, Wendy, great to be here. Hello with you. Yeah, we’re welcome.
Wendy:
Yes, we are so excited to be here and I’m so excited to have Terry here because as I was prepping for this episode, Terry’s like, I don’t know, can I add to this? And I’m like, yes, honey, we are raising a beautiful little girl who’s 15 now. And so I thought it would be really great to have Terry be part of this conversation so you can just kind of chime in from a guy’s perspective too, a dad’s perspective too.
Terry:
Sounds good.
Sheila:
Yes, it’s fun to meet Terry too. We’ve known other for a while. We’ve never met Terry, so
Wendy:
I know, I know.
Terry:
Yeah, it’s awesome to to meet you and see you again Rebecca. We, we’ve, we had an awesome time last time we spoke, but you reminded me it’s been, it’s been a minute. So
Rebecca:
I wasn’t a mother yet.
Terry:
Yeah, wow. I know that’s a trip. Yeah.
Rebecca:
Yeah. My kids weren’t here yet. That was at least three years ago.
Terry:
Time’s flying when we’re having fun here, right? Yes.
Wendy:
It really is amazing. And how old are your kids now again?
Rebecca:
I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old. They’re almost exactly two years apart, so three and one.
Wendy:
So it really was, it doesn’t feel like we’ve had the podcast that long, but yeah, you’re right. It’s been, we have,
Terry:
Oh, we’ve been doing this
Wendy:
Time does, really does fly. Well listeners, Sheila and Rebecca are very, very special to us. And so I thought I would just give you just a little bit more information about how we started working together. Like Rebecca said, it’s been a few years now, but I actually found you Rebecca through Allie Cassaza’s podcast a while back and just fell in love with your book, why I Didn’t Rebel. As a Parenting Educator, it was such an important book and I still recommend it to people all the time, students and listeners and people in my community. And it was just a really moving representation of what connected firm and kind parenting looks like. So in a way, I got to know Sheila, right, like through that book a little bit.
And then fast forward a few years and you had shared kind words with your mom and so you and your mom reached out and said, Hey Wendy, would you like to be on our show? Your podcast is just has the most amazing community and your blog has the most amazing community of listeners and followers and all the things. And when I came on your show, it was such an honor. We talked about discipline and we talked about positive parenting, especially some of the messages that have been given in the Christian world that are just so opposite of the truth. And after that interview, I had an influx of families who were just the kindest, most hungry parents who were just like, oh my gosh, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.
Sheila, you and I went on to have a collaborative free workshop on compassionate discipline for your, your families. And again, like it was just probably the biggest influx of, of families that we’ve probably ever had in the period of a few months. And again, they were all just so eager to learn and, and humble and kind. And I’m telling you like you’ve, you’ve just become such a meaningful person in my life. You don’t know if you know this, but a mentor because, you know, in this space and my work, it’s such a learning experience for me over the last few years to learn how to speak up and advocate for things when they are against what so many teach in the Christian world.
And it is just something that God’s been like teaching me and, and working on in my heart and all these things, but watching you and Rebecca do it over the years and watching how you do it with grace and dignity and freaking courage and bravery has inspired me so much and it really has just been very important in my body of work. So just thank you both for your voices, for your courage, for your commitment to just being, you know, Christ-centered families that are, are advocating and teaching like light driven work, but also not afraid to call out toxic teachings and atrocities in the church.
So I just hope you know how much you both mean to me. Us
Sheila:
Thank you. Oh, thank, that’s really lovely.
Wendy:
Yes. So Terry, it’s an interesting perspective that Terry and I come from today because, because we didn’t grow up in like a fundamentalist Christian evangel, you know, evangelical church, we didn’t have a lot of this like toxic, toxic teaching on marriage or purity culture. So we’re really here just to learn today because we know that so many of our listeners, you know, we have listeners across the board of All Faiths, but there are a lot of families of Christian faith and there’s a lot of families who grew up in these circles where this type of teaching was really there. So Sheila, will you just start us off a little bit by telling us about your marriage work, right? Like how, and maybe your story, we’ve heard Rebecca’s story, but, and we’ll make sure we link the podcast episode that was Rebecca was on.
But will you tell us, like now you’ve written nine books, you’ve got your, you and Rebecca have your 10, you know, your additional book coming out in April together, you know, and I think your latest one, the Great Sex Rescue has really brought so much healing to marriages across the world. But tell us like, how did you land on being a Christian sex helper and marriage helper?
Sheila:
Like yeah, no one intends to grow up to be the Christian sex lady like – or if you do intend then there’s like something really wrong with you. I don’t, yes, no, I, I started out blogging in 2008. I had already written a few small books and I just wanted to build my platform and that’s what you were supposed to do. So I was in the mommy blogging space, you know, parenting, housework, organizing. But the more I talked about sex, the more my traffic grew. And so my blog kind of morphed into that by accident. It wasn’t intentional, but I, I wrote a few big sex books, the Good Girls Guide to Great Sex in 2012, 31 Days to Great Sex. And I was, I was giving all of what I thought was healthy information for many years.
And then in 2019 our ministry really changed, my blog is now Bare Marriage. It used to be called something else, but we’re at baremarriage.com, we have a podcast. But in 2019 I read the book Love and Respect for the first time I was procrastinating, I didn’t wanna work, I had a migraine and I saw people talking about the book on Twitter and I realized I had that on my bookshelf but I’d never read it. So I got it, got it down and I turned to the sex chapter. It was only about 12 pages long. And love and respect is the most used marriage curriculum in North American churches. So this is a big deal. Wow. And I’m reading this chapter and it says, if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don’t have.
Wendy:
Hmm.
Sheila:
Okay, so, so sex is not for women, it’s for men by the way, sex is in the men’s section. So it’s the stuff that men need. So it’s not what women need. Sex is all about a husband’s physical release and if he doesn’t get physical release, he’ll come under satanic attack. There wasn’t a single word in the chapter about a woman feeling pleasure about sex, being intimate, about the fact that women can orgasm. It was just why would you deprive him of something which takes such a short amount of time and makes him so happy.
Rebecca:
Now I’ll add that the only thing really being said that sex doesn’t take that long is probably why it was in the men’s section and not in the women’s because of sex doesn’t take very long, frankly, it’s only for one of them. I’m just going to put that out there.
Wendy:
Yes. Exactly.
Sheila:
So I feel like in nuclear bombs going off in my living room and I’m FaceTiming with Rebecca and with another, a younger woman who works with me, who worked with me on the blog. And that changed everything because we realized it’s not enough just to give good information. It’s not enough just to say, Hey, here’s how you can pursue a healthy marriage or healthy sex life. We need to start looking at the foundation because for many people, especially those who grew up in evangelical circles, a lot of the foundation of our marriage teaching of our sex teaching and as of our parenting teaching as you guys well know is rotten and we can’t build something good on a rotten foundation.
We need to, to take out that foundation first. And so that’s what we’ve been doing and we’ve been doing it with huge research projects. So the great Sex rescue Yes. Launched it. We surveyed 20,000 women to find out what key evangelical teachings hurt women’s, marital and sexual satisfaction. And then our new book, cuz after we wrote that all these women are like, oh my gosh, this book has rescued me, but I do not wanna do this to my kids. Like, what do I say to my kids then? Yeah, because everything that happened with me as a kid was wrong. Like, like it really messed me up. Yeah. I don’t wanna mess up my kids. So we thought, okay, let’s tackle this one. So we did another huge survey this time looking at women’s experiences in high school, in the church, mostly in the church.
So what they were taught and what the high school youth group environment, et cetera was like. And we were able to look at what messages have really hurt girls then and continue to hurt women now as they’ve, as they’ve grown up.
Wendy:
Oh so good. And, and now listeners make sure you, you go follow Sheila and Rebecca on social and, and all the things. But Sheila, you do these fixed it for you on Instagram, you know, that I see on Instagram. I dunno if you put ’em other places too, but they’re so beautiful because you, you have this, you know, this way of, of pointing out and trying to eradicate the rotten teachings. Right. And it’s, it’s so good and it’s so like, easy to understand how you can have a simple fix, right? Like it’s not a simple fix, but I mean it’s just, yeah. It, it’s so clear the the way you, you teach it, right? Like this is not okay, this is actually not accurate and then you just cross it out and write it in.
Right? And so that’s been really, really awesome to learn from you in that capacity. And then I just, again, I I’m so, I’m just so inspired by your courage because there is something like about the Christian world especially like that scares the heck outta me. Like calling out these big authors and like people that are established in the evangelical church. I’m like, why am I so scared of them? Like, it’s like there’s this like, oh my gosh, there’s like this air of, I don’t even know, but you do it, you go first. And I’m like, okay, if Sheila can do this. Like, and it’s not an attack, like, so many of them take it as an attack. It’s not an attack, it’s, it’s just calling the truth and light.
And, but I just want, like, it’s very inspirational to me and I’m just so grateful that you go first and do it because you have like, we have to call it out, right? Like, I’ve gotten emails before, I remember when I got the email from the one student and she was like, can you please stop calling out the church for like, all these false teachings about discipline because this is not the norm anymore. Like, this is, that was a long time ago that it’s done. Yeah. This, that church is taught that. And like, it’s very like, upsetting when you focus on the negative and there’s all, all of us over here who are like, ready. And we’re like, we’re not in that world anymore. And it was, it was just so interesting to have a conversation with her because I was like, no, I can’t, I can’t stop.
Like, but it, it, it’s something I wrestle with like, and it, it feels very, it’s still something that God’s like developing in me, the confidence to feel us have a settled body about it. And I’m just still working on it and I’m still doing it anyways.
Terry:
Well it, it’s an interesting thing that you bring up. Cause I, you know, I I, I witnessed this and I yeah feel this sometimes too, but it’s like you, you know, you’re always checking in with God and I think the check-in there is that you’re, you’re engaging and you’re working against the forces of the world and like people that, like that’s not, that’s not you versus God right there, right? This is like you versus people and what, you know, this foundation, like you said, that’s just been established by people and it’s just gotten, it’s just, it’s just off course. So all you’re doing is saying, this feels off course this isn’t right. And, and we’ve talked to 20,000 people about it and you know, so,
Wendy:
So interesting cuz I feel like the enemies attack more within the church than I feel it from without. Oh definitely.
Rebecca:
Oh, 100%. I fully agree with that. But I think when we get people saying that this stuff is in the past too, you know, like, well no one’s really saying you have to spank anymore. Right? Like, or that’s what they might say. Right? But what we found in, in doing our research, in our, our lit review research for this, this newest book is that, you know what, yeah. No one gives their kids I kiss dating goodbye anymore. Okay? People just don’t really give that book to 13 year olds anymore cuz it’s outta print, right? Yeah. But, and here’s the big but, the messages are still there, but they’re hidden in kind of this christianese where it’s, it, you don’t explicitly say you can’t hold hands until you’re married anymore.
Rebecca:
Right? What they say is, Hmm, but where’s the line? Are you making sure that you’re fleeing from the line of temptation instead of telling it explicitly? They, they go about it in a very tricky way. And so yeah, you might not blatantly see, you should not kiss slash hold hands slash hug until you are married anymore. But what these teenagers getting are, but these people who didn’t are a better Christian than you. These people who didn’t, they’re really, really holy and we’re not gonna say that they’re better than you, but we’re gonna say that these guys are holy. Yeah. And then we’re just gonna leave it hanging. And so that’s why we have to keep talking about it because that’s not about the explicit teaching, it’s about the messages behind the teaching that are still prolific throughout the church.
And we need to get it out at its root, not just snip off the branches. So,
Wendy:
Yes. So good. And it’s explicitly in print in there,
Rebecca:
It’s like, and and it’s also explicitly there, like it’s just not every single church is doing it in the same way anymore. But we have to make sure that we can get even the tricky messages that come up. And that’s really what our books are about. It’s not just about, Hey, this book is bad. That’s not actually what it is. It’s about this message is bad and it’s in this book.
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Wendy:
Yes.
Rebecca:
But this message is bad, so no matter where you get it from, this message is bad.
Wendy:
Oh, so good. Well, well let, let’s just hop into it. Let’s talk about purity culture and all the things, because I feel like when I look at your guys’ body of work and you know, your first nine books, Sheila, this is the first one that you guys have co-authored, right? Your 10th book, Sheila is the first one you have co-authored with Rebecca. Right. We
Rebecca:
Did Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better.
Wendy:
Okay, this is the third book you co-authored or second.
Rebecca:
It’s the second
Wendy:
Okay. Oh, okay.
Sheila:
Yes. So we did, we did. Yeah. So, so the Great Sex Rescue changed everything. So, and there’s three of us on it and it’s because it was, it was such a huge research project. So Joanna Sawatsky, our co-author, did all of the stats, which is really hard, plus some editing of the book. I primarily wrote the book, Rebecca wrote the survey along with Joanna. And then Rebecca and I edited the book largely now, which she deserves better re which is the new one that’s coming at Rebecca took more of a role in writing that at first, and then we did it and then we wrote that together. But again, Joanna did the stats cuz we couldn’t do this without, or like, it’s a really big project. Most people have
Rebecca:
Joanna
Sheila:
University departments to do this.
Rebecca:
No, Joanna is a godsend. She is, yeah. It’s, it’s amazing that God has given us the opportunity to have someone on our team who can do statistical analysis at a graduate level. Like that’s amazing what blogging trio has that Yes. Like that is such a providence situation. Yeah. Right. We could not done it without Joanna. 100%.
Wendy:
That’s so amazing. I have a new team member. She, she does data and budget and analysis for me and I’m, she’s kind of that brain, right? Yeah. Where I’m like, she sends me these spreadsheets and I’m like, this are beautiful. I don’t really wanna look at it, but it’s beautiful and it’s amazing and it’s gonna transform our business and the decisions we make and like all the information that the data and Yeah, I remember stats in college like, dang, that was an intense, that was an intense course. Yeah. Like, but when I look at your guys’ body of work, like there was so much that was like a, from like almost like a rescue, right? Like, and now you’re shifting into like a prevention. Yes. And so this new book is so preventative, right? And like, I think that’s the, the vision for, so like so many of us that share in this same like light-filled work is there’s one that’s like, you know, 90, 90%, no 90, 99% of families who come to me and start, you know, learning with me.
It’s like, oh my gosh, I’m in crisis. Help me get me out. Right? But the vision, like, and so that’s our mission, right? Is to serve all these families who have the same story as us, right? Like we did a full 180 and our parenting walk when Stella was like two or three years old. We, but we were esta kind of established by then. But the vision is like, what if we can now move to like preventing this and like actually like not saving marriages, but like creating these strong, beautiful marriages. So, okay, so talk to us about raising girls to resist toxic teachings about sex self and speaking up. And I was blessed enough to get a pre copy of the book.
And so there’s 10 amazing chapters. If it’s okay, I thought I would just kind of preview like the names of the chapters and then you guys can pick and choose what you wanna like, you know, speak to or bring light to. But listeners, here’s kind of like an overview. So chapter one talks about how our girls deserve to be set up for success. Understanding how the church influences our daughter’s self-esteem and wellbeing. How our girls deserve a big faith, defining our faith by fruit, not fundamentalism. Chapter three is how our girls deserve to be heard while emotional health isn’t attained by just telling her to be joyful in the Lord. Chapter four is she deserves to be respected teaching girls to draw bold boundaries.
Yes. Five is how our girls deserve the whole story about dating. Why a one size fits all approach won’t work. Chapter six says, she deserves to be protected, identifying red flags for toxic people. Oh, so good. Chapter seven, she deserves to know about her body Why sex ed isn’t the boogeyman you’ve been told it is. Right? That is a rhetoric that is so thick. She deserves to understand consent. Thank you God for this chapter. Boys will be Boys and other lies the church has tells about assault. Nine is she deserves to exist as a person, not as a threat. Your daughter is not a stumbling block. And then lastly chapter 10 is she deserves permission to be big girls come second to Christ alone.
So my gosh, I mean, listeners just pre-order the book right now, but you guys, what would you like to speak to today? Like what is, what is your, like if someone’s new to this and you know, a lot of listeners are probably like, that are really gonna resonate the most is the ones that grew up in purity culture and wanna do it different. But anybody like I, Terry and I are sitting here just wanting to like learn how to be preventive and do it different. So what, what would you girls like to speak to about the the new book?
Sheila:
I think that the chapters that often mean the most to me aren’t the ones that people are gonna go to the first. So let me just say the emotional health stuff is so important, really, really important. And I don’t think a lot of parents get that. But I think that the, the big thing that parents are wondering is how do I navigate my kids dating and how do I navigate how to talk to ’em about sex? And so since that’s the felt need of most parents, why don’t, why don’t we jump in there
Wendy:
And we are right there. We are key subject matter for that right now. Just opened up to us the other night you guys and shared for like, I’m gonna say it was like an hour and a half. Yeah. And Tara and I were just kind of sitting there like doing our parenting work. We’re all okay, just listen, listen. Yep. Hold space, listen. But we kind of were like, what, what do we say? Right? But like it’s, this is gonna be really helpful for us today.
Sheila:
Yeah. So let me, let me just take, take you back and do the big picture Yeah. Stuff for a minute. So we, we talked to 7,500 women in our survey, very long survey. And we were looking specifically at, you know, how, how these women’s experiences of teens affect them now. So I have some good news first that I wanna make sure that we say right off the bat Yes. Which is that church is a positive thing for kids.
Wendy:
Mm.
Sheila:
So we’re gonna be telling you a lot of things the church does wrong. But please know that overall and mo it isn’t just our study, this is such an established fact. In fact, Becca should speak to this cuz she’s the psychology grad. But nice.
Rebecca:
Yeah. I mean I have done so much, so many lit reviews on the effects of religiosity, on adolescent development, on long term health and socioeconomic outcomes. Like literally every outcome that you can measure.
Sheila:
Wow.
Rebecca:
Pretty much church protects people, okay? So people who who are involved in church as a teenager are tend to be happier as adults. They tend to be in better marriages, they tend to have better sex lives. They tend to, and I know it’s weird thing, but your kid having a better sex life later. But what’s the alternative, right? We all, you don’t want the alternative. So you can call it whatever you want. Better broccoli, I don’t know, put something in your mind to make it able to think without cringing. But all that being said, they have hope. They have purpose, they have less rates of mental illness and related struggles. Or if they do have mental illness, they tend to be able, like recovery is a little bit easier. There’s a lot of research out that finds that religiosity is profoundly protective, thank God. But there’s a big but
Sheila:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca:
What, what what research has found is that although religiosity is overall protective, our survey has found that there are certain teachings that are highly co-related with religiosity that are actually detrimental. So religiosity as a whole is really great. Going to church is really great. Jesus changes lives. Okay?
Wendy:
Yes.
Rebecca:
Research shows that Jesus changes lives.
Wendy:
Amen.
Rebecca:
But you can be in a church that brings down the average, your daughter could be in a church environment that makes it less likely that she will experience those protective factors because they’re adding in some poison. And so what we wanna say right off the bat is we’re gonna talk about some really bad stuff. We’re gonna talk about some stuff that makes it sound like the church is bad. What we’re saying is there are churches that bring down the average, but there are also churches that bring up the average. So once you know what’s bringing down the average, your job as a parent is to find a church that brings up the average. Yeah. So make sure that you’re not That’s exactly it. So our, what we, what we’re really hoping with this book is to equip parents so they don’t have to feel so helpless.
Cuz there’s so many parents who grew up in fundamentalism. They say, listen, we, I talk to so many women in our focus groups, I run all the qualitative research for this stuff. I talk to so many women in our focus groups who came out of abusive marriages because of the teachings that they got in church. And they said, I don’t wanna make my kids like have a sex phobia, but also like, I don’t know what to tell them. Yeah. It does kind of start with like kissing and holding hands. And so what do I tell them to make sure they don’t get taken advantage of by some abusive guy, but also can be, you know, your sexuality’s not a terrible thing. And these are the really difficult questions people are grappling with. And so we’re hoping is that through this research, through our data, it’s not just opinions anymore Yeah.
But through data we can help parents feel equipped so that they can look for those churches that have those protective factors that will launch their daughters into success because they’re being given Jesus without any unnecessary baggage. And so, yeah. I don’t know which baggage do you wanna talk about first, mom?
Wendy:
So good,
Sheila:
Right? Yeah. I mean I think, I think when we, when we look at these moms who are trying to navigate all of this, so many moms grew up in purity culture. And what we mean by that isn’t that the idea of saving sex until marriage is necessarily a bad thing. Like when people hear us critique purity culture, they think that we’re critiquing what would normally be called a biblical sexual ethic. And I know people have different opinions on this. Yep. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re trying to take the, and in the book we, we do talk about that there are benefits to waiting, you know, for marriage, for sex because there definitely are. Yeah. But I know there’s different opinions on that. But that’s not what we mean by purity culture.
Purity culture was this whole movement that amped it up a thousand points where it wasn’t just that you saved sex till marriage, it was that your primary identity was in being a virgin. It was that you don’t kiss before marriage. It was that your family helps you choose your spouse. It was that you need to cover up so that you’re not a stumbling block. And all of these things got added that weren’t there. It’s so interesting. I grew up in the eighties and if you were to ask me in the eighties what it meant to be a Christian, I would not have said anything about waiting for sex for marriage, even though I did believe in that.
Sheila:
Yeah. What I would’ve talked about was praying for the unreached world. It was learning how to give our money to kids who were really hungry. It was fighting against sex trafficking. We didn’t call it sex trafficking then there was a different, you know, child prostitution is what we called in the eighties, but
Wendy:
Right.
Sheila:
You know, it was fighting against that. It was, it was evangelizing and starting Christian groups in our schools. Like that’s what we were consumed about. And something changed over the next 15 years. And when by the time Rebecca was a teenager, that was not what Christianity was. Christianity was just staying pure.
Wendy:
Yep. And now I have so many friends who speak so much about this and I just, I’m so in such a, like a learning state cause I’m like, wow, they are really, really pissed about it. Like they are like, I mean, and they’re, they have amazing voices and but, and it’s so beautiful to see them advocating in a different way, but I, I know now a lot of people who have come from it and just share how much harm and trauma they feel like they had from it. So that’s wild. But it like developed in the last, it seems to like a really ramped up over the last few decades. It’s interesting.
Rebecca:
Yeah. Well it really, most people kind of see purity culture really taking off with Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye book. Like that really seems to be where a lot of people talk about. And that’s why these questions about sex education and dating tend to be the highest felt need among parents because they were like me calling you out, mom. But we joke about this all the time we’re given, I Kissed Dating Goodbye to read when they hit 13
Sheila:
I thought a great book!
Rebecca:
Uh oh. There’s a hormone better throw Josh Harris at it. Right? Like that’s what we all did in church. And it was this idea that you don’t date unless you think you can marry the person and you’re not even gonna date you’re gonna court. And courting means that all these, they had so many rules guys, so many rules and a lot of people coming outta that realized, oh, I wasn’t taught how to have discernment about who to marry. I wasn’t taught how to actually find someone to marry. And so even though I wanted to get married, here I am and I couldn’t because I had to know I could marry them before we went out to, to coffee. And that’s just logically that doesn’t hold up. And there was a lot of issues. And so now you have a lot of moms saying, okay, so I was raised with this super dysfunctional idea of what it meant to be a Christian in a relationship.
And now my daughter’s 14, it has a crush on Brody in her, you know, grade nine homeroom. And what do I do because all the purity culture, red, red lights are going off in my head. Do I tell her she’s not allowed to date? Do I tell her that she should date? Do I set them up on a date? What do I do? Right. And so we, we wanted to address it by looking at what the data showed of the different outcomes of if people, is it okay if I go into this now, mom?
Sheila:
Yeah, yeah,
Rebecca:
Sure. Let’s talk about it. We wanted to talk about the outcomes of different dating rules and this is kind of gives you an idea of what the book is about. What the book is like. Okay. So we looked at people who were allowed to date and were not allowed to date and people who did date and who did not date. And we looked at a bunch of different outcome variables. Okay. Things like the typical purity culture one, which is were you a virgin when you got married? Right. Because that’s what they were trying to do. They’re trying to make sure people didn’t have sex before they were married
Sheila:
Or, or was, was your marriage your first consensual sexual experience? So
Wendy:
Yes. Oh yes,
Rebecca:
Yes. Was your marriage your first consensual sexual experience? And then we also looked at things like how good is your marriage? But we looked at things like, do you have a good sex life or again, whatever you wanna put that in your brain so you don’t have to think about the word sex life in your daughter.
Wendy:
Broccoli life
Rebecca:
Broccoli. Yeah. Your broccoli life. How’s your broccoli life doing? Right. And then we also, Is it limp? Is it not? Is it
Wendy:
I Love you guys
Sheila:
that weird green color?
Rebecca:
Anyway. No, but we also have questions. We had, we had questions about, you know, your your self-esteem as well because not everyone’s gonna get married and not everyone even wants to get married. And so the other things matter too. Like what’s your self-esteem? Like how was it in high school? How is it today? And the big one is how likely are you to end up in a relationship that has ever been abusive?
Wendy:
Hmm. Yes.
Sheila:
So let me, okay, so there’s four possibilities, right? Yeah. There’s not allowed to date and didn’t date, not allowed to date, but did date allowed to date and dated and allowed to date and didn’t date. Now I’m gonna ask you now there isn’t, there isn’t one thing that gets you all of the best outcomes.
Wendy:
Yes.
Sheila:
Okay. This is what’s interesting, but there is one that tends to be better.
Wendy:
Okay. Okay, can we gonna
Sheila:
Guess which do you think is the best one
Wendy:
Allowed to date and did date?
Terry:
I mean, I leaned towards that too, I think. Yeah, I mean actually I, well just to be different. I’m gonna say allowed to date but didn’t date.
Wendy:
Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s kind. Yeah.
Sheila:
Terry’s ding ding ding. Terry’s got it. Yeah.
Wendy:
Ah, that’s
Rebecca:
In high school. In high school to be clear. Like dating after high school.
Wendy:
Now, now there is one that, there are a few that don’t do as well. So your chance of getting married overall is lower if you didn’t date in high school. Okay. So it’s not like it’s best universally. Yeah. But if you wanna look at not choosing an abusive partner, if you wanna look at measures of self-esteem, you know, all of those things are better if you were allowed to date but you chose not to date.
Sheila:
Huh.
Rebecca:
That’s interesting. That was me by the way. That was Rebecca. That was me, right. In high school. And what we think is going on here is this is why there’s not a one size fits all. Right? There’s some people who just kind of, they, they date at 16 and they’re great, they do great and there are some kids who date at 16 and it’s a hot mess. But there are also what makes it so that you’re someone who is allowed to date but you choose not to in high school. And those are the questions that we have to ask as a parent. Because you can’t just say, this is why rules don’t work about this stuff. Right. My rule is that you are allowed to date and you will not date. Right. That makes no sense. Right. The idea is this, what you’re talking about all the time, you guys are talking about this all the time, it’s not about controlling what your kids do, it’s about creating an environment where your kids are able to make decisions that are good for them.
Wendy:
Yes.
Sheila:
Right? Yeah. And so part of this, this idea is who are the kinds of people who might choose not to date in high school, right? Maybe they’re ones who are really busy, maybe they got lots going on in their life and that’s gonna set them up for a lot of success later. Maybe they have super high self-esteem and quite frankly they’re like, yeah, high school boys are not that impressive. Okay, I’m gonna be honest here
Wendy:
That’s kinda what’s happening for Stella right now.
Sheila:
Yeah. I’m gonna be very honest that was me. Okay. Or maybe they’re people who just really decided that they wanna take their teenage years and really work on figuring out who they are so that when they are ready to date they can just go in and find the right person and just kind of run with it versus trying, trying out a bunch of stuff in high school. And those are all things you can’t control as a parent.
Wendy:
Yeah.
Rebecca:
What you can do is learn about the the principles behind these things so that you can create an environment where your daughter knows, Hey, you know what, there isn’t really a one size fits all here, which means you can’t fail me.
Wendy:
Yes, exactly. Rebecca.
Rebecca:
You as your daughter, you can’t fail me. This is gonna be something that we’re having to wrestle through together and figure out what the next step is as it comes. But we definitely know that telling kids they’re not allowed to date doesn’t seem to work.
Sheila:
Now I do wanna put a caveat in here, which we put in the book too. There’s still, there’s still wisdom with age, right? Yes. Like a 16 year old dating is still different from a 13 year old dating.
Rebecca:
Yeah.
Sheila:
Yeah. And, and we were looking specifically at high school, so you know, you, you obviously don’t necessarily want your 14 year old making out with a whole bunch of people. So there, there definitely is that. Yeah. But again, it’s having those conversations and it’s, it’s letting your daughter know what she is worth and it’s letting your daughter understand how to recognize when a person is good for her and when a person isn’t. And in the book we have have we, at the end of each chapter, there’s mother-daughter exercises so that you can have these conversations with her and you can help talk through in ki in, in just an easy way. You know, how do we figure out when a good, when a good time to date is?
Sheila:
How would you figure out if someone is good? What would be red flags? And we spent a lot of time helping girls recognize red flags.
Rebecca:
Yes. Yeah. We have one exercise where we give them a scenario like about how, you know, Tony has a crush on you or whatever. And then we have a bunch of different bullet points like, okay, but what if you are 12 and he’s 18? What if, what if you’re both 15 and you’ve been friends for forever or whatever, what if like, and there’s all these different things. What if he’s your youth pastor? Like there’s a bunch of different things going on here, right?
Wendy:
Real life. Real life in our house. What if he came to your like little get together for your birthday and stole your younger brother’s console, like video game console, like red flag.
Rebecca:
Oh goodness. Yes. Goodness. Yes. Exactly. But these are the things that we wanna help mom’s and, and obviously dads as well, but specifically this book is for mothers of daughters. We wanna help moms people have those conversations so that it, it’s less of that fundamentalist idea of there is one right way to do this and more about building up your daughter’s understanding that she is worth so much
Wendy:
Yes.
Rebecca:
that she is allowed to say no.
Wendy:
Yes.
Rebecca:
And in fact she should say no until the right yes comes up and the right yet doesn’t need to mean the one you marry. It just means a wise choice. Yeah. You don’t just date someone cuz they like you, you date someone cuz they’d be good for you and you’d be good for them.
Wendy:
Yeah. Well and it’s like, God, this is, I’m like, was just feeling like emo like emotion. Like because you’re just, this is so important and like something that is like I, I’m an educator, I teach parenting and I feel like frozen in this area, right. And just like it couldn’t come at a better time for Terry and I, but like the this, all of it is so beautiful and like you, we need sup. Like we need a book like this to just walk us through to give us courage to walk in the room at night. And you know, again, we just had this beautiful conversation with Stella but it was mostly listening, right? And now we’re gonna be able to walk in and, and be like, hey, we just wanna chat about some few things, a few things and do it in a way that’s like connecting and building her up and teaching her the life skills that she needs to know and not being embarrassed by it or like, it’s just really, it’s just so beautiful and important.
Wendy:
So it’s good right.
Terry:
It’s very good.
Sheila:
Yeah. Here’s, here’s something fun. The whole idea of not kissing until you’re married, right? This, this became really big in purity culture to hold to
Wendy:
I have somebody, yep.
Sheila:
To have your first kiss at the wedding. Okay. Yeah. So we asked women, did you kiss before you were married? And the percentage of women who, first of all what age group, if you’re looking at all the different generations, think of Gen x, boomers, millennials, you know, gen I’m Canadian so I’m gonna say Gen Z. But you know, which generation do you think mostly saved kissing for the wedding?
Wendy:
The purity culture? Oh no, no, no. Oh they did? Yeah, yeah,
Sheila:
Yeah. So millennials, what do you think our boomer grandparents did?
Wendy:
They’d like played spin the bottle at like 12.
Sheila:
They were totally kissing. It was like nobody saved kissing for the wedding until 1995. Before that everybody was kissing. Like it wasn’t even a conversation when I was in high school. My, my mother okay, who grew up in the fifties, they would every, they would go to a school dance with one person and then on Saturday they would go out for a milkshake like with someone else. And this was normal. Like you, you dated many, many different people. You went on dates. It’s not like you dated one
Wendy:
Oh yeah,
Sheila:
You went on dates and this was really normal to go on multiple dates. Now fast forward to purity culture and you’re told if you kiss someone or if you date someone, you can’t do that until you’re sure you’re gonna marry them. So you’re on a date and you’re with someone and you end up kissing and you now feel, I guess I’ve decided I’m marrying them. And we can say that’s crazy. But that a whole generation of women went through that and there are a lot of women who got married because they felt, well now I have to
Wendy:
Because they’re still kids, you know, like they’re still, they don’t un you know, Stella still says like productful at 15 and I never correct her cuz I’m like, it’s, she’s still little, you know, she, she doesn’t know better. Like, right. So that makes sense that they would think that.
Rebecca:
Yeah. And that’s why there’s been research that that’s, that’s shown that having really strict rules about these kinds of things, really, really strict rules about things like dating, like sex and about what is acceptable, what is not actually makes it more likely. So it makes it less likely that a kid will have sex. Let’s be clear, it makes it less likely that any child will have sex. We have really, really strict rules, things like no kissing and whole marriage, less likely. But if they do, it’s more likely to be with incredibly risky sexual behaviors such as not using any protection. It’s more likely to be in an abusive situation. And so in essence it, it’s less likely to happen not by a lot, but it is less likely. But if it does happen, it’s far more likely to be the worst case scenario.
Wendy:
And then question the shame cycle. The shame cycle is what probably destroys lives the most and marriages the most.
Rebecca:
Right. And that’s what the research has found is that it is the shame cycle. It’s exactly what my mom was saying where it’s like, this girl who’s in this situation and says, you can’t even kiss someone till you’re married, ends up making up with making out with a boyfriend. And she realized, well, I’ve already given it all away, so I’m, I have no right to say no anymore. That’s what they think. I have no right to say no. And I heard this in our focus groups over and over and over again, this idea that, well I went this far, like, okay, well like I had his hand on,
Terry:
it’s already done
Rebecca:
up my shirt. And so we might as well have sex. Versus kids who have a more nuanced understanding of these things where it’s not about this hard line in the sand of you are pure and you are in good standing with God, or you are a horrible, horrible person who has lost their most precious treasure. But that there’s, it’s, it’s, it’s far, far more grace-filled than that we can teach our kids that they are able to say no because they’re empowered to know that, hey, even if I do something that I didn’t want, that I, that I originally was like, yeah, that was not actually a great idea, I can still just turn around at any moment Yeah. And just say no and go, I can just say no and not do this again. And it’s not a big deal. Versus this idea of your entire world will come crashing down if you have sex.
And that’s where sex education really comes into play too.
Wendy:
Oh, it’s wild. Like the whole consent thing is so fascinating because like we, you know, there was like a opening up the other night of like a, a spin the bottle situation where it was like, come on, come on, come on. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. And it was the first eye-opening thing for me as a parent where I was like, holy crap, that’s a consent issue right there. And it’s starting that young. Yes. And it seems like not that big of a deal, but like, you know, just, just remembering how important these conversations are, right. To like have with our kids. And I’m just excited to, to talk more with her about that. And I mean it’s, it’s just something I was never, I was never talked to about consent and, and then like you layer in so many people who have got the purity culture message of, well this is what a man needs and you’re good if you provide this and all the things.
It’s just so complex and interesting.
Sheila:
Remember, remember that you can’t actually have the consent conversation in church in, in evangelical churches that are stressing the purity rules because the thing that is the biggest sin is losing one’s virginity. And so we ne so we can’t even talk about consent because that implies that you might actually be doing some of this stuff. And so all we’re gonna tell you is not to do it. Now, of course the problem with, with saying that a girl’s virginity is her most precious treasure, it’s interesting that never say the boys’ virginity is it’s it’s the girls’ virginity that she gives. Like I don’t even get that, but, and whatever is that it can be stolen. Yep. So we are telling, we are literally telling girls that they are damaged goods when someone else hurts them.
I can’t think of anything more evil.
Wendy:
Right? Exactly.
Sheila:
And yet we have done that and so we haven’t had that consent conversation. And Becca, maybe you could just sketch out the Vera story story at the beginning because it’s so, I think it, it speaks to this so much.
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Rebecca:
Yeah. I talked to one woman in our focus groups where she explained that when she was 16 years old, she was dating a guy and she was having horrible migraines as a result of a concussion. And so one day her boyfriend brings her home from school cause she was having a blackout migraine and she blacked out and she woke up in essence and he was, he was raping her. So she goes to the Christian youth counselor at like their, their little Christian group on, on the high school campus and says, I had sex and really I don’t know how to feel about it. And she alluded to how he used force and the youth leader just scoffed and said well, it takes two to tango. And so then she says, well that the way she put it, which I thought was so funny, she said, that actually helped me.
Cuz for the first time I’d realized, wait I wasn’t tangoing. That didn’t take two cause I wasn’t tangoing. But she went to she, so she, she was still looking for help cuz she was still really confused. This is a boyfriend, she loved this guy. Right? So she goes to her youth pastor and his wife and she again explains the situation and her youth pastor says, well what do you expect for dating a non-Christian? And the youth pastor’s wife goes into the back room, comes back out with a piece of pink and a piece of blue construction paper and any of my Brio magazine, fundamentalist girlies are gonna know what’s coming up next. She glues them together and then she let weights them for the dry and then she tears them apart and she says, Vera, you have bits of the pink paper stuck on the blue and bits of the blue paper stuck on the pink.
When you have sex with someone, a piece of you is with them forever and you will always carry a piece of them with you as well. And Vera was heartbroken and she said, I feel, she said I felt crushed. Like I had just been told that I would have to carry my rapist around with me for the rest of my life. And she didn’t know at that point to use the word rapist.
Wendy:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca:
Because this is the advice she was getting. Well the advice was don’t have sex. No one asked. But wait, was this sex or was this rape?
Wendy:
Right.
Rebecca:
No one stopped to say, are you okay? They only stopped to condemn. And that’s why we need to change the conversation that we’re giving our teenage girls in the church because it’s not enough to talk about how you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married. We need to talk about a healthy sexual ethic, not about strict sexual rules because a healthy sexual ethic will include sexual boundaries. Yes. A healthy sexual ethic will include sexual boundaries, but it will be much more holistic so that our girls will have a better rate of, we in our survey, only one in four of our respondents said that they were confident they understood date rape by the time they, they graduated high school.
Rebecca:
Only one in four That is three and four girls who are susceptible to what Vira went through.
Wendy:
Yeah.
Rebecca:
That is three out of four. That is insane.
Wendy:
It’s insanity. Yeah.
Rebecca:
And these are women who were raised in the church. They read all the books like these are women who got the who a lot of them got these teachings and we know cause we asked them and they didn’t know. And that’s just inexcusable and that’s what we’re hoping to change. That’s why she deserves better. She deserves better than what we’ve been given. She deserves better than to be told. You are just pink construction paper that can be ripped off at any moment by some boy who decides to take what he wants. They deserve better to be told. Well it takes two to tango. They deserve better than to be told. If you don’t follow the rules perfectly, you are worthless. They deserve better. Yeah. To be
Wendy:
You disappointed me.
Rebecca:
Yeah. They deserve better than to be told. Your worth in Christ’s size is entirely about whether or not something’s gone into your vagina. And I’m sorry to be very crass, but that’s what Yeah, that’s what we’re told.
Sheila:
Yep.
Rebecca:
And our daughters deserve better and we believe there is a better way and we believe that there are churches that are doing better and we believe that our research has proven that. And so we hope that with this book what we can do is make it so that the generation of girls who are being raised by the people listening to this podcast, okay. The generation of girls who are being raised by the mothers who will read She Deserves better grow up to never need our book the Great Sex Rescue.
Wendy:
Yes, exactly.
Rebecca:
That’s what we want.
Sheila:
And She Deserves Better. It doesn’t just tell the moms about this research.
Wendy:
Yes.
Sheila:
The consent chapter for instance, has a lot of exercises that you do with your daughter
Wendy:
Nice.
Sheila:
That will help her will, will let you know that she does understand consent. By the time you are finished with that, she will understand consent. Yes. And it’s just such an important conversation because our girls are getting the opposite message. We do, we do give some examples of Christian resources that have really distorted the consent message. And let me just give you an example so that people can know what it is that we’re up against. So Shaunti Feldhahn wrote a book called For Young Women Only, which was published I think around 2006. I could have that wrong, but it was it was around that time period. Yeah. And it was based on a survey that she did of teenage boys.
We do not believe that her survey questions were properly worded or that they were properly interpreted. So I’m about to give you a stat that is gonna sound horrific, but please know that we do not think this stat is accurate. Okay. Yes. Yeah. But she asked girl, she asked boys, if you were in a make out situation with a girl, how willing or able would would you be to stop in that situation? And she concluded with their, with their answers that 82% of boys have little ability and feel little responsibility to stop in a make out situation.
Wendy:
What?
Sheila:
So she said 82, she combined little ability and feel little responsibility. So she is telling girls that 82% is boys may have little ability to stop.
Wendy:
And then she’s telling them that and then she’s teaching that. Right.
Rebecca:
What I find so frustrating too is what she does in her question is she tells the boys these are willing and eager participants. She says to the boys and the question, so in essence the boys are being given the situation where this her, their girlfriends all over them. She hasn’t said, you’re supposed to not have sex. She says, Hey, this girl’s all over you. How much do you wanna stop? And like the guys are like, why would I stop? Right. These are non-Christian guys who have their girlfriend who’s just willing to go there and, and then she extrapolates that to tell young girls in the church that if she highlights one young man’s survey response that says if you don’t want to go there, it’s better to not even start to a girl. And she highlights that like it’s best to not
Sheila:
Even puts, puts in bull, she puts it in a thought bubble. Yeah. If you want to stop, it’s better to not even start. So that is the message that is being given to girls. Combine that
Wendy:
No responsibility on the guys, no teaching of life skills, no teaching of self-regulation, understanding their body, understanding their mind, body connection. Nothing. No, it’s all on the girl. Yeah.
Sheila:
No teaching girls that if a boy crosses your boundaries, that’s a red flag. Right? It’s just simply saying so no, no saying, hey, this might mean that he’s not a good person. It’s just saying, Hey boys have little ability to stop. And so it’s better to not even start. Yeah. And you combine that with the message that girls are a stumbling block because your body is so attractive to him. And if you don’t dress properly, you’ll let his thoughts run away with him and then he will be overcome
Wendy:
This poor helpless man.
Sheila:
And it’s, it’s basically turning girls into the perpetrator of their own rapes.
Wendy:
Right.
Sheila:
Because what were you wearing and what were you thinking starting to kiss him? It’s like you actually made him rape you because he doesn’t have the ability to stop and you were a stumbling block.
Rebecca:
Yeah.
Wendy:
Dang,
Terry:
That’s so harsh
Rebecca:
Harsh. And we heard that exactly from other women that we interviewed. We heard that story from one woman we call Kay in the book who says that she was in this situation when she was 16 where she’s making out with this guy and she kept on saying, you know, stop we’re going too far. And then they’d just go back to just kissing and then he’d push again against this boundary and then she’d stop and then he’d push, then she’d stop and then he’d push and stop and push and stop and push and stop. And eventually she realized he’s never going to stop. And so she just gave in and afterwards she was thinking, well yeah, but I was wearing a short skirt. Well yeah, but I shouldn’t have been making out with him in the first place. Well yeah, but it’s like, yeah, but he could have stopped. But that’s not what she was taught.
Wendy:
Yes. Is there any books teaching that?
Rebecca:
She Deserves Better!
Wendy:
Right, right. But for like, for dad, for mom and dads of sons, like now that maybe that’s your next book, right? Like maybe
Sheila:
Yeah,
Wendy:
Teach the boys, right?
Rebecca:
She Can do Better.
Wendy:
Right.
Sheila:
But we do have,
Wendy:
There you go. Yeah.
Sheila:
We do have a course, a puberty course called the Whole Story where you can have conversations with your dads, with their sons and, and moms with their daughters. We’ll give you a link that you can share with your listeners. Yes. But that can help boys have that conversation too with their dads. Yeah.
Wendy:
Yes. Cuz that’s such an important equal part of this, right?
Sheila:
Yes.
Wendy:
That is so, so important, man. It’s like I could, we could talk to you guys for hours again, like your work, it, it like makes me wanna like sob with heartache and joy at the same time because there’s so much hope in it and so much heartache. But again, like I just, I feel like I get this feeling when someone’s work is so important and especially when like, you guys are in the world doing it and there’s just so much freaking, like, I don’t wanna call it tack cause I feel like that word is like thrown out in this way that’s like, there’s just so there’s not enough affirmation of what you’re doing. And so I’m just, I’m so grateful girls for this book and I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on it.
And I just, I wanted to end with one thing. I know, like, you know, I, in this, in this world where we’re bringing attention to something that we’re realizing is not okay and that needs to change, right? Like it’s happening, thank God in the cri like in the discipline world, like in the whole world discipline world, but especially in the Christian Church, right? Like I am someone, you guys are someone who is advocating and begging for change and demanding change of what is being taught, right? But I just, I love what you model Sheila, as far as healthy humility. Like you have, you’ve shared how you have earlier articles on like your blog or something where you’re like, Hey, I realize that I am, I’m actually not okay thinking that way or teaching that anymore.
And like you’ve pulled down those blog posts and said, Hey, like I’ve grown, I’ve learned, I’ve changed, like Jesus has opened my eyes and now I advocate for change in the church, right? Like, we need more leaders like that. So when, when leaders are called out or authors, right, or people teaching really toxic things that you guys have proven in your research, right? Like it’s not just marriage and sex. Like you guys, you know, have proven research about the discipline side of things too. We need leaders to say, humbly admit like, hey, we were outta line, we were wrong, we were wrong.
This is not the truth about what the Bible teaches us. And so, so just thank you for leading that and just for being willing to say like, hey, I get it. Like I’ve grown, I’ve learned and it’s just really important. And there’s not enough leaders and pastors and you know, churches that are doing that right now. And that’s what, you know, I hope everyone feels encouraged by this conversation to be an advocate in your church, right? As Rebecca said earlier, like, find the church that is, that is on the other side of the spectrum that is bringing the averages up. And also like I hope that, you know, just hanging out with these girls today gives you courage to raise your hand and say, Hey, I’d like to advocate for this book to be on the shelf, right?
Like, I’ll never forget the day we walked into church and I was volunteering a check-in and I was like, oh my gosh, they have the Jesus the Gentle Parent book on the shelf, like right there as like, you know, the welcome to the Rock Kids ministry area for check-in. I was like, thank you. But we need, we need to be advocates in our own churches to create the change that we wanna see, right? And so Sheila and Rebecca’s books are a perfect way to do that, to advocate and say, Hey, I’d like us to consider changing our narrative on this and realize that that is not an attack against your pastor or the people you know, your trusted mentors, air quotes, trusted mentors.
That is an invitation for growth and learning and correction in the name of Jesus. And so every single human on the planet is learning and growing. And so I just want, I just hope everyone feels encouraged by that because when you feel like you’re attacking your pastor or your church for bringing this forward, it’s a really hard place to go. You are not attacking, you are raising your hand and not turning a blind eye to injustice. And that’s what’s so cool. So many of you listening to this podcast have beautiful, strong-willed children. And a lot of us, it’s because we are beautiful, strong-willed like the apple doesn’t fall far and we have a very hard time turning a blind eye to injustice.
So use those justice buttons, get Rebecca and Sheila’s new book, advocate in your church for healthy discipline, compassionate discipline to be taught. Don’t tolerate those, those outdated, toxic teachings anymore that you need to hurt and harm your children. And that’s what the Bible teaches you. Don’t turn a blind eye and be okay with this purity culture being spread anymore. So I love you guys
Sheila:
And, and can I just say to you, for people who do wanna advocate, you know, She Deserves Better, it launches April 18th, so it is available for pre-order right now. But here’s what’s really cool. If you pre-order it, you can become an advocate because we have a pre-order bonus which shares some stats that didn’t make it into the book. Not because they’re not good, but just we didn’t have room. But we are really looking in depth at the modesty message. So what is the effect of telling girls that you are stumbling blocks for boys and what is the effect on a lot of the, of a lot of the dress codes that we see in churches and in schools. And so if you are concerned that the dress codes are very one-sided where you are, we have some talking points and some information and a handout in our pre-order bonus that you can take to your school or your church or your youth pastor.
And we, there’s a, we’ll give you the link that you can share with your listeners on how to get that bonus too.
Wendy:
And, and Rebecca you mentioned there’s, there’s even more bonuses that come with the pre-order, like if you actually pre-order the book, right? I think you mentioned there’s a few bonuses.
Sheila:
We’ve got a whole package that you can get when you pre-order. So just go to the link. There’s an email address that you can send your receipt to when you order it off of Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Just email us the receipts and you can get a bunch of our bonuses including the modesty one, which I think is really cool and can help people advocate. And let’s just start a conversation cuz our daughters do deserve better. And I just wanna tell moms and dads that, that you can do this, you can do this. It may seem like it’s a really big task, but you can do this and I hope that the book helps you. Hope She Deserves help you, I hope She Deserves Better helps you in that.
Wendy:
Oh, I love that. Yes. Okay, well, we’ll make sure we, we put the book, the links on our, our shop page on our website and just no listeners, like if you are, if you wanna support Sheila and Rebecca’s work, like I know pre-orders for authors really are helpful.
Sheila:
They’re big.
Wendy:
So, and, and I think pre-orders, the way they work is you don’t get charged till it ships. So it’s not really like doing anything.
Sheila:
Yeah, you’re automatically gonna get the lowest price because here’s the cool thing, the more people pre-order, the more Amazon drops the price. Like Amazon can drop it like by as much as 40%, the more people pre-order and the more people pre-order, the more other book sellers notice that the book is selling. And so then they’ll order it and they’ll stock it in their stores. So like pre-orders matter even more than orders after releases. So it just, if you want this message out there, this is part of being an advocate, so
Wendy:
Yay. And then we’re gonna make sure we link your puberty course too. And yes, Terry and I will for sure be doing that. I really would love some additional resources to talk to both of the kids. And so just thank you, thank you ladies for taking time outta your, your busy schedules to be with us this morning. This has been so rich and just so encouraging.
Terry:
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. You both are just powerful bright lights and I mean, listeners, can you believe this mom and daughter duo like out there changing the world, doing this together. It’s just so inspiring. Thank you so much for everything you’ve, you, you do. This has been great.
Sheila:
Thank you so much.
Families, I hope that you have loved this episode as much as I have loved recording it for you. Don’t forget to go grab your free Quick Start Learning Bundle so you can really step into learning with me. Head on over to freshstartfamilyonline.com/free and you’ll get your downloadable learning guide about how to raise strong-willed kids with integrity so you don’t lose your mind. And then also an invite to join me for my free Power Struggles online workshop. All right, go grab that now. Freshstartfamilyonline.com/free. As always, thanks for listening and I’ll see you in the next episode.
For links and more information about everything we talked about in today’s episode, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/162.
Stella:
For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening, families, have a great day.
