One night in high school, my very Baptist boyfriend and I had plans to attend Black Light Night with the Baptist youth group at the local bowling alley. If you are unfamiliar with this ritual of youth, it involved a dark bowling alley, the neon glow of black lights, and loads of N’Sync. We decided we had a solid five minutes to make out in his car before entering the building. We were teenagers in a Mississippi summer. I don’t make the rules.
As we walked in everyone turned to give us horrified faces. Upon glancing at my boyfriend, I realized that my lip gloss glowed white in the contrast of the black lights. His face was covered in it. My face was covered in it. Our necks and ears even had some white smears. “Oh Lord,” I remember thinking as I gazed upon a wall of glaring angry peers. “They look like they are going to kill me.”
There have been several books published in recent months by women who grew up during the ‘Purity Culture’ movement of the 1980s and 90s. Typically, what they’re referring to involved a “Promise Ring” to be worn as a reminder of their chasteness to God. Also, some ritual of signing or taking a vow, often with your father involved, was standard. If this all sounds like a creepy bat mitzvah gone terrible awry, then you are getting the general gist of the Purity movement.
Even if the adults in the situation meant well, which I imagine a lot of them did, these books call out the pain, confusion, repression, and shame that many women (and some men) experienced in their childhood and teenage years as a result. As a pastor, I regularly meet with women whose lives were irreconcilably damaged by this culture. Women come to me who were sexually assaulted only to have their parents tell them that they were asking for it. Or they come to me to talk about how racked with guilt they always feel around sex, years after getting married. I listen a lot. And I pray with them. But I cannot relate to what they have navigated.
While I grew up in Mississippi in the 1990s, I was in one of the few non-Purity households I knew of. My parents took us to church faithfully every Sunday, but seemed oddly uninterested in where my relationship with Jesus intersected with my sexual awakening. So I do not carry the same guilt and pain (at least about that one issue!) that many of my hometown peers carry. Lately, I have found myself at dinner parties or at a ladies night out, and the subject will come up. And so many of the women (especially those who grew up with promise rings) will anguish over how they are going to raise their daughters. What will they tell her about sex? How will they keep her safe?
I thought I’d lay out a few of the things my parents did to raise me as a young Christian woman who made wise decisions. I’m phrasing them as advice, but they’re really just descriptions of how I now realize my mom and dad acted toward me. Take them or leave them. If you do not find them helpful then they probably were not intended for you.
1. Do not take Jesus away from them.
I know of too many instances where girls have been taught, implicitly or explicitly, that the love of God is somehow contingent on their ability to remain “pure.” Words like “modesty” get thrown around as if God’s main interest in a young woman’s life is in doing a junior high skirt-length check. Girls are told that flirtatious speech or actions could be a “stumbling block” to the young men around them. This line of thinking makes sex creepy and God seem even creepier.
While we laud and magnify what scripture says about virtues like chastity, when we overemphasize out of fear, we run the risk of making sex all about Jesus, guilt, and female modesty. Even scarier, though, is the lack of conversation around earthly consequences that happens when the entire teachable moment is pulled from scripture.
When I was in high school, my Bible Belt state had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country and HIV was (and still is) an epidemic. Conversations around conception and STDs were the lifesaving talks that should have been happening around the kitchen table. But all to often, my peer’s parents would opt out of that less comfortable conversation and instead threaten their daughters with a purity-obsessed Risen Lord.
(As a parent myself now, I get this by the way. It is way easier to use a Jesus THREATDOWN than it is to show them how to put a condom on a banana. But, I digress.)
By contrast, my parents talked about pregnancy constantly. They would not shut up about it. An oft-repeated refrain from my mother was, “Sarah, if you get pregnant then everyone gets pregnant! I get pregnant! Your dad gets pregnant! Even your little brother gets pregnant!” I cannot tell you how many times a vision of my eight-year-old brother with child kept me from making a risky 11pm move. Seriously.
2. Talk about the future—and make it realistic.
I was desperately envious when all of my friends were given Promise Rings in middle school. I am a lover of jewelry and grand gestures, and this seemed like something I needed to get in on. I remember coming home and explaining why I needed a ring to remind me about a promise to not have sex until marriage, and my parents both laughed at me and said, “Let’s shoot for college! Save yourself until college!”
They talked to me often about all of the potential that was in front of me and how stupid all of the boys around me were. Some people might say that this is not the best way to raise a humble daughter. But I am not sure that was ever their goal.
3. Keep your daughter safe.
I know that it is central to purity culture that sexual abstinence will keep girls safe. Again, the intentions here are seldom malicious. But I would suggest that it is your job to keep them safe even after they start being “less pure.”
Once, in 10th grade, I necked with a boy at a party. The next week, a friend of mine told me that he had set up a secret code embedded in the school’s website. You could click a certain space on the homepage, and you would be directed to this young man’s website where he had posted very specific descriptions of all the girl’s he had been intimate with. I was on the list. I was cyberbullied before being cyberbullied was cool.
All I remember is my mom getting on the phone to him and saying something along the lines of “Look, you little asshole, if this does not come down immediately, I am showing up at your house with a lawyer.” This would have been particularly difficult for this young man as he recently won Bible Jeopardy at his church and would not want his parents to find out. Ahhh, morality.
What I do not remember is being at all ashamed to tell my mother what happened. Because when it came to me, I knew she just wanted what was healthiest and safest. And in that particular instance it was threatening a 15-year-old boy within an inch of his life.
None of this TMI advice means that you cannot talk about Jesus and sex with your kids. But here is my final suggestion: Talk about Jesus the way you always talk about Jesus. Call him the Forgiver and the Redeemer, no matter what happens. Because in all likelihood, your daughters (and sons) will make regretful choices around intimacy. And other things. Because all of us do. But knowing that they can turn to you and to Jesus when those things happen is actually the best gift a parent can give a child. Believe me, I would know.
COMMENTS
20 responses to “How Not To Raise a Daughter in Purity Culture (According to Sarah’s Parents)”
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This is so good! Thank you from someone who lived some of this and now has two daughters.
Thanks, Sarah. This is so helpful in revealing the harmful (often long-term) unintended consequences of the purity scene. I love how your honesty points toward love.
Have you really lived if you haven’t been cosmic bowling? That story is amazing.
This piece spins up a lot of feelings for me as someone whose group of friends (guys and girls) all read “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” in high school (obviously this freed up a lot of time for things like cosmic bowling and ice cream). I really appreciate Joshua’s statement about the book here: https://joshharris.com/statement/. He also has a free e-book with some reading suggestions that I thought were really interesting. In looking back, this book was actually more protective than damaging for me at that particular time in my life–and I praise God for that–but as Joshua says, that doesn’t mean the book should still be in print. One of the criticisms that I do have of the book (and the whole purity culture, I guess) is that it encourages an idolatry of sexual fulfillment within marriage.
What I really appreciate about my own parents is that even though they NEVER referenced the bible or sin in talks about sex, they were very clear on the emotional consequences that sex (especially casual) outside of a marriage can have. What led them to be honest about that? As Mark Twain says, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
Through the years in dorm rooms and at parties, I heard the same voice from the garden say to me “Did God really say…” leading me to question whether God’s design for intimacy (or anything else to be honest) was really in my best interest. As I look around at my group of peers now, I see a lot more emotional fallout from the lie that is pervasive in our culture that sex outside of the context that God intended it for won’t have deep and lasting emotional consequences. I want my daughters to know that they are counted pure and blameless because of Jesus’ complete work on their behalf and not because of their behavior **full stop**. When talking candidly about the consequences of sex–I do believe I will do them a disservice if I don’t explain it by equally weighing out the physical and the emotional consequences of sex.
Sarah is right to point out the dangers in the purity culture, and man-o-man do I share those concerns. I think I’ve shared them from day 1.
I always made fun of the Joshua Harris-stuff when I was in College. Eastern University is a VERY different place now (and not in a good way), but back in the late 1990’s ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ was all the rage. I thought, even then, that the Courtship approach placed too much leaden pressure on couples, forcing them to discern marriage-compatibility before dating-comparability. Harris has changed his tune in subsequent years, and I’m glad for it. And to suggest with words or whispers or jewelry that one’s legitimacy in the Eyes of Ultimacy hinges upon virginity is a Pelagian (and quite unbiblical) hermeneutic, and one that batters the wounded heart from within.
And yet I think that many Christians are being dangerously (and deliberately) unbiblical in our current cultural moment, which is hardly being carried along by a puritanical current. Increasingly, American Christians are adopting a libidinal hermeneutic which can take nearly any form of sexual expression forbidden by Scripture and somehow make it ‘work.’ The damage of biblical-dishonesty and incredulity has yet to be measured, but give it 20 years or so and we’ll glean a horrific yield. (Also, I doubt in 20 years that any Christian will celebrate or regard as heroic the construction of a semi-Asheran statue gifted to a dubious politician.) The major damage of our present moment will fall at the feet of an anti-purity culture, which gives license where God has not and commends what God has condemned.
Our biblical and Reformational theology (which hinges upon grace-as-redemptive-favor, and not upon a blanket affirmation) energetically decries a purity culture which equates the justification of sinners with their sexual purity. And our biblical and Reformational theology would also decry the betrayal of Scripture by those who teach an anti-purity message, diminishing the moral Law rather than seeing it beautifully fulfilled (and upheld – Romans 3:31) by a lavishly merciful Christ. We know from St John that ‘his commandments are not grievous.’ The best thing we can do is to communicate God’s Word with integrity and honesty, both in Law and in Gospel, upholding the Creation-oriented requirement as well as the unyielding mercy which cures the broken heart.
Ethan! ❤️
Sarah, I realize that I diverted from the direction of your article, but that wasn’t because I’m dissing your concerns. Not. At. All. I (from my heart) share them.
We have about 200 college students at the parish I serve, and most of them hail from a local Christian college. What’s interesting, though, is how the pastoral issues have morphed over my tenure as rector here. Early on, say ten years ago, the highly-strictured and crampy purity culture was still ‘felt’ on campus. I – the new Anglican minister – was regarded as dangerous because I taught anti-courtship classes at the church (called ‘How to Date Like a Healthy, Normal Person’), I warned people about over-controlling fathers who creepily claimed to ‘own’ their daughter’s purity until her future-marriage, and I got angry phone calls from spleeny parents who asked me to engage in church-discipline with their children (and they were furious when I refused to do so – most of what their kids were up to wasn’t sin … in fact, most of it sounded fun). And yet in 2019, I’m chilled-to-the-bone by the new and darker appetites that have replaced the mid-nineties virginity-obsession. The ruin that I’m currently seeing is, from my pastoral encounters (anecdotal, I know), what happens when ‘purity’ is not replaced with a humble, biblical righteousness which springs from free-Grace, but with a ‘belly-god.’ On rare occasion I still deal with (and I hope, with a generous pastoral grace) those who have been seared by the excesses of Harris-ism, but more and more the god of appetite reigns supreme. And heaven help us all.
Anyway, just an explanatory note. I commend your concerns and your pastoral heart. We have to stay close to Christ and his Word in these weird times, and in light of our own weird souls.
I would be fascinated to know more about the specifics of what you see as “unbiblical,” Ethan. What is the “horrific yield” we will glean? What exactly falls under a “libidinal hermeneutic”? What is the “anti-purity message” you see being taught?
I ask because Mbird has been a real balm to me over the past year, and I’ve come to really enjoy the podcast. But this comment surprised me only because the language of “commend[ing] what God has condemned” sounds suspiciously similar to the rhetoric of conservative Christian groups that viciously condemn LGBT people. As a gay man, my radar is on high alert with this kind of stuff – whenever I hear people saying God condemns exactly what they themselves want to condemn, it seems all too convenient, and even more so if it’s a married heterosexual person talking about how God condemns gay people. Such rhetoric has been deployed by those groups for years to mock me and diminish my God-given human dignity, to draw the circle of God’s fold and specifically cast me outside of it.
I wouldn’t have guessed that Mbird would be a place where such views are held, so maybe I’m misreading it. (Although I’ve noticed that there is not much on the site specific to the experience of LGBT people.) I am genuinely curious to know more about what you mean. I hope I’m off-base.
I love your parents Sarah. I don’t know them at all, but I love them!….I love the movie “Juno” too, and I love how great those images and insights are sprinkled about this entire piece.
I took our oldest daughter to the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” seminar here in Atlanta when she was 11 (Josh Harris was very nice when he talked to her and signed her copy) – she’s now 31. We never pushed the promise ring on her because Dina and I both thought it was creepy, even back then…but the next Christmas, the only gift she wanted was “Passion and Purity” by Elizabeth Elliott. Of course we bought it for her – we got off cheap that Christmas!
In particular, I love what you said about “keeping our daughters safe” …… when our younger daughter went to Senior Prom, she was with a friend group of 8 couples – all Christian families. One of the families volunteered to let all 16 spend the “after prom” night in their basement. All of the parents were thrilled that their children would be in a “safe environment” for prom…….that is, except for Dina and I.
We let her stay there at their house till 1AM, and then went and picked her up. She was MORTIFIED!….. and now she’s 27, and she thanks us often for not being like “all of the other Christian parents”!….. our other two children went to prom with Mormon kids! ….. and everyone was home and tucked in bed safely by 10:30…moral insanity has it’s upside.
However, we did not keep our daughters safe – they went through a lot of “bleep” in HS and College, or as Juno would say, they were out dealing with stuff “way beyond their maturity level”. As much as women deal with shame about the purity ring era, I think that we as parents deal with shame over not protecting our girls as well we should have – I love what your mama did threatening that kid! That’s a win, and parenting these days is about a lot of wins and losses, and A LOT of pointing to the Savior Jesus, not the “6 inch measuring stick” Jesus…..much love!
Hmm. The discussion here seems to be that some aspects of “purity culture” are broken (and they definitely are). Yet at the same time, “saving oneself for marriage” still sorta, kinda is God’s gold standard.
So, here we are, stuck in the middle with no good answers as to how to keep our kids from the heartbreak of a pre-marriage sexual relationship while not going all OT stoning on them.
One question to ask is why Christians today don’t encourage their kids to get married earlier rather than to spend 18-28 basically engulfed in flames. I mean, why tempt fate? Who says college and a bunch of years mucking about establishing a career should be the norm? Why don’t Christians bust that norm? It’s heading for a bust anyway.
But is the engulfed in flames thing even really the case? I mean some of us first had sex on our honeymoons, and we weren’t mere youths, so it’s not like it’s not impossible to get to the marriage bed a virgin, even past your 20s. What’s with thinking failure is inevitable?
So, maybe we just put too darned much emphasis on sex? I mean, when you make it the be all and end all of everything, you create this sense that if you’re not doing it, you’re some bizarre weirdo.
Anyway, what DO we actually tell our kids? My parents never told me no, but at the same time, I knew that my having sex before marriage would have disappointed them terribly. And God too. Is that no longer valid?
Anyone?
I agree… what do we teach? I received very mixed messages from my parents and society growing up in the ‘80’s. I don’t recall any discussion about sex and relationships at church or youth group. I sort of floundered around going back and forth between what I thought God wanted and what I thought guys wanted or what I thought I wanted. For now we are teaching our boys to wait… until marriage if they can, but if life takes them another way to please be “safe” and respectful of themselves and the other person. We talk about being friends and getting to know someone they like, building trust. That’s a general overview and it has been talked about in relation to their ages..starting around 11 years old. We also allowed them to get the school’s “sex” education classes and discussed them. Our younger son just kept saying “Ewww, I don’t want to talk about it” and our older son then talked to his Dad. Our church is taking on a wonderful role this year of having some Bible studies for our youth about this very subject. I hope it’s wonderful and not too much information out of fear. We’ll see…
I love this so much. So so so damn much.
I love this, being that I remember the purity rings well, and have some younger friends who were in the thick of it and decided not to kiss until they were married (they now admit that was unnecessarily rigid)…
I did wait. I grew up with the contrast of a mom who openly talked about sex, and had waited herself until marriage, along with a father that was not a believer, yet was conservative in his views…. everything was mixed in there!
My take away from that and since, in a culture of extreme promiscuity that has obvious damage everywhere, is that it is, and always should be, about God. He has created all things, and through Him all things were created… including sex. And He made all things for our good, and His glory… including sex. I’ve pointed out to my kids that there are all sorts of variations on what God actually intended, but if we stick to what it actually was intended for, the consequences are greatly reduced.
That does not mean the marital sex is always more orgasmic than anything Cosmo touts, but it does mean that it has a much better chance at the true unifying intimacy it was intended for. It always means that anything unexpected (…. ahem, pregnancy) is much more protected under the wings of a committed marriage. God can redeem anything. Grace is extended from the cross, not from the law. But when we seek to follow His rules and laws, we will find that He was looking out for us that whole time with intention and purpose. For when we shine His light on this culture, it reveals pain and brokenness He did not intend for what He created.
Our kids will make mistakes…in relationships, in sex, in life. I pray that they always remember who made them and why.
Sarah, thanks for sharing this. And Ginger, I had not read his stance of re-evaluation. Which makes me think ‘wow’ that he took that opportunity to voice his having changed his mind on some things, rather than a total re-brand, or taking a position of justifying his former views.
To the most recent comment from DLE, I have to strongly disagree. The church is, passively (by way of judgement) and sometimes actively, encouraging kids to get married younger. What solution does this provide? Justifying sex? By choosing to enter into a lifelong commitment with God and another person in order to meet that end only compounds the problem. I’ve witnessed one too many products of this married-young set and they are getting divorced right and left. Or seriously suffering within the confines of marriage (what’s new) but additionally compounded by guilt and the realization that they married to meet the expections of others, or even moreso, to absolve their own feelings of guilt and shame. As Ginger stated so well, the idolatry of sexual fulfillment is a big one in this culture. Imagine what that does to a new spouse who realizes they are now expected to fulfill this role, one that the church, or whoever, has promised them. I dare to say that is as much objectifying as anything else out there.
I believe the answer here is less prescriptive. Though heartbreak, love, betrayal, and/or an unintended pregnancy can teach a lifetime’s worth of lessons, perhaps, as Sarah says, we just stick with the rule, Don’t Take Jesus Away From Them. He’s not interested in the morality of turtlenecks and skirt-measuring. He’s interested in them. At every point in their lives. Maybe especially in the moments of “What have I done?” That’s where I found grace.
I am waiting for the “Human Sexuality” issue of the Mockingbird magazine. As a lapsed Methodist or Christ-haunted heathen romantic…whatever identity the world wishes to stamp me with…the main reason I have never returned to The Church is because of the issue of human sexuality. At a half-century old, I can only view human sexuality as a torturous curse. It is unknowable to me as a gift, as a component of human flourishing. It is the one point where my absolute resentment of the secular world and of the Christian world converge. Despite every single thing I’ve ever been told by both sides, the deepest recesses of my reason and heart can only interpret human witness to the experience of sexuality as a lie. The church has “The Catholic Church Problem,” and the secular world has their #metoo problem to demonstrate both sides of this gross failure. Other than the gift of those beautiful babies, it all seems like a wretched horror.
Well done, good and faithful servant! I can not wait to hear you preach!
More things I wish I would have heard/believed years ago. This is amazing. Thank you for always reminding us that we are loved by Jesus. #therapydebt lol!