Book Review: A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication date: August 6, 2024
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles––a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn’t risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.
Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman’s race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
Tia grew up in a conservative mega church, where she met her husband, Allen. She married him right out of high school. Soon after they wed, he joined an even more conservative patriarchal Christian movement that was all about wives submitting to their husbands. It was part of the quiverfull movement that the Duggars are also a part of, although it wasn’t the same church as them. The idea is to have a “quiverfull” of children to be God’s soldiers and hopefully eventually outnumber all of the sinners in the world.
Tia’s church also believed in the Goddred method of raising children to be obedient. That included “blanket training” that starts when the child is just a baby. They are punished every time they try to roll or crawl off their blanket on the floor so that eventually, they will stay on the blanket. (Michelle Duggar also promotes this method of teaching children to obey.)
Tia’s husband and the church itself became worse and worse over time. The leadership openly condoned and encouraged husbands to spank their wives to get them to obey. Her husband was more than happy to follow this protocol.
Something in Tia told her that this was not right. She never blanket trained her infants and she went against the advice of the other mothers in the church who believed babies would become spoiled if you picked them up and/or fed them whenever they cried.
Eventually, Tia began processing her growing disillusionment with the church through blogging and connecting with other women in her situation through a message board called Trapdoor. Even so, it took her years to work up the courage to take her children and leave. And even more years to process her religious trauma.
I enjoy books about cults, and I believe that religious fundamentalism is basically a cult. It’s fascinating to me how many women in Tia’s circle believed whole heartedly that their husbands should control them and they should submit blindly to them. And they mentored Tia (or at least tried to) to be the same way as them. They are already living in the way the project 2025 proponents want everyone in the country to live.
Tia is a strong woman and I’m glad to have read her journey out of religious patriarchy. She is featured in the Amazon documentary Shiny Happy People, which I hope to watch soon to learn even more about her and her former community.
