Covert Childhood Sexual Abuse (Part 2)

This is part two in a three-part series on covert childhood sexual abuse. In this article, I build on last week’s post that covered the definitions of childhood sexual abuse and the ways in which it exists in covert forms.

Covert childhood sexual abuse occurs when a parent takes emotional and psychological pleasure from a form of intimacy with their child that is not centered on the child’s needs. Many examples of this type of abuse can be categorized as either enmeshment or enslavement. In this post I’m diving into the concept of enmeshment and next week we’ll look at forms of enslavement.

Enmeshment: parental domination of a child’s emotional and relational energy

Enslavement: parental domination of a child’s body

This series culminates with a substack live event on Friday July 24th at 11am MST with author Marissa Burt, coauthor of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families. We’ll discuss how the use of spanking intersects the terrain of childhood sexual abuse.

Continue reading the free post here!

Save the date! Live substack hour with Marissa Burt on Friday July 24th @ 11am MST!

Covert Childhood Sexual Abuse (Part 1)

In the six months I’ve been writing on substack, this is the topic I feel the most called to speak about and the one I have most dreaded diving into. Everything I have written about childhood trauma is the scaffolding for this topic. I’d hoped it would feel more natural and gentle by now, but it doesn’t. I don’t expect discussing how large the umbrella of childhood sexual abuse really is will feel rewarding but I know it is important. This three part series is not for everyone, but there are more of us for whom this is relevant than we want to admit.

All of us have at least a beginning concept of what qualifies as childhood sexual abuse.

Dr. Dan Allender defines it as any contact or interaction—whether visual, verbal, or psychological—in which a vulnerable person (such as a child or adolescent) is used for the sexual stimulation or gratification of an older, stronger, or more influential person. This includes any touching, rubbing, or exposure to pornography meant for the offender's pleasure and is possible because of a fundamental betrayal of trust and misuse of authority to groom or coerce a victim.

This is what I refer to as OVERT sexual abuse. It’s something you could capture on camera. It involves physical contact and is clearly violating even if the beginning stages of grooming are hazy. The heartbreaking reality is that this is only part of what qualifies as childhood sexual abuse. There are many other categories of COVERT childhood sexual abuse that leave survivors battling the same emotions and symptoms but without the clarity of why.

Continue reading the free post here!

Save the date! Live substack hour with Marissa Burt on Friday July 24th @ 11am MST!

How Emotionally Immature Parenting Dehumanizes Children & Compromises Their Development (Part 3)

In astronomy, gravitational dominant means a celestial body is massive enough to control or clear out all other objects in its orbital path through collisions, captures, or ejections. Traditional Christian parenting models, like the ones Burt and McGinnis research in their book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families, posture parents as God-like figures in the lives of their children exerting incredible force in the family system.

This post wraps up a three-part series exploring how the parenting style of emotionally immature parents compromises the differentiation process for children. Lindsay C. Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents list traits of EIPs (emotionally immature parents) that fall into three main categories. We’ve looked at how EIPs are immovable and competitive. This week we take a look at their gravitational dominance.

Continue reading the free post here!

Save the date! Live substack hour with Kelsey Kramer McGinnis on Friday June 26th @ 11am MST!

How Emotionally Immature Parenting Dehumanizes Children & Compromises Their Development (Part 2)

This post continues a three-part series exploring how the differentiation process for children clashes with the parenting style of emotionally immature parents. We are looking at three key categories from Lindsay C. Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents. Last week we looked at how EIPs (emotionally immature parents) are immovable. This week we take a look at their competitiveness.

The most tragic thing about being raised by an EIP is that what they need compromises what you need. Their underdeveloped relationship with personal power plagues their parenting style and thus undermines the development of their children’s agency. Burt and McGinnis in their book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families shed light on how well-intending parents become entwined in power struggles with their children.

Continue reading the free post here!

Save the date! Live substack hour with Kelsey Kramer McGinnis on Friday June 26th @ 11am MST!