So, did anyone else see this episode of Wife Swap? I generally don’t watch the show with any regularity, but sometimes I get interested in possible train wreck scenarios. The first episode I ever saw of this type of show (can’t remember if it was this one or Trading Spouses) was the one where they pitted a small town conservative Christian woman against a mom from a fairly liberal “spiritual” family and it ended up in the Chrstian woman shrieking about gargoyles and psychics and how they’re “not a Christiaaaaaaaaaaan!” and kicking the entire crew out of the house while trying to exorcise them all. It was a trainwreck beyond all trainwrecks.
Well, this episode took a hint from that one and decided to swap wives from two varieties of Christian households. One family (Beckman-Heskett) consists of wife as breadwinner and theologian husband who disagree with literalist interpretations of the bible and encourage their daughters to pursue education and careers of their choosing. The other family (Childs) consists of a SAHM and husband as breadwinner who believe in following the biblical teachings to the letter*, the man as head of household and arbiter of rules, and women as subservient helpmeets to their male partners.
There weren’t as many fireworks during the “meeting of the spouses” portion of this episode, but there were quite a few when the Childs family members encountered differing points of view than their own, with immediate accusations of “the devil” supporting a point of view that did not adhere exactly to theirs. I do recall with some astonishment Mrs. Childs seeing Mr. Heskett’s multiple doctorates in theology and deciding that “that’s okay; I have a special connection with God” as justification; it just came across as invalidating any study he’s done because she’s decided that studying your beliefs means that you can’t have a connection with the higher power you profess to believe in. I’m also concerned with the way Columbia Childs was handled by the father during this episode; although she had some differing opinions, they were actively suppressed by both father and mother and, in one point in the show, Mr. Childs drove away with Columbia instead of letting her have more exposure to Ms. Beckman-Heskett, who seemed pretty bland but fairly vehement that the Childs family try something new. <---- Isn’t that what the show is about, other than creating situations of easy drama?
Any thoughts on this episode?
[sub]*but only when it’s convenient, it seems. For a start, there’s a lot of things from Leviticus missing from the household.[/sub]
I saw it. I kept waiting for the follow-up clip to show Mr. Childs explaining how he has to rape his daughters as part of god’s plan, or digging some daughter-sized graves. What a fucking soul crushing environment for those kids (they must have been so proud when that one daughter ‘saw the light’ and decided not to become a doctor because her duty was to be a wife and mother). The mother seemed a bit nicer, especially when she got excited about speed dating, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts he beat that notion right out of her.
The Beckmann-Hesketts were my family of choice, but yikes, what a douchebag for a dad. No problem with him being a ‘housewife’ (honestly, no one could come up with an alternative? Stay-at-home dad? Househusband? Christ), but he was pretty inarticulate for someone with a ‘PhD in Bible,’ and ridiculously condescending. The wife seemed nice, though, and the kids normal.
Of course, like every episode, there was a decent amount of obviously staged bits. Still, infuriating.
The whole family seemed to have a strange relationship with the father. I suspect that the marriage started out as a woman with low self esteem settling for a guy who’s controlling and it all went on from there. I have to seriously wonder what the girls think is going to happen when they pray to God for a husband if they’re against dating first. Are we discussing an arranged marriage? Are they going to look for someone who goes to the same church as them? Or is Daddy going to be their eternal father-husband-master? It’s a little creepy, and I find his behavior to be suspect, as nobody should have that deep of an interest in his daughters’ virginities and love lives beyond hoping that their partners are good people. Columbia just looked dejected and resigned to a fate she didn’t want after the “escape in the van” episode; my imagination ran away with me and wondered whether she went to a temporary “Christian” reprogramming camp to beat the love of subservience back into her.
The Beckmann-Hesketts dad was a lot like some of the professors I’ve met while an undergraduate student. Some of them are so caught up in what they’ve studied that they just cannot hold a regular conversation with anyone without it going back to whatever it is they’ve spent their lives studying. The dad was so “scarred” by dealing with crazy fundies that he was more than willing to be “crazy religion professor” with Ms. Childs, but had a hard time relating to the fact that they were on different wavelengths when it came to belief and reasons for belief. The wife was a bit more normal, but still seemed a bit like she resented the idea of any woman being a housewife, even if that was that woman’s choice.
Both families were a little unbalanced, but at least the Beckmann-Haskett household has a better chance of their children finding success and happiness in the world we live in while still “living their faith”.