Spoiler warning: this letter references events and personalities in Welcome to Plathville Seasons 1-4.
Dear Fergus,
Thank you for sharing the tea with me about the hit reality show Welcome to Plathville. I have not been able to keep track of the number of Plath children in this program so it is all the more difficult to keep track of their individual stories. But having completed a deep dive just now up to Season 4 I have some observations about the dynamics of the family, especially Kim and Barry’s parenting style.
What Even is This Show Honestly
For those out of the know, Welcome to Plathville follows two parents and their 9 children living on a farm in Cairo (pronounced Cay-ro, obviously) Georgia. This, at least, is the initial setup, but early on the older children are transitioning into their marriages and jobs. Another two siblings, Micah and Moriah, are invited not to live in the family home anymore (ie. were kicked out) due to their disobedience and pursuit of a wild, secular lifestyle—relative to the family norm.
The Plath farm seems a lovely place to grow up in terms of opportunities to commune with nature, appreciate an honest day’s work, and learn stewardship over crops and animals. But challenges abound for your average 21st Century child.
Parents Kim and Barry run a tight ship in their Christian conservative home. There is no TV; no pop music; a limited, supervised use of internet; no sugar intake; no Coke Zero (I could never); and the children are homeschooled to protect them from the dangerous ideas and influences of the outside world.
I wonder if there are parents who restrict their children’s viewing of TLC to protect them from the horrors that can be seen there too.
For most of their formative years, the Plath children are naturally unaware of other ways of living. I would say their encounters with the world around them largely come from being on the show. When family drama happens, Plathville fans are on social media doing analyses and taking sides. One of the siblings will then go on record on TikTok or insta live to clarify the truth of the matter. Then a spouse or boyfriend of one of the siblings gives us the real low-down. So on and so forth.
It is a strange thing to have your introduction to the outside world be a Reddit post by a fan and/or enemy in Medicine Hat, Alberta, but this is the unique life for the Plath children.
I can understand why Kim and Barry wanted to shield their children from these kinds of dynamics in the world, and all the ways technology can be used for destructive ends. Alas, the filming of their everyday lives ultimately defeats the purpose of this intentional isolationism. They are the most famous pseudo off-grid family in the world.
Trouble in Plathville
The all-access arrangement of the program allows us to get a sense of the deeper problems in the Plath household. We see children who are free of many anxieties others their age may face, yes; but we also see the young adults they grow into be woefully unprepared for life outside the nest.
And boy do they resent the heck out of their parents for it.
The three eldest that the show follows, Ethan (and his wife Olivia), Micah, and Moriah, each in their own time, confront their parents about their upbringing. While Ethan had a clearer and longer break from contact with his parents due to their treatment of his wife, Olivia, the other two were able to have frank conversations with their parents that were pleasantly nuanced and mature. The siblings could talk about the aspects of freedom on the farm that they enjoyed, but not to the exception of a serious critique about the inadequacies in their parenting that led to them to where they are now.
Each elder Plath child shared their frustration with Kim’s homeschooling program, and how behind it left them compared to their peers. They felt lacking in basic social and communication skills. They were unfamiliar with the diversity of lifestyles and systems of belief in the world—and if they were familiar, they understood that it was all evil and bad.
The messaging that you only date a person with a view toward marrying them led to challenges in their first romantic relationships. In the case of Ethan, this meant a pressure for he and Olivia to be married as soon as possible, to the detriment of each. Ethan and Olivia reference the problems caused by their rushed marriage fairly often, wishing there had been more time to see areas of incompatibility. Ethan finds himself frustrated with Olivia’s growth into a seemingly different person than he fell in love with. It is the kind of conflict that could have looked different if each had ample time to accept or reject the aspects of “the world” that they were taught to fear and hate.
Meet the Parents (And Confront Them About Your Childhood)
Looking at the conversations the elder Plaths had with their parents, I want to begin by looking at Kim and Barry’s side, not taking into too much account the things we know about them from sources outside the show. Their demeanour in talking to their children and receiving their criticisms is relatively calm. Barry can be an odd duck and say serious things while smirking, but you don’t necessarily get a sense of flat out denial you may get in other cases.
The Plath parents express a sentiment I can empathize with, even as a non-parent. There are no rulebooks or clear answers for parents anywhere, and the two of them say they did the very best they could to love and protect their children, to help them grow in faith and to know right from wrong, and to prepare them for life as an adult.
With the understanding that my writing about the Plaths is not just about the Plaths themselves, I would take the “We did the very best we could with what we had” to heart unless there was reason not to.
Why the qualifier? Because sometimes that just isn’t true.
When a child is consistently harmed by a parent, belittled, shamed, or neglected, “We did the best we could with what we had” isn’t good enough. There may be no handbook for parenthood, but the capacity to be a good, just, loving person is accessible to anybody.
If we carry trauma, unhealthy ways of coping with anger, issues with substances or other addictions that were beset upon us to no fault of our own—all of this deserves compassion. But when we begin to harm our children or others as a result of even these things that are not our fault, we have to recognize that it is all still ours to address and heal. This is urgently true for parents.
“This is how my parents treated me—actually they were even worse—and I turned out fine!”
No actually, you didn’t. If, despite your inevitable mistakes (no one can possibly get it 100% right), your child cannot say with confidence that you love them—something is seriously amiss, and the sources of rectification are far more likely to be found in vulnerability and humility than in doubling down, or consulting a parenting for dummies book as if the answers were so mysterious.
Why vulnerability and humility? Whether you are a parent or a priest, vulnerability means dropping a façade of closed certainty in favour of open reflection, for the good of you, your loved ones, and all you interact with. There is no chance of intimacy with a grown child without this, particularly when they are in a place of resentment about their upbringing.
Humility is the companion concept. When I recognize myself as more limited in knowledge and power than I project, I no longer have a long way to fall when the feedback about me is humbling. I am telling the person giving me difficult information about how they experience me: “Even before you speak I am down here to meet you.”
For a parent having difficult conversations with their grown children about their upbringing, it might help to think of how most adults naturally relate to small children. We might lean or crouch down to speak, or hear the cool story about something that happened at recess. A parent might pick up their child to hold them and see eye to eye, especially if they are crying, hungry, or just raising their arms for a pick-up.
In the case of Kim and Barry, this is at least part of what I would want to communicate to them on behalf of their children as they enter into these difficult conversations. Drop the façade. It’s true that no one can stab you with your armour on; but no one can comfortably embrace you either. So do what you once did as parents and come to whatever level necessary to listen to what your kid is telling you. And understand that unless this conversation is happening in the context of explaining why a child is going no-contact, their concerns are being brought forth in a spirit of potential repair.
Despite the harm caused, Kim and Barry’s barrier to entry back into their kid’s lives felt so low, thanks to the Plath children themselves. These were young people who were not intent on holding onto bitterness and grudges for the rest of their lives. They just wanted to be seen, heard, and respected enough to get an acknowledgement of harm done, and an apology—neither of which would have negated what good they had done as parents!
By the end of Season 4, the results for Kim and Barry’s relationships with their children are a bit mixed, but there are steps in the right direction. Notably, what positive steps their have been did not come from Kim and Barry convincing their children that what they said happened, didn’t, or that it didn’t matter because they tried their best. The shift into healthier relationships as adults came from receiving their children’s vulnerability, and responding in kind.
Whatever happens with the Plaths (I am on Season 5 and feel nauseous) it’s never too late for any of us to let go of what narratives we cling to that keep us from healing relationships. It is not safe for every parent-child relationship to include contact, never mind friendship. But even in the midst of the messiness of these first four seasons, the Plaths remind us of how attainable a few steps in the right direction really are for many.
Yours in Ethan not being ready for children but caring for 6+ vintage cars he has no room or time for,
Stu
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