I think it's extremely telling. That sort of upbringing leads to that kind of mental state. Regardless of what a woman sees around her, who her friends are, what her education level is, if she's been raised to think so little of herself, she will put up with all sorts of dominating behavior because she thinks she has no choice.
Well, I'm more of a believer in nature than nurture. But let's say it's all about upbringing. Even so, by your description is valid but not specific to the Christian community. That was my point.
As I said in my post, what is rare I think is families raising daughters to expect physical punishment. I doubt they do. What they are raised with is the idea that the man is the leader, the shepherd, the one to whom she must cling, the one who is closer to god, the one who is in control. With that sort of idea about a marriage spouse, when/if the abuse starts, it's unlikely she's going to think anything is wrong with HIM.
What I'm saying is that I think families that teach that the man is "the leader, the shepherd" etc. -- in other words, families who advocate that the woman should be totally subordinate and submissive to the man -- are in 2011 very few and far between. Again, I'm sure they exist out there, but they are not mainstream, so to speak, conservative Christians. Don't believe me? Let's take a look. The conservative Christians I know in RL don't say that. The conservatives I've gotten to know on BetterMost don't say that. Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh don't say that. I've never heard Pat Robertson and his ilk say that.
Are there some backwoods, backwards, old-school Christians who still teach their daughters that sort of thing? No doubt. Heck, I've met backwoods types who's families have been in the United States since the 18th century yet they don't speak English (only French). My point is that people like that are rare outliers, not what you'd expect from some average conservative Christian family.
As far as average Christian families go, they and I probably wouldn't see eye to eye on lots and lots of issues, including women's roles. But do they think that men are totally the boss of women and that women have to do whatever men say? No, not often.
The stats are only stats of those who REPORT the abuse. If a woman doesn't think the husband is doing anything wrong, or that she somehow deserves her treatment, and he reinforces this idea along with her family and social network, she's not going to report it. There could be a lot more of it than we know about.
The stats are definitely under-reported, although in this day and age it's less because the woman doesn't think the husband is doing anything wrong -- women who think like that are extremely are -- as that she feels helpless, scared and/or loves him and is trying to protect him.
Ummmm, maybe they give verbal lip-service to approving of them, but it's unlikely with the male dominated society that they subscribe to that they'd actually vote for them. A friend of mine were just talking about this very subject just this weekend and this was our conclusion. 
If those candidates were the most conservative candidates around, you can bet they'd vote for them. I think that, for instance, if the GOP race were between Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, Bachmann would win easily with the far-right conservative Christians. Though not among the more reasonable moderate Republicans, so in the end Bachmann probably wouldn't get the nomination.
Masses of people don't usually "give lip service" to some candidate and then vote otherwise. Except when it comes to black candidates, in which case there's an actual phenomenon called the Wilder Effect (after Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia) about people telling pollsters they're likely to vote for a black candidate but then not actually doing it. You could argue that Bachmann, Palin, etc., would be the subjects of their own personal Wilder effect. But I disagree, and unless we have numbers we won't resolve that easily.
It also entails Bachman lying about being submissive to her husband. If she was following the bible teachings as she claims, she'd also have her head covered while speaking in public and be silent in church and her husband should be either with her at all times, or be discouraging her to speak in public.
Well, exactly. I think Bachmann saying she's submissive is sort of a PC statement for that community and doesn't really mean much. If she were following Bible teachings, she would leave/have left the house when she has/had her period, spend the time in isolation and avoid touching anything that others touched.
If such women were truly as bible following as they claim to be, we wouldn't be hearing from them. Bachman is a typical fundamentalist hypocrite like all the others.
Sure. They pick and choose just like most Jews and Christians do. Just at a more fundamentalist level.
The novel The Handmaid's Tale was pretty amusing when it described a similar situation. In that novel, the US has become a theocracy that harkens to Hebrew Bible teachings. A woman politician much like Bachman or professional like Schlafly - before the move to the theocratic form of government - used to go on public speech jags about a Christian woman's proper place, blah blah blah... then when the country actually went to a theocratic government, women were silenced in public. Just like the bible says. The main character of the book notices that this ex-politico/professional woman is not happy about being put in her proper place.
I've read it. It was published in 1985, and very topical in respect to the Iranian revolutio -- that is, with only slight exaggeration, what happened to Iranian women. As for North America, it wasn't, and isn't, as good a fit. It's dystopian, for sure, but we were nowhere close to that sort of society 26 years ago and we're much further away from it today.
