Lifetime's The Preachers' Daughters

Lifetime Network aired a new "reality" series with the theme of what it is like to be the daughter of a preacher.  Of course they are all Christian's.  We have different sects within Christianity being immortalized.

All of these young woman are 18 or younger and are living with a preacher.  One daughter, Colby, the youngest of the group has to deal with both parents being preachers.  Although the parents are divorced.  She is 16 and is looking to start dating.  This is a conversation that virtually all parents have and agonize over.  What is the right age to allow your children to date?  I don't think that there is a right or wrong answer as every child is different and their levels of maturity will part of the decision.

I know an Indian family that has yet to allow their daughter to date and she is in sophomore year of college.  They are big believers in her getting her education and want her to concentrate on that.  I know parents who let their 13-year-old daughter go out on group dates.  So I think not just your religious beliefs come into play when making these decisions.

A part of this show was about Colby's parents dealing with her desire to date.  By the end of the show we meet the boy she wants to date and he is also a child of a preacher.  Part of her mother's job at her church is to talk to the teenage members of the church about sex, and we get to see her sex talk.  Which of course was quite interesting, but very honest.  She talked about STD's, AIDS, and what can happen to you if you get pregnant outside of marriage.  She very specifically talks about how sex is a wonderful thing, inside of marriage.

Another one of these young girls has already had a child and we find out that she isn't sure who the father is.  A paternity test will be part of an upcoming show.  In this episode she has to tell her parents that she is unsure who the father is.  She is the youngest child and admittedly had a very wild year for her senior year of high school, drugs, sex and rock & roll.  What I found so amusing about this particular girl is that she was constantly being shown breast-feeding this baby.  It seems that is what the producers wanted to focus on with this particular girl.

Taylor, a 17-year-old, is by far the wild child of the group.  She has fantasies of being in the porn industry.  She feels that strippers and porn stars have more freedom.  Her father is very strict, some may say overly strict.

Every parent has to try to walk a fine line between trying to protect their children and being so restrictive with them that they go wild when they get even a little bit of freedom.  It must be even harder when you are a person of God.  That microscope that you and your family are put under must be difficult to live with.  People have this need to call any person who calls themselves a Christian a hypocrite any time they make a mistake.  No Christian tries to say that they are perfect, every human is flawed and makes mistakes.  What a true Christian tries to do is live a worthy life, but accepts the reality that they fall short.  The goal being not to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

I admit I went into watching this thinking it would be worse than it was and really pushing the point that all children of preacher's are just bad seeds and the parents push their children into wild behavior.  There is some of that, but not as much as I thought.  So I give Lifetime a bit of credit for that.  But this is a theme that will be pushed as the season progresses.

My personal experience with children of preachers is kind of mixed.  My pastor's children are great kids.  Someone that I knew growing up was a lunatic; drugs, sex, and physical abuse towards women.  Some famous children of pastor's include Katy Perry and Toni Braxton.  So this show just may showing how things really are.  I do question why the preacher's agreed to this and what their motives are.

See I watch this crap so you don't have to.