"And ladies, build up your husband by being submissive. That's how you will give your children success; you will want your children to be obedient, to be submissive to righteous living"
About this Quote
“Build up your husband by being submissive” isn’t advice so much as infrastructure: a blueprint for making domination feel like devotion. Jeffs frames submission as a kind of emotional labor that women perform for men’s benefit, then laundered as family stability. The verb “build up” is key. It suggests the husband is a project, a fragile structure requiring constant reinforcement. That’s not partnership; it’s a demand that women become unpaid caretakers of male authority.
The line’s real engine is how it recruits motherhood as a compliance tool. “That’s how you will give your children success” turns parental love into leverage. If you resist, you’re not just defying a man; you’re jeopardizing your kids. It’s coercion with a lullaby melody, a move common to high-control religious communities: take the most sacred identity available (mother) and fuse it to obedience.
Then comes the slippery pivot from household hierarchy to moral absolutism: children should be “obedient” and “submissive to righteous living.” “Righteous” is the escape hatch that keeps the system unchallengeable. Jeffs doesn’t have to defend his commands; he only has to define “righteous living” as whatever sustains his rule. In that context, “submissive” stops being a private marital preference and becomes a multi-generational political program: train women to yield, train children to comply, and you’ve built a culture where dissent feels like sin. Coming from Jeffs - a criminal who led an authoritarian sect marked by abuse - the quote reads less like spiritual counsel than like a manual for grooming a community to accept exploitation as virtue.
The line’s real engine is how it recruits motherhood as a compliance tool. “That’s how you will give your children success” turns parental love into leverage. If you resist, you’re not just defying a man; you’re jeopardizing your kids. It’s coercion with a lullaby melody, a move common to high-control religious communities: take the most sacred identity available (mother) and fuse it to obedience.
Then comes the slippery pivot from household hierarchy to moral absolutism: children should be “obedient” and “submissive to righteous living.” “Righteous” is the escape hatch that keeps the system unchallengeable. Jeffs doesn’t have to defend his commands; he only has to define “righteous living” as whatever sustains his rule. In that context, “submissive” stops being a private marital preference and becomes a multi-generational political program: train women to yield, train children to comply, and you’ve built a culture where dissent feels like sin. Coming from Jeffs - a criminal who led an authoritarian sect marked by abuse - the quote reads less like spiritual counsel than like a manual for grooming a community to accept exploitation as virtue.
Quote Details
| Topic | Husband & Wife |
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