My wife was a born in, so was her sister. I used to envy them as my parents never really got into church when I was growing up. Therefore, I never got to go to church as a family when I started going, so I would often go alone. I dreamed of having a family who we could all go to church together instead of how I was raised. But marrying a Jehovah's Witness (even if she does go along with some of my 'worldly' activities) all but guaranteed that that will never happen. As I was trying to support her and her beliefs, I would attend meetings with her and even do 'Bible' studies with them. Thinking even that perhaps they are indeed the true religion (or as close to it as one religion could get).
After learning what I learned over the summer concerning its darker side, I find myself so glad now that my parents weren't into religion. I read a book called "The Spanking Room: A Child's Eye View of the Jehovah's Witnesses" and I must say that it was an eye opener. Well, that and all of the stories published by people on http://www.freeminds.org/ and of course Dr. Bergman's own life story. Some are extreme (like that book I mentioned), others are more balanced (like Dr. Bergman's personal testimony), but all of them have a common thread (Jehovah's Witnesses seem to have a harder time coping with reality than most people). While some people may debunk the connection between Jehovah's Witnesses and mental illnesses, my personal experience tells me that legalistic, rules based, religions do indeed aggravate (if not cause) mental illnesses as my personal testimony on another topic points out.
In the end, I ended up thanking God for my not being born as a Jehovah's Witness, though a part of me still wonders if I would've been better off if my step-dad had not have left his Primitive Baptist church when he married my mom, would I have had a better childhood. I find myself concluding that I seriously doubt it because they too were legalists. My step-dad did not leave that church, he got put out, his dad left because his son was put out. Why did my step-dad get put out? He married my mom who was a divorcee and who did not have a 'scriptural' divorce. So my step-dad had 'committed adultery' by marrying her. In fact, now that I think about it, the Independent Fundamental Baptist church I use to attend also frowned on my aunt for leaving her husband. I kept telling them, "You don't understand what she went through with her husband. She did what she had to do." They still kept judging. Nevermind the fact that my aunt and mom were abused by their husbands, I guess scripture doesn't take that into account (at least not according to these churches).
It's almost enough to make people want to abandon God and for a while I did. However, He never abandoned me and when I started getting back into going to church, I found that the churches I've attended in recent years are much more forgiving and understanding in regards to divorces. Besides, who are they to judge anyway?