Someone Should Have Saved Joan Crawford’s Adopted Daughter From Her Parenting Methods

Joan was very eager to become a mother, but that didn’t happen during her first marriage to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. This lasted from 1929 to 1933, when she decided to end it and got a divorce. She married Franchot Tone in 1935 and wanted children, but, again, that wasn’t to be.

After the second marriage ended in 1939, she knew that having children naturally wasn’t meant to be. It was at this point that she decided adoption was the best option and adopted a 10-day-old baby girl.

When Joan Crawford discovered that she couldn’t have children during her second marriage, she decided to adopt a child. This was when she adopted Christina, the first of five adopted children through the years. She adopted the baby girl from an unmarried teen mother from Los Angeles, California.

According to Christina, her biological father was a married man in the navy, and her mother was still a teenager. Joan Crawford adopted this baby through a baby broker in Nevada because social services denied her adoption in California.

Although Joan Crawford was at first denied the adoption of a child, she didn’t let that stop her from starting a family. That was when she pursued adoption through another state where she had more success.

Her determination made it possible for her to adopt Christina just after her second marriage. It took Joan a while to decide what to name the new baby, but after some uncertainty, she settled on Christina. This is how she found a child of her own at long last.

This event took place around a year and a half after adopting her baby girl while married to her third husband. At this stage, she decided to expand the family and find another child to adopt. They settled on a boy, but something they never expected happened.

The biological mother of the boy decided that she wanted her baby back and was awarded guardianship. Joan and her new husband, actor Phillip Terry, were stunned by this development.

After this unfortunate incident, the couple decided to adopt another child and settled on a boy. This new baby boy was named after his adopted father, Phillip. This baby boy was meant to replace Christopher, the boy they needed to return to his biological mother.

Unfortunately, her marriage to Phillip didn’t last that long; she ended up getting a divorce. Both children stayed with Joan after their separation, so she had two children to devote her life to. After the divorce, Joan Crawford changed the boy’s name to Christopher.

After divorcing Phillip Terry in 1946, Joan decided to try again for adoption, this time, using an adoption agency. So, in 1947, as a single parent, she opted for another baby and found a pair of twin sisters. She quickly adopted the twin baby girls and called them Cindy and Cathy.

Even though the agency was known for using illegal practices to provide children to celebrities, she went ahead and adopted the twins. This is what she always wanted: a large family to care for.

According to Christina’s memoir, published in 1978, Joan was quite strict with her children. Joan didn’t hesitate to discipline them when they did something not in accordance with her rules. Christina also said that she would use anything that was lying around to punish them.

She also remembered that her mother would use wooden coat hangers to spank them if they misbehaved. This type of parenting technique wouldn’t sit well in today’s modern world of tolerance and restraint.

Because she was a public figure, Joan had to keep up the image of a perfect mother, and that’s what everyone saw. But there was more going on than what everyone assumed they knew.

While everyone saw an idyllic home with happy children, according to Christina, something else was going on. She said Joan was very strict and would punish them harshly for minor misbehavior.

In front of other people, she would play the part of a loving and caring mother, but when they were alone, it was different. Joan would easily use even a hair brush to discipline her children when they were naughty. On one occasion, she broke the handle of a brush.

These punishments were always done when they were alone, and no one could see what was happening. According to Christina, Joan would use any object to carry out the disciplining of her children.

Joan would lock her children up in a storage closet if they misbehaved or did something she didn’t like. According to Christina, this was one of her methods of disciplining her children when they were naughty.

Christina claimed that Joan would lock them up in a small room in their luxury Beverly Hills home. This was done as punishment for even minor misconduct.

On another occasion, Joan cut Christina’s favorite yellow dress into pieces with scissors. That was because she accidentally tore the wallpaper while tracing the pattern with her finger while falling asleep. Joan was enraged when she found out what Christina had done.

This certainly didn’t sit well with Joan, so she used this method to punish the girl for tearing the wallpaper. Christina claimed that her mother knew that was her favorite dress.

The incident with the wallpaper is one of many that showed how scared Christina was of her mother’s parenting methods. After tearing the wallpaper, she tried to put it back onto the wall and even used spit to stick it to the wall.

This meant she would rather hide things from her mother than face her wrath. The worst part was that, after cutting the dress, Joan made Christina wear the tattered dress for a whole week, even after it got dirty.

Christina also states in her memoirs that Joan forced her children to call her “Mommy Dearest” instead of just Mommy. Even though it’s common for children to give their parents endearing names, this was a bit too much.

She would become furious if Christina didn’t call her by that name. In this case, this wasn’t out of love or respect. It was enforced on the children to refer to her by the term.

According to Christina, Joan was also much stricter with her than she was with the younger children. This was especially the case when she broke one of her mother’s many rules. She would be harshly punished by her mother, Christina recalls in her book.

She remembers that Joan was especially strict with her and would easily discipline her more than the other children. Even if it’s not easy for a single mom to raise five children, she might have been a bit too strict.

Joan would use different types of punishments to discipline the children when they broke the rules. On one occasion, Christine broke one of the rules, and Joan prevented her from attending a friend’s birthday party.

She had to sit quietly for the whole duration of the party and not move. This was actually witnessed by a friend of Joan, June Allison, who thought that the punishment was a bit harsh. She recalled that Joan was very strict with Christina.

On another occasion, a friend would find Christopher tied to the bed when he came to visit them. It seems like this type of thing happened quite often in the Crawford home. According to them, Christopher was tied to a sleep-safe device.

The boy who visited them was the son of another famous person, Helen Hayes, who refused to let her child visit them again. According to Christina, she was also tied to the bed for the night occasionally for bad behavior.

Apparently, Joan would wake the children up at night when they were sleeping and make them clean up something they messed up. These night raids were done on a regular basis and were one of the parenting methods applied by Joan.

Christina recalled one occasion when she was eight years old and was taken out of bed by Joan at night. This was done so they could clean up where they made a mess during the day.

These nightly raids would mean that the children would be up for the majority of the night while they cleaned their mess. This was a favored method of teaching the children not to make a mess during the day, or else they would regret it that night.

This could happen to any of the Crawford children, who would be woken up to clean. As Christine recalled, they all were subjected to this method, even the youngest of the children.

Joan would, on occasion, introduce the children to her boyfriends and girlfriends when she brought them home. She would bring her lovers home at night and introduce them to the children before going upstairs with them.

On other occasions, she expected Christina to mix their adult beverages. The children were instructed to call these visitors her mother brought home their uncles. She didn’t try to hide her activities with these visitors from the children.

One of the most awful things Joan would do, according to Christina, was to give the children Christmas presents in front of photographers. Then she would take those gifts away. According to Christina’s memoirs, Joan wasn’t one for spoiling her children, even for the holidays.

The gifts were taken away and re-wrapped so they could give them to their friends on their birthdays. Each child was only allowed to keep one present on these occasions.

On occasion, Joan would accuse Christina of making a move on her husband, Alfred Steele, and trying to seduce him. This was a sure sign that Joan Crawford had some jealousy issues, which she projected onto her oldest daughter.

The Green-Eyed Monster

It’s also known that Joan was jealous of her professional rival, Bette Davis. Unfortunately, Joan allowed this serious jealousy problem she had to come between her and Christina, souring their relationship. She didn’t see her daughter very favorably at all.

One thing Joan enjoyed doing was having both mother and daughter dress in look-alike outfits for photo sessions. She liked to do this with Christina from a young age, and the cameras were rolling. This was her favorite thing to do over the Christmas season.

Christina recalls that this wasn’t really meant for her to have fun but rather for Joan to project the image she wanted to maintain. While it looked beautiful and fun, she didn’t particularly like these sessions.

It might seem that Christina was a difficult child, but to call the authorities on her was really a scare tactic. According to Christina, a juvenile officer came to their home and gave her a stern warning.

This included the threat that she would be taken away to the juvenile hall. This left Christina quite shaken and made her feel that she would never be welcome; it made her feel hopeless. Was this a good parenting method?

Right from the first adoption of her children, Joan changed their names a few times before she was satisfied. It started with her first adoptive daughter, who was first named Joan, and then she changed her name and settled on Christina.

The second child, which was the second boy, was named after his father, Phillip, but she changed his name to Christopher after the divorce. This name change happened when he was around three years old; no wonder he had some issues growing up!

As punishment, Joan didn’t allow Christina any food for a time because she complained about dinner at some point. Christina complained that the steak she was served was a bit raw to her taste and refused to eat her food.

Because of that incident, Christina was denied food for more than a day before she was allowed to eat again. She also said that this was part of Joan’s nature to control them, and it certainly showed in her parenting methods.

When Christina reached her teenage years, she felt that her mother didn’t really love her or even care for her. This, Christina claimed, was because of the physical mistreatment she received from her mother when growing up. Being slammed and grabbed by her mother didn’t help build a good relationship.

While Christina claimed that her mother became violent when they were alone, many didn’t believe that accusation about Joan. But Christina says that’s only because she let people see what she wanted them to, nothing more.

Joan apparently had a hatred for wire hangers and forbade her children from using them when hanging their clothes. She was, on one occasion, furious when she found a single wire hanger in Christina’s closet.

She dragged Christina out of bed in the middle of the night and spanked her with the hanger. For unknown reasons, wire hangers had quite an effect on Joan, and she would lose her temper when they were found in her home.

At the age of 10, Christina was sent to boarding school, and this put some distance between her mother and her childhood. It was here that she found that Joan’s parenting methods were far from normal and somewhat odd. But this didn’t help her to build a life of independence.

Christina understood that the rules she grew up with weren’t the norm and that other children didn’t go through the same punishment. This may have been the reason why she had some issues later on in her life.

When Christina was 15, and in boarding school, her mental health wasn’t what it should be, even for a teenager. According to Christina’s memoirs, she claimed that Joan’s treatment caused her to feel negative about herself and her future.

During this time, Joan totally ignored her daughter. At this point, Christina tried to take too much medication, and Joan didn’t even contact her during this episode. Joan left her alone to cope with her problems, which made them even worse.

Joan had grabbed Christina by her throat in a fit of rage, her hands around her neck, trying to harm her. This specific incident happened when Christina was a teenager, and it was a very bad physical fight that impacted the child.

She remembered that her mother had a look of animal rage in her eyes and that she fell to the floor when she lost her footing. This was also the last time they were involved in a physical fight.

Even her son had to go through some extreme punishment, like the time when he played with a box of matches. Joan had him hold his hand in the fireplace to teach him not to play with matches again. This happened when he was only seven years old.

This punishment caused him to have blisters on his hand, and he recalls that it was the first time he ran away from home and away from Joan. This incident proves that Christina wasn’t exaggerating about being mistreated by her mother.

All these things and many more mentioned in the book Christina published caused Christina never to trust her mother again. This may have been the reason why they didn’t speak with each other for many years and why Joan disowned her eldest daughter and son.

The extreme and uncontroversial parenting methods of Joan Crawford caused irreparable damage to her adopted children. This was also the reason why Christina tried to end her life, and Christopher ran away from home many times. What a sad story.