After fleeing polygamist sect, boys face a new world
BY JOHN M. GLIONNA
Zach Bowers' cultural education included a battle of wills over a simple task: how to mop the kitchen floor.
Just when the teenager thought he was done with the weekly chore, Debbie Hofhines would loom like a drill sergeant, demanding to know whether he'd used enough cleaner. In response, Zach grumbled, slammed drawers and disappeared with friends.
"At first, she was so aggressive she scared me," he said. "She'd say, 'I want this done and I want it done now.' I'd never seen anything like it. I was like, 'Whoa.'"
This was no typical parent-teen faceoff. Zach, who grew up in a polygamist compound, had always been taught that women served men. Debbie, 51, a veteran foster parent, was determined to show him housework was not just women's work.
"This is my house," he says Debbie told him. "And nobody tells me what to do here."
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