Libby Anne gets responses from people saying “yes but we home-school and we follow Jesus but we don’t fit your description.” She gently points out that if they don’t fit the description then she’s not writing about them…and goes on to provide a list of the genuine problems with “the various teachings of Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull” [italics hers], not having a large family or homeschooling. Among them –
- When parents teach their daughters to dream of nothing but homemaking and seek to kill any other desire or dream, that is a problem.
- When parents teach their daughters that boys are to go out into the world and take dominion while girls are to take dominion by doing laundry, that is a problem.
- When parents teach their daughters that women are created to serve men, that is a problem.
- When adult daughters are expected to obey their fathers and remain under their fathers’ authority, that is a problem.
- When parents insist that they control their adult daughters’ romantic relationships and can’t trust them to be adults and make their own decisions, that is a problem.
She knows this from the inside.
Part of the deception of Quiverfull is in diversity of practice among adherents.
None of the families “buy the whole package” – or so they believe. I was convinced that I obviously was studying the bible for myself and coming to certain conclusions (homeschool, submission, sheltering children, courtship, stay-at-home mom, etc) based on the truths that I discovered in the scriptures, while at the same time, rejecting many of the QF distinctives – I wore makeup and painted my nails, I wore jewelry (one QF friend of mine would not even wear a wedding ring), I worked (though admittedly from my home – just like the Proverbs 31 woman), I voted, and I believed it’s important for girls to get their drivers licences and learn to drive.
I can’t count the number of Quiverfull believers who have posted this same defense after reading the stories at NLQ. “We wear pants and allow our kids to participate in 4-H.” ergo – they are not really “Quiverfull” and we should not be painting them with the same broad brush.
Of course, it’s a lot of horseshit.
As I explained in a recent article at PoliticusUSA, the Quiverfull worldview and lifestyle which I felt that I had carefully considered and thoughtfully adopted is, in actuality, a product called “Biblical Family Values” which is being aggressively marketed as an investment to safeguard our loved ones from becoming collateral damage in today’s “War Against the Family.”
What Vision Forum and similar organizations are selling is protection from the Big, Bad, Scary World – and we bought it big time – all the while, convinced that we were searching out these ideals for ourselves in the Bible.
I have to agree with Vyckie here, but it’s really hard to say without knowing much about a family. It IS possible to be a Christian homeschool family with five kids and a stay at home mom and NOT have the problems I discuss (problems that come from Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull beliefs more than from the things listed before), but it is really hard to do so and not get sucked in to at least part of this thinking. My suspicion is that some of the people who email me may actually have adopted some of these beliefs, and that my writing therefore makes them nervous. And hence they jump up and down to defend themselves. Like, if you do these things, I’m talking about you, and if you don’t, I’m not. It’s really that simple!