Nowadays, there are religious “authorities” writing about how women SHOULD NOT go to college – and I read an excerpt from Kathryn Joyce’s book, where she quotes some guy saying, in effect, “I wouldn’t worry about a homeschooled 9-year-old girl who can’t read, as long as she knows how to take care of her younger siblings . . .”

Seems like the logical extension of patriarchy is that women don’t need to learn anything except cooking and cleaning.

It is hard for me to read comments like this. Laura’s “future” wasn’t “snuffed out”. Her future was changed. She still has a future and a bunch of apparently really nice kids to go along with it. She wouldn’t have had those kids if she hadn’t followed the movement.

I’m not at all QF, but let’s be honest, Laura –or whoever–, which kid would you rather “not have had” now that you know them all?) I hope if you have one in mind that you wouldn’t ever voice it!

I am so glad you have won free of this horrible person.

Gotta say the college thing is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I feel it is definitely ok for girls to go to college. I wanted to be an airline pilot back in the day. Very few women were doing this in the late 80′s Family circumstances and illness prevented me from going that route.

Believe it or not, me an evangelical, recently read “The Feminist Mistake” by Leslie Bennetts and am in agreement with quite a bit of it. My father died when I was very young, my mom who had been a store manager before having kids, had not worked in 12 years. He passed after 2 years of being ill, during that time, we were financially strapped and came very close to foreclosure. Not fun when you are a teenager.

In a comment on another part of this blog. I talked about the fact of my infertility. A few years back my husband and I were in church and I told him if I heard “Q/F” one more time I was going to through a hymnal at the person who said it. Later after we left that particular church. I became aware of a new school of thought coming from the “Q/F” type movement that maybe daughters should not go to college. YIKES!!!!

Elizabeth C.

that’s a fascinating story! especially so because part of it is so like my mom’s story. my mom studied physics and engineering in college, too. one of two girls in her class, as well! my mom got pregnant with me at the end of her studies (i was born in 82), then my brother came along. as a result, my mom didn’t work for 6 years in a row (this was in poland, a mother got 3 years paid maternity leave for each child).

here’s where the story starts looking differently. for one, she found a job in the physics department very easily. two, she didn’t have any more children after that. three, she eventually got sick of living in Poland and took my brother and me to live in Germany, where she re-trained and now works in IT.

all the female members of my family have careers and children. I think it has a lot to do with whether society as a whole, and men in particular, are willing to pitch in more, so that women don’t have to be full-time parent and full-time career-woman, while men always get to focus solely on their career, even when they have bunches of children. some countries do that now: they have laws where a company must give an employee parental leave (this is for both father and mother; who gets how much off depends on the country. i like the equal-time arrangement and the flexible “you get 1 year total, split it between the two of you as you like” systems best), and also must rehire that person when they come back. with just maternity leave, you get companies that don’t wanna hire women, but when both the men and the women are equally likely to take a kid-break, it gives everyone a chance at being parent and being a career person!

and also: we need to get back to multi-generational families. i know my mom would love babysitting once she’s retired (and once there’s grandkids to babysit, of course), but of course that doesn’t work when i’m in a different country!

You go girl!

If you can, I suggest pressing on through a PhD and be a physics professor at a small college, the hours are very family friendly. My hubby’s a physicist and “professored” for 17 years. Nowadays, he’s an engineer and its just as bad as when I was doing it.

Your daughter is beautiful! I never did anything like cheerleading dancing was/is “sinful” in my parents church and the church school in their denomination is even against competitive sports exept for exercise within the school…

I’m amazed at the little community in the posters here, I read all the stories and am quite fascinated.

Guess who talked me into letting her do it? My 20 yo daughter. My kids are like a “union”. They stick up for each other and team negotiate for benefits.

Ditto!

I am a self identified QF mom. Have 8 children, pregnant 11 times (three in heaven). Fundamentalist Christian, used to be on the QF Digest e-mail loop and subscribe to Douglas Wilson’s “Credenda Agenda”…. But I sure am not stereotypical!

My testimony as a teenager was that I was raised in an abusive home with an alcoholic father who was repeatedly adulterous, and left my mother in a huge burst of violence against her and my two teenage sisters who still lived at home. I went to college absolutely bound and determined that I would never be so dependent upon a man that I could not support myself. This was in the early seventies, and I agreed with the feminists of that day “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and I believed them when they said “a woman can do anything!”.

So I studied engineering- just because I knew it paid well, and I liked the challenge of being one of only two girls in a class of a couple hundred. I went to graduate school at a top engineering school, graduated, and worked as an engineer, married my husband whom I met in graduate school. I had become an evangelical christian about a year before him. We were both new at it.

Fast forward,,, When I gave birth to my first daughter in 1984, I figured out why engineering is not a traditionally female field. It is a very intense schedule- salaried with lots of overtime and travel, no part time work to be had. I have discipled my daughters since they were knee high not to choose a field which is inflexible. I’m happy to see that thus far, they have chosen medical fields. The oldest is in med school, and the second is in PA school.

I still need to figure out what I will be when I grow up My engineering training is obsolete after 25 years of child rearing. Now that I am not homeschooling anymore, I am having a little breathing room because I was very tired.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that getting the brass ring of college when young is not necessarily the ticket to paradise. Nor was my QF lifestyle a ticket to paradise. It appealed to me because I thought I could keep my children safe and give them a better childhood than I had, and I thought it would please my heavenly parent. I hadn’t yet learned that His love is not dependent upon my “performance”.