Keep up the good blogging ladies, you are doing a wonderful job. Very challenging to everyone who reads it.

Keep up the good blogging ladies, you are doing a wonderful job. Very challenging to everyone who reads it.

I did that calculation too: I changed 40,000 diapers. I was pregnant or nursing for 16 years. I matched approx 100,000 pairs of socks. (I have 8 children) I don’t say it with pride. Its sort of embarrassing. I don’t regret having all my children. I regret being such a “slave wife” though, and I definitely embraced much suffering which I didn’t have to (eg, never had an epidural until my 8th child at age 42 and I got that one because my 7th at 40 was 11 lb and very painful to deliver)

arietty,
that description of how the Campbell daughters live sounds incredibly hard! We have lots of Amish around us and they are QF often with 8-12 children, and don’t believe in electricity, but they have very ingenious ways of making their family lives more comfortable than what you described. They have indoor plumbing with gravity fed water, and propane hot water heater which is not allowed inside the house but can be kept in the barn, as can a telephone. I see them at the swimming hole in the summer sometimes. The women fully clothed, sitting with feet in the water. The men wear shorts and swim. Those hot days, the young mamas look very tired…

My husband has admired them at times and even mentioned how we would be famous if we “converted”, but I have always said that I am used to electricity and cannot live without it. And when our well has gone out on occasion, it was an extreme hardship to function without running water (everyone got sick from it too). I guess I would be moving out with the children within a week if my husband could not figure out a way to have running water!

I did that calculation too: I changed 40,000 diapers. I was pregnant or nursing for 16 years. I matched approx 100,000 pairs of socks. (I have 8 children) I don’t say it with pride. Its sort of embarrassing. I don’t regret having all my children. I regret being such a “slave wife” though, and I definitely embraced much suffering which I didn’t have to (eg, never had an epidural until my 8th child at age 42 and I got that one because my 7th at 40 was 11 lb and very painful to deliver)

arietty,
that description of how the Campbell daughters live sounds incredibly hard! We have lots of Amish around us and they are QF often with 8-12 children, and don’t believe in electricity, but they have very ingenious ways of making their family lives more comfortable than what you described. They have indoor plumbing with gravity fed water, and propane hot water heater which is not allowed inside the house but can be kept in the barn, as can a telephone. I see them at the swimming hole in the summer sometimes. The women fully clothed, sitting with feet in the water. The men wear shorts and swim. Those hot days, the young mamas look very tired…

My husband has admired them at times and even mentioned how we would be famous if we “converted”, but I have always said that I am used to electricity and cannot live without it. And when our well has gone out on occasion, it was an extreme hardship to function without running water (everyone got sick from it too). I guess I would be moving out with the children within a week if my husband could not figure out a way to have running water!

Anyway, as has been pointed out repeatedly on this blog, there are many prescriptive statements in the Bible that would lead to the idea that a “good christian family” would be one based on QF teachings. But then as others have pointed out, there are prescriptive statements which could be seen as supporting a more egalitarian approach. The thing is, once a person starts picking out some verses and discarding others, they’re using their own personal sense of morality, not the Bible’s, to decide which verses are “right”, and these verses are likely to be verses which would support the general idea of a good family which would be shared by those of another faith, or of no faith. (eg, I would hope most people, no matter what their outlook, would discard the bit about killing their kid if they disobey you. But decent folks of many outlooks might like the part about husbands respecting their wives. Again, though, these choices are more based on a shared human morality than a biblical-based morality). So this is why I think it might be impossible to really answer the question of what makes a “good christian family”, but we all can agree on many aspects of a “good whatever family”.

Anyway, as has been pointed out repeatedly on this blog, there are many prescriptive statements in the Bible that would lead to the idea that a “good christian family” would be one based on QF teachings. But then as others have pointed out, there are prescriptive statements which could be seen as supporting a more egalitarian approach. The thing is, once a person starts picking out some verses and discarding others, they’re using their own personal sense of morality, not the Bible’s, to decide which verses are “right”, and these verses are likely to be verses which would support the general idea of a good family which would be shared by those of another faith, or of no faith. (eg, I would hope most people, no matter what their outlook, would discard the bit about killing their kid if they disobey you. But decent folks of many outlooks might like the part about husbands respecting their wives. Again, though, these choices are more based on a shared human morality than a biblical-based morality). So this is why I think it might be impossible to really answer the question of what makes a “good christian family”, but we all can agree on many aspects of a “good whatever family”.