Five years ago, we commenced our homeschooling journey. We were moderate christians, active in church and we believed in our faith wholeheartedly. My 2 oldest were very interested in the solar system and dinosaurs and we spent a great part of that year learning about those subjects. Our approach was purely scientific and secular. I had a few moments of doubt (as a christian) about what we were learning but felt confident that “exposing” them to secular science was a good thing.
As the years progressed and we traveled deeper into the homeschooling world, I was faced with some tough decisions. None of the families we knew were teaching their kids about evolution. When I questioned the literal interpretation of the bible (quietly and discreetly) I was told that we HAD to believe in creationism. We had to study the “facts” and get in line with the bible. So in my quest to belong and fit in, I did just that.
Let’s take a look at how I devolved while I languished in the christian homeschooling world.
Year One, my goals were academic excellence. I identified with the Classical educational approach and I pushed my daughter to do her best (probably too hard but that’s another post). Although I was unsure what I believed, as far as evolution was concerned, I found it perfectly acceptable to “expose” my children to all the ideas and review the facts with them. I had occasional bible verses for the children to memorize and we narrated a bible story or two throughout the first year. As far as culture and “worldliness” we were in the middle. I’d rate us as low on ”legalism”. Spongebob, Timmy Turner, spaghetti straps, bikinis and pop music were all fine with me.
Year two, we joined our local homeschool co-op. During our first year, we met other christian homeschoolers. This was an eye opening experience for me. I was introduced to the extremes of biblical fundamentalism. I honestly didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, I was glad to meet other homeschoolers and glad for my children to meet other wholesome kids but on the other hand, I was horrified at the attitude of these women and the oppressive nature of our meetings and conversations. Examples include, submission to husbands, ”managing” their homes, the evils of yellow cheese, the evils of public school children, and the general unsuitableness of just about anything you can think of and modesty, modesty, modesty.
My general outlook, at the time, was one of uneasiness. I both despised and admired these women. I was lonely. I didn’t feel that I belonged. While the seasoned mothers bonded during breaks, I floundered in the corner. I did eventually make friends and this shaped (distorted) my reality.
Somewhere between year 2 and 3, my focus began to morph. Character training, biblical knowledge, “godly” attitudes and outlooks became my focus. I turned in my pants and started wearing dresses. I bought in-depth bible studies for the children and began to restrict more and more things. What I couldn’t fix, I tried to hide. Oh the sorrows of leading a double life!
I began year 4 in earnest. I was going to be the best, most godly, homeschool mother ever. My new found passion was finding my less than perfect, potty humour son “better” friends. I was determined to mold this boy. Was I ever in for a surprise! The wholesome boys that I wanted my son to befriend were specifically warned by their mother NOT to interact with my son.
I can’t even begin to describe the utter hurt, disappointment, disillusion that this caused me. My initial reaction was to try even harder. This was the beginning of the end for me.
A combination of hurt, outrage and doubt rested upon me. Before this incident, I was so enamored with christian homeschooling that I began to pursue the idea of the quiver full. My husband had a vasectomy after our fourth child and I was researching the possibility of getting a reversal. I happened upon a Secret Lives of Women episode on the quiverful movement. I was so excited to know that this movement was getting more tv time (on top of the Duggars). I devoured the episode. I couldn’t believe that one of the moms had “escaped” from the movement and was now an atheist. I found her website and I began to read it and I read it and read it and read it and read it and read it. It was like a ice cold glass of water had been thrown at my face. The truth that I read resonated within me.
At the very least, forcing my children to be perfect fell off my radar. It was as if some of the smudge that had been on my glasses, distorting how I saw my children was washed off. My next big step was bible reading.
Of course, I didn’t want to give up my faith. How does bible reading equate with losing your faith? Have you read your OT lately? Have you studied the history of the NT? What began as a sincere desire to reestablish something that I felt I had lost with God, ended with a lack of trust and assurance in the god of the OT/NT.
Right now we are creeping along in limbo land. Without my special god goggles, the world looks different. I find it perfectly fine to look at Hinduism and see their gods look like Indians. I find it humorous to research and see the streams of thought that came from the ancient world and how they have evolved over the centuries. I can see fanaticism or fundamentalism in a whole new light.
It’s not easy. In fact, it’s really hard. But I have a peace and sense of well being that I haven’t had before. Taking the lightning Bolt out of God’s hand has been very freeing for me.
I’m at a crossroads. We are leaving behind christian homeschooling and embracing secular homeschooling. We are saying goodbye to some and hello to others. I am searching for a way to be honest with myself and others in a respectful way. I’ll be examining our curriculum and expanding our worldviews. … we are studying world religions. What a privilege to see life through another cultures’ eyes and not disdain it but embrace it and see the truths that it has to offer.
We’ve got a long road ahead of us and what a beautiful road it is.
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Charlie Richards ~ the creator of the Christian video series, “Life at the Pond” ~ recently shared on his blog about his experience of working with the Duggar kids ~ particularly the three oldest girls, Jill, Jessa & Jinger, whom he describes as, “ sharp, fun and informed.”
They know what’s going on out there. But it isn’t at all a part of their every day life. And, to the shock and dismay of so many, they’re okay with that.
While, admittedly, I admire the Duggars for much of what they do, I didn’t expect what I saw in these three girls. The world has yet to beat them into submission. They don’t watch the Disney Channel, so they’ve yet to learn that adults are buffoons and parents are embarrassing. They don’t listen to the local rock station, so they’ve yet do discover life is supposed to be one promiscuous event followed by another. They don’t attend public school, so they’ve yet to learn teenage girls are required to be filled with angst and riddled with insecurities.
As we spoke to the three of them, one word kept jumping out at me: Freedom. These girls were experiencing freedom teenagers rarely taste. Completely free to be themselves. The exact opposite of the words so often used by media folk to describe the 19 kids.
While many times teenagers can’t wait to get away from adults, these three were anxious to engage in conversation. And they were delightful. All of the Duggars were.
Wow ~ this takes me back to my Quiverfull days! Watching the Duggars & other “big, happy families” ~ catching that VISION ~ the appeal is just.so.darn.strong!!
Richards’ praise of the Duggars and his insistence that the older girls are “experiencing freedom” brought to mind Jill Cozzi’s poignant summary of the QF/P “freedom”: The problem with Quiverfull isn’t in its advocacy of large families, it’s in its view of women, and in questions about just how much “free will” is involved with women who become embroiled in its clutches.
Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.
by Defendant Rising
On my wedding day, I embraced a new religion. I marched up the aisle on my father’s arm, in a white lace gown with monstrous leg-o-mutton sleeves—very fitting for a lamb going to the slaughter.
No bride was ever more madly in love, or more giddily romantic, or more enraptured with her white church wedding. It was my greatest accomplishment; it was my reward from God for being virtuous and pure. Saying vows that I wrote myself, I outdid every right-wing, anti-feminist bride on earth. I promised to obey and submit and never speak a word against my husband until either I was dead or he was—but I think I phrased it more poetically than that. Then I walked up to the altar and took the symbolic body and blood of Christ directly from the hand of Nate Willoughby, while my own pastor, and my beloved Granddaddy who was also a pastor, stepped aside. My mother, who later became a pastor herself, told me it was “a little weird.”
She had no idea.
Something was saying “weird” to me on my honeymoon. There were forecasts of bizarre on the horizon, but a 23-year-old virgin wouldn’t know from bizarre, now would she?
It was weird that from day one, Nate would not have sex after dark. Or without immediately showering afterwards. It was weird that I could not initiate sexual contact—it always had to be his idea. I tried seduction, the day after I married him. I had some inkling from TV or the movies that if a new bride on her honeymoon put on a racy little red-and-black number and emerged from a hotel bathroom, her husband would. . . smile? Make passionate love to her? Say, “You look [insert flattering adjective here]”?
Nate looked blank. He looked through me and said, in a voice colder than Christmas in Siberia, “That’s not the kind of lingeré I like.”
I beat a hasty retreat and sat on the hotel bathroom toilet seat in a state of shock, tears flowing, fists clenched, and thought, what was that?
Then I thought the fatal thought. The thought that would lock me in a prison for almost eleven years: “I’ll try harder to please him.” It was a poisonous thought, as poisonous as the “sacramental” grape juice that I had taken from Nate’s hand the day before. These were the two foundations of my marriage:
1. I get my Jesus from Nate. The Christ I worshipped as a child, teenager, and college student is dead. Nate is my pastor, my Jesus-proxy, my god.
2. I will try harder. If Nate is displeased, Tess is guilty.
Idolatry and shame. My marriage. I can’t believe I’m alive to tell the tale.
Looking back, I think it was the Mary Poppins aspect of my marriage (besides the fact that I worshiped the man) that kept me stuck in it. If “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” Nate used truckloads of verbal corn syrup to make the guilt and control go down with ease. When he wasn’t being shockingly rotten, he was overwhelmingly attentive and complimentary, to the point where he followed me around the house praising me. And I ate it up like a rat in a science lab.
I was really married to two men. Anyone who saw my Dr. Jeckyll husband, who sat and stared into my face and stroked my hand and murmured “you’re beautiful, I love you” into my ear, would have flatly refused to believe that Mr. Hyde existed. (During the courtship, Nate was all Dr. Jeckyll, but with a disturbing tendency to be jealous of anyone else I spent time with.)
But Mr. Hyde did exist, and he kicked my hide every day of my life over every little measly thing. Everything was always my fault. From the very beginning. I wore the wrong lingeré. I cooked the wrong meals. I miscarried our first child. Whose fault would that be but mine? Nate didn’t “shoot blanks,” he pointed out. He hit a dead ringer within three months of marriage. It was my stupid uterus that hiccupped and couldn’t hold onto Nate’s child. Nate was worried. Had he married a malfunctioning woman who could not give him children?
Needless to say, when I got pregnant again, I was a nervous wreck. It was very important to Nate and to Nate’s Jesus that I carry this baby. The baby I lost was to have been a son, named Daniel, which in Hebrew means “God is my judge.” And this child was to be Daniel, Nate declared. My femininity was on the line. Nate explained that I would still be acceptable as a woman and a Christian if I had a girl, because a girl could be raised to be fruitful for God herself, and I could get pregnant with a boy again A.S.A.P.
Even with this caveat, the pregnancy was very stressful. I think Daniel got a lot of freak-out hormones. He’s a very driven, temperamental kid to this day.
During my fourth month of pregnancy with God-please-let-it-be-Daniel, Nate and I had an argument in the parking lot behind our apartment building during which he invoked his authority as my husband and Head. This should have ended the dispute. Women (says the Bible somewhere, I forget the exact place) are to Submit and be Silent when a man who has Headship over them says so.*
Nate said so, and I wasn’t silent. I pressed my point. Nate went into a cold rage, face like stone, icy eyes. He strode into our building and up the stairs. Behind him, I tripped on the staircase on the way up and fell to the bottom. I cried out.
Nate kept walking up the staircase without turning around or even pausing. He went into our apartment and shut the door forcefully behind him.
I made an extra good supper that night despite some bad bruises. Nate talked to me again.
Daniel was born five months later.
*Nate and I learned this mindset as college students in an ultra-conservative Christian sect called Great Commission Students (part of Great Commission International), which put a lot of emphasis on Men in Charge. Men could be Elders and Deacons in this group, but women’s highest office was that of Deaconess, a fetch-and-carry person for the elders and deacons who urged the sisters to be sweet and submissive. The big issue in this group was whether women ought to wear head coverings. In retrospect, not the best crowd to hang with in one’s formative years.
Viewers of the earliest Duggar TLC Specials [14 Children and Pregnant Again, 16 Kids and Moving In, etc] know that the Duggars have not always lived in a 7,000 square foot debt-free dream house.
In fact, like many of today’s Quiverfull families, they lived very humbly for many years saving for that dream home. A 900 square foot home behind a used car lot on a busy highway is not an average Mother of 5 little children’s dream home! Yet Michelle put up with these cramped quarters—often hiding out in the bedroom with all the kids while Jim-Bob closed a car sale. Like many savvy real estate investors they “moved up” to a “fixer upper”—a repossessed, all brick ranch home that was much bigger. They did the renovation work themselves, learning along the way, in order to make it affordable. They did their furniture and décor shopping at auctions, yard sales and thrift stores. When Michelle said on TV that they “worked really hard” so they could “relax” today she was telling only part of the story. The rest of it is not taking out a mortgage or any other debt to buy that bigger home.
But while the Duggars, on their 20 acres, with their 2000 square foot boys and girls bedrooms and indoor climbing wall represent the zenith of Quiverfull life, we need to look at how an “average” Quiverfull family lives to truly get the “whole” picture of life in this movement.
Let’s look at how other Quiverfull families provide life’s basic necessities for their large families. But first, a brief mention of the Frugal Life from way back—like in the 1980s. Frugal Living Guru, Amy Dacyczyn’s, Tightwad Gazette newsletter has been collected into a commonly appreciated source book—available in both one and three volume additions. These are revered by “Tightwads” of all political and religious persuasions. These are very often mentioned in blogs with families either voluntarily reducing consumption or who are struggling to survive – the type of family Hillary McFarland writes of in her new book Quivering Daughters:
“Until you have knelt for hours in a field like my mommy, scrubbing thousands of cloth diapers by hand….till you cry with guilt when someone buys you something new and you try to take it back to the store because you could use that money to buy groceries or pay a bill…till you school your children all day, bake twenty loaves of bread by hand….”(p. 30)
In many rural areas, such as my current and former counties in two different Midwest states, it is not unusual to see a well-used van dispensing a river of children in very odd clothing and a haggard mother—often entering the public library for more school books or to make use of free Internet. You’ll also see them selling produce at road side stands or at the pay-by-the-pound recycling centers, the clearance racks and ½ price day at the local thrift shops. The struggle is etched on their faces.
From the anecdotal evidence posted in the forums here at NLQ and elsewhere, these families exist everywhere—and far outnumber the oft-profiled Royal Families of Quiverfull such as the Duggars. They cobble together mobile homes, sell e-books of well-worn recipes, they market quilts, cloth diapers, goat milk soap, homemade lotions and herbal remedies. They glean aluminum cans from the roadside and change from the sidewalks. They birth babies alone or with an under-the-radar unlicensed midwife. They treat illness with what they can afford and trust—which rarely includes a doctor. Many times, like Gil and Kelly Bates, they qualify for federal assistance such as WIC or state children’s health insurance, but won’t take it. Let’s take a look at THESE Quiverfull families and see, truly, how the greater portion of Quiverfull families live.
Shelter
At her now defunct blog, Under $1000, blogger Emily describes and illustrates with photos her family’s extremely small living quarters in a rental apartment. Certainly, conditions like this are not unusual among families of college or graduate students. [Her husband was in seminary.] In most cases they are temporary and become part of family folklore in later years. What makes Emily’s family different is that Emily publically discussed her plans for even SMALLER living quarters as their family grew LARGER! She had no problem with her children sleeping on blankets on the floor if necessary.
Most American parents would find this at least odd if not almost abusive. [Although, as we will see a little later on, this style of living is endorsed by one of the top Quiverfull evangelists.] She was frugal to such an extreme that she routinely used only a crock-pot to cook in order to save money on the electric bill. She kept tubs of children’s clothing stacked in her apartment so she did not need to shop for the next size. Aside from this ridiculous mini-washer, she washed clothes, bedding, diapers, in a plastic storage tub in a shower stall, rather than going to a laundry mat. Many of her money-saving ideas were not quite mainstream (an odd diet of fermented drinks and crock-pot cream cheese, for example).
Build It Yourself vs Shack Living
The Duggars are hardly the first family to ever build their own home with their own hands. Possibly they’ve built the most extreme house though. Many families have built their homes as they can afford it. In Quiverfull families this is not at all uncommon. Quiverfull “Royalty” such as Steve Maxwell and his sons have built two houses and remodeled a third.
On their blog, the Brow family of Vermont has detailed how, while squeezing into a small mobile home, they are building their own home debt-free. The Seargeant family of Plymouth Rock Ranch, spent a considerable time living in a tent while building their cabin. In Alaska the Wilkinson family details the building of their home on their blog as well.
Certainly, build it yourself, is not merely for Quiverfull families. America’s first prominent homeschooling family [who were VERY secular!!!] the Cofax family sent a son to Harvard after he helped clear the land, build the house and establish a functioning homestead and after he published several articles in goat breeding journals!
And, let’s not forget that the poster family of what can go wrong in Quiverfull life, the Yates family. Not long before the horror of Andrea drowning their children in the bathtub, Rusty had moved the family out of the RV they had been living in and into a modest ranch house. The strain of living with all her children in such tight quarters was too much for Andrea and her post-partum depression reached a danger zone. Sadly, it was too little, too late.
Utilities can be a staggering expense—although two that are often helped by rural living are heating and water. While many families with well water have to use a water softener or water purifying system, some families simply cannot afford these options. The beauty of a well is no water company to pay. This can be a substantial savings. Heat, (especially in the more northern states) can be very, very expensive. Home heating oil, propane, or electric heat is high enough in an area with efficient delivery networks. In rural areas served by Rural Electric Co-ops or in which heating oil or propane deliveries have to add mileage surcharges it can be extremely expensive. Many rural families, even those with a decent standard of living (like the Duggars) choose to heat with wood. Selling firewood supplements many family incomes as well. Finally trash removal is a huge expense in rural areas. Fewer customers per mile, greater distances to dumping sites and landfills, makes regular trash collection out of reach for many people. Rural families are often ahead of the curve on trash—growing food, composting, recycling all help with trash expenses. A once or twice a year trip to the dump, trash burning or burying, often takes care of the rest.
Quiverfull families in rural areas often live in substandard housing or with other primitive conditions like no indoor plumbing or even no running water. Perhaps the most extreme example of staying debt-free while building a home comes from one of the most Royal of Quiverfull “Royal Families”—the Campbells. While Colin and Nancy run the Above Rubies empire from a beautiful custom-built home, daughter Serene and her family have lived for years in conditions familiar to only the poorest of 3rd world nations.
Quiverfull matriarch Nancy Campbell has often written about her daughter, Serene’s family and their struggle to complete the building of their home. In spite of coming from a very well-off family who brought the Christian music superstars the NEWSBOYS to America, Serene and her large family live in a “shell” of a house with no running water. Even though they live in a “family compound” with other members of their own family, Serene and her children must haul 5 gallon buckets of water from a nearby stream for their daily use. Recently flooding made the lower level of the home unlivable. Rather than move out, conduct mold abatement and other necessary repairs, the family simply moved upstairs. Nancy called this situation “hilarious.” Most Americans would call it child neglect or even child abuse.
Serene helps support her family by hosting women’s retreats, recording and selling cds and promoting her own views of “good health.” Heath “advice” from a woman who apparently does not consider a smoke filled, mold-infested home to be a health hazard for herself and her children. Like Serene, Emily at Under $1000 a Month [above], kept her MAINE apartment so cold in the winter that one reader compared it to an old-time city tenement—a breeding ground for TB. Serene also had no problem ignoring other comforts for her children. For years they slept “like puppies” on the floor on blankets—surely the inspiration of Emily’s planned future sleeping arrangements for her own children!
Food
The Duggars’ shopping trips to Aldis focus on bulk buying of frozen burritos by the case, trays of frozen lasagna, jars of spaghetti sauce and boxes of so-called Macaroni and Cheese. Many other Quiverfull families eat more God-made than man-made food.
There are excellent examples of God’s bounty, lovingly coaxed from the ground by busy moms and toddlers, teenagers and even over-worked Quiverfull Dads. (Although not stated as Quiverfull, the family profiled in these posts exemplify a healthy, yet minimal income family). Gardening, canning, freezing, jam-making, soap making, quilting are all frequently found on Quiverfull Mom-blogs and homemaking sites. More than one family has a cottage industry producing ebooks or even dvds on how to do these money-saving tasks (soap making, bread baking, or Serene making sourdough). In fact, the West family even had their homemaking videos produced by Franklin Springs Media.
Gardening and food preservation is another area the Duggars strangely ignore. The garden they showed in one episode [“17 Kids and Counting: Cheaper by the Duggars”] was barely more than most people can grown in a tiny subdivision lot—and yet the Duggars have 20 acres! (NOTE: Likely a substantial garden would be too hard to keep up with while they are touring and filming, much of which takes place in the summer garden-season.)
While cheap, frozen ground turkey, a Duggar staple, is frequently found in many, many homes today, other Quiverfull families raise chickens for eggs and meat, goats for milk and or meat and even pigs and steer for meat. Poultry keeping has even become trendy in some suburbs! Other families rely on deer, elk or moose season to provide the bulk of their meat. Steve Castleberry gives a humorous discussion of learning to butcher his first steer in his book, Our Homestead Story: The First Years.
Many Quiverfull families find it a good use of their scarce food budget to buy an electric grain mill and bulk buy wheat that they then grind fresh into flour and hand bake the family’s bread. No one can argue with the nutritional boost over gluey American white bread, but the process does take a toll on the wives and daughters who must labor thru the grinding, mixing, kneading baking cycle every few days. In fact, Bill Gothard teaches his followers [who include the Duggars] that white bread is “evil” and that bread must be made by hand—no mixer! [Veinot, p. 299]. A bucket of good red wheat does not come cheaply, either (about $65 a bucket). Nor does a good mixer—for those who don’t follow Mr. Gothard’s health advice and see the kneading as something a machine can adequately handle, a Bosch universal mixer costs up to $400.00, but is the holy grail of convenience for Quiverfull moms who see bread making as part of their calling. A “Wonder Mill” for grinding wheat can set a family back more than $200.00. A Berkey water filter another $200.
Homeschool
Very few Quiverfull families could afford to buy brand new curricula for each student in each subject every year. Many could not even afford to buy the very reasonably priced and thoroughly excellent [if not terribly exciting!] Rod & Staff curriculum so beloved of the Maxwell family. Nor can many otherwise like-minded families afford the up-to- $600+ a year just to belong to Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute and be “encouraged” by the likes of the Duggars and Bates. Many families cannot afford or cannot justify the expense to attend a pricey homeschool convention—all of these are, for the most part, marketed to the solidly middle-class family with disposable income [although there are families who diligently save and sacrifice to get to one]. A burgeoning legion of web sites has sprung up linking to free or extremely low cost homeschooling materials—many of which are excellent others less so.
Since so many Vision Forum-influenced Quiverfull families are reluctant to expose their children to the literature of the 20th, let alone the 21st Century, most of the books linked to by these sites are in the public domain [i.e. no longer protected by copyright laws]. Many of these are standard classics that are often even assigned in public schools [example: Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol or Great Expectations]. Several Quiverfull families produce and sell homeschool resources as well. [The Learning Parent or Eagles Wing Ed or Heart of Wisdom.]
While I could not find any poof of this, I suspect with the growing number of states who have free online Charter Schools, some Quiverfull families may take advantage of this at least for higher math classes. In my state, this results in the family having a free computer and high-speed internet access.
College or advanced vocational training—when allowed in such families—is often done on the cheap in a way savvy students have been doing since the 70s: using CLEP tests to earn college credit. By combining this with “safe” at-home online classes, some Quiverfull sons, and a rare few daughters, can achieve a college degree or technical certificate.
Medical Care
Medical care in the United States is a nightmare for self-employed and working poor families of any worldview. Quiverfull families, oddly, often join the New Age in rejoicing in “natural” or “herbal” medications. Old home remedies are also often in favor:
It burned, dripping down my back, scathing tender flesh. The stench crept through my nostrils and landed on my tongue. My eyes watered. “Hold still,” Mom ordered, one hand rooted in my scalp and the other poised above my head…”It will kill the lice,” Mom said, swishing my hair in kerosene. I lay in it [in the tub] drenched, my body on fire…..I know her hands burned, too.
Grandma Millie, our neighbor, said it worked because that’s what they did in the old days. We wanted to live like they did back then, because that’s when life was simple….living frugally and biblically, which meant not relying on the conveniences of modern culture, but welcoming hardship—“For in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”(Gen. 3:19) (McFarland, Quivering Daughters, p. 1).
The biggest cost for most families is child birth. While there is a cooperative program such families may choose to join that provides a limited solution to the health insurance problem, the solution for many, many families is simply home birth.
While Anna Duggar had a perfectly normal home birth, she had received state-of-the-art prenatal care, had attended a standard childbirth education class with her husband and “just happened” to have on-hand both an experienced childbirth educator/doula and her very experienced mother-in-law. For many families none of this is an option. Mistrust of medical science in general—and of obstetricians specifically, refusal to accept government assistance, extreme rural living, combined with a poverty-level income makes homebirth the only possibility for many mothers.
In her book, The Way Home, Mary Pride called for women who die in childbirth to be regarded as martyrs. Sadly, with more money or even simply a greater ability to reason and trust, some of these mothers could have stayed to raise their many children.
Elder care is beyond the means of many, many families today. Unlike other families who choose a Medicare/Medicaid funded nursing home or other solution, Quiverfull families often, commendably, care for their elderly at home. It’s not only the Duggars who have given end-of-life care in their homes to parents or grandparents (Duggars, p. p. 219-220 and “18 Kids and Counting: Duggars Say Goodbye) but most such families do not enjoy the luxury of a full guest suite in their home in which to house the loved one. Nor can most afford a doctor who makes house calls. (See here - scroll down to “Nursing Home”.)
Another area of medical care that is not in the budget, or the mindset, is vaccination. As the Duggars showed recently with 12 children covered in chicken pox spots, (“19 Kids and Counting: Duggars Chicken Out”) vaccines are pretty much seen as an evil. Although most well baby shots can be had from your state’s department of health at regional or county clinics for little or no charge, Quiverfull families tend to steer clear of any form of government assistance. This also means that nursing mothers and their little children who qualify and would benefit would not accept WIC or food stamps. Nor would most families sign their children up for state health insurance. Staying away from the government is a goal.
Clothing and Diapers
The Duggars spend a lot of time promoting thrift store, and more recently, clearance rack shopping for clothes and shoes. Many families of all types nationwide have jumped on the “buy used” bandwagon—if only to survive. Goodwill is chic these days! For families at or below the poverty line yard sales, clearance racks, consignment shops and thrift stores are the main suppliers of clothing, bedding, shoes and other items.
Like the Duggars of old (and the Duggar girls today when desired) many still sew clothing—although sources of cheap fabric are not plentiful anymore—even Wal-Mart has cut back or eliminated yard goods from their sales floor.
Caring for clothing, bedding, towels etc, is another place many families struggle. While the Duggars installed low-water front-loading washers in their 8-machine family laundry room, with 20 acres to work with it would seem that a lot of those khakis and polo shirts—not to mention sheets and towels—could be hung out to dry at a substantial savings. This is another part of either savings or basic survival in many homes. With large numbers of children, possibly no water heater, no electricity, and at best ONE washer, many, many families end up doing a combination of hand washing, machine washing, outdoor drying or indoor rack drying.
One place the Duggars show good planning though is their “family uniform”—developed back in the day of their ranch house. With two washers, and later in a rental house with only one washer, they simplified their laundry by having everyone wear the same color each day—khaki pants for all the boys, same color polo shirt for all the boys and similar dress or jumper for the girls reducing the sorting and number of loads of laundry. All the Duggar boys at that time wore black socks, while the girls wore white socks. [I have not confirmed this, but have been told that matching clothing is promoted by ATI for family unity. Still, it totally makes sense with limited laundry equipment.] With more laundry equipment this rule seems to have been loosened if not completely abandoned. Another money-saving tip the Duggars have adopted—like many other families of all beliefs—is making their own laundry detergent [I have personally been doing this for 4 years—it’s great and so cheap.] (“17 Kids and Counting: Cheaper by the Duggars” and Duggars, p. 173).
In Blogland, many Moms signal their beliefs and desired audience with phrases like “Attachment parenting, breastfeeding, cloth-diapering, homeschool mom.” Or “God-honoring, dresses only, head-covering, wheat grinding, non-vaccinating, cloth-diapering…etc”. Cloth diapers are no less a point in the Quiverfull “Mommy Wars” than elsewhere. While it’s nice that the older Duggar girls and Grandma aren’t stuck washing all little girls’ diapers, it would seem that as cost-conscious as Jim-Bob and Michelle are, that they’d have clambered onto the cloth diapering band wagon about 18 kids ago. Sewing cloth diapers, cloth nursing pads and other similar items is a popular home business for many stay-at home moms at BOTH ends of the political spectrum. While the cost to the environment is hotly debated, the sheer COST of all those packages of disposable diapers for the Duggars has to be mind-boggling.
Finally, some families take washable cotton a few steps further into the bathroom. Cloth sanitary napkins, like diapers, are a popular home business. Like cloth diapers, they come in all styles, prints, and price ranges. Also like diapers they are a “love ‘em or leave ‘em” product. For many families at the poverty level with large numbers of girls they may be the only alternative. Free patterns are available on web sites and blogs just like for cloth diapers [pads] [diapers].
The other reusable feminine product is a rubber cup known as the “Diva Cup.” It’s been mentioned in Tightwad circles for years. It’s inexpensive and re-useable. Since it is an internal device, meant to replace tampons, it may not be considered appropriate in Quiverfull families for unmarried girls.
Many families, like Gil and Kelly Bates [who taught the Duggars this savings] make their own baby wipes using paper towels. Other families do the same, but with re-useable strips of terrycloth or other absorbent cloth. “Recipes” for the soaking liquid are available at many websites and blogs.
And then there is the [ahem] “family cloth.” This is simply washable toilet paper. Small squares of cotton are kept in a basket by the toilet. Used cloth is put in a diaper pail (or similar) with vinegar or bleach and then washed. Used cotton sanitary napkins are done in a similar way as are homemade hemorrhoid cloths with witch hazel.
Additional Money Savers
[Note, this section is added to Hopewell's article by Vyckie ~ as evidenced by the sudden appearance of run-on sentences strung together with lots of tildes. ]
Families which take Quiverfull fundamentalism to the extreme frequently develop even more radical (if it were possible) convictions which can also cut expenses considerably.
No insurance. Many of the QFers I knew (including Laura’s ex-husband, Dale) believe that purchasing insurance is tantamount to putting ones trust in ”man” (insurance companies) rather than God. These families only purchase the minimum insurance which is required by law, such as liability insurance for their vehicles ~ rather than purchasing homeowners insurance (which is not required on their debt-free homes), they are relying on the Lord as their “insurance policy.” Because life insurance is also optional ~ these families trust that God will provide for their orphaned children should He choose to take them home early.
No extra-curricular activities. Followers of Jonathan Lindvall’s teachings regarding “sheltering children,” do not allow their kids to participate in sports, cheerleading, band, etc. ~ this eliminates the expense of uniform and equipment purchases and/or rentals.
No frivilous entertainment. Okay ~ this one is fairly common among Quiverfull families who take the protection of their children from worldly influences very seriously. Most QF families do not own televisions, let alone subscribe to cable programming. Nearly all movies ~ yes, even Disney! ~ are out of the question too.
No toys. According to Nancy Campbell’s daughter, Evangeline, “Things do not make you rich! Children do! Children do not need another toy – they need you! Excess toys create fights, chaos and mess. I hate them!” Although in this article, Evangeline encourages Moms of Many to get rid of “excess toys,” a later Above Rubies article (which I’m not finding online), details how she got rid of all the children’s toys, insisting instead that the children “play” with real babies rather than plastic dolls, or make their own play things (sticks for guns, etc.) rather than buying over-priced “stuff” from the toy department which takes up space in their already-overcrowded home.
Debt-Free – A Recipe for Neglect & Burn-Out
Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering has often stated that the ultra-demanding Quiverfull lifestyle is a recipe for neglect and burn-out. NLQ readers have asked, both on the website and on the forum, how realistically are the Duggar family and other “Quiverfull Royalty” portraying this debt-free ideal? The high standards of striving to live debt-free, keeping Mom (and often, Dad, too) at home, tithing 10% – 15% of their income, and eschewing government assistance do not offer a promising financial outlook for Quiverfull families who are actively welcoming an abundance of children in today’s economy.
While this combination of principles may seem especially godly and makes for a popular “reality” TV show, such utopian idealism more often adds up to a stark and impoverished Quiverfull reality.
Before TLC and their reality TV show offer came on the scene, Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar were already on their way to financial security—a situation not normally found in homes with no college-educated adult. But, like the people profiled in the book the Millionaire Next Door, Jim-Bob and Michelle have always lived BELOW their means and have always had common sense about purchases.
They also share a vision for the type of family life they wanted to lead. While Jim-Bob did hold a job, and a mortgage, at the time they married he soon realized this was not a sensible way to live. His love of buying cars, fixing them up himself, and reselling them for a profit was the first step to a secure future. Although he acknowledges that the used car business is not looked on with much respect, he decided to set up a car lot and run it in a Christian manner. Soon he was making enough off used cars to quit his day job. Eventually, they rented out the mortgaged house and moved into a tiny house on the car lot to increase their income. Along the way, he made a few good decisions [and a few bad ones]. (Duggar, chapters 1 & 2 and “17 Kids and Counting: Cheaper by the Duggars”).
One good decision was to buy a tow truck. While the first model he bought wasn’t worth the money, unlike many college-grads he knew enough about cars and other equipment to buy the towing equipment and winch off another tow truck, hold on to it, save up for a truck to put it on and eventually he had an excellent tow truck and no loan. The towing business grew fast and he had to hire help. Finally the collateral supplied by the car lot inventory, a bent for strong and creative negotiations and the savings from their income allowed the Duggars to enter the true source of their security: REAL ESTATE. (Duggar, chapters 2 & 3).
Jim-Bob’s parents were in real estate and soon Jim-Bob and Michelle also got realtors licenses. Jim-Bob discovered he had an eye for investment properties and the stomach for deal making. After saving up $65,000 to pay cash for the home they would still be living in when they filmed their first TV special, the Duggars went on to make several profitable real estate deals. One deal, which cost about the same amount as the house, netted them a profit of nearly $200,000 after Jim-Bob put in a few hours on a backhoe clearing the site. They also bought a 20-acre parcel of land with an old chicken hatchery on it. They converted the building into commercial rental space and used part of the land for their dream home. The rent collected from the rental properties was their main income for several years. In their show (“17 Kids and Counting: Cheaper by the Duggars”) he shows viewers the property he owns and leases to a cell phone company for their transmission tower. In addition to the real estate deals, Jim-Bob often buys and sells other items. While building their home, he acquired and resold a bucket-lift truck and a scissor-lift among other equipment (Duggars 20 and Counting and elsewhere).
Jim-Bob figured out how to efficiently provide for his family by being observant, staying debt-free and having assets that could be quickly liquefied to provide cash for new ventures and by using all his negotiating skills to get great deals when he did buy big ticket items. Without a high-paying white collar profession, Jim-Bob would have been routinely away from his family for 80 or more hours a week to try to earn the income they needed. Instead, he found a way to provide a level of income for the family God would send him and still be at home to help with that family as much as possible.
Along the way, Jim-Bob met with a group of business men who introduced him to the Jim Sammons Financial Freedom Seminars. This taught a Biblical perspective on managing family finances and stressed the debt-free mantra. Jim-Bob would later host such seminars in his own home and would promote Sammon’s message on their TV show (“18 Kids and Counting: Big Family in Big Sandy” see also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTrVjoAh20g).
Another way the Duggars have always provided for their family is thru their motto of “buy used and save the difference.” Jim-Bob grew up in a family known for economic hardship. While his parents were both excellent salespeople, his father simply could not manage money. In fact Jim-Bob remembers his Mom cooking rice that had been in a decorative jar for years because it was all the food left in the house! (Duggar, p. 11). Frugal living and a very tight budget were natural to Jim-Bob. Michelle, however, had grown up with much more financial security and disposable income. She had to work hard to overcome the “ick” factor involved in buying and wearing used clothing! Today the Duggar’s are probably the world’s best known thrift-store shoppers—and for years bought nearly all clothing not only at thrift stores, but on 50% off days.
The Duggars also use their sales skills in reverse—negotiating a great deal on items they must buy new. For example, Jim-Bob taught viewers how to negotiate for a bus tire (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars in Dixie”), to look for businesses that can haggle on the price (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars on a Deadline”) and always to ask for a discount (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars on a Diet” & (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars in Dixie”).
“Do it yourself” is a way of life to the Duggars. From making their own laundry detergent to cutting and styling their own hair, to cutting their own firewood, to fixing their own cars to hiring skilled people to teach them to build their home, the Duggars never pay to have someone do something they can do themselves. (“18 Kids and Counting: Cheaper by the Duggars,” (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars New Additions,” “16 Kids and Moving In,” Duggar web site, and Duggar, Chapter 8).
In spite of their thrifty ways, in spite of all the “many hands” to make “light work,” the Duggars do not really garden or raise any animals for meat, eggs or milk. Nor have they been seen to hunt and butcher for venison—a common money saver among conservative Midwestern and Southern families. The girls sewed their own clothes for years—and still do so when they want to. They also rely on a lot of convenience foods—understandable with that many children, but not healthy or economical. Inexplicably, they seem to ignore the great deal they got on a commercial dishwasher—preferring to waste money on an endless stream of paper plates, cups and bowls. Again, understandable with the numbers they feed at each meal, but if “many hands” do in fact “make light work” [a favorite Duggar saying] and “buy used and save the difference” is the family rule, then it would seem reusable dishes would be their only choice. Nor have they ever used cloth diapers, which would seem to be a very substantial savings with so many children, but would increase the laundry by a load or two per week.
Often people have commented that TLC “rescued” the Duggar’s from their seemingly never-ending task of building their dream home. While TLC certainly did help out and did force the completion of the project, the Duggars would have finished it eventually and stayed debt-free. While TLC provided a lot of “goodies” like new furniture and a grand piano, the Duggars paid cash for their super-sized commercial kitchen by buying it at an auction when a KMART store closed for a fraction of the retail cost. (Duggar, p. 215). These are not people who would “abandon” a project or give up in any way! Like their friends, the Bates family, they would have lived amid continuing construction. In truth, even with TLC’s help, the family did without air conditioning for a year and without window coverings for longer than that (air conditioning, Duggar, p. 223; window coverings “18 Kids and Counting: Duggars and Dentists”). Throughout the process, they remained debt-free.
What about other Quiverfull Dads?
“Family business” is the ideal for members of Bill Gothard’s ATI/IBLP. Families should be together as much as possible to ensure that fathers play a very prominent role in training their children. The Duggar’s discouraged son John from becoming a pilot because it would mean too much time away from his future family—a powerful illustration of how seriously this is taken. Other Quiverfull dad’s support their families in different ways, but normally with a family business of some sort. We’ll look at some of the Duggar’s friends and a few other Quiverfull fathers to see how they do it.
Gil Bates, a now frequent ATI/IBLP speaker who talks about supporting his 17 children with one income, has tried a number of ways to support his family without holding a regular job. Among those are window washing and lawn care before happening on tree work. (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars’ Big Thaw). Today Gil and his three eldest sons (Zak 21, Lawson 17 and Nathan 16) work together in the family’s tree service company. Along the way Gil was “blessed” when a group of businessmen gave him a bucket truck.[In case you are curious, I could not verify if this was the same bucket truck Jim-Bob Duggar sold a few years back.] While the Bates family are certainly hard working, their income is such that they have publically stated they are eligible for federal assistance but do not accept it.
Clark Wilson and his sons own and run a construction company in Mississippi. The Arndt Family have a court reporting service [Arndt family] and several families are in full-time music ministry living off “love offerings” [and probably investments of some type in many cases] and cd sales (examples: http://www.wissmannfamily.com/GospelBluegrass/Store.html or http://www.southernraisedbluegrass.com/index.html ). Younger Quiverfull adults are finding opportunities with photography, web design and teaching music lessons.
“Family Business” and a love of practical work-related fellowship are among the ties that bind the ATI/IBLP families together. On “ 18/19 Kids and Counting” we’ve seen the Bates show up to help the Duggars clear the trees downed in an ice storm (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars’ Big Thaw”) and we’ve seen Clark Wilson helping with the construction of the Duggar home (“16 Children and Moving In”). Recently we’ve seen the Duggar, Wilson, and Reith families all go to Tennessee to help build the Bates family a new, larger home (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars and Bates Reloaded,” “18 Kids and Counting: Do it Yourself Duggars,” “18 Kids and Counting: Duggars on a Deadline.”) In fact John and Joseph stayed on with the Bates to continue working on the project. We’ve also seen the Wilson family come to help build a basketball court for the Duggars (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars New Additions”).
ATI/IBLP stresses “hospitality,” “fellowship” and “encouragement” of one member family for other families in the group. Huge houses help facilitate a greater level of hospitality. It’s no accident that as soon as the Bates new home addition [well, new home] was “livable,” the Bates were featured on the ATI/IBLP web site. Members have a directory to use to find nearby families when they are traveling. Obviously, it’s nice to have time with like-minded families—for even the Duggars have said their kids need to be with other such families to avoid feeling like the “only ones” who live this way (“18 Kids and Counting: Big Family in Big Sandy”)—but it also serves to keep ATI/IBLP members “in line.” You’d have a hard time hiding a big screen TV or your son’s R-rated posters if a bus full of fellow ATI-ers pulled up for the night on short notice. “Walking the Talk” is a 24/7 requirement.
The Duggars and other Quiverfull families inflate their incomes by using their children as unpaid labor. At very young ages both Josh and John Duggar were helping build the family home, running earth-moving equipment, using power tools and doing all kinds of things that by law normally require being a certain age—unless you are a family member. By not paying for that labor, the costs of a project decreases considerably. Ditto child care. Many Quiverfull Moms help with the family business, such as Anna Duggar who was show on TV making her first used car sale (“18 Kids and Counting: Duggars in the Driver’s Seat”) and her mother-in-law Michelle even towed cars on occasion back in the early days of her marriage! Some wives even run a home-based business on their own—with the husband’s approval of course. Who looks after all those little kids (often a larger number of children and infants than a licensed home day care could have), cooks the meals, does the homeschooling, sews matching dresses, does the laundry, or runs to the grocery store? The live-in unpaid servants: the teenage daughters [and in the Duggar’s case a family friend and Grandma] that’s who.
Sons and Daughters in Business
While Josh Duggar happily graduated from homeschool at 16, it’s doubtful that he was doing much school work by that age. He spent huge amounts of time helping with the house construction, working on political campaigns and taking care of younger siblings. The same is true with John Duggar and now younger brother, Joseph. They finished the state-mandated amount of schooling and were then at work—helping manage rental properties, repairing cars or making home repairs, managing a used car lot, starting a wrecker/towing service (http://tlc.discovery.com/videos/19-kids-and-counting-a-satisfied-customer.html and http://tlc.discovery.com/videos/17-kids-and-counting-webisodes-apprentice-duggars.html) —all to build up enough money and life experience to be able to marry and start a family debt-free. While Josh Duggar and his wife, Anna, are living in a rental home owned by his Grandmother [he may have purchased it— it has not been mentioned], most young men need to own their home and be able to single-handedly support a family in order to marry (Veinot, pp 257-258 and http://www.titus2.com/blog/index.php/page/10/ example). Once married, Quiverfull sons and daughters abide by the rule “leave and cleave” as Michelle Duggar put it. The financial support from Mom and Dad is gone for good.
Other Quiverfull sons may join the family business or may strike out on their own in business at least—if not in actually moving out of the family home, before marriage. Many get their start in Josh Duggar’s case putting up signs for political campaigns. The Maxwell sons have a few businesses and have also built one home, remodeled another and are working on a third as son Christopher prepares to marry.
As we have seen, John Duggar has his own towing business. Christopher Maxwell and two of the Staddon brothers have photography and web design businesses. Training in these careers is offered by ATI/IBLP. Many sons draw on their ALERT Cadet training and give-back to their communities as volunteer firefighters or EMTs. Recently, we were shown John Duggar responding to a fire as well as Zak, Michaela and Nathan Bates helping their local volunteer fire department (“18 Kids and Counting: Designing Duggars” and “19 Kids and Counting: Digesting Duggars”).
Daughters contribute to the family’s income mostly by keeping house and helping with the younger children without being paid. Like their brothers, they may earn a little money by doing odd jobs such as cleaning or babysitting for other families. Many daughters, though, play a role in their family’s business. The Maxwell girls pack orders and man sales booths at homeschooling and other conventions. Maxwell and Castleberry daughters write self-published chapter books for children marketed to like-minded families.
One of the Boyers’ daughters had a cleaning business and markets cds of her convention “talks” and other materials for homeschooling families. Many daughters, such as Erin Bates, teach piano, violin, harp or other music lessons. Training as a music instructor is another offering of ATI/IBLP. One family runs a retreat center for families (and found themselves featured on the successful TV show “World’s Strictist Parents” in which their children play an integral part in running the business and taking care of guests.
Selling the Dream
Steve Maxwell and his family produce and sell a number of specialty products aimed at large homeschooling families . Among these are the Chore Packs and the scheduling system, Managers of Their Homes, that the Duggars have mentioned in their book and on their show (Duggars, pp 118-119; “18 Kids and Counting: School Daze”).
They and many other families are really in MARKETING—selling the “dream” of the ideal Christian, Quiverfull family with Dad firmly in charge as the Patriarch of the family. The Maxwells help with selling the dream by producing a scheduling system and chore-reminder system that helps simplify the life of huge homeschooling families. The Boyers offer not only homeschooling materials—most chosen specifically for like-minded families, they also produce cd-s, flash cards and workbooks to aid in “child training” and scripture memorization. They sell cds of their message that a big family can have peace and that brothers and sisters not only CAN but MUST be each other’s best friends. Finally,another Quiverfull family sells “wholesome wear” swimsuits of the kind worn by the Duggars, that encourage modesty and draw attention to the lady’s countenance in the ATI-approved manner.
While the “dream” is of a blissfully happy family, sheltered from the world by a loving, homeschooling Mother who has endless time for training her children—the reality is often that Mom is a successful speaker, author or businesswoman. While other Moms diligently sew cloth diapers or modest clothing for sale on an Ebay site to help provide for their families or sell homemade goat-milk soap or ebooks on couponing or other small, part-time ebusinesses, top level Quiverfull families are very different. Two such women are among the “Royalty” of the Quiverfull Moms—Nancy Campbell and Jennie Chancey. Few women have devoted themselves to furthering the Quiverfull lifestyle more than these two.
Nancy Campbell, the “Queen Mother” of the Quiverfull Movement, has built a speaking, retreating and writing empire that touches the lives of Quiverfull women on just about every continent (for Quiverfull is not merely an American movement). Her seminal book, Be Fruitful and Multiply, helped make the Quiverfull lifestyle popular. Her magazine, Above Rubies, was “created to:
Encourage and strengthen women in their high calling as wives, mothers and homemakers
To raise the standard of God’s Truth in the nations.
To make the magazine more widely available, subscriptions are free and issues are produced when enough donations have flowed in to cover the printing and shipping costs. Quiverfull wives can write and submit articles, too, detailing how they are blessed by the lifestyle.
Nancy Campbell’s commercial empire includes the sale of books [her own and others that encourage the lifestyle], dvds—such as her “Family Meal Table,” music cds and, of course, recordings of Nancy’s encouraging talks. Nancy also sells her husband’s Bible Study materials and writings and cds by her adult daughters, Serene and Evangeline. Women can also enroll in one of the Above Rubies retreats for encouragement and fellowship. Unlike ATI, however, Nancy Campbell encourages adoption and has produced and sells materials on the blessing of adoption. The Campbells are also behind the hugely successful (and very UN-ATI) Contemporary Christian Music group the Newsboys.
While at Nancy’s stage of life, i.e. an empty-nester, it’s easier to understand how she can be selling the dream and still running her home and caring for her husband [not that NON QF moms don’t do this every day alongside a successful career], less explicable is the empire of Jennie Chancey—a mom with many young children. In addition to her vintage sewing pattern company, begun as a newlywed, Mrs. Chancey co-founded the iconic blog “Ladies Against Feminism.” Mrs Chancey is the author, with another of Quiverfull’s Royalty, Stacey McDonald, of the Christian Best-seller, Passionate Housewives, Desperate for God: Fresh Vision for the Hopeful Homemaker. She was also among the featured speakers in the “The Monstrous Regiment of Women” [LINK] In addition to all of this, Mrs. Chancey makes time to lead tours of Jane Austen’s England! With her husband Matt working full-time as a lawyer and speaker, it does make outsiders question just who is minding all those little children and overseeing their homeschool lesssons.
Another aspect of “Selling the Dream” of the Quiverfull Lifestyle is reaching the teenagers—especially the girls. This is handled by two sisters who have a virtual monopoly on the Quiverfull Daughter Market—Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin. These two specialize in the dream lifestyle of the Stay At Home Daughter. Their book, So Much More, and their dvd, Return of the Daughters, sell an idealized notion of the grown, homeschool-graduate daughter, serving as her father’s trainee helpmeet while waiting for her God-chosen and father approved husband to be presented to her.
This “vision” rarely, if ever, includes college. It can include extensive time working (unpaid) in her father’s business or it may center on doing the homemaking or homeschooling of younger siblings to relieve the Mother. The Botkins focus their vision of the Stay At Home Daughter on serving their father—running his errands, making his life easier in any way possible. Example of the way the Botkins and others in Vision Forum-influenced, Patriarchal families view the father-daughter relationship are the father-daughter purity balls and a frequently cited “fun” activity at father/daughter camping events where the daughters must shave their father’s faces. While totally UnBiblical, this message is finding an enthusiastic reception among Patriarchal, Quiverfull families—among whom the Botkin Sisters are superstar celebrities. If there was a Quiverfull version of People Magazine, the Botkin girls would be among its most frequent cover girls. Given the acknowledged headship of their father, Geoffrey Botkin, it is left for observers of the family to wonder if the girls earnings are given to their father, put into an account to fund dowries or if they even see any of the money they earn.
Among the dirty little secrets of this lifestyle is the economic exploitation of the entire family. While the Duggar’s TV show is the ultimate example of this, all Quiverfull families with a business use the wife and children as unpaid labor. In many cases such a business would just plain fail if hired help was necessary. Children, often too young for a work permit, are pressed into service in family business to cut costs. Wives take on roles in the business while daughters keep the home running and raise and educate the younger children. This part of the “dream’ is not shown in the Botkins books or dvds or in any other source for what it really is: exploitation and child labor. True, non-Quiverfull family businesses often do the same thing, but rarely are there so many children who need care in such families.
Calls to regulate the use of children in reality TV are the tip of the regulatory ice berg. Loopholes in labor laws—covering agricultural workers and family business, need to be closed to protect young children. This is not to say that all help by children in family business is wrong—far from it. It can truly be an outstanding learning experience. But children’s hours should be tightly regulated to ensure they are not overworked and undereducated. Similarly, the daughters’ hours of looking after younger siblings need to be carefully limited. And, children should be fairly compensated for their labor—they are not earning their room and board. While homeschooling, done well, can easily take less time than a public school day, until age 18 the laws are clear that school hours should outnumber work hours.
William Branham never claimed to be a faith healer. That is, he claimed that it was the power of the individual’s faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that healed their diseases. Christ had finished the work; there was nothing left to do but believe. In a 1955 sermon entitled Jehovah-Jireh, Branham explained that faith was the force that brought healing to the believer:
If I could heal anyone, I’d come down here, and go to each one and heal everyone. I would, if I could. But I can’t. And there’s no other man can. And–and if Jesus was here, He could not, only if you’d believe. Look. That sounds strange, that Jesus could not heal unless you’d believe. When He went to His Own country, the Bible said, “Many mighty works He could not do, because of their unbelief.” Now, if He was standing here tonight on this platform, just like that you’re looking at us, and you’d come up to Him, and say, “Jesus, will You heal me?”
He’d say, “Child, can’t you believe that I have already done it on Golgotha? I paid for your sickness. If you believe, go and receive.”
For here’s what He said. “As thou has believed, so be it unto you.” He said, “Now, for Myself, I can’t do nothing. I do what the Father shows Me. The Father shows Me a vision, then I do what He tells Me. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Now, you just ask. It’s your faith. … Just go out believing and you get well. Isn’t that simple? It’s God’s love. Now, we will call a few people up here at the platform to pray for them. You know why I do that? Is to get the anointing, Spirit started among the people. It begins to build their faith. And as their faith comes up, He speaks to me, just like He did to the Lord Jesus. The woman that touched His garment and she went out in the crowd, Jesus said, “Someone’s touched Me.”
And everybody said, “Not me.”
And then He looked out; He seen the woman. He said, “Thy faith has saved thee.”
Now, it was her faith, not Jesus. She–she drew the power from–from God through Jesus. Now, watch and see if He doesn’t do the same thing. See? As soon as the Holy Spirit gets anointing the people, the prayer line as good as stops.
Believing was evidently an imperfect process, as I slowly watched the demon of cancer waste away the life of one of my dearest friends.
Pearl and Eamon were my Message-church grandparents. Their love story captivated us all: they’d met at six years old (like Sven and me, everyone not-so-subtly noted) and had a joyous marriage. They were still infatuated with one another forty years after their wedding day. Pearl was an inspiration to me in every way. She challenged her husband as much as she supported him. She regaled us with a robust sense of humor at every church luncheon, and she listened with genuine sympathy to our ills. She was well known for founding a support group for sufferers from a chronic gastrointestinal disease, ignoring the naysayers who accused her of leading men and dealing with the World. She and Eamon had just one son.
Patriarchy had not succeeded in suppressing Pearl’s energy, creativity or zest for living. I hinged my hopes for the future on her example: if she could exercise her own intelligence and independence within marriage, maybe one day I could be so lucky. Maybe I wouldn’t be stuck with a replica of my controlling father, asking permission for my every breath. Never once did I see Eamon give cause for Pearl to submit. He loved her as Christ loved the church, I thought. She never even needed to obey him. They were neither male nor female, head nor feet in Christ.
But it was my fate to watch their tragic separation, as the stomach pain Pearl suffered one summer turned out to be much more than the precociousness of her existing disease. The doctors could do nothing. I lay awake for those long summer weeks, praying desperately for her healing. What stands in the way of our faith? My mother and I wondered. God promised Brother Branham that not even cancer would stand in the way of the Bride of Christ, if only we would believe. I felt a growing hopelessness as Pearl was admitted to hospice, and rebuked myself in terror, lest my unbelief pollute our church and hinder her healing. My mother shared my thoughts, however, revealing that she thought God had other plans this time.
When at last Pearl died, I felt a part of me detach. I no longer had reason to believe that divine healing was more than cruel chance, taking the profane and the beautiful without regard for the damage left behind. But in Pearl I also lost my future self: no more was there an example of a woman in the Message who thought and did for herself. I burrowed still deeper into a bodily regimen in the effort to stave off womanhood. I would not eat, I would not grow, I would not be enslaved. I would die first.
Meanwhile, my pastor preached, as he had often done, that mental health, like physical health, was a promise of the Holy Spirit. There was no room for depression or fear in the minds of the elect – indeed, they were signs of the absence of the Holy Spirit. “He has promised us a spirit of power and of a sound mind,” pastor Jacob frequently reminded us in a sober voice. He went on to warn us of the perils of seeking worldly counsel. His sister saw a psychiatrist every week, he explained, and her worldly counselor only enabled her to blame her parents for her problems rather than taking responsibility for her own sins. This story was taken as a word from God in my household.
“I don’t believe in counseling,” my mother told me on the single occasion when I was so foolish as to bring up my depression. “God promised us a sound mind. Just pray to Him for deliverance. Worldly counselors just teach you to blame others for your problems.” I never mentioned it again, fearing that admitting any instability of mind would immediately reveal to her that I didn’t have the Holy Spirit. I owed it to every midnight breakthrough and morning profession of faith not to admit that I was afraid I didn’t have it. My every outward move must reflect the change that Christ had wrought in my heart – even though I’d never known another kind of heart – lest I be revealed as a corrupter, or worse yet, as the Serpent’s Seed. Some new births are not so dramatic, it was rumored, especially for kids growing up in the Message. They’ve never had the chance to grieve the Lord like their parents. I often wished I had – then, at least, I’d be able to point at the date of my conversion and feel assured that my life was, after all, not the same.
I strove harder. I ate less.
My mother was furious. My grandmother was furious. I was sworn at, cajoled, and commanded, yet I felt a desperate power in resisting. I alone knew what this “personal walk” meant for me. I knew what I had not to eat. We lived now in my grandparents’ basement, having been ejected from our home of seven years when my father left to pursue his affair. My mother struggled for several months to make up the rent payments by foster parenting, but ultimately failed. We supported ourselves by selling our belongings until there was nothing left to sell. At last we returned to my grandparents’ door, paupers. I hung long curtains from the basement window in my room in the effort to pretend my view consisted of more than the underside of a garden shrub. We were expected to share my grandparents’ dinner every evening. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let them control what I ate: they were dead set on making me fat. I adhered strictly to what I could measure: no rogue food passed my lips. I rinsed the powder from my chewing gum to cut down on the calories. When it was dinnertime, I would hide. I rose at 6AM to do my schoolwork, then immersed myself in Scriptures and the Message, pausing only to entertain myself by writing fiction. On other days, I simply worked.
Reactions to my shrinking figure from people in the church were initially positive. Even my mother once commented on my waiflike figure and long, trailing hair: “You look like one of those lovely, pretty Message girls.” I was engulfed by the persistent belief that Christ could make one beautiful: the glow of the Holy Spirit was to endow us with a beauty beyond our mortal frames. Others were to look at us and wonder at the supernatural glory we radiated. “Hollywood glitters,” ran a famous Message saying, “but the Gospel glows.”
People commented on my grace and maturity as I set about desperately reforming my attitude. I would be sweet. I would be kind. I would let Jesus rule my every thought, word and deed. I immersed myself in scripture and tearfully apologized to my parents for my sinful attitude of rebellion and anger. I felt a thick knot of rage welling up against the injustice of my plight even as the words of penance rained from my lips: I was apologizing for my anger with the man who had abandoned my family – yet I suppressed it, swallowed it, indeed rebuked it in the name of Christ. Satan was the author of anger, and bitterness would bar me from the Rapture. My father hugged me, and I gloried in my own humiliation. I was crucifying my flesh. A part of me still burned with indignation as I handed over a thousand dollars to my father, all of my earnings for a year’s work in a bakery, to pay one small fraction of his massive debts. Jesus would give away all that he had, I thought. My father had asked – I had no right to refuse. Yet I would never be able to buy a car now.
“Sierra is getting so mature,” I overheard adults saying. They commented on my air of serenity. My father praised me for my patience. All the world seemed to approve, at first. I finally looked and behaved as a Message girl should.
But there was a hitch in my master plan. People were growing suspicious of me. One year, I spontaneously bought presents for my friends: all of the people in my youth group, numbering about ten. The problem lay in the fact that I had given presents to girls and boys alike, and one of those boys read deeper into my present that I’d ever thought possible or desirable. A five dollar radio from the clearance shelf at Ames seemed to have translated into a gesture of romantic intent, and the church was abuzz with Jonathan’s newly awakened interest in me.
I was mortified. Jonathan was a narrow, bespectacled character seven years my senior. He was part of the “youth group” simply because he inserted himself there, despite the fact that he was in his early twenties. I knew him for correcting every grammatical mistake that might slip into my colloquial speech, and for the perfect SAT scores of which his doting mother never ceased to boast. I began to avoid him, and the church began to notice. Sympathetic figures whisked me away when they saw him coming. Other times, I answered his queries in a monotone and escaped to the bathroom. I wondered if I could eat so little he would really cease to notice me. I was also humiliated to note that the church elders had noticed my avoidance of the young man, and several mothers commented that this was causing a scandal. I withdrew still further, sitting alone in my mother’s car or talking to no one but my old friend Sven and my younger friends, Rachel’s children. And still I grew thinner.
Eventually, my thinness became a subject of general concern.
“Turn sideways,” Eamon instructed me playfully one day. I complied, and he asked, “Where’d you go?” I walked away, confused by the encounter.
Jonathan’s mother, her interest piqued by her son’s, began to follow me, handing me copies of Above Rubies excerpts she had personally printed out, if not whole magazines themselves. I discretely took them home and threw them in the trash. I sensed that she was perpetually measuring me for my potential as a producer of grandchildren for the Lord’s army. On more than one occasion, I turned to find her round eyes boring into the back of my head, and once exited the sanctuary to find myself yanked by the elbow into the adjoining bathroom before I could identify my assailant. “Sierra,” she rebuked in a harsh whisper. “I can see your thighs!” It was Donna, Jonathan’s mother. She hastily drew a safety pin from her purse and pinned shut the back of my baggy denim jumper, which was slit to the base of the knee. Thus repaired, I waddled from her clutches to the car, rolling my eyes with my back to her face. I did not speak.
It was from Donna that would come the most eye-opening criticism of my decision not to eat. “You know,” she said, cornering me against a vending machine with an air of invested concern, “a woman needs to have some fat on her hips in order to bear children.”
Involuntarily, I laughed. “That’s great news,” I said with magnanimity, basking for a moment in her dumbfounded stare. “I don’t plan on having any children. The Lord is calling me to be single. I am going to serve Him as a truck driver and spread the gospel across the country.” She stammered in shock as I excused myself, hastily greeting a friend. Inwardly I thought, with a stab of realization at my own small worth, No one cares whether I’m hurting myself. All they really want from me is my womb. That’s all they think I am. I am nothing but a walking womb.
With Pearl gone, and Donna’s intensive focus drawn upon myself, I withdrew from the social throng of the church. I became increasingly dependent on Sven, newly returned from his three years in a Connecticut church, in order to endure the whirlpool of misdirected emotions in our peer group. I hid under his wing from the attentions of Jonathan and the assaults of his mother.
Little did I know how effectively Sven’s wings were clipped.
Sierra is a graduate student living in the Midwest. She left William Branham’s Message of the Hour in 2006 and enjoys a life of peace and freedom with her boyfriend and two cats.
Q: Why Do You Dwell in the Past ~ Why Don’t You Just Forgive and Move On?
Those of us who are sharing our stories of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse at No Longer Quivering are often accused of being bitter and angry.
I frequently receive emails encouraging me to “move on” ~ one writer told me, “You’re out! Good for you. You deserve to be happy, so quit dwelling on past abuse and live and enjoy your life fully in the present.”
I understand this ~ and when Laura chose to stop writing her story here at NLQ because she didn’t want to rehash all the painful memories of abuse ~ and she saw that it was having a harmful effect on her kids ~ and she married Richard and wanted to focus on her new life ~ I was very happy for her. I believe Laura’s example ~ of moving on to a new, happy life ~ is very powerful and inspiring.
Laura’s story brings us hope that the pain and turmoil of leaving an abusive relationship is not forever ~ it is possible to find happiness and not be always controlled and defined by past abuse.
The thing is ~ if we all “move on” then there will be no record ~ no warning. Which is why I’m still here writing and doing what I can in my own way to make a difference. It doesn’t mean that those of us telling our stories are bitter or that we are stuck in the past. In fact, NLQ is all about the future. We write so that the lives of many women which might otherwise have become hell on earth, will instead be free from legalism, self-abnegation and abuse.
Also ~ No Longer Quivering is still a relatively new website ~ so we’re all still in the process of writing our stories. It takes time. For instance, new writer, CherylAnnHannah has only posted two installments ~ so at this point, readers do not know how things have turned out for her. As you read, keep in mind that those of us who are sharing at NLQ have been out for a while ~ we’ve had some time to process the abuse, to rebuild our lives and to move on.
Those NLQ members who are still in the midst of waking up to the deception of Quiverfull ~ the women who have only just begun to disentangle themselves from the mindset and the lifestyle ~ for the most part, they are only sharing as part of the NLQ community on the forum or in the chat room. It’s much too painful ~ the wounds are still too fresh ~ to tell their stories publically. Many are in the process of divorce or child custody disputes ~ they are not in a position to share their experiences on a high-profile site like No Longer Quivering.
This is not to say that all of us writing here at NLQ have our acts together, have experienced total healing and have found our bliss. It’s a process ~ and each of us has our own timetable. Sharing is often a part of that process. Those of us who are writing our stories for NLQ are finding that the discussion which takes place on the forum in response to each installment of our stories can be quite validating and it really helps to process and find healing. I have learned so much from the women here ~ and it has really helped me to understand the dynamic of what we were doing as a family.
I believe that the more of us who are willing to speak up about the abuses of the Quiverfull philosophy and lifestyle, the harder it is becoming for QFers and their teachers to ignore our collective voice.
And for every email I’ve received suggesting that I leave the past behind and just move on, I have dozens thanking me for the No Longer Quivering website and forum. Recently, I was talking to a volunteer counselor for the Take Heart Project ~ she told me that she was doing a web search for resources to share with her friend who couldn’t admit to herself that her husband is abusive. She came across NLQ and started reading the stories and was able to use the info. here to help her friend to escape and start a new life of freedom.
That is only one of many, many such examples of women being helped ~ and that’s why No Longer Quivering and the Take Heart Project are here ~ not because we want to wallow in the bitterness of the past ~ not because we are unwilling or unable to move on ~ it is because we’re now living in freedom and we are making peace with our pasts by helping others to avoid or escape the QF/P paths which lead us to heartbreak and sorrow.
When we arrived, my boyfriend’s family and pastor took me in and became my adopted family. They ministered to me and loved me, and generally instilled the confidence in myself, in God, and in family that I had lost.
When we announced the news of my engagement, my family started writing my pastor and generally trying to sabotage my wedding by not sending my dress or supporting me in any way. To give me my dress would the same as giving money to a homeless drunk in their eyes. My in-laws and my boyfriend paid for everything, and we used the church for free.
It was a (perfect) small wedding. My grandparents came and I walked the aisle alone. I liked this because, it was me, making a decision. My pastor asked me after the ceremony how I felt, and I answered “free.” I made it. I didn’t give up, and I did what I knew was right. It was worth the pain, the depression, and the sacrifice to be free.
I’ve left a lot behind, I think differently, I don’t view the world as I used to, and I’m enjoying having the liberty to learn and grow. My husband and I have been married over a year, are stronger than ever, and enjoy being able to make decisions without being worried about unneeded input. I am now confident and pleased with myself – no longer hating my own guts.
My relationship with my parents fluctuates between shallow and non-existent. In time, I hope they’ll accept me as an adult, and not view me as their unrepentant child who still needs training. I hope someday, they’ll be willing to listen, and love me because I’m their daughter, respect my decisions (and husband) because I’m an adult, and have a healthy relationship with me. I’d love for that to be soon. I’m sorry for any wrong or pain I’ve caused them. I know they meant well, they were trying as hard as they could. I don’t want them to think that because I’m different, that it means I’m bad or rejecting them, just that, I’m a person.
I guess if there’s anything to be learned from my story it’s that there’s hope. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but there’s a way out, a way to freedom, a way to life, and it’s worth the pain to find it.
All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go; The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow
by Shelly Cruz
It was not until a period of distance was placed between my family and Cecilia’s, that I began to see the blessing that Cecilia gave me. It was an ABUNDANT blessing in disguise! At the time, I felt sad, lonely, depressed and even angry with her and with her whole family. I felt that Cecilia divorced our friendship, and I had no idea why.
I went from being a babe in Christ, to a woman, desiring nothing more, than to love my Savior Jesus. God was changing me little by little each day. I began to pray for specific things, and within weeks, sometimes days, prayers were being answered.
As I spent time in prayer, I started hearing the Lord speak directly to me. I became sensitive to hearing his voice. Good things began happening in my life. It felt amazing! I felt on fire for the Lord, and wanted to scream it from the rooftops! I felt that I had been lost, walking around in limbo for so long, but now I was found.
I clung to this verse: “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8)
I also went about my days, repeating…. “I Can Do All Things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippines 4:13)
The Lord started redirecting all my negative thoughts. I did not have to try to act a certain way anymore or anything like that. The Lord himself molded me, just like the potter and the clay. Me, a former mall-rat, was now more interested in tending to my flock at home, than shopping at the mall till midnight with friends.
I had no desire to paint my face with all the latest cosmetics, or keep up with the latest trends.
I once paid over two hundred dollars for a pair of Chanel sandals, which had the cutest CC logo on them. They made me feel so special. I remember showing my expensive sandals to Cecilia one day at church, along with my new Dooney & Burke bag. Cecilia just remained silent. God only knows what she was thinking, but who cares now!
I began to realize that buying frivolous things, such as very expensive shoes and expensive handbags, was not using my money wisely. I even traded in my much loved, Burberry coat, for a practical barn jacket. I became very frugal and wise with the money the Lord blessed my family with.
God was transforming me at last!!
These changes did not happen over night, but within a three-year stance. I firmly believe that God allows us to go through certain things, at certain times in our lives, to help us mature, and grow spiritually. If you have never been through any hard times in your life, why would you ever need the Lord to lean on? If everything has always been fine in your life, you would never realize the need for a higher power, which is Christ our Lord!
It is when you are at your lowest, that you reach up, with tear filled eyes… tired, confused, and feeling like anything would be better than the situation that you are in at that moment.
You call out to God, begging him to help you through it. You feel so weak, and realize that you can not do anything on your own. You want to close your eyes, and pretend it is all a dream!
That is when the Lord, reaches his hand to you, promising, that you will never be alone again. You dry your tears, now feeling an amazing inner strength that has just over taken you. And you just know that everything is going to be OK.
This was the way it was for me many nights.
Family will fail us, Friends will fail us too, but the Lord will never leave us, or forsake us.
I could not be happier nowadays. I have an awesome marriage. My husband is hard working and an amazing provider, who loves and treats me like the gem I am. As for my four children, they are happy and thriving. I just want them each to be the person that God has created each of them to be. I do not want to have robotic children, who have exquisite manners, but no personalities of their own.
That said, it is still hard for me to be around families like Cecilia’s. There have been a couple of families like that, who have passed our way. I do not want to shun anyone, but I can still see that I could possibly be lured back into something ugly.
Unless you have experienced this kind of situation, it may be hard to understand what I am saying. And I’ll be honest, oftentimes, I still think about Cecilia and her family. It is amazing how much of an impact one family can have on another. I often wonder how other families view my own family?
Does Cecilia have any idea what I have been through these past few years? Probably not, and despite all that has happened, I would not want her to feel bad about anything that happened. I am an adult, and take full responsibility of my own actions and emotions.
Where is Cecilia now? Well, just a few weeks ago, while cleaning out my bedroom closet, I came across a phone number, which read, Cecilia xxx-xxxx (call anytime)
Anytime huh? That is not even funny! I thought to myself.
I instantly had a flashback of this little yellow Post-it Note, which was given to me almost 5 years ago, by Cecilia herself. I turned the Post-it over, feeling the slight stickiness that it still had left to it. I walked over to the refrigerator, pressing it hard on the front door.
Silly as it sounds, I said to myself; if it is still stuck there by morning, I will pick up the phone after lunch tomorrow and call her. If it falls to the kitchen floor, I will pick it up and toss it in the trash, leaving well enough alone….
The next morning arrived, and guess what? It was still stuck to the refrigerator. I said a prayer, and headed over, and picked up the phone …
Vyckie Garrison started No Longer Quivering to tell the story of her “escape” from the Quiverfull movement.
Over time, NLQ has developed into a valuable resource of information regarding the deceptions and dangers of the Quiverfull philosophy and lifestyle. Several more former QF adherents are now contributing their stories to NLQ and our collective voice makes these Quiverfull warnings impossible to dismiss or ignore.
NLQ is a gathering place for women escaping and recovering from spiritual abuse.
* NLQ Carnival Grandstand *~ 55 posts in 4 days! Don't miss the incredible articles from the NLQ Carnival Days from a variety of contributors on the dangers of Quiverfull/Patriarchy. These posts are brief ~ quick, but powerful reading!
@NoQuivering close minded. I deliberately didn't say my oldest had a reaction to his very delayed first shots since I already was anti then - posted on
@NoQuivering You're probably right. Well, I can't see them actually looking at anything I posted, so I'm sure I'm done. Sad to see them so - posted on
@NoQuivering I didn't say I speak it, just that my brain is biggish. Lol - posted on
@NoQuivering Yeah, I just can't seem to stay away. I guess I'd just like to dispell the "non-vaxers are idiots" idea they're promoting - posted on
@NoQuivering Ambrosia managed to seriously piss me off in that thread, I was much more restrained than I wanted to be, but I behaved. lol - posted on
