In case you’ve missed it – I posted an article at Other B&W by the author of the Love, Joy, Feminism blog. It’s a must-read. She tells us what it’s like to grow up in the Patriarchal/Quiverfull world, and what it’s all about, and what it took away from her.
A wife and mother was all I wanted to be, because any dream of anything else was nipped in the bud before it ever took root. I truly believed that this was what God wanted of me, and that serving my family and raising my siblings was serving God. And I gloried in it.
That’s one of those philosophy thought experiments it’s interesting to puzzle over – if you think you’re happy, does it make any sense to say you’re wrong? If we could know that all Quiverfull children are blissfully happy, should we just leave them to it?
… by homeschooling us my parents could completely control what we learned. I studied from creationist textbooks and learned history from a curriculum that taught “His Story,”beginning with creation, Noah and the flood, and Abraham and his covenant with god, showing the hand of God moving through the six thousand years of the earth’s history. I never had anyone tell me to dream big, or to think outside the home, or that with my talent and intellect I could have a brilliant career. Everyone around me believed the way my parents did, including all of my friends, who, after all, were without exception children of my parents’ friends. They encouraged me in my steadfastness of belief and held me up as a paragon of virtue. Why would I desire anything else?
Well?