A sad and frightening tale at AlterNet today,
Though there are no exact figures for the size of the movement, the number of families that identify as Quiverfull is likely in the thousands to low tens of thousands. Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception — adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes — and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.
“Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice,” write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement’s founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, “My body is not my own.” This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They’re domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women’s liberation: contraception, women’s careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.
Pride argues that feminism is a religion in its own right, one that is inherently incompatible with Christianity. “Christians have accepted feminists’ ‘moderate’ demands for family planning and careers while rejecting the ‘radical’ side of feminism — meaning lesbianism and abortion,” writes Pride. “What most do not see is that one demand leads to the other. Feminism is a totally self-consistent system aimed at rejecting God’s role for women. Those who adopt any part of its lifestyle can’t help picking up its philosophy.” “Family planning,” Pride argues, “is the mother of abortion. A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could be popular.”
In a nutshell the group thinks women should have as many children as they possibly can in an effort to create soldiers for god and overthrow the feminist, heathen, liberal society they so fear.
It is their belief that god will provide. That if women are submissive all good will come to them and their husbands will care for and never leave them.
Oh and no need to take care of this earthly sphere for god has a new home prepared for the faithful.
I wish it were possible to force feed history. It is not that long ago women were submissive regardless if through choice or by law.
Cases of spousal abuse were not less, rape was not less, single mothers were really not less just better hidden.
Women worked!!
Yes there is the great romantic novel of how women merely lazed the days away, happily content in her role as mother and wife.
The reality being that any woman of a certain class was trained in certain skills to be a good companion and social climber.
All other women made do as they could working as domestics, laundresses, wet nurses, prostitutes, bar maids, anything that might keep body and soul together.
Children were raised by older children, were taken to orphanages, were abandoned were raised in workhouses and were lost to poverty and disease.
There was nothing romantic about their lives. God sent no armies of angles to comfort the children as their bellies swelled with hunger, no angles comforted mothers trying to provide for their children as their bodies ached from their daily labours. No angles kept the fibers and dust out of the lungs of women working in the mills. God provided no comfort for those women beaten and raped by husbands and who had no recourse for the damage done. God’s priests provided no comfort sending these women home and telling them to be better more submissive wives in order to prevent further abuse.
“My body is not my own.”
A scary thought. A feeling one has when undergoing severe abuse or rape. The only way to deal with is to disassociate
It is interesting to me that these women fear feminism, fear autonomy, fear the right to make their own decisions and fear being left.
It is as if they do not realize that women living under full control of a patriarchy have much more to fear.
The children have much to fear also, being seen as future brood mares of cannon fodder.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal
That article also shows the total, utter failure of the Democratic party to support women in any concrete way. Here they are sending someone to look at the ‘strategic’ value of pimping patriarchy:
I guess of some human rights are tradeable south of the border (hey we’re lucky to have elections) then all of them are. Sad.
Yes everything they need needs, like rights, should never be up for debate.
I come from a large family and can honestly say that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. That of course isn’t saying much because I am a man and I am not the one that had to raise myself and my five siblings.
The interesting thing is that my mom has said the same thing. Sure she had to struggle at times but she loves the life she has lead and she loves her children. I think the difference between my mom and those you hold up as the down trodden examples is my dad. He worked and struggled along side my mom to provide for our family’s every need.
I don’t say down trodden sarcastically, I say it because that is exactly what they were. The lives of early American women were horribly difficult. The living conditions were unacceptable…the life they had to live was not the one they deserved. Today the working mom is not subjected to harsh physical labor practices. The world of the working woman is full of opportunity and success. However, I am not so naive to believe all I see has been gained by women receiving fair treatment. To the contrary I believe women don’t get their fair share most of the time even in today’s world. But to compare the working mother of early America with todays working woman would be amusing. To see how ridiculous the comparison is, switch their lives around. The business woman of today, indeed the business man of today doesn’t work nearly as hard as the early working mother.
But to say that modern women should throw off the shackles of men and jump into the brave world of business, success, and self gratification is ludicrous. To assume that a house wife is shackled is beyond ludicrous and I am sure she would be the first to tell you. The history of motherhood is a hard one full of struggles and hardships but so is the history of the world. Without the mothers of the world struggling to raise their children we wouldn’t have the great societies we have today. Mothers in today’s United States still struggle to raise their children, many on their own, but I think they would tell you that they love raising their children, they love watching them grow, and they love the struggles that go along with it all.
Let me end by saying this: I have no problem with women doing anything a man can do. I don’t believe women should be limited by anything except their morals or their imagination which is the same standard for myself. What I have a problem with is people (not just you, not just women) that denigrate mothers and housewives as stupid or lower than the average business woman just because of her chosen profession. As we can see throughout history the role and job of mother is the most honorable and needed job in the world, it also happens to be one of the hardest.
@Mike –
I guess you don’t read here often. I have been a housewife/stay at home mom to six children to denigrate the work of mothers would be to denigrate my own life.
It is,however, disingenuous to recite stats of successful business women as the reality of all working women when it is so far from the truth. Just as all men are not CEO’s most are busting their ass just to keep body and soul together.