What the Future Holds for Quiverfull Moms

The  choices women make to bear many children in the context of  fundamentalist communities will cost them, sometimes dearly.   Nobody talks much about these costs, certainly not women who are still in these communities, where to talk about such things indicates fearfulness  (viewed as sin) or a lack of faith (viewed as spiritual weakness or immaturity).    To be honest and open about parenting struggles (besides the struggle to subdue and manage one’s children)  is to be openly or discreetly shunned as someone who must have had some “hidden sin,” some defect in her Christian walk or as someone who is somehow paying for some transgression, her own or her ancestors’.   So, women don’t talk about this.  They believe the best, they hope for the best, they try to live by the kind of love they believe will never fail, so they aren’t afraid.  They are heartbreakingly sincere.

The likelhood is, statistically, that the future will hold in store at least one or more of the following eventualities for Quiverfull mothers over the course of their lives.

• One in four of their children is likely to have a diagnosable mental disorder.
• One in 17 in any given year might have a serious mental illness.
• One in nine may abuse alcohol.
• Nearly one in 10 may abuse substances.
• Nearly one in 10 may suffer from an eating disorder (most of these will be girls and women).
• One in 10 may be attracted to persons of the same sex.
• One in four daughters will be sexually assaulted in her life.
• One in 12 sons  will be sexually assaulted in his life.
• One in two may be divorced.
• Their children may leave their community.

The more children a woman has, the more likely that some of her children will experience some of these things, with deep implications for her.   Among Quiverfull mothers there is a lot of talk about birthing, breastfeeding, homeschooling, family bed, a lot of joking about large family life.   In the overall scheme of things, though, these are really a very small part of what it means, over the span of a lifetime, to have given birth to a large number of children.  Your kids don’t stop being your kids once they’re adults (unless there is an intentional severing of the relationship, another painful possibility).   For better or worse, they will be part of your life always; you will feel their struggles and challenges and will be affected and impacted by everything that comes into their lives and all the decisions they make.   Those of us who have left the movement can find some support in times of difficulty, limited though it may be (because mainstream culture does often blame mothers for their children’s struggles.)  For women who are still in the movement, there is not much support when their children’s lives go sideways in some way or when their children fail to live up to community standards.  They will be judged or shunned, held out as a bad example, enjoined to “give it all to God” or to “trust God” or to “count it all joy” and to deny how deeply their lives are affected.

It pains me when this community is idealized (as it often is, even by the mainstream).   It’s hard enough when a woman has one struggling child; five or 10 or 15 children’s struggles and sufferings over a lifetime?  This is a cost to be reckoned with.

Heart

When You’ve Raised 11 Kids

• You keep buying the huge, family size, even when there are only two kids at home now and you have a smallish (or at least “normal” sized) family. 
• Following from the first bullet point above, you consistently use your giant pots to cook huge amounts of food… which then becomes leftovers because it’s way too much for your family now.
• You are stunned when you realize boxes of cereal last longer than one day.   Not only do they last longer than a day, the cereal gets stale and you have to throw it out.
• You continue to buy half gallons and gallons of ice cream, recalling the days when these lasted an hour or so if you were lucky. After a while, you have six or seven untouched half gallons in the freezer, developing freezer burn.  Your 17-year-old keeps saying, “Mom! Stop buying ice cream!”
• You panic and go into crisis mode when the dryer breaks down because you forgot you no longer have four in diapers and one or two who occasionally wet the bed at night. If your panic is full-blown, you drop what you’re doing and race to the laundromat half an hour away to dry your wet clothes, when it would have been absolutely fine — and completely possible — to just hang them up to dry.  There aren’t that many of them anymore.  It’s not like the old days where if the dryer broke down, you covered every fence, every door, each nail and all doorknobs with drying items.
• You always, always, always rock gently back and forth, to and fro, as though you are balancing babies on your hip or in your arms or on your back and you are calming them. You rock in grocery lines, waiting for the bus, standing in the bookstore, pumping gas, talking to colleagues.  There are no babies for miles around; still, you rock.
• You wake up every mornng at 4:30-5:00 a.m., without fail. You don’t know how to sleep in.
• You can sleep anywhere.

This will be part one.

Heart

Ring the Bells That Still Can Ring

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
–Leonard Cohen

Anuna linked to this wonderful video in a different thread, but I thought it deserved its own post. She wrote:

I know what both of you mean, Arietty and Heart, about sometimes feeling wistful. For me, it’s especially so at this time. I thought I’d share this song with you–kind of different from the one [in the other post]. It’s Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla singing Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem.” I just thought these ladies were so great.

I’ve been reading a good book about healing from abusive relationships. The author makes the point that the idea that things will be “better” after we leave abusive relationships is really a myth. We aren’t being abused anymore, it’s true, and that’s a relief. There are things to look forward to and be happy about. But the fact remains that we have also lost many things and there is so much to grieve. We lost our dreams, our hopes, our plans. We lost our confidante or confidantes, in the case of a community. We lost our lover and companion. We lost our sexual or spiritual innocence, not innocence in the sense of inexperience, but in the sense of having lost our sense of ourselves as sexually or spiritually whole women. Our abusive husbands took control of our bodies or of our sex lives with them — what our sex lives would or wouldn’t be, would or wouldn’t include — and in so doing, took our sexuality away from us. Our abusive communities took control of our spirituality and took that away from us. We lost our roommates, our friends, the people we talked with about our problems, daily activities, kids. relationships, the news, politics. We may have lost our possessions, our dreams for our own lives and for our children’s lives. We had thought we’d be and have our families always or our communities always and with them, stability, history, continuity, a shared future. We lost that. It’s gone now. We lost our shared traditions and memories. We lost our opportunity to say all the things to our partner or our community that we wanted to say and that will now remain unsaid, many, many things. We couldn’t say these things while we were in our relationship or in our community because it wasn’t safe to or we might have been abused for it or because we knew what we said would fall on deaf ears; our partner or community didn’t care, didn’t want to hear about it. These are significant losses and are to be mourned. There’s no other way through. It’s really, really hard at times; as you say, at times of the year like now, anuna.

This song is so perfect; the loss and the hope, the disappointment and determination, the fierceness and the grief are all wrapped together and entangled. That’s exactly the way it is for us, isn’t it?

Heart

“If it costs me everything, I’ll obey”

Jeyoani (my oldest daughter, who is 33) read the following paragraphs to me from a website she’d come across after we’d been talking about Kathryn Joyce’s new book, Quiverfull.  I’d visited the site before and recognized it as a Doug Phillips/Vision Forum kind of a place and therefore, I’d had no interest in lingering. The paragraphs were written by a young woman in the Quiverfull community who had recently married.

Before I was married, much of who I was, what I believed and understood was wrapped up in my father’s vision. Since marrying I’ve undergone a surgery of sorts to replace Dad’s vision with Pete’s.

My loyalties had to undergo a change. I was used to thinking that Dad knew best. Now I needed to learn to think that Pete knows best. I used to do things and invest my time in projects according to what I knew Dad would want me to do. Now I needed to be guided by what Pete wanted me to do. When faced with a problem or an option I couldn’t think, “What would Dad have done in this situation?” Now I had to think, “What would Pete do in this situation?” These were exciting times and difficult as during this state of flux—learning to replace one man’s vision with another—the devil would come around and say, “But what about what you want? What about what you think?

…Taking on Pete’s vision is a very exciting thing. Studying him, learning more and more about his vision, his convictions, his desires for our family, our time, our money, our spiritual walk has been, well, romantic! Like RC Sproul Jr says, “the most romantic thing in the world is when a man shares his vision with his wife.”

Link

It is my experience that indeed, guys like RC Sproul, Jr. and girls and women groomed from childhood to serve them find dominance and submission in intimate relationships “romantic.” But I’m not going to go there right now.

The above paragraphs and similar writings remind me of a chorus we used to sing regularly during our house church days.  It was one of our favorites and one we especially taught to the children:

I’ll obey to serve you
I’ll obey to show I trust you
I’ll  obey, my life is in your hands
“Cause that’s the way to prove my love
When feelings go away
If it costs me everything, I’ll obey

My experience is that only rarely are outsiders to this world able to comprehend what it does to girls and women to be immersed in beliefs and teachings like this, particularly from their earliest moments of life. A while back I was involved in a discussion about the way state authorities removed children of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) from their Texas community and placed them in foster homes, taking them from their mothers. I said I believed it was the fathers — those directly responsible for harming women and children and teaching young men and boys to continue to do so –who should have been removed from the community, not the children, not the mothers, grandmothers, women. I said that given time away from these men with men denied access to them or their children (as they should have been, given that they were perpetrators and rapists or complicit in rape and sexual assault), the mothers would begin to recognize the severity of their experiences, how wrong it was that they and their children had been abused, and they could be expected to begin to care for their children, themselves and one another appropriately and nonabusively. This idea was met with all sorts of resistance, the mothers’ failure to protect their children from these men cited as evidence they were not trustworthy as mothers. I didn’t bother to engage beyond that point, no sense throwing good energy after bad.

Living all of one’s life inside a context and community, and in intimate relationships, in which you are required to regularly, consciously, in a committed way and under threat of punishment, reject your own wants, needs, desires, even thoughts, replacing them with those of your male authorities, takes its toll on girls, on women — mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. This is indisputably true. Once abusers are out of our lives, though, bit by bit, little by little, with help and support, girls and women in situations like this will begin to see more clearly, will begin to recognize and acknowledge not only all the ways they have been affected, harmed, abused, mistreated, but all the ways they have also participated — however unwittingly — in harming their own children and one another. Safe space, time away from men who are abusive, is necessary if this journey is to begin for victimized women. Who women and girls are in the context of intentional, conscientiously practiced patriarchal religion, and what they do and seem to believe in those communities, are not who they will be, what they are, or what they will do once they have safety and the time and space to begin to talk about what has happened to them.

I want to write about these matters, write my responses to Kathryn’s book. But, its hard. Just reading her book is heartbreaking to me on so many levels. I read a few pages, then find it takes me days, even weeks to recover sufficiently to be able to pick the book up again and read some more.

But the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about this song and the young woman’s words above, so I thought I would write about it.

Heart

I Blame the Patriarchs, Part 3: Quiverfull Mom Pays, Patriarchs Walk

In November of 2006 I wrote a blog post entitled I Blame the Patriarchs, Part I: The Truth About Full Quiver Families. I wrote this post in part in response to a horrifying series of events in my area in which Kimberly Forder, who had subscribed to my magazine when I was publishing, had been charged with killing her 8-year-old son, Christopher. The Forders lived about 20 miles away from me on a 2.8 acre farm. They had three adult children and had adopted or were foster parents to eight more. They homeschooled, home churched, gardened, lived and dressed “simply.” Forder had been charged with homicide by abuse and neglect, was jailed and her bail was set at $1 million.

Christopher Forder

Christopher actually died in 2002 but charges were not filed against Kimberly Forder until 2006. There had not been enough evidence before that time. What changed was, one of the Forders’ adult daughters went to authorities alleging that her brother, the Forders’ grown son, had raped her. This son, Michael V. Forder, was also arrested. In the course of investigating the rape charges, the two adult daughters told authorities their mother abused and neglected Christopher and that she was responsible for his death because she did not seek medical attention for Christopher when he was sick with pneumonia. Rapist Michael Forder’s attorney then cut a deal with the prosecutor in Kimberly Forder’s case: In exchange for recommending a shorter jail sentence for the rapist, the rapist would testify against his mother and would confirm that what his sisters said about her were true.

Michael V. Forder

These events unfolded in 2006. When I read about it, so much about it seemed wrong, wrong, wrong. It wasn’t true that Kimberly Forder had failed to seek medical attention for Christopher; she had sought the attention of alternative medical practitioners instead of M.D.s. Important, to me, was something that had happened after Christopher’s death. The family patriarch, Robert Forder, assembled the family in the living room as the little boy lay dead in his bedroom. On that evening:

…Robert, told his seven children they had a choice: They could bury their brother in the backyard, or call 911 and risk having the state snatch all of the children away because of Christopher’s obvious bruising.

Robert Forder, according to this account, then told the kids the decision was theirs and he went to bed. Later that night, the parents tried unsuccessfully to revive Christopher with CPR, and a son called 911. The Sheriff’s Department investigated as did Child Protective Agencies. Christopher had died of pneumonia. Though Christopher’s body was bruised and he was very small, no conclusive evidence of abuse was found.

The family then moved to Liberia to be missionaries. Kimberly Forder wrote of wanting to create gardens and a medical center there. She served for a while as a midwife.

At some point after the adult daughter went to authorities to report that she had been raped by her brother, and as the plea bargaining on behalf of the rapist brother was taking place, Kimberly Forder returned home from Liberia to get medical treatment for a debilitating infection. She was then arrested.

New Book: Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

A little over a year ago, I blogged about having been interviewed by Kathryn Joyce, who was writing a book about the Quiverfull Movement. The book has now been published, I’ve received my review copy, and though I haven’t read the entire book yet (and will begin tonight), what I have read is excellent! I am so pleased and excited! Chapter 19, “Exiting the Movement,” of Quiverfull — Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, tells my story. Kathryn did such great job! I am always vaguely terrified in situations like this because my story is complicated, there is much that outsiders to the movement might (understandably) misunderstand, and especially, I feel fiercely protective of women who are still in the movement. It is painful to me any time my story is used against fundamentalist women, is somehow thrown in their faces. What happened to me happened to me at the hands of men, not women– even though individual women did, undeniably, cause me great harm. At any rate, I need not to have been afraid. Kathryn’s writings evidence a deep and thoughtful understanding of the situation of women in the Quiverfull movement.

I will be writing more about this book as I read it. For now, I wanted to let everyone know it is in print and available to purchase in all the regular outlets.

Great job, Kathryn!

Heart

Welcome to Quiverfull

From approximately 1986 through 1994, I was a participant and ultimately a leader in a movement which has come to be known as the “Quiverfull Movement,” the “Titus Two” movement, and the “Patriarch” movement, Christian Bible literalist movements in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand that emphasize obedience to the Bible, submission to authority, separation from the world, and, for women, devotion to husband, children and home. 

When I took the turn in the road that led me in the direction of this movement in 1983, I had four children and was expecting my fifth, who is now 25.  I had quit my job outside the home as, at that time, a court reporter and had begun homeschooling and learning to manage on one income instead of two.  As a member of Calvary Chapel of Tacoma, a nondenominational, Bible literalist church which emerged out of the “Jesus People” counterculture movement,  I was immersed in “verse-by-verse expository Bible teaching” which emphasized obedience to “the Word” and to God.  As a pioneer in the homeschooling movement, I met other Christians who, like me at the time, were interested not just in believing the Word, but in “doing” the Word, obeying it, in other words.  In the belief that I was following God and embracing God’s plan for my own life, for women, and for wives and mothers, my then-husband and I stopped using birth control in favor of allowing God to plan our family.  My daughters and I dressed modestly, wore head veilings and were silent in the church in submission to the scriptures.  We lived a home-centered life, planted gardens, raised farm animals. 

In 1989 I began publishing a magazine for other women interested in living this way.  The name of this publication was Gentle Spirit.   I began with 17 subscribers.  The first issues were typed on a Selectric typewriter and copied on a copy machine.  I began speaking at homeschooling meetings and conferences locally and my subscriber base grew.  Over the next decade I would speak across the country at homeschooling conferences, on the radio and television.  I was a guest speaker on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family program as part of a  panel on a show entitled “Career Homemaking.”  This program became a classic and was aired worldwide and translated into Spanish. 

By 1994 I had approximately 30,000 readers internationally, and my magazine had become a full-color, glossy publication published 11 times per year.   By this time I was the mother of nine children.   My magazine featured articles on living on one income, feeding a large family on $200 per month (something I managed to do for many years), home birth, home schooling, breastfeeding, natural childbirth, gardening, raising farm animals, making soap and candles, homesteading,  hospitality, sewing and home arts.  I published regular articles on “Titus 2″ living, too — being “chaste, discreet, a keeper at home, good and obedient to our own husbands.”

The emphasis in Quiverfull/Titus 2 circles on submission to husbands and reverence for husbands meant women in abusive relationships — as I was — had nowhere to turn for help.  To report that a husband was abusive was to dishonor him and to invite the criticism and censure of the community.   In my community, it was believed that God ordained our paths and charted our life’s  course and that “something good” would come out of anything we might go through, even a husband’s abuse.  The view was that if a husband was abusive, we should pray for him and attempt to “win him without a word,” by our “chaste behavior, coupled with fear.”  We were taught, as women, not to “lean to our own understanding,” because women were and are “prone to deception.”  We learned to “trust God” in the face of abuse and to pray and hope for a better day.

The day came when I could no longer continue in my own abusive marriage.  Exhausted, desperate and afraid,  I separated from my then-husband and filed for divorce.  He turned to a pastor friend and to other national leaders in the Quiverfull/Titus 2 movement, and I was subjected to church discipline on a national level and ultimately to excommunication.   As a result, my publication was destroyed.  In 1997 when I could not move forward with my life two full years after my divorce was final, I filed a lawsuit against the churches and organizations that excommunicated me and drove my publication from the marketplace.  A jury found in my favor in 1998, agreeing that the defendants in my lawsuit had conspired to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Act.  The defendants appealed, we settled, and I returned to  publishing for two years, making good on outstanding subscriptions and making things right with columnists and advertisers.  The story of my excommunication is told in the article “Confronting the Religious Right.”

It has now been 14 years since the day the “letter of discipline” was read in a church I had not attended for months.   After my excommunication, I remarried and had two more children.   Eight of my children are adults now and on their own; they are ages 19-36.  I am still raising my three youngest children, ages 10, 13 and 17.   I have four grandchildren, two of whom have always been homeschooled, just as my two youngest, like most of my older children, have always been homeschooled.  

Since my excommunication I have worked hard to make sense of my experiences and to place them in the larger context of a world in which all women are still second-class citizens, and in which women in fundamentalist religious groups of many kinds remain, for all intents and purposes, the property of their husbands.    I will be writing about my and other women’s experiences  – the big issues and smaller issues, about ideas, theories, politics and day-to-day realities,  in this blog.  I hope what I write will educate and inform those who are not familiar with the situation of women in fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalism in general.  I also hope women like me, exited from groups like mine, will find support, encouragement and practical help here as we build new lives for ourselves and our children. 

In peace and love,

Cheryl