Do you think the daughters’ smiles are masking the terror they feel at the prospect of cranking out that many babies in their futures?
My grandmother came from a devoutly Catholic family with 13 kids and had 6 of her own. She keeps warning all of us in the younger generation to please wait to have babies and make sure we have a good career first, and even though her voice is light, she gets this really deadly serious look behind her eyes when she says it.
It seems that Michelle Duggar really, really likes having babies. And giving them names that start with J. (My favourite is “Jinger.” It’s pronounced “Ginger.” Feh.) Did you read about the husband’s political campaigns, in which the children sing a song called “Won’t You Please Vote For My Daddy”?
Jim Bob Duggar says he has something very special planned for Mother’s Day. Michelle says if that means he’s cooking, she’ll have quite a mess to clean up when he’s done.
Hardy har har har!
I find it creepy that the woman has won awards for having all these kids. It’s reminiscent of Nazi Honour Cross campaigns to get Aryan women to breed.
Oh those Duggars. I’m only counting 14 kids in that picture; she’s pregnant with her 17th right now.
My sister is fascinated with them, I’m more into their insane recipes for food on their website - usually involving 40 lbs. of ground beef, some cans of tomato sauce and 1 teaspoon of garlic powder. Ugh.
Obviously these people have access to an illegal cloning lab.
Actually, I’ve heard of these people, and they shall simply have to deal with the fact that the record for the largest number of children produced by one woman is 69, from some poor Muscovite woman a couple centuries ago who gave birth only to twins, triplets and quadruplets. So, really, they should just quit now.
what’s the problem with people having as many or as few babies as they want?
Well, there isn’t really, but the Duggars are hard-core conservative Quiverfulls, which means that they pretty much think everybody should live without contraception.
It’s true, the “Vagina: It’s Not A Clown Car” poster isn’t the most pro-woman thing one could come up with. On the other hand, neither is holding up Michelle Duggar as a model for other women to follow just because she’s reproduced a whole bunch of times.
There’s got to be a young Dan Savage or David Sedaris amongst those kids somewhere, biding their time. Can’t wait to read their childhood anecdotes one day…
At once hilariously funny and embarrassingly painful to look at.
Two things:
My great-grandmother was the youngest of 13.
My 27-year-old sister-in-law has had three babies in four years, the two most recent times she was pregnant she had significant health problems and significant pain starting at about five months, and they are thinking about having another child.
It’s her choice (I hope) but man, that makes me cringe.
I haven’t heard of the Duggars, but from their dress I would guess ‘very conservative Christian, possibly Pentacostal/some small Baptist denomination’. Mostly all the girls in dresses with long hair give me that impression. Could be really, really wrong, I know. But still. I see a woman with that many children and I automatically think of a religious denomination that limits the rights and determines the ‘place’ of women much more strictly than even our government tries to.
Wow. I’ve actually seen a few of this family’s shows on The Learning Channel. (For example, the one in which they all help to build a giant house with one boys’ bedroom and one girls’ bedroom–because they all love each other so much no one wants his or her own room!) Perhaps it’s only the case while they’re on camera, but them seem eerily unreal to me. The way they communicate with each other is so, what’s the word? forced-nice? The mom has a hyperfemininized voice and always speaks softly. She nods and blinks a lot while she speaks. The kids never seem to fight. It’s really scary. Some of them must snap sometimes. I’m just waiting for one of them to grow up and write a horrified memoir like this one (the author of which is a brilliant woman, actually!).
That it’s remarkably unlikely that a person who had not had patriarchy pelted at them from the moment of birth would choose to have more than two children, three tops. (seriously, when you truly know you don’t have to I can’t imagine many women would choose to have kids at all, what with the shitting a pumpkin part) (I intend to remain childfree for life, do not call breastfeeding women moos and other derogatory names and deeply respect born homosapiens of all ages and body shapes as full persons, so don’t think I hate children or women - actually people in general - caring for children and do know I despise families, as the emphasis must be on the individual)
Living in Quebec I have seen the future- the children will all wait to have the fewest number of children possible. I believe that the oldest daughter has already fled the family unit though that could be from one of the other Learning Channel programs of large family units. Most of the daughters will reach puberty having already raised several children in the form of younger siblings.
However, some women are just happy having endless children and miserable when they come off the oxytocin rush. I suspect that Michelle Duggar is one these women. The problem is that they are so HAPPY that they think that everyone else will be if they only tried it.
Their activities include such lovely behaviours as trafficking underage girls over the border as wives, shunning women who dispute anything, and all sorts of other loveliness. The group has mainly been exposed by women who fled the community.
“the “Vagina: It’s Not A Clown Car†poster isn’t the most pro-woman thing one could come up with.”
You’re right, but I’m detecting a broader issue: humans are prone to folly, and one of the folliest is the idea that any reproduction at all is a good idea. I like babies as much as the next doting aunt, but the planet is only so big, and can really only support a fraction of the H. sapiens currently inhabiting it.
I’m not gunning for the parents in the group; I’m just the messenger.
Ow, I can’t even look at that picture without getting sore.
What I find contradictory about the Quiverfull movement (and the anti-choice movement in general) is that even though these people are against contraception and abortion, none of the ones I’ve met have actually adopted a “saved” child.
They are proud that they are debt-free (which, I admit, is admirable). Yet they got their new house completed for them by The Learning Channel. Disneyland gave the entire family a free several-day trip complete with lodging, mouse ears, and any gift they wanted from one of their on-property shops. The got a free Grand Canyon fly-over trip. They appear to rely heavily on charity while being so proud of their independence.
Almost all of their clothes are either second-hand or home-made or hand-me-downs. Nothing wrong with that, either, but it seems that the children could experience so much more in life if ALL of the family’s money wasn’t going for just the basics. Their choice, though.
In response to viewer questions re: individuality, the eldest boy said something like, “Oh, we each have our own interests. Some of us like mustard, others like mayonaise,” or some similar non-issue - as he sat there sporting Daddy’s and all his brothers’ haircut and “today’s” boys’ shirt color that all the males wear.
Jane Awake! You linked to the Truth Book! Yay! I’ve known the Joy (the author) since we were freshmen in college. (before freshMEN were called “first-year students”). Her book is amazing, brave, brilliant, and beautifully written. Anyone who thinks the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a harmless christian sect should read her memoir.
These Quiverful folk are more extreme that the mainstream LDS, who would come-a-calling on me in our Denver ‘burb. Young men (women aren’t allowed out on mission unless they are considered a lost cause marriage-wise) canvassed our neighborhood to convert families, and they were less than charming when I, a mere woman, told them that I wasn’t interested in being a second class citizen. I’m sure that these young men did their “voodoo routine” on my front lawn grass. Ohh, I am sooo concerned that you cast your little voodoo spell on me, dude. I can only hope that they stepped in dog shit on the way out.
I don’t agree with their choices and ideals, and they get on my nerves when I’ve seen them on TLC. However, If you want reproductive freedom, this is what you’re going to get sometimes. Whatever.
I get the whole overpopulation angle. And having less children is better for all of us…but I think it is a bit hypocritical when some complain about families with lots of kids when their own family members are slapping a big, colassal ecological footprint on the earth. One thing I have to say about the Duggars is that they are pretty darn frugal. How does the footprint for each child measure up to others who have less children? I’m not sure. But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying “have less children” while going around in an SUV and a million dollar house. (Not saying that of you, Twisty–just an argument I’ve heard before.
The Duggars? Whatever. Frankly their hair offends me more than their reproductive choices. But, I did chuckle at the caption of the pic.
Jezebella, yeah! I saw Joy at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference this year. She spoke on a panel entitled “Trashy Women.” It was about working-class women’s experiences in academia and as artists. It was by far the best panel I attended, and Joy was particularly inspiring.
Not sure how much their current frugality or “footprint” matters when you think about the factor to which these two people have reproduced themselves, and the fact that they have no control over the choices of their children (in theory anyway) when they come of age. What if each of these children decides to have 11, 14, 17 children? Even 5 children apiece? What if all 17 of them, and their spouses, and their 3, 5, 10, 15 children decide to drive SUVs for 50 years (assuming that will be possible then)? What does the environmental impact of this family add up to in that case? I think the moral and ethical issues here are a little more complicated than “well, it’s their choice.”
I read somewhere that (in the US, probably) not having kids = 72 years of 100% recycling. I’ll take that, thanks very much.
We’d better hope that Mom and Dad love Tater Tot casserole, and that lots of other morons like them love it — without a few of them keeling over from arterial plaques, there ain’t gonna be room for those little kids once they start crapping out herds of their own on this tired old planet.
At first I thought that was the not-so-estimable Rep. Dan Ruby (of no-prenatal-care-for-pregant-teens-without-parental-consent-even-if-it’s-that-loathsome-parent-who-made-you-pregnant fame), but then I realized that Rep. Dan has a mere ten children (Dan’s biography is here. His email is: druby@nd.gov. His phone number is: 701-852-6132, and his address is: 4620 46th Avenue NW, Minot, ND 58703-8711). Anyway, ugh.
i’d try harder to respect their reproductive decisions if i believed for a nanosecond that they respect mine. my grandma had 16 kids, but she never said a disapproving word to her kids or grandkids about birth control pills.
If these people are like my own Quiverfull relatives they’re virulently anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-gay, anti-premarital sex, and anti-sex ed. Y’all know who I blame for that. You can respect their reproductive choices all you want, but they sure as shite won’t respect yours.
Clio– having lots of kids doesn’t necessarily damage the vagina or uterus, and especially in the case of full quiver types, who generally birth with midwives, often at home, and therefore get the most knowledgeable and attentive pregnancy and birthing care possible. I’ve had 11 kids and my uterus and vagina are just fine, thanks, everything is where it’s supposed to be. The same is true for most full quiver women I have known. Prolapsed uteruses, poor maternal health etc., result from inadequate or substandard (or nonexistent) prenatal and birthing care, whether because of poverty, or because of American-style patriarchal medical practices which focus on interventions, drugs and things like “elective” c-sections and other invasive procedures.
Most kids from full quiver families don’t turn around and have lots of kids themselves. Growing up in large families cures them of that particular urge, the girls, particularly, who are usually depended upon to help care for the new babies in the family. I have 11 children, eight of them are adults, the oldest is 35, and I have only four grandchildren, the youngest of which is 10. None of my six daughters wants to have more than one child (and so far none of my daughters has children, and four are adults).
Some women really do enjoy everything about pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, the whole thing. I did. The fact that some women are disgusted by these things, just means some women are disgusted by these things. I loved pregnancy, I loved birthing, I loved breastfeeding, and would have even if I hadn’t been a full quiver type. I understand why women might find these things disgusting and have no problem accepting their disgust; I’m just saying, some of us really are earth mother types and revel in it.
All full quiver types are not environmentally conscious or responsible, but many are, particularly the back-to-the-land, neo-Plain People contingent, who grow a lot of their own food, compost everything, recycle everything, live in community and share all their stuff, avoiding capitalist-style accumulating and spending, are often vegan, drive cars til they drop (if they own cars), etc.
There is definitely much to criticize about the full quiver movement, and I have, here:
I think it’s wrongheaded, though, to be assholish in the direction of the girls and women in the movement, in particular. I and my daughters were part of the movement, and now all seven of us are radical feminists. We’re far from the only ones. I’ve walked alongside many, many erstwhile full quiver women as they’ve divorced their husbands, left the movement, left patriarchal religion behind, come out as lesbians (a surprising number). Women in radical expressions of fundamentalism like this are often sharp, tough, and exceptionally strong. Life teaches them. over time, how foolish they were to trust men and male gods, and when they get free, they bring tremendous energy to feminism because they are so intimately familiar with unapologetic, power-mad extremes of patriarchy. Radical feminism gives them words for their experiences and rings for them, in a way it doesn’t for huge numbers of more traditional women who don’t seem to realize that most men, including theirs, are just a pious walk of the aisle away from similarly abusing power (and them).
These aren’t all single births are they? I think some of them have to be twins or triplets. Every time I look at that picture I start multiplying the number of kids by nine and coming up with a number of months that sounds more like a prison sentence than a pregnancy. I mean, even if you really like being pregnant, that’s got to be a complete drain on your energy. Just looking at that makes me tired. And you have to feel sorry for the girls in that family, I’m sure they’re getting saddled with all the work taking care of the little ones alongside all the housework, except for what the mom has time to do. It makes me so glad I’m just the oldest of two kids.
> But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying
> “have less children†while going around in an SUV and a million
> dollar house.
The “million dollar house” part of this made me giggle. In several neighborhoods in the city where I live, you’d be lucky to find a broken-down studio condo for a million dollars. I rent in an area that appears to be gentrifying, because they’re putting in condos across the street, many of which have a price tag somewhere north of a million dollars. Where my grandfather lives (in the same bungalow for 56 years now), people largely get million dollar houses so they can knock them down; it’s the land that’s worth that much. To me, it seems like home ownership is largely for couples who are willing to take on a staggering amount of risk, essentially betting that neither of them will get sick for the next 30 years.
Frigga- Quebec went through this type of breeding for political/religious furor from the 1700s on with little real impact demographically. This changed in the Depression era as most other industrialized nations started to see increased use of contraception but religious pressure and lack of formal education kept women in Quebec from accessing the means to control family size. Quebec saw a huge relative to its neighbours growth up until the late 1950s when a backlash started to grow as women and men became aware of what was available outside their borders. In a single generation Quebec went from the highest birthrate in the industrialized nations to the lowest, negative population growth even with immigration. Secular control of the legislature has become the norm and it is only with huge programs for support of families (child care subsidies, paid maternal/paternal parental leave. universal daycare and reduced taxes on infant care supplies to name a few) that the birthrate has started to go up. Children who raise families at a young age are disinclined to raise them once older.
Children who raise families at a young age are disinclined to raise them once older.
Yep. The best cure for big families is taking care of kids while you’re still a child yourself. I put off childbearing until I’d had a decade-plus break from caring for my little brothers — and there were only two of them. If there had been more sibs to “assistant mother,” I might not have had kids of my own at all.
The other thing is, it’s wrong to assume that left to themselves, all things being equal, all things being het, and everybody wanting kids, women would have huge families like this. One thing the full quiver movement has taught people is that deciding to have a huge family doesn’t mean you will. There are lots of women who “let God plan their family” and end up with two, one, or zero children. Not all that many end up with gigantic families like this one, even though they actually try for them.
So even in the case of women who have 6-15 kids, it can’t be presumed their kids would each have that many kids, even if they wanted to, because it doesn’t work that way. I was the only one of the three daughters in my own family to end up with many children. One sister had two, widely spaced (eight years between them) and one sister had none, with neither using birth control.
I’ve read that Michelle Duggar breastfeeds each baby for six months, then hands the kid off to a daughter to raise so she can get started on the next experiment. She’s got a regular assembly line going there, and her husband is frankly creepy. I can’t imagine fucking him once much less seventeen times.
I can’t imagine fucking him once much less seventeen times.
HA!
The fact that Duggar only breastfeeds each baby for six months is one reason she has so many kids. Most full quiver women breastfeed for much longer than that, years, which delays the return of fertility in the majority of women, sometimes for years. Duggar must be going for a record.
Heart said, “Growing up in large families cures them of that particular urge, the girls, particularly, who are usually depended upon to help care for the new babies in the family.”
I have to disagree about the experience of being in a big family necessarily “curing” the girls of the urge to have big families themsleves. My partner’s parents both come from very large families, and then they also had a large family. I was visiting a few months ago, when two of his sisters were explaining to me that they wanted to have very large families also. They said, “It’s so much fun to have a really big family. Something is always going on. It’s always someone’s birthday. There are enough people for a party.” I wasn’t really how to react to this point of view, especially considering I’m an American and they’re not, so I kept my big mouth shut. But I can definitely say that having come from a large family does not deter some women; it encourages them instead.
Also, ladies, *where* did this “quiverfull” expression come from? It’s grossing me out.
I don’t remember exactly where “quiverfull” comes from, but it’s something along the lines of “we’re having a quiverfull of arrows to fight on behalf of the lord.” The rationale given in the article I read was the when Reagan became president, there weren’t enough conservative Christians to staff the gov’t for him, so these people are having a quiverfull of children who will grow up to staff the institutions of society (the govt, universities, etc.) and make them more conservative.
I find it unlikely that kids from such big families would be much of an asset in an advanced industrial society. With this many children, it’ll be hard to get good education for all of them. Public schools are going downhill (maybe these people will become advocates for good public school??), private schools are too expensive, and with mom needing to take care of so many small children, it’ll be hard to provide much of a home schooling experience. AFter high school, it’ll be hard to pay for high school for so many kids. Presumably the boys are destined for the military and the girls for marriage with no education.
So basically they’re using “quiverfull” because it sounds better than cannon fodder.
Yeah, I’m with Jane Awake on the opinion that coming from a large family isn’t necessarily a deterrent to having one of your own. Sometimes people forget just how much work their family was and only remember the fun times and how close they all are. My mom co-raised two of the kids in her family and would vividly describe how much they didn’t have in the way of resources to care for everyone, but she still wanted to have six or eight kids. My good luck in family size is unfortunately due to her back luck with carrying kids to term.
I must say, one thing I respect about some of these conservative Christians is their resistance to consumerism. (That said, I do’t think accepting a free trip to Disneyland counts.)
“But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying “have less children†while going around in an SUV and a million dollar house.”
There really isn’t more to overpopulation. You’re responding, reasonably, to hypocrisy, but I think what you’re describing is overconsumption. There are too many people in the world by a factor of 1000 whether Americans overconsume or not.
I’m not advocating that we all tool around in F-650s, but I’m sure you’re aware of studies that point out how all the Hummer-driving Honky McRichersons in the world combined are as a drop in the ocean compared to industrial polluters.
As for million-dollar houses: You’re probably alluding to the hideous McMansions that are all the rage right now, but I tell you whut, if you, like I do, suffer from romantic delusions about reducing your footprint, you can blow alotta grip even on a small one. The 5-room house I’m building right now at El Rancho Deluxe is costing about a third again what it would cost to build the same house without “green” systems and materials: rainwater collection, solar panel hookups (for future solar panels that I can’t afford now), paint that doesn’t make you sick, Forest Stewardship Certified lumber, insulation, sun shades, one of those hot-water-on-demand heater things, etc. I’m beginning to think I should have gone with my original plan and dug a cave out of the side of a hill, accessed by a hobbit door or something.
If there had been more sibs to “assistant mother,†I might not have had kids of my own at all.
Many years ago I read a letter in Ann Landers from a teenager who, as the eldest daughter, was being forced to help raise her many younger siblings. She described never being able to go out and have fun with her friends or date. Ann Landers chastised her, saying that children should gratefully do whatever was needed by their families. Several readers wrote in to lambast Ann for that opinion. One woman attributed that to her never having married or having children of her own, along with not developing social skills among her peers. She warned parents not to view older kids as built-in babysitters. To Ann’s credit, she acceded to the responders and reconsidered her advice.
I feel especially sorry for the girls in that family because you know, given the uber-traditional gender roles, they are expected to be junior mothers without question. Whether or not that impacts the kids’ future life decisions, it’s really shitty for parents to enmesh their children into their own issues, whatever they are. Kids should have some chores and responsibilities around the house, but when they start to overtake their other important activities, then it’s a problem.
Slightly OT but I don’t really care for the way some of my fellow progressive activists bring their youngsters to protests and things like that. I’m not talking about occasionally because they can’t get childcare or they want them to have the experience. I mean every time, every meeting, every protest, where it’s clearly to indoctrinate the kid. How is that different than fundies forcing their little cherubs to hold up fetuses at rallies?
I read somewhere that (in the US, probably) not having kids = 72 years of 100% recycling. I’ll take that, thanks very much.
I wonder whether this has a fair bit to do with recycling being a particularly useless environmental contribution, mostly aimed at salving suburban SUV guilt? In the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle triad, the first two are much more important than the third.
I’m really uncomfortable with the women here who are choosing the Duggar mother’s putative vaginal appearance[1] as the most horrendous thing about this whole situation. Powerless women trying to survive in a toxic patriarchy deserve to have us denounce their male oppressors, not just shoot yet more and more barbs at their bodies.
The women who do end up with severely damaged vaginas (in the US, assuming decent nutrition etc) usually do so because of men who can’t keep their hands and forceps and scissors out of them and leave them alone to do their job. (In Africa, say, severe vaginal damage might be more likely from peripubertal pregancy in an undernourished girl, possibly with rickets; or perhaps from being raped with a bayonet.
For all of these, I blame the patriarchy.
[1] which is very likely completely normal, as Heart notes
Quiverfull comes from the Bible; I believe in Proverbs, about having a full quiver of children.
I think heart’s insight is fascinating, and have been interested in the Duggars for a while…and yes she has had a few sets of twins.
My favorite thing to think about when I see the Duggars is that study that came out a while ago showing that the more older brothers a boy had, the more likely he is to be gay. You know there’s at least a few non-het kids in a group that large.
I think having babies is simply what Michelle perceives as her career, and she’s good at it, biologically speaking. Doing something else would require learning a whole new set of skills, standing up to her husband, and probably running away from home….I think she’s just chosen not to think about such scary possibilities. Which is easy when you always have another newborn to care for.
When menopause hits, I guess it will be all about the grandchildren. But I can’t help but think that wondering what else she could have done with her life pops up now and again.
I first heard about the Quiverfull movement via this horrifying November 2006 story in The Nation; women are to submit to their Heavenly Father (aka “The Birth Controller”) in their dedication to supplying solders for God’s army:
“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.”
Lauradhel, I’m sorry, I was the first who brought up the vaginal appearance thing. I did not mean it as any perjorative at all. I honestly meant it in kind of a curious amazement. I’m a historian, and have read about women in the past, when the norm was to have this many children, and they suffered quite a number of gynocological and nutritionally-related problems. Today, of course, there is better care, but still, it takes a toll on the body. So, I was just wondering (in, granted, a rather glib way, but I am a glib person) how her body was absorbing this many children.
As for turning over the new children to the older children, that happened in our house and I was the oldest and only girl. Granted, we only had three children, but, at the age of 10, I did not ask to be a mother to the other two. Additionally, while the next child, a boy, and I were less than two years apart, the last child was 7 years younger than me. I was always in charge of both of them, and the housework (while they were paid for the yard work). There was no switching off between me and the elder brother. In other words, the distribution of the child care and housework was not equal between me and the older boy. This may have contributed to my lack of desire to have children; but I KNOW it made me accutely aware of the patriarchy at a very early age.
A hot-water-on-demand-heater sounds like heaven. I’d love to have one of those. I’ve got a water-hogging teen in the house.
I feel sorry for these quiverful moms. They have absolutely no time for themselves. I would go nuts! I feel sorrier for the girls who rear younger siblings. These girls didn’t ask to be nannies.
Kids should have some chores and responsibilities around the house, but when they start to overtake their other important activities, then it’s a problem.
Ever discover you have a particular nerve only when something hits it?
Blamerella’s quote hits exactly what upsets me about these enormous families; the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood. I’ve made a solemn vow to myself that my older son will never be made to babysit, tutor or clean up after his five-years-younger brother.
The other downside of the sibs-raising-sibs issue can be that when the caretaker sib finally takes off (woo hoo!),it’s a real loss for the little ones left at home, more so than it would be if the older sib weren’t a ‘bonus parent.’
I don’t blame my parents too much — they came up hard in families where everyone pitched in or everyone went without, so that setup was normal to them. But it was not the norm by any means among my childhood friends.
This is judgmental, but I think the Duggar-style setup could be exploitation of the older,caretaker sibs. Having that many kids is a lifstyle choice. Would the parents still choose it if they had to pay for the help the older kids provide for free?
Most full quiver moms homeschool their kids. In many quiverfull communities and churches, they will be shunned if they don’t homeschool. Many of these families do a really good job of teaching their kids and their kids go on to be successful in college or in trade schools. Not many join the military; many quiverfull types are pacifists and nonresisters, and even those who are god and guns types usually hate Bush because he is not enough of a theocrat and believe the war in Iraq is wrong.
My oldest five children were homeschooled all the way through high school; all went on to college or trade school, all did well, none went into the military, all are gainfully employed, all are artistic souls. My next three down went to high school only and all three are in college. The oldest of the next three went to a prestigious four-year-college on full scholarships and will get her four year degree this year.
Generally, these kids receive good, if religious, educations. When they go on to college, well, it is a consciousness-raising experience for them, unless it’s Michael Farris’ Patrick Henry college, in which case, oh well. I’ve seen lots of quiverfull kids leave the fold once they’ve gone on to college.
The other thing is, quiverfull families emphasize entrepreneurial endeavors, family business, and there are many successful home businesses amongst homeschoolers (lots of them providing the needs of homeschoolers). Children are mentored in the family businesses and are, indeed, valued for the help they provide, just like in the old days when kids helped on the farm. They also often grow up and take over the businesses.
The term “quiverfull” comes for a verse in Proverbs that says, “Children are blessing from the Lord; blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them.” The patriarchs take off with that particular warrior imagery and love to run off at the lip about all the “arrows” they will send into the various disciplines and institutions of patriarchy, and they’ve been successful there, which is one reason it’s hard in some places to get your prescriptions for morning after pills filled and which is why you have public school teachers teaching “intelligent design” despite what school boards say, which is why you have legislators, say, introducing bills that require women who miscarry to notify the cops within 12 hours so the “fetal deaths” can be investigated, on penalty of jail time.
It’s true that some young people go on to have big families; my experience is that not many do though.
Lots of quiverfull moms bail in their 40s. The demands on women in this world are horrifying. You feel like a machine and you are a machine. At one time I had 9 children under 18 years old with three-four still in diapers for some portion of the day. Imagine the laundry, especially for people who are environmentally conscious and reject disposable diapers. Lots of 40-something quiverfull moms leave the fold and never look back. They leave the church, divorce, become feminists, etc.
Something no one talks much about: lots of women find pregnancy to be a highly sexual time and enjoy sex at this time of their lives more than any other time, for reasons which are physiological and chemical. Paradoxically, or maybe ironically, being pregnant also gives quiverfull women a reasonable and acceptable excuse to opt out of sex with their husbands in a world in which women are taught that their bodies belong to their husbands and sex must be provided on demand.
Re the cost of all the green stuff. I recently read a fairly disgusting article in the Seattle paper about a guy who started a business selling frozen gourmet meals made with locally grown (within a 30-mile radius) organic produce and free-ranging, grain-fed animal products, packaged in recyclable containers. You return the glass dish each time you buy new meals and you return the cardboard wrappers for recycling, etc. Sounds great. Cost per meal? $30-$55. Talk about-offputtingly gentrified. How f’ing many people can afford that.
Some of the quiverfull people get some things right, despite their large family size. Besides growing/making their own, sharing stuff with each other to avoid overconsuming, they reject debt, pay cash, don’t take handouts from the government in any form, many reject militarism/nationalism and the invasiveness and intrusions of patriarchal medicine. They take care of their own elderly and disabled, adopt and take in foster kids, as a matter of religious conviction.
But their ideology horribly oppresses women and girls,including starry-eyed women who go into it thinking they want this kind of lifestyle. It also often turns garden variety heterosupremacist men into abusive control freaks, with the blessing of church patriarchs.
Oh, and yes, in families this large, some are usually not het. Several of my children have or have had same sex partners.
I was offended the first time I saw the “Clown Car” photo a year or so ago, not because of the zillion kids but because even feminists make fun of this woman’s body. Why? Is it only a sin to make fun of unmarried, child-free women? I don’t get it. Women with a bunch of kids are so repulsive to us patriarchy-blamers that even we get to ridicule them?
Another note on the older children raising the younger children: the younger children cannot possibly benefit from this situation, either. I shudder to think of the ways that I fucked up my younger brother because I was just a kid taking care of a kid, and resenting the holy hell out of it. Raising kids takes a lot of energy. We talk about having the financial resources to do it, but we should also consider the human resources involved, as well. Hiring a nanny is one thing, but expecting a child to be a nanny is quite another.
Don’t ask me why, but this term “Quiverfull” used in the context of childbearing conjures up this image of a nekkid woman, upside down, legs splayed apart, with about ten kid poking out of her vagina. Not babies, kids. I find the image disturbing.
…the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood.
And their education. I wonder how many days the oldest girls are kept from school or NOT schooled even at home because something needs to be done, and Gawdknows we ain’t gonna ask the oldest BOYS to inconvenience themselves to do it.
I agree with tinfoil hattie…while I do find this photo hilarious, I think it is because I may have that shock value/sick/very mean sense of humor. And this photo is very mean to women, no doubt. Is the mean-girl mentality congruous with being feminist? I’m not too sure.
My mom only had 3 kids and I, as the oldest, was still a built-in babysitter. Do people really think this only happens in large families?
Also, Twisty, just wanted to let you know that I love your blog, you are the best. Many a day you bring a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. Who would I blame without you.
Clio and LMYC, very true re the girls taking care of their younger siblings and not being allowed to attend to their own needs, of whatever kind. The oldest daughters, especially, often really are servants. In a lot of the quiverfull households, maybe all, while girls are educated, they are discouraged or forbidden from preparing for careers and are taught they are destined for wife-and-motherhood (often via arranged marriages with the sons of quiverfull families), so the childcare and household duties are considered appropriate “training.” They are also shipped off to the homes of other quiverfull families when the moms have babies if they themselves don’t have older daughters. The girls definitely get the raw deal in the family compared with the boys, in a million ways, to include, for example, that in many of these families, the boys can speak, teach, and lead in church whereas the girls and their moms must remain silent and submissive.
…the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood.
My grandmother was oldest of 6, 2 sets of twins. She once told me the story of the happiest moment of her whole life. Her work was done, and she sat on a hill and just looked around. The part that was special was that “her work was done”. From the sounds of it, that didn’t happen again, that she could remember.
I love some models of kids teaching and helping younger kids, but those are set up especially for the benefit of the kids (Montessori) not as primarily a labour saving device. Most kids love to help and be included in work, to take advantage of that is a perversion and misuse of their good nature. Everyone should have an opportunity to develop her gifts, as well as be of service.
Heart is amazing. 11 kids. I understand the joy of 11 babies must have been incredible.
For my part, I am kind of sheepish for having even one when my saintly friends are adopting crack babies. Black girls - most unwanted babies of them all, snubbed by yuppies for chinese and russian kids every day.
Yet the timelessness of holding my own baby girl for hours on end is something that I will never forget. In a life full of starlike splendor and bursting with love, those moments are untouchable pinnacles of heavenly bliss.
But I look up from my bliss and see endless human beings smothering the face of the world and even - unbelievably - sucking every single fish out of all the seas, and I think I maybe shouldn’t have done it.
I think the clown car snark may be based on the assumption that maximizing child production is a thing done to women through oppression rather than a thing a healthy independent woman would choose to do.
We are so used to a culture that objectifies women that we sometimes fail to notice that we are nodding in time to the music.
I did a little bit of background research on this family, and according to their official website, the two oldest girls (not oldest children, mind you, just the oldest girls) make the meals: The thirteen year old makes lunch every day and the fourteen year old makes supper. It’s really the fact that it’s the girls doing the extra work that bothers me. When my small sister was born eight years after me, my older sister and I were thrust into the role of “built-in babysitter”, but my parents were certainly around as well and it wasn’t a big deal. Had there been a brother, however, there’s no question that he would have had an equal share in the work. That doesn’t seem to be case in the Duggart household. IBTP.
Random Lurker:
“If these people are like my own Quiverfull relatives they’re virulently anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-gay, anti-premarital sex, and anti-sex ed. Y’all know who I blame for that. You can respect their reproductive choices all you want, but they sure as shite won’t respect yours.”
And there’s the bottom line on why this situation is so repulsive. Respecting others’ rights is a proper moral choice, but when it doesn’t works in both directions there’s no obligation to respect their choices.
What really pisses me off is that the girls but not the boys do the housework and servitude. My brother never did any chores in our house at all; it was all the girls, and in school, the teachers were always trying to get the girls to do the cleanup work, while the boys were never tapped for it.
Those kids wear identical clothes, adn the girls are being raised to be servants, as free labor.
An article detailing the consequences of having this many children. Of course, I’m childfree, so this is biased.
An excerpt:
That’s when I totally lost it. I said, “Okay, Mr. Roan, so you’re saying that if a rich person who drives an SUV, goes on foxhunts and never recycles, decides he’s not going to have kids, then he’s better than me—a vegetarian, with one kid, who recycles and has never so much as killed a fly?â€
“Environmentally speaking?†the idiot replied. “As far as Mother Nature is concerned, she would much rather tolerate the childless rich person. In the long run she’s better off with him.†I was so dumbfounded by this guy’s stupidity I hung up the phone in disbelief. Then I went over to my son who was sleeping on the couch. I looked at him and swore I would never let him or his brothers and sisters or any of their children or any of their children’s grandchildren or any of their grandchildren’s children’s children turn out like the oblivious buffoons I had talked to on the phone today.
They will still, a number of them will. Because it isn’t mothers who raise families. Oh we do the work, but it’s society who raises the adults who become like this buffoon, whose mother is banging her head against a wall somewhere.
Only here can you find such a great CR-type discussion about women’s lives resulting from a single picture. Thanks, Twisty!
And thank YOU, Heart, for sharing your story. I don’t believe this particular movement is mentioned in the magazine, but the latest issue of the feminist journal Off Our Backs is completely devoted to women in fundamentalist religious groups all over the world and the unique challenges they face. It includes a few narratives by women who tell stories of leaving their husbands and/or sects that sound very similar to yours.
It’s probably important that we not make too many assumptions about what Michelle Duggar’s life is actually like, but I would say that the way her family lives is most certainly a feminist issue.
what’s the problem with people having as many or as few babies as they want?
Are you kidding??? Noone’s genes are that important.
If you were truly interested in future generations and/or, you know, the planet, it would do you well to avoid creating a whole tribe of resource users.
People can do what they want, and they will, but making an enormous family in a time of depleted resources and impending global catastrophe is pretty selfish and ignorant.
In regards to the frugal commune back-to-the-land Christian living, unless everyone is pooping in a hole in the ground et al., they are most likely still using up resources that could be better distributed among a wider variety of people, likesay the groups of people considered pariahs by their scary right wing community. But perhaps that is the point, to create enough people to buy/hoard the resources so that the shunned and banned have to struggle harder.
It’s terrifying to me to think that there are women out there mechanically creating enormous ‘quivers’ of arrows for the Christian god. Am I the only one that thinks this sounds like a bad sci-fi movie?
At least these people have a plan and are taking time to do this. They live frugally and are not asking the world for hand outs. Sure they use a lot of resources, but they do pay their taxes. People of the same ilk are the ones handing out prizes to them, not the community at large. The folks with a zillion kids I have a problem with are those crazys who were artificially inseminated and carried all 7 viable embrios to term. The community gave them a house and paid all kinds of things for that family including the medical bills for the children who were damaged by being in a womb made for one. They were premature and underweight, the kids have all kinds of problems that we as a society will be paying for for the next 50 plus years. Those godbags make me sick. They new the risks of artificial insemination and did it anyway. I think their doctors are to blame as well. They were a really expensive experiment. Their sense of entitlement sickens me.
Girls from small families (even one-child families) usually get left doing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., so I’m really perplexed why so many of you are upset about the Duggar girls having to cook lunch and dinner and take care of babies and so on. The Duggar girls’ childhood lot in life may take place in a more unconventional setting, but it’s hardly that different from other girls’.
Puffin, there’s a HUGE difference between helping out with one or two younger siblings, and a teenager being responsible for dinner for TWENTY PEOPLE every single day. I’m the oldest of two and was required to do a lot of babysitting, but it didn’t come close to the kind of drudgery the girls in a family that large are having to do.
Those women with the seven embryos in one pregnancy are the victms of men who don’t want any other man’s child to raise (and from what we see of the way they do treat other men’s children when they are stepfathers, often, maybe they’ve got a point) and the medical profession that thinks if they can invent it it’s good. Let’s find a use for it! I shudder too, when I hear them announcing that the 18 ounce baby is healthy. Not all disabilities are evident at birth, or even within the first several years.
Just as a point of clarification…If you are speaking of that family in Iowa, I think their name is Dougherty??? They did not use artificial insemination. In fact, there is no risk of multiples from artificial insemination alone. You may be thinking of in vitro fertilization, in which they implant 1-3 embryos. This is where the twins and triplets come from. No doctor on the planet would implant seven embryos. What happened with them is that she took medication to ovulate and they had good ole’ fashioned sex. But she hyperovulated (which is a somewhat low risk of that method of IF) These six and seven “tuplets” are usually a rare effect of hyperovulation. Most of the time, women who take meds like clomid to ovulate have just one baby and in 5 or so percent, twins.
It was for sure a medical risk they decided to take, right or wrong, but I don’t think it is quite like you are portraying. It was a very rare fluke that happened. If the community wants to help out with the consequences of that kind of risk…I say, let ‘em. No skin off my back.
Of course she could have selectively reduced, but then it goes back to reproductive freedom. You can’t have it both ways. The whole quiver thing creeps me out as well. But I’d rather not put myself in charge of monitoring other people’s reproductive choices, whether it be Plan B or abortion or sterilization or IF or having more kids than I would ever want.
I would like to add my experience to Heart’s on the continuum of constructions of work and play. Some of the happiest times in my life have been at home, as a child (considering myself at the time a young woman), cooking and cleaning for my loved ones. It is a form of taking care of, caring for, Dasein. I’m not jittering for a Heidegger-was-a-Nazi-and-Nazis-mistreated-women schlock here. I’m just saying, as caring for patients brings some doctors joy and caring for students brings some teachers joy, so caring for loved ones at home brings some people (men and women) great pleasure. You can call it productive play, child labor, Stockholm syndrome, or another delusion. I call it meaning. Everyone finds her own sources of the stuff, and they change (both the sources and the people seeking them).
The real debate, in my mind, should be about why women’s reproductive choices still significantly delimit their professional possibilities. With over a million viewers at IBTP, 2 million at Feministing, and a whole gaggle of folks still gagging over the Edwards bloggers affair, why is this still the sad reality of sex in America? Why don’t women have equal rights as laborers? Any woman who can raise this many healthy, happy children should be leading her own contingent in Iraq — or organizing a Quiverfull anti-war march. But without a strong support system including extended family and halfsies-shared parental responsibility, her sphere is still, by necessity, the private one. If she works outside the home, she is neglecting her family and not holding herself accountable for her choices, because there is no day care she will not be charged and blamed for putting her children in. She is ostracized by political society, disqualified from the rat race, and made obsolete as a public actor for her choices — except as an ambassador for those same choices. This is the issue. This is the tragedy.
Hmmmm. I think the real issue could also be why you won’t find hundreds of GUYS proclaiming their love for cooking and cleaning and caring for their own kids or younger brothers and sisters. I find it a tragedy that one guy can get a good job and work the same 8 hours a day as a teenaged 7-11 employee, yet be able to “support” a giant family, while a woman’s work in this same family has octupled or more to the point where she needs to employ her daughters as helper-slaves (while the sons run around doing what they want, naturally). I find it a tragedy that new fathers don’t volunteer en masse for paternity leave, for flextime, for a couple extra days off a week to care for THEIR new families. Their PAID JOB comes first. It is the imbalace in family life/parental roles, which is due to a gender-split-based capitalism ideology, that is the problem.
Lisa, you are probably right in some regards, but I still have the same opinion. They took a risk? No they forced 7 children to take a risk, not to mention the two children they had already. And yes it is the family in Iowa I am thinking of. They did it for their own personal gratification whatever the so called reason or method. The community may have come together for the birth but do you think they are still as supportive now that the kids are in special ed and need all kinds of things? The more power to them arguement seems a little weak if taken to the logical extreme.
Shouldn’t the goal be healthy children and mothers? I felt sorry for those 7 children. A few of them needed feeding tubes as infants (3 or 4 of them?). I hope that these kids are healthier now. The press definitely glossed over the medical problems.
I’ve always felt very, very conflicted about the whole having-babies thing. From the start, I knew it wasn’t for me. Having been present for my best friend’s c-section was only confirmation. Thanks but no thanks, huh uh, not me.
I’m the youngest of five girls and my eldest sisters spoiled me rotten, toting me everywhere they went, spending their first paychecks on me, and doting on me in general. My elder nieces & nephews are more like brothers & sisters to me. This has always been a happy situation for me, and continues to be so as we go into future generations. Coming from a large family is *not* what made me not want to reproduce.
My nephew’s wife is one a those women who could have a baby every year without ill effects. Three days after she misses her period, she knows she’s pregnant and carries the child to term with relatively little discomfort. She’s added two beautiful, sweet-tempered souls to our family, whom I adore. Bless her. Would I wanna be like her? Hell no!
Still, I used to delight in poking fun at women like her, calling them Fertility Goddesses and inferring that they oughtta sleep with a baseball bat handy. As some of you have mentioned upthread, I’ve come to respect their choices, and I continue to insist on the validity of my own. Gestation and parenthood are, I believe, the most difficult tasks in the world, and not ones to be borne unwillingly. Why can’t we have a little sanity about this issue?
The McCaughey septuplets *were* the result of fertility drugs. It made me sick to hear the mother, while she was still pregnant, saying that God gave her these babies, so she didn’t want to get a selective reduction. Seems to me that God made her infertile and the medical community gave her these babies. Why isn’t getting fertility treatments defying God’s will in these people’s heads? Aaauuuughhh!
Funny poster, but I didn’t think it was real until I started reading comments.
They may not be in debt, but having more than 15 kids is a choice, regardless if a deity makes the choice “for” you, and should not merit charity alone.
Another disturbing thing is that the jimbob.com website looks more like a political campaign site than a family photo album.
Now for the mind-melting philosophies of the Quiverfull…that could make me puke. I could have done without reading up on this new one for me. Having more kids to spread Christianity is a scary thought, not because I find it a threat but because I find the reasoning a vacant excuse.
Tracey, thanks. Just ftr, I wrote one of the articles in that Off Our Backs issue you link to, so one of the stories actually is mine. :) I wrote Confronting the Religious Right.
the quiver full of arrows verse is actually in one of the psalms, not in proverbs. that doesn’t change anything about the discussion, just saying.
my question above was honest and no, I’m not kidding. I was curious what people here would say about reproductive choice when the choice was one they probably wouldn’t make and possibly find offensive.
I do appreciate those who pointed out that their choices would not be respected by these people. I think that’s true. I’d add, however, that I don’t respect people’s choices just because they respect mine.
But I do know it’s true that people in these kinds of communities can be very insular and very harsh in their judgments of those who don’t conform to their way of thinking. I have several friends who are conservative roman catholic, don’t use birth control, want to have families of 10 or more kids, homeschool or plan to homeschool etc. And no, they don’t have the least bit of respect for my reproductive choices or how my husband and I are raising our kids.
I do respect their choices, however, and they aren’t mindless drones or walking vaginas. Sometimes I think they’re a little deluded, sure. Number of kids is one thing, but I’m frankly more offended by those I know who refuse to vaccinate their children and then watch them pass 19th century diseases back and forth. That makes me want to shake people, dammit! I also cringe when I hear them wish and hope out loud for a girl baby at the top of the birth order so she can help out and I think some of them are in for a bit of surprise once their kids are grown. I keep most of this to myself.
The worst of it, though, is the feeling I get from them that my occasional kvetching about how hard it is to pursue my career and take care of home and children. Their response? The fact that its so difficult is proof that women should not work outside the home. I’ve even been told I’d be a lot happier if I would give it up and just stay home to have kids. To me, the fact that it’s so difficult is proof that the world sucks and women aren’t really equal. Katelyn Sack, a few comments up, said it perfectly.
Heart,
Thank you for your input. You bring a great perspective to this discussion.
My assumption that these boys are headed for the military was based on rather limited information. In the articles and interviews I’ve read about such mothers, the families didn’t appear to have home businesses.
I’m glad your kids had such academic success, but the way things are going with the cost of college education and shrinking financial aid (I was on a committee looking at the issue when I was in college), I think college will become more out of reach for anyone who’s parents didn’t start saving in large amounts from the day they were conceived.
I saw this family on TLC a while ago. I’m all for women making their own reproductive choices, but the girls in this family did not choose becoming housekeepers and little mothers while their ages were still in the single-digits. That is my main feminist concern with this family.
One girl makes dinner every day, while a boy near her age does his daily chore by feeding the dog? That’s FUN. Making dinner for 18 is not that fun.
Another disturbing thing is that the jimbob.com website looks more like a political campaign site than a family photo album.
That’s not really surprising. Jim-Bob has run for office before and no doubt will again.
He was in the Arkansas House of Reps from ‘99-’02, according to Wikipedia. He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in ‘02. He ran unsuccessfully for the Arkansas State Senate in ‘06. I’m sure he has plans to run for some office in ‘08 too.
I think it is really important that we note that the website for the family is under his name, not the family, it’s jim-bob that matters. Ew and yuck. His women serve, damnit.
Heart,
That’s awesome that that was you! This thread immediately made me think of your article and the others like it in that issue. I really learned so much from it, and I would recommend it to anyone. Your story and your strength are truly inspiring.
I too saw the photo and was a bit confused. What’s the joke about photoshopping like that? Making fun of wingnuts by pointing out the narcissism inherent in wanting to replicate oneself to the umpteenth degree?
Please, please, PLEASE don’t make me live in a world where this happens. I fervently pray that this is some sort of cruel Photoshop trick.
[whimper]
That woman looks really, really tired.
Do you think the daughters’ smiles are masking the terror they feel at the prospect of cranking out that many babies in their futures?
My grandmother came from a devoutly Catholic family with 13 kids and had 6 of her own. She keeps warning all of us in the younger generation to please wait to have babies and make sure we have a good career first, and even though her voice is light, she gets this really deadly serious look behind her eyes when she says it.
It seems that Michelle Duggar really, really likes having babies. And giving them names that start with J. (My favourite is “Jinger.” It’s pronounced “Ginger.” Feh.) Did you read about the husband’s political campaigns, in which the children sing a song called “Won’t You Please Vote For My Daddy”?
Or how about this article from 2004, the emetic of the day:
Jim Bob Duggar says he has something very special planned for Mother’s Day. Michelle says if that means he’s cooking, she’ll have quite a mess to clean up when he’s done.
Hardy har har har!
I find it creepy that the woman has won awards for having all these kids. It’s reminiscent of Nazi Honour Cross campaigns to get Aryan women to breed.
Oh those Duggars. I’m only counting 14 kids in that picture; she’s pregnant with her 17th right now.
My sister is fascinated with them, I’m more into their insane recipes for food on their website - usually involving 40 lbs. of ground beef, some cans of tomato sauce and 1 teaspoon of garlic powder. Ugh.
Obviously these people have access to an illegal cloning lab.
Actually, I’ve heard of these people, and they shall simply have to deal with the fact that the record for the largest number of children produced by one woman is 69, from some poor Muscovite woman a couple centuries ago who gave birth only to twins, triplets and quadruplets. So, really, they should just quit now.
what’s the problem with people having as many or as few babies as they want?
what’s the problem with people having as many or as few babies as they want?
Well, there isn’t really, but the Duggars are hard-core conservative Quiverfulls, which means that they pretty much think everybody should live without contraception.
It’s true, the “Vagina: It’s Not A Clown Car” poster isn’t the most pro-woman thing one could come up with. On the other hand, neither is holding up Michelle Duggar as a model for other women to follow just because she’s reproduced a whole bunch of times.
There’s got to be a young Dan Savage or David Sedaris amongst those kids somewhere, biding their time. Can’t wait to read their childhood anecdotes one day…
At once hilariously funny and embarrassingly painful to look at.
Two things:
My great-grandmother was the youngest of 13.
My 27-year-old sister-in-law has had three babies in four years, the two most recent times she was pregnant she had significant health problems and significant pain starting at about five months, and they are thinking about having another child.
It’s her choice (I hope) but man, that makes me cringe.
I haven’t heard of the Duggars, but from their dress I would guess ‘very conservative Christian, possibly Pentacostal/some small Baptist denomination’. Mostly all the girls in dresses with long hair give me that impression. Could be really, really wrong, I know. But still. I see a woman with that many children and I automatically think of a religious denomination that limits the rights and determines the ‘place’ of women much more strictly than even our government tries to.
Wow. I’ve actually seen a few of this family’s shows on The Learning Channel. (For example, the one in which they all help to build a giant house with one boys’ bedroom and one girls’ bedroom–because they all love each other so much no one wants his or her own room!) Perhaps it’s only the case while they’re on camera, but them seem eerily unreal to me. The way they communicate with each other is so, what’s the word? forced-nice? The mom has a hyperfemininized voice and always speaks softly. She nods and blinks a lot while she speaks. The kids never seem to fight. It’s really scary. Some of them must snap sometimes. I’m just waiting for one of them to grow up and write a horrified memoir like this one (the author of which is a brilliant woman, actually!).
I had never heard of these people until this morning. I gotta get out more.
That it’s remarkably unlikely that a person who had not had patriarchy pelted at them from the moment of birth would choose to have more than two children, three tops. (seriously, when you truly know you don’t have to I can’t imagine many women would choose to have kids at all, what with the shitting a pumpkin part) (I intend to remain childfree for life, do not call breastfeeding women moos and other derogatory names and deeply respect born homosapiens of all ages and body shapes as full persons, so don’t think I hate children or women - actually people in general - caring for children and do know I despise families, as the emphasis must be on the individual)
Living in Quebec I have seen the future- the children will all wait to have the fewest number of children possible. I believe that the oldest daughter has already fled the family unit though that could be from one of the other Learning Channel programs of large family units. Most of the daughters will reach puberty having already raised several children in the form of younger siblings.
However, some women are just happy having endless children and miserable when they come off the oxytocin rush. I suspect that Michelle Duggar is one these women. The problem is that they are so HAPPY that they think that everyone else will be if they only tried it.
Twisty, me neither. Apparently I don’t pay enough attention to creepy Southern Baptist families of note.
I do get really freaked out by these people:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/bustupinbountiful/
Their activities include such lovely behaviours as trafficking underage girls over the border as wives, shunning women who dispute anything, and all sorts of other loveliness. The group has mainly been exposed by women who fled the community.
“the “Vagina: It’s Not A Clown Car†poster isn’t the most pro-woman thing one could come up with.”
You’re right, but I’m detecting a broader issue: humans are prone to folly, and one of the folliest is the idea that any reproduction at all is a good idea. I like babies as much as the next doting aunt, but the planet is only so big, and can really only support a fraction of the H. sapiens currently inhabiting it.
I’m not gunning for the parents in the group; I’m just the messenger.
Ow, I can’t even look at that picture without getting sore.
What I find contradictory about the Quiverfull movement (and the anti-choice movement in general) is that even though these people are against contraception and abortion, none of the ones I’ve met have actually adopted a “saved” child.
Learn more here
http://www.jimbob.info/
Daddy’s favorite meal is Tater Tot casserole.
They are proud that they are debt-free (which, I admit, is admirable). Yet they got their new house completed for them by The Learning Channel. Disneyland gave the entire family a free several-day trip complete with lodging, mouse ears, and any gift they wanted from one of their on-property shops. The got a free Grand Canyon fly-over trip. They appear to rely heavily on charity while being so proud of their independence.
Almost all of their clothes are either second-hand or home-made or hand-me-downs. Nothing wrong with that, either, but it seems that the children could experience so much more in life if ALL of the family’s money wasn’t going for just the basics. Their choice, though.
In response to viewer questions re: individuality, the eldest boy said something like, “Oh, we each have our own interests. Some of us like mustard, others like mayonaise,” or some similar non-issue - as he sat there sporting Daddy’s and all his brothers’ haircut and “today’s” boys’ shirt color that all the males wear.
Their faux happiness is just plain creepy.
Jane Awake! You linked to the Truth Book! Yay! I’ve known the Joy (the author) since we were freshmen in college. (before freshMEN were called “first-year students”). Her book is amazing, brave, brilliant, and beautifully written. Anyone who thinks the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a harmless christian sect should read her memoir.
These Quiverful folk are more extreme that the mainstream LDS, who would come-a-calling on me in our Denver ‘burb. Young men (women aren’t allowed out on mission unless they are considered a lost cause marriage-wise) canvassed our neighborhood to convert families, and they were less than charming when I, a mere woman, told them that I wasn’t interested in being a second class citizen. I’m sure that these young men did their “voodoo routine” on my front lawn grass. Ohh, I am sooo concerned that you cast your little voodoo spell on me, dude. I can only hope that they stepped in dog shit on the way out.
Every time I see that picture, I feel like barfing.
Ah, yes, the Duggars.
I don’t agree with their choices and ideals, and they get on my nerves when I’ve seen them on TLC. However, If you want reproductive freedom, this is what you’re going to get sometimes. Whatever.
I get the whole overpopulation angle. And having less children is better for all of us…but I think it is a bit hypocritical when some complain about families with lots of kids when their own family members are slapping a big, colassal ecological footprint on the earth. One thing I have to say about the Duggars is that they are pretty darn frugal. How does the footprint for each child measure up to others who have less children? I’m not sure. But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying “have less children” while going around in an SUV and a million dollar house. (Not saying that of you, Twisty–just an argument I’ve heard before.
The Duggars? Whatever. Frankly their hair offends me more than their reproductive choices. But, I did chuckle at the caption of the pic.
Jezebella, yeah! I saw Joy at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference this year. She spoke on a panel entitled “Trashy Women.” It was about working-class women’s experiences in academia and as artists. It was by far the best panel I attended, and Joy was particularly inspiring.
Not sure how much their current frugality or “footprint” matters when you think about the factor to which these two people have reproduced themselves, and the fact that they have no control over the choices of their children (in theory anyway) when they come of age. What if each of these children decides to have 11, 14, 17 children? Even 5 children apiece? What if all 17 of them, and their spouses, and their 3, 5, 10, 15 children decide to drive SUVs for 50 years (assuming that will be possible then)? What does the environmental impact of this family add up to in that case? I think the moral and ethical issues here are a little more complicated than “well, it’s their choice.”
I read somewhere that (in the US, probably) not having kids = 72 years of 100% recycling. I’ll take that, thanks very much.
http://www.ninapaley.com/NinasAdventures/NewAdv11.htm
We’d better hope that Mom and Dad love Tater Tot casserole, and that lots of other morons like them love it — without a few of them keeling over from arterial plaques, there ain’t gonna be room for those little kids once they start crapping out herds of their own on this tired old planet.
I have had such a crappy day, and that picture gave me the first laugh I’ve had all day.
I love that one! I posted it last year….
http://www.woodka.com/2006/08/24/clown-car/
Twisty, there are days when you put the Loud in LOL.
I thought that picture was a joke. They are real! Damn. Imagine what that poor woman’s vagina and uterus look like.
At first I thought that was the not-so-estimable Rep. Dan Ruby (of no-prenatal-care-for-pregant-teens-without-parental-consent-even-if-it’s-that-loathsome-parent-who-made-you-pregnant fame), but then I realized that Rep. Dan has a mere ten children (Dan’s biography is here. His email is: druby@nd.gov. His phone number is: 701-852-6132, and his address is: 4620 46th Avenue NW, Minot, ND 58703-8711). Anyway, ugh.
Sorry, here’s the link for Rep. Dan’s bio: http://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/60-2007/house/representatives/bios/danruby.html
i’d try harder to respect their reproductive decisions if i believed for a nanosecond that they respect mine. my grandma had 16 kids, but she never said a disapproving word to her kids or grandkids about birth control pills.
If these people are like my own Quiverfull relatives they’re virulently anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-gay, anti-premarital sex, and anti-sex ed. Y’all know who I blame for that. You can respect their reproductive choices all you want, but they sure as shite won’t respect yours.
Also I feel sorry for these children, they’re being mistreated by living with these creeps.
Clio– having lots of kids doesn’t necessarily damage the vagina or uterus, and especially in the case of full quiver types, who generally birth with midwives, often at home, and therefore get the most knowledgeable and attentive pregnancy and birthing care possible. I’ve had 11 kids and my uterus and vagina are just fine, thanks, everything is where it’s supposed to be. The same is true for most full quiver women I have known. Prolapsed uteruses, poor maternal health etc., result from inadequate or substandard (or nonexistent) prenatal and birthing care, whether because of poverty, or because of American-style patriarchal medical practices which focus on interventions, drugs and things like “elective” c-sections and other invasive procedures.
Most kids from full quiver families don’t turn around and have lots of kids themselves. Growing up in large families cures them of that particular urge, the girls, particularly, who are usually depended upon to help care for the new babies in the family. I have 11 children, eight of them are adults, the oldest is 35, and I have only four grandchildren, the youngest of which is 10. None of my six daughters wants to have more than one child (and so far none of my daughters has children, and four are adults).
Some women really do enjoy everything about pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, the whole thing. I did. The fact that some women are disgusted by these things, just means some women are disgusted by these things. I loved pregnancy, I loved birthing, I loved breastfeeding, and would have even if I hadn’t been a full quiver type. I understand why women might find these things disgusting and have no problem accepting their disgust; I’m just saying, some of us really are earth mother types and revel in it.
All full quiver types are not environmentally conscious or responsible, but many are, particularly the back-to-the-land, neo-Plain People contingent, who grow a lot of their own food, compost everything, recycle everything, live in community and share all their stuff, avoiding capitalist-style accumulating and spending, are often vegan, drive cars til they drop (if they own cars), etc.
There is definitely much to criticize about the full quiver movement, and I have, here:
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/11/29/i-name-the-patriarchsi-name-and-blame-the-patriarchs-part-2-fallacies-about-the-full-quiver-movement/
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/11/14/i-name-the-patriarchy-part-i-the-truth-about-full-quiver-women/
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/the-quiverfull-movement-hate-speech-and-discrimination-against-women-as-women/
I think it’s wrongheaded, though, to be assholish in the direction of the girls and women in the movement, in particular. I and my daughters were part of the movement, and now all seven of us are radical feminists. We’re far from the only ones. I’ve walked alongside many, many erstwhile full quiver women as they’ve divorced their husbands, left the movement, left patriarchal religion behind, come out as lesbians (a surprising number). Women in radical expressions of fundamentalism like this are often sharp, tough, and exceptionally strong. Life teaches them. over time, how foolish they were to trust men and male gods, and when they get free, they bring tremendous energy to feminism because they are so intimately familiar with unapologetic, power-mad extremes of patriarchy. Radical feminism gives them words for their experiences and rings for them, in a way it doesn’t for huge numbers of more traditional women who don’t seem to realize that most men, including theirs, are just a pious walk of the aisle away from similarly abusing power (and them).
Heart
These aren’t all single births are they? I think some of them have to be twins or triplets. Every time I look at that picture I start multiplying the number of kids by nine and coming up with a number of months that sounds more like a prison sentence than a pregnancy. I mean, even if you really like being pregnant, that’s got to be a complete drain on your energy. Just looking at that makes me tired. And you have to feel sorry for the girls in that family, I’m sure they’re getting saddled with all the work taking care of the little ones alongside all the housework, except for what the mom has time to do. It makes me so glad I’m just the oldest of two kids.
Lisa:
> But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying
> “have less children†while going around in an SUV and a million
> dollar house.
The “million dollar house” part of this made me giggle. In several neighborhoods in the city where I live, you’d be lucky to find a broken-down studio condo for a million dollars. I rent in an area that appears to be gentrifying, because they’re putting in condos across the street, many of which have a price tag somewhere north of a million dollars. Where my grandfather lives (in the same bungalow for 56 years now), people largely get million dollar houses so they can knock them down; it’s the land that’s worth that much. To me, it seems like home ownership is largely for couples who are willing to take on a staggering amount of risk, essentially betting that neither of them will get sick for the next 30 years.
Frigga- Quebec went through this type of breeding for political/religious furor from the 1700s on with little real impact demographically. This changed in the Depression era as most other industrialized nations started to see increased use of contraception but religious pressure and lack of formal education kept women in Quebec from accessing the means to control family size. Quebec saw a huge relative to its neighbours growth up until the late 1950s when a backlash started to grow as women and men became aware of what was available outside their borders. In a single generation Quebec went from the highest birthrate in the industrialized nations to the lowest, negative population growth even with immigration. Secular control of the legislature has become the norm and it is only with huge programs for support of families (child care subsidies, paid maternal/paternal parental leave. universal daycare and reduced taxes on infant care supplies to name a few) that the birthrate has started to go up. Children who raise families at a young age are disinclined to raise them once older.
Children who raise families at a young age are disinclined to raise them once older.
Yep. The best cure for big families is taking care of kids while you’re still a child yourself. I put off childbearing until I’d had a decade-plus break from caring for my little brothers — and there were only two of them. If there had been more sibs to “assistant mother,” I might not have had kids of my own at all.
The other thing is, it’s wrong to assume that left to themselves, all things being equal, all things being het, and everybody wanting kids, women would have huge families like this. One thing the full quiver movement has taught people is that deciding to have a huge family doesn’t mean you will. There are lots of women who “let God plan their family” and end up with two, one, or zero children. Not all that many end up with gigantic families like this one, even though they actually try for them.
So even in the case of women who have 6-15 kids, it can’t be presumed their kids would each have that many kids, even if they wanted to, because it doesn’t work that way. I was the only one of the three daughters in my own family to end up with many children. One sister had two, widely spaced (eight years between them) and one sister had none, with neither using birth control.
Heart
I’ve read that Michelle Duggar breastfeeds each baby for six months, then hands the kid off to a daughter to raise so she can get started on the next experiment. She’s got a regular assembly line going there, and her husband is frankly creepy. I can’t imagine fucking him once much less seventeen times.
I can’t imagine fucking him once much less seventeen times.
HA!
The fact that Duggar only breastfeeds each baby for six months is one reason she has so many kids. Most full quiver women breastfeed for much longer than that, years, which delays the return of fertility in the majority of women, sometimes for years. Duggar must be going for a record.
Heart
Heart said, “Growing up in large families cures them of that particular urge, the girls, particularly, who are usually depended upon to help care for the new babies in the family.”
I have to disagree about the experience of being in a big family necessarily “curing” the girls of the urge to have big families themsleves. My partner’s parents both come from very large families, and then they also had a large family. I was visiting a few months ago, when two of his sisters were explaining to me that they wanted to have very large families also. They said, “It’s so much fun to have a really big family. Something is always going on. It’s always someone’s birthday. There are enough people for a party.” I wasn’t really how to react to this point of view, especially considering I’m an American and they’re not, so I kept my big mouth shut. But I can definitely say that having come from a large family does not deter some women; it encourages them instead.
Also, ladies, *where* did this “quiverfull” expression come from? It’s grossing me out.
I don’t remember exactly where “quiverfull” comes from, but it’s something along the lines of “we’re having a quiverfull of arrows to fight on behalf of the lord.” The rationale given in the article I read was the when Reagan became president, there weren’t enough conservative Christians to staff the gov’t for him, so these people are having a quiverfull of children who will grow up to staff the institutions of society (the govt, universities, etc.) and make them more conservative.
I find it unlikely that kids from such big families would be much of an asset in an advanced industrial society. With this many children, it’ll be hard to get good education for all of them. Public schools are going downhill (maybe these people will become advocates for good public school??), private schools are too expensive, and with mom needing to take care of so many small children, it’ll be hard to provide much of a home schooling experience. AFter high school, it’ll be hard to pay for high school for so many kids. Presumably the boys are destined for the military and the girls for marriage with no education.
So basically they’re using “quiverfull” because it sounds better than cannon fodder.
Yeah, I’m with Jane Awake on the opinion that coming from a large family isn’t necessarily a deterrent to having one of your own. Sometimes people forget just how much work their family was and only remember the fun times and how close they all are. My mom co-raised two of the kids in her family and would vividly describe how much they didn’t have in the way of resources to care for everyone, but she still wanted to have six or eight kids. My good luck in family size is unfortunately due to her back luck with carrying kids to term.
I must say, one thing I respect about some of these conservative Christians is their resistance to consumerism. (That said, I do’t think accepting a free trip to Disneyland counts.)
“But I think there is more to the overpopulation issue then saying “have less children†while going around in an SUV and a million dollar house.”
There really isn’t more to overpopulation. You’re responding, reasonably, to hypocrisy, but I think what you’re describing is overconsumption. There are too many people in the world by a factor of 1000 whether Americans overconsume or not.
I’m not advocating that we all tool around in F-650s, but I’m sure you’re aware of studies that point out how all the Hummer-driving Honky McRichersons in the world combined are as a drop in the ocean compared to industrial polluters.
As for million-dollar houses: You’re probably alluding to the hideous McMansions that are all the rage right now, but I tell you whut, if you, like I do, suffer from romantic delusions about reducing your footprint, you can blow alotta grip even on a small one. The 5-room house I’m building right now at El Rancho Deluxe is costing about a third again what it would cost to build the same house without “green” systems and materials: rainwater collection, solar panel hookups (for future solar panels that I can’t afford now), paint that doesn’t make you sick, Forest Stewardship Certified lumber, insulation, sun shades, one of those hot-water-on-demand heater things, etc. I’m beginning to think I should have gone with my original plan and dug a cave out of the side of a hill, accessed by a hobbit door or something.
Isabella, thanks for the info. When I heard “quiverfull,” for some reason “sheath for a sword” came to mind.
Many years ago I read a letter in Ann Landers from a teenager who, as the eldest daughter, was being forced to help raise her many younger siblings. She described never being able to go out and have fun with her friends or date. Ann Landers chastised her, saying that children should gratefully do whatever was needed by their families. Several readers wrote in to lambast Ann for that opinion. One woman attributed that to her never having married or having children of her own, along with not developing social skills among her peers. She warned parents not to view older kids as built-in babysitters. To Ann’s credit, she acceded to the responders and reconsidered her advice.
I feel especially sorry for the girls in that family because you know, given the uber-traditional gender roles, they are expected to be junior mothers without question. Whether or not that impacts the kids’ future life decisions, it’s really shitty for parents to enmesh their children into their own issues, whatever they are. Kids should have some chores and responsibilities around the house, but when they start to overtake their other important activities, then it’s a problem.
Slightly OT but I don’t really care for the way some of my fellow progressive activists bring their youngsters to protests and things like that. I’m not talking about occasionally because they can’t get childcare or they want them to have the experience. I mean every time, every meeting, every protest, where it’s clearly to indoctrinate the kid. How is that different than fundies forcing their little cherubs to hold up fetuses at rallies?
I read somewhere that (in the US, probably) not having kids = 72 years of 100% recycling. I’ll take that, thanks very much.
I wonder whether this has a fair bit to do with recycling being a particularly useless environmental contribution, mostly aimed at salving suburban SUV guilt? In the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle triad, the first two are much more important than the third.
I’m really uncomfortable with the women here who are choosing the Duggar mother’s putative vaginal appearance[1] as the most horrendous thing about this whole situation. Powerless women trying to survive in a toxic patriarchy deserve to have us denounce their male oppressors, not just shoot yet more and more barbs at their bodies.
The women who do end up with severely damaged vaginas (in the US, assuming decent nutrition etc) usually do so because of men who can’t keep their hands and forceps and scissors out of them and leave them alone to do their job. (In Africa, say, severe vaginal damage might be more likely from peripubertal pregancy in an undernourished girl, possibly with rickets; or perhaps from being raped with a bayonet.
For all of these, I blame the patriarchy.
[1] which is very likely completely normal, as Heart notes
Quiverfull comes from the Bible; I believe in Proverbs, about having a full quiver of children.
I think heart’s insight is fascinating, and have been interested in the Duggars for a while…and yes she has had a few sets of twins.
My favorite thing to think about when I see the Duggars is that study that came out a while ago showing that the more older brothers a boy had, the more likely he is to be gay. You know there’s at least a few non-het kids in a group that large.
I think having babies is simply what Michelle perceives as her career, and she’s good at it, biologically speaking. Doing something else would require learning a whole new set of skills, standing up to her husband, and probably running away from home….I think she’s just chosen not to think about such scary possibilities. Which is easy when you always have another newborn to care for.
When menopause hits, I guess it will be all about the grandchildren. But I can’t help but think that wondering what else she could have done with her life pops up now and again.
I first heard about the Quiverfull movement via this horrifying November 2006 story in The Nation; women are to submit to their Heavenly Father (aka “The Birth Controller”) in their dedication to supplying solders for God’s army:
“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.”
Lauradhel, I’m sorry, I was the first who brought up the vaginal appearance thing. I did not mean it as any perjorative at all. I honestly meant it in kind of a curious amazement. I’m a historian, and have read about women in the past, when the norm was to have this many children, and they suffered quite a number of gynocological and nutritionally-related problems. Today, of course, there is better care, but still, it takes a toll on the body. So, I was just wondering (in, granted, a rather glib way, but I am a glib person) how her body was absorbing this many children.
As for turning over the new children to the older children, that happened in our house and I was the oldest and only girl. Granted, we only had three children, but, at the age of 10, I did not ask to be a mother to the other two. Additionally, while the next child, a boy, and I were less than two years apart, the last child was 7 years younger than me. I was always in charge of both of them, and the housework (while they were paid for the yard work). There was no switching off between me and the elder brother. In other words, the distribution of the child care and housework was not equal between me and the older boy. This may have contributed to my lack of desire to have children; but I KNOW it made me accutely aware of the patriarchy at a very early age.
A hot-water-on-demand-heater sounds like heaven. I’d love to have one of those. I’ve got a water-hogging teen in the house.
I feel sorry for these quiverful moms. They have absolutely no time for themselves. I would go nuts! I feel sorrier for the girls who rear younger siblings. These girls didn’t ask to be nannies.
Kids should have some chores and responsibilities around the house, but when they start to overtake their other important activities, then it’s a problem.
Ever discover you have a particular nerve only when something hits it?
Blamerella’s quote hits exactly what upsets me about these enormous families; the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood. I’ve made a solemn vow to myself that my older son will never be made to babysit, tutor or clean up after his five-years-younger brother.
The other downside of the sibs-raising-sibs issue can be that when the caretaker sib finally takes off (woo hoo!),it’s a real loss for the little ones left at home, more so than it would be if the older sib weren’t a ‘bonus parent.’
I don’t blame my parents too much — they came up hard in families where everyone pitched in or everyone went without, so that setup was normal to them. But it was not the norm by any means among my childhood friends.
This is judgmental, but I think the Duggar-style setup could be exploitation of the older,caretaker sibs. Having that many kids is a lifstyle choice. Would the parents still choose it if they had to pay for the help the older kids provide for free?
Most full quiver moms homeschool their kids. In many quiverfull communities and churches, they will be shunned if they don’t homeschool. Many of these families do a really good job of teaching their kids and their kids go on to be successful in college or in trade schools. Not many join the military; many quiverfull types are pacifists and nonresisters, and even those who are god and guns types usually hate Bush because he is not enough of a theocrat and believe the war in Iraq is wrong.
My oldest five children were homeschooled all the way through high school; all went on to college or trade school, all did well, none went into the military, all are gainfully employed, all are artistic souls. My next three down went to high school only and all three are in college. The oldest of the next three went to a prestigious four-year-college on full scholarships and will get her four year degree this year.
Generally, these kids receive good, if religious, educations. When they go on to college, well, it is a consciousness-raising experience for them, unless it’s Michael Farris’ Patrick Henry college, in which case, oh well. I’ve seen lots of quiverfull kids leave the fold once they’ve gone on to college.
The other thing is, quiverfull families emphasize entrepreneurial endeavors, family business, and there are many successful home businesses amongst homeschoolers (lots of them providing the needs of homeschoolers). Children are mentored in the family businesses and are, indeed, valued for the help they provide, just like in the old days when kids helped on the farm. They also often grow up and take over the businesses.
The term “quiverfull” comes for a verse in Proverbs that says, “Children are blessing from the Lord; blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them.” The patriarchs take off with that particular warrior imagery and love to run off at the lip about all the “arrows” they will send into the various disciplines and institutions of patriarchy, and they’ve been successful there, which is one reason it’s hard in some places to get your prescriptions for morning after pills filled and which is why you have public school teachers teaching “intelligent design” despite what school boards say, which is why you have legislators, say, introducing bills that require women who miscarry to notify the cops within 12 hours so the “fetal deaths” can be investigated, on penalty of jail time.
It’s true that some young people go on to have big families; my experience is that not many do though.
Lots of quiverfull moms bail in their 40s. The demands on women in this world are horrifying. You feel like a machine and you are a machine. At one time I had 9 children under 18 years old with three-four still in diapers for some portion of the day. Imagine the laundry, especially for people who are environmentally conscious and reject disposable diapers. Lots of 40-something quiverfull moms leave the fold and never look back. They leave the church, divorce, become feminists, etc.
Something no one talks much about: lots of women find pregnancy to be a highly sexual time and enjoy sex at this time of their lives more than any other time, for reasons which are physiological and chemical. Paradoxically, or maybe ironically, being pregnant also gives quiverfull women a reasonable and acceptable excuse to opt out of sex with their husbands in a world in which women are taught that their bodies belong to their husbands and sex must be provided on demand.
Re the cost of all the green stuff. I recently read a fairly disgusting article in the Seattle paper about a guy who started a business selling frozen gourmet meals made with locally grown (within a 30-mile radius) organic produce and free-ranging, grain-fed animal products, packaged in recyclable containers. You return the glass dish each time you buy new meals and you return the cardboard wrappers for recycling, etc. Sounds great. Cost per meal? $30-$55. Talk about-offputtingly gentrified. How f’ing many people can afford that.
Some of the quiverfull people get some things right, despite their large family size. Besides growing/making their own, sharing stuff with each other to avoid overconsuming, they reject debt, pay cash, don’t take handouts from the government in any form, many reject militarism/nationalism and the invasiveness and intrusions of patriarchal medicine. They take care of their own elderly and disabled, adopt and take in foster kids, as a matter of religious conviction.
But their ideology horribly oppresses women and girls,including starry-eyed women who go into it thinking they want this kind of lifestyle. It also often turns garden variety heterosupremacist men into abusive control freaks, with the blessing of church patriarchs.
Oh, and yes, in families this large, some are usually not het. Several of my children have or have had same sex partners.
Heart
I was offended the first time I saw the “Clown Car” photo a year or so ago, not because of the zillion kids but because even feminists make fun of this woman’s body. Why? Is it only a sin to make fun of unmarried, child-free women? I don’t get it. Women with a bunch of kids are so repulsive to us patriarchy-blamers that even we get to ridicule them?
Another note on the older children raising the younger children: the younger children cannot possibly benefit from this situation, either. I shudder to think of the ways that I fucked up my younger brother because I was just a kid taking care of a kid, and resenting the holy hell out of it. Raising kids takes a lot of energy. We talk about having the financial resources to do it, but we should also consider the human resources involved, as well. Hiring a nanny is one thing, but expecting a child to be a nanny is quite another.
Don’t ask me why, but this term “Quiverfull” used in the context of childbearing conjures up this image of a nekkid woman, upside down, legs splayed apart, with about ten kid poking out of her vagina. Not babies, kids. I find the image disturbing.
…the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood.
And their education. I wonder how many days the oldest girls are kept from school or NOT schooled even at home because something needs to be done, and Gawdknows we ain’t gonna ask the oldest BOYS to inconvenience themselves to do it.
I agree with tinfoil hattie…while I do find this photo hilarious, I think it is because I may have that shock value/sick/very mean sense of humor. And this photo is very mean to women, no doubt. Is the mean-girl mentality congruous with being feminist? I’m not too sure.
My mom only had 3 kids and I, as the oldest, was still a built-in babysitter. Do people really think this only happens in large families?
Also, Twisty, just wanted to let you know that I love your blog, you are the best. Many a day you bring a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. Who would I blame without you.
Clio and LMYC, very true re the girls taking care of their younger siblings and not being allowed to attend to their own needs, of whatever kind. The oldest daughters, especially, often really are servants. In a lot of the quiverfull households, maybe all, while girls are educated, they are discouraged or forbidden from preparing for careers and are taught they are destined for wife-and-motherhood (often via arranged marriages with the sons of quiverfull families), so the childcare and household duties are considered appropriate “training.” They are also shipped off to the homes of other quiverfull families when the moms have babies if they themselves don’t have older daughters. The girls definitely get the raw deal in the family compared with the boys, in a million ways, to include, for example, that in many of these families, the boys can speak, teach, and lead in church whereas the girls and their moms must remain silent and submissive.
Heart
…the older kids–most often girls–are put into service as sitters and maids at the expense of their childhood.
My grandmother was oldest of 6, 2 sets of twins. She once told me the story of the happiest moment of her whole life. Her work was done, and she sat on a hill and just looked around. The part that was special was that “her work was done”. From the sounds of it, that didn’t happen again, that she could remember.
I love some models of kids teaching and helping younger kids, but those are set up especially for the benefit of the kids (Montessori) not as primarily a labour saving device. Most kids love to help and be included in work, to take advantage of that is a perversion and misuse of their good nature. Everyone should have an opportunity to develop her gifts, as well as be of service.
Heart is amazing. 11 kids. I understand the joy of 11 babies must have been incredible.
For my part, I am kind of sheepish for having even one when my saintly friends are adopting crack babies. Black girls - most unwanted babies of them all, snubbed by yuppies for chinese and russian kids every day.
Yet the timelessness of holding my own baby girl for hours on end is something that I will never forget. In a life full of starlike splendor and bursting with love, those moments are untouchable pinnacles of heavenly bliss.
But I look up from my bliss and see endless human beings smothering the face of the world and even - unbelievably - sucking every single fish out of all the seas, and I think I maybe shouldn’t have done it.
I guess one more baby wasn’t too much to ask.
I think the clown car snark may be based on the assumption that maximizing child production is a thing done to women through oppression rather than a thing a healthy independent woman would choose to do.
We are so used to a culture that objectifies women that we sometimes fail to notice that we are nodding in time to the music.
I did a little bit of background research on this family, and according to their official website, the two oldest girls (not oldest children, mind you, just the oldest girls) make the meals: The thirteen year old makes lunch every day and the fourteen year old makes supper. It’s really the fact that it’s the girls doing the extra work that bothers me. When my small sister was born eight years after me, my older sister and I were thrust into the role of “built-in babysitter”, but my parents were certainly around as well and it wasn’t a big deal. Had there been a brother, however, there’s no question that he would have had an equal share in the work. That doesn’t seem to be case in the Duggart household. IBTP.
Why be kind? How do you think these people feel about, oh, say, Lesbians?
Random Lurker:
“If these people are like my own Quiverfull relatives they’re virulently anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-gay, anti-premarital sex, and anti-sex ed. Y’all know who I blame for that. You can respect their reproductive choices all you want, but they sure as shite won’t respect yours.”
And there’s the bottom line on why this situation is so repulsive. Respecting others’ rights is a proper moral choice, but when it doesn’t works in both directions there’s no obligation to respect their choices.
What really pisses me off is that the girls but not the boys do the housework and servitude. My brother never did any chores in our house at all; it was all the girls, and in school, the teachers were always trying to get the girls to do the cleanup work, while the boys were never tapped for it.
Those kids wear identical clothes, adn the girls are being raised to be servants, as free labor.
http://www.viceland.com/issues/v10n9/htdocs/eat.php
An article detailing the consequences of having this many children. Of course, I’m childfree, so this is biased.
An excerpt:
That’s when I totally lost it. I said, “Okay, Mr. Roan, so you’re saying that if a rich person who drives an SUV, goes on foxhunts and never recycles, decides he’s not going to have kids, then he’s better than me—a vegetarian, with one kid, who recycles and has never so much as killed a fly?â€
“Environmentally speaking?†the idiot replied. “As far as Mother Nature is concerned, she would much rather tolerate the childless rich person. In the long run she’s better off with him.†I was so dumbfounded by this guy’s stupidity I hung up the phone in disbelief. Then I went over to my son who was sleeping on the couch. I looked at him and swore I would never let him or his brothers and sisters or any of their children or any of their children’s grandchildren or any of their grandchildren’s children’s children turn out like the oblivious buffoons I had talked to on the phone today.
They will still, a number of them will. Because it isn’t mothers who raise families. Oh we do the work, but it’s society who raises the adults who become like this buffoon, whose mother is banging her head against a wall somewhere.
Did you see the video on that site?
Only here can you find such a great CR-type discussion about women’s lives resulting from a single picture. Thanks, Twisty!
And thank YOU, Heart, for sharing your story. I don’t believe this particular movement is mentioned in the magazine, but the latest issue of the feminist journal Off Our Backs is completely devoted to women in fundamentalist religious groups all over the world and the unique challenges they face. It includes a few narratives by women who tell stories of leaving their husbands and/or sects that sound very similar to yours.
http://www.offourbacks.org/
It’s probably important that we not make too many assumptions about what Michelle Duggar’s life is actually like, but I would say that the way her family lives is most certainly a feminist issue.
what’s the problem with people having as many or as few babies as they want?
Are you kidding??? Noone’s genes are that important.
If you were truly interested in future generations and/or, you know, the planet, it would do you well to avoid creating a whole tribe of resource users.
People can do what they want, and they will, but making an enormous family in a time of depleted resources and impending global catastrophe is pretty selfish and ignorant.
In regards to the frugal commune back-to-the-land Christian living, unless everyone is pooping in a hole in the ground et al., they are most likely still using up resources that could be better distributed among a wider variety of people, likesay the groups of people considered pariahs by their scary right wing community. But perhaps that is the point, to create enough people to buy/hoard the resources so that the shunned and banned have to struggle harder.
It’s terrifying to me to think that there are women out there mechanically creating enormous ‘quivers’ of arrows for the Christian god. Am I the only one that thinks this sounds like a bad sci-fi movie?
Twisty, do you have a MySpace?
At least these people have a plan and are taking time to do this. They live frugally and are not asking the world for hand outs. Sure they use a lot of resources, but they do pay their taxes. People of the same ilk are the ones handing out prizes to them, not the community at large. The folks with a zillion kids I have a problem with are those crazys who were artificially inseminated and carried all 7 viable embrios to term. The community gave them a house and paid all kinds of things for that family including the medical bills for the children who were damaged by being in a womb made for one. They were premature and underweight, the kids have all kinds of problems that we as a society will be paying for for the next 50 plus years. Those godbags make me sick. They new the risks of artificial insemination and did it anyway. I think their doctors are to blame as well. They were a really expensive experiment. Their sense of entitlement sickens me.
Girls from small families (even one-child families) usually get left doing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., so I’m really perplexed why so many of you are upset about the Duggar girls having to cook lunch and dinner and take care of babies and so on. The Duggar girls’ childhood lot in life may take place in a more unconventional setting, but it’s hardly that different from other girls’.
Puffin, there’s a HUGE difference between helping out with one or two younger siblings, and a teenager being responsible for dinner for TWENTY PEOPLE every single day. I’m the oldest of two and was required to do a lot of babysitting, but it didn’t come close to the kind of drudgery the girls in a family that large are having to do.
Those women with the seven embryos in one pregnancy are the victms of men who don’t want any other man’s child to raise (and from what we see of the way they do treat other men’s children when they are stepfathers, often, maybe they’ve got a point) and the medical profession that thinks if they can invent it it’s good. Let’s find a use for it! I shudder too, when I hear them announcing that the 18 ounce baby is healthy. Not all disabilities are evident at birth, or even within the first several years.
Belle,
Just as a point of clarification…If you are speaking of that family in Iowa, I think their name is Dougherty??? They did not use artificial insemination. In fact, there is no risk of multiples from artificial insemination alone. You may be thinking of in vitro fertilization, in which they implant 1-3 embryos. This is where the twins and triplets come from. No doctor on the planet would implant seven embryos. What happened with them is that she took medication to ovulate and they had good ole’ fashioned sex. But she hyperovulated (which is a somewhat low risk of that method of IF) These six and seven “tuplets” are usually a rare effect of hyperovulation. Most of the time, women who take meds like clomid to ovulate have just one baby and in 5 or so percent, twins.
It was for sure a medical risk they decided to take, right or wrong, but I don’t think it is quite like you are portraying. It was a very rare fluke that happened. If the community wants to help out with the consequences of that kind of risk…I say, let ‘em. No skin off my back.
Of course she could have selectively reduced, but then it goes back to reproductive freedom. You can’t have it both ways. The whole quiver thing creeps me out as well. But I’d rather not put myself in charge of monitoring other people’s reproductive choices, whether it be Plan B or abortion or sterilization or IF or having more kids than I would ever want.
I can only see this as breeding your own personal cult.
I would like to add my experience to Heart’s on the continuum of constructions of work and play. Some of the happiest times in my life have been at home, as a child (considering myself at the time a young woman), cooking and cleaning for my loved ones. It is a form of taking care of, caring for, Dasein. I’m not jittering for a Heidegger-was-a-Nazi-and-Nazis-mistreated-women schlock here. I’m just saying, as caring for patients brings some doctors joy and caring for students brings some teachers joy, so caring for loved ones at home brings some people (men and women) great pleasure. You can call it productive play, child labor, Stockholm syndrome, or another delusion. I call it meaning. Everyone finds her own sources of the stuff, and they change (both the sources and the people seeking them).
The real debate, in my mind, should be about why women’s reproductive choices still significantly delimit their professional possibilities. With over a million viewers at IBTP, 2 million at Feministing, and a whole gaggle of folks still gagging over the Edwards bloggers affair, why is this still the sad reality of sex in America? Why don’t women have equal rights as laborers? Any woman who can raise this many healthy, happy children should be leading her own contingent in Iraq — or organizing a Quiverfull anti-war march. But without a strong support system including extended family and halfsies-shared parental responsibility, her sphere is still, by necessity, the private one. If she works outside the home, she is neglecting her family and not holding herself accountable for her choices, because there is no day care she will not be charged and blamed for putting her children in. She is ostracized by political society, disqualified from the rat race, and made obsolete as a public actor for her choices — except as an ambassador for those same choices. This is the issue. This is the tragedy.
Hmmmm. I think the real issue could also be why you won’t find hundreds of GUYS proclaiming their love for cooking and cleaning and caring for their own kids or younger brothers and sisters. I find it a tragedy that one guy can get a good job and work the same 8 hours a day as a teenaged 7-11 employee, yet be able to “support” a giant family, while a woman’s work in this same family has octupled or more to the point where she needs to employ her daughters as helper-slaves (while the sons run around doing what they want, naturally). I find it a tragedy that new fathers don’t volunteer en masse for paternity leave, for flextime, for a couple extra days off a week to care for THEIR new families. Their PAID JOB comes first. It is the imbalace in family life/parental roles, which is due to a gender-split-based capitalism ideology, that is the problem.
People should have “fewer” children, not “less.” “Child” is a count noun, and count nouns get “fewer.”
Sorry–I couldn’t think of anything to add, as you all said it so well and so thoroughly, so I played my English teacher trump card.
Lisa, you are probably right in some regards, but I still have the same opinion. They took a risk? No they forced 7 children to take a risk, not to mention the two children they had already. And yes it is the family in Iowa I am thinking of. They did it for their own personal gratification whatever the so called reason or method. The community may have come together for the birth but do you think they are still as supportive now that the kids are in special ed and need all kinds of things? The more power to them arguement seems a little weak if taken to the logical extreme.
Shouldn’t the goal be healthy children and mothers? I felt sorry for those 7 children. A few of them needed feeding tubes as infants (3 or 4 of them?). I hope that these kids are healthier now. The press definitely glossed over the medical problems.
“Of course she could have selectively reduced, but then it goes back to reproductive freedom. ”
Yes I think this illustrates
very well what the forces that want to outlaw abortion are really about.
With IV fertilization, there are many many embryos created which are later destroyed. If they’re in a petri dish, they’re not entitled to life.
But if they’re inside a WOMAN well then they’re as human as you or I.
I’ve always felt very, very conflicted about the whole having-babies thing. From the start, I knew it wasn’t for me. Having been present for my best friend’s c-section was only confirmation. Thanks but no thanks, huh uh, not me.
I’m the youngest of five girls and my eldest sisters spoiled me rotten, toting me everywhere they went, spending their first paychecks on me, and doting on me in general. My elder nieces & nephews are more like brothers & sisters to me. This has always been a happy situation for me, and continues to be so as we go into future generations. Coming from a large family is *not* what made me not want to reproduce.
My nephew’s wife is one a those women who could have a baby every year without ill effects. Three days after she misses her period, she knows she’s pregnant and carries the child to term with relatively little discomfort. She’s added two beautiful, sweet-tempered souls to our family, whom I adore. Bless her. Would I wanna be like her? Hell no!
Still, I used to delight in poking fun at women like her, calling them Fertility Goddesses and inferring that they oughtta sleep with a baseball bat handy. As some of you have mentioned upthread, I’ve come to respect their choices, and I continue to insist on the validity of my own. Gestation and parenthood are, I believe, the most difficult tasks in the world, and not ones to be borne unwillingly. Why can’t we have a little sanity about this issue?
Lisa and Belle:
The McCaughey septuplets *were* the result of fertility drugs. It made me sick to hear the mother, while she was still pregnant, saying that God gave her these babies, so she didn’t want to get a selective reduction. Seems to me that God made her infertile and the medical community gave her these babies. Why isn’t getting fertility treatments defying God’s will in these people’s heads? Aaauuuughhh!
Funny poster, but I didn’t think it was real until I started reading comments.
They may not be in debt, but having more than 15 kids is a choice, regardless if a deity makes the choice “for” you, and should not merit charity alone.
Another disturbing thing is that the jimbob.com website looks more like a political campaign site than a family photo album.
Now for the mind-melting philosophies of the Quiverfull…that could make me puke. I could have done without reading up on this new one for me. Having more kids to spread Christianity is a scary thought, not because I find it a threat but because I find the reasoning a vacant excuse.
j: “Twisty, do you have a MySpace? ”
No. As far as I can tell, MySpace is for social networking, and I hate people.
Tracey, thanks. Just ftr, I wrote one of the articles in that Off Our Backs issue you link to, so one of the stories actually is mine. :) I wrote Confronting the Religious Right.
Heart
the quiver full of arrows verse is actually in one of the psalms, not in proverbs. that doesn’t change anything about the discussion, just saying.
my question above was honest and no, I’m not kidding. I was curious what people here would say about reproductive choice when the choice was one they probably wouldn’t make and possibly find offensive.
I do appreciate those who pointed out that their choices would not be respected by these people. I think that’s true. I’d add, however, that I don’t respect people’s choices just because they respect mine.
But I do know it’s true that people in these kinds of communities can be very insular and very harsh in their judgments of those who don’t conform to their way of thinking. I have several friends who are conservative roman catholic, don’t use birth control, want to have families of 10 or more kids, homeschool or plan to homeschool etc. And no, they don’t have the least bit of respect for my reproductive choices or how my husband and I are raising our kids.
I do respect their choices, however, and they aren’t mindless drones or walking vaginas. Sometimes I think they’re a little deluded, sure. Number of kids is one thing, but I’m frankly more offended by those I know who refuse to vaccinate their children and then watch them pass 19th century diseases back and forth. That makes me want to shake people, dammit! I also cringe when I hear them wish and hope out loud for a girl baby at the top of the birth order so she can help out and I think some of them are in for a bit of surprise once their kids are grown. I keep most of this to myself.
The worst of it, though, is the feeling I get from them that my occasional kvetching about how hard it is to pursue my career and take care of home and children. Their response? The fact that its so difficult is proof that women should not work outside the home. I’ve even been told I’d be a lot happier if I would give it up and just stay home to have kids. To me, the fact that it’s so difficult is proof that the world sucks and women aren’t really equal. Katelyn Sack, a few comments up, said it perfectly.
Heart,
Thank you for your input. You bring a great perspective to this discussion.
My assumption that these boys are headed for the military was based on rather limited information. In the articles and interviews I’ve read about such mothers, the families didn’t appear to have home businesses.
I’m glad your kids had such academic success, but the way things are going with the cost of college education and shrinking financial aid (I was on a committee looking at the issue when I was in college), I think college will become more out of reach for anyone who’s parents didn’t start saving in large amounts from the day they were conceived.
I saw this family on TLC a while ago. I’m all for women making their own reproductive choices, but the girls in this family did not choose becoming housekeepers and little mothers while their ages were still in the single-digits. That is my main feminist concern with this family.
One girl makes dinner every day, while a boy near her age does his daily chore by feeding the dog? That’s FUN. Making dinner for 18 is not that fun.
I hope every single one of those children grows up to be Childfree!
Here here, NK!
That’s not really surprising. Jim-Bob has run for office before and no doubt will again.
He was in the Arkansas House of Reps from ‘99-’02, according to Wikipedia. He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in ‘02. He ran unsuccessfully for the Arkansas State Senate in ‘06. I’m sure he has plans to run for some office in ‘08 too.
I think it is really important that we note that the website for the family is under his name, not the family, it’s jim-bob that matters. Ew and yuck. His women serve, damnit.
Heart,
That’s awesome that that was you! This thread immediately made me think of your article and the others like it in that issue. I really learned so much from it, and I would recommend it to anyone. Your story and your strength are truly inspiring.
I too saw the photo and was a bit confused. What’s the joke about photoshopping like that? Making fun of wingnuts by pointing out the narcissism inherent in wanting to replicate oneself to the umpteenth degree?