The Duggar family
Last week it was announced that Michelle Duggar is 6 weeks pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle is in her early forties. Her eldest child is 20, her youngest is 9 months. Michelle is, as one might suspect, a stay-at-home mom and all the children are homeschooled.
The Duggars are, both because of their family size and because of patriarch Jim-Bob's involvement in Arkansas politics, the family that has gotten the most media attention for their large size. But they are, in fact, but one of a growing number of incredibly large families who are members of the Quiverfulls, a radical Protestant sect that believes it wrong to do anything that would limit a woman's fertility. Quiverfull's have no central organization but they are extremely fundamentalist, take the bible as literal truth, and require wives to submit to their husbands. While some children of these families go to college, many of the boys are sent into trades that they can be apprenticed in: carpentry, plumbing, farming, etc. Fewer women go to college, since they are expected to be home-makers. Many Quiverfull families also practice carefully chaperoned courtship for their children. Two families of with children in their late teens/early twenties will introduce their children to each other in the hopes that they'll hit it off. If the couple like each other they spend time together in the presence of one family or the other, rarely if ever go on solo dates, and then, presumably, marry and go off to start their own new "quiverfull". Insofar as this practice seeks to assure both sets of parents that their children will marry somebody from the "right kind of family" this is a short step away from arranged marriage.
Unsurprisingly, most of my information about the Quiverfull's comes from the Internet. Many families who follow Quiverfull practices maintain family websites that are filled with pictures, quotes from the bible, recipes, FAQ's about how they manage such large families, and tips on how to economise in order to take care of everyone. Without any central organizing body, the Internet becomes an important place for the communities to share support and coping strategies.
The Quiverfull's present me, personally, with a huge conundrum. It goes, I hope, almost without saying that I DESPISE their politics, their oppressive patriarchal family structure, their dogmatism. I worry about the militaristic rhetoric of many of these families, who speak of building up "God's Army" through their enormous families and seem to seek, quite literally, to outbreed other demographic groups in order to move America in the direction of their own religious and political agenda. Many of the things the families do to manage themselves I find distasteful. The children in the Duggar family, for example, have to sign up for one-on-one time with a parent if they are feeling shorted for individual attention. Household chores are divided strictly by gender--the men, for example, never cook. One picture on the Duggar family website shows Michelle looking affectionately at Jim-Bob as the family sits at the table doing family bible study. It is captioned, "Michelle admiring Jim Bob for being the spiritual leader of their home"--which makes me want to scream and tear my hair and beg the woman to develop her own sense of her fitness to have a personal spiritual life, mediated by herself and for herself. I worry about whether the children of these families, and particularly the daughters, will ever have any sense of themselves that is freely developed. How will they ever experience choice, growing up in such rigid homes? Many of these women aren't even allowed to wear pants, let alone make serious decisions about their educations, careers, or day-to-day lives. So these groups frighten me, because they represent in a concrete, 20-person-family strong form, exactly what I most fear for my own life and for the country.
At the same time, the children from these families who keep blogs are cheery, productive, and happy kids. It is frightening but true that what I see as their indoctrination seems to make them happy, a compelling if disturbing example of the notion that ignorance is bliss. They report feeling very loved by their parents, and are grateful for the closeness of their many siblings. The children are healthy, clean, and well-fed. And the families have a much smarter approach to money than many smaller families--a truth achievable for them in no small part because they started out with a lot of white, middle-class privilege, but also because they have learned to do with less, to make or grow their own, to share resources. I find myself wondering if I should be more worried, on an individual level at least, about the children from these families or about the ones who live in poverty, in dangerous neighborhoods, who have no sense that somebody out there really cares about them. There is no question, in my mind, about which kids need society's help more, and it isn't the 18 young Duggars. They don't need my help, not in any way they would understand right now.
Looking at the two hypothetical children in my head as I write this, the one from the Duggar clan (or the Arndt family, or the Heppner, or the Jeub) and the one from the inner-city, I wonder which one has the chance to grow up and take an active part in the fantasy-America in my head, the one with universal healthcare and enough healthy food for everyone and rich communities and art bursting out at the seams. Neither? Both? How would I get these hypothetical children involved in my fantasy-America? Why do I feel, looking at these constructs in my head, like I'm being forced to make some kind of impossible choice between Fascism and Tragedy?
The Duggars are, both because of their family size and because of patriarch Jim-Bob's involvement in Arkansas politics, the family that has gotten the most media attention for their large size. But they are, in fact, but one of a growing number of incredibly large families who are members of the Quiverfulls, a radical Protestant sect that believes it wrong to do anything that would limit a woman's fertility. Quiverfull's have no central organization but they are extremely fundamentalist, take the bible as literal truth, and require wives to submit to their husbands. While some children of these families go to college, many of the boys are sent into trades that they can be apprenticed in: carpentry, plumbing, farming, etc. Fewer women go to college, since they are expected to be home-makers. Many Quiverfull families also practice carefully chaperoned courtship for their children. Two families of with children in their late teens/early twenties will introduce their children to each other in the hopes that they'll hit it off. If the couple like each other they spend time together in the presence of one family or the other, rarely if ever go on solo dates, and then, presumably, marry and go off to start their own new "quiverfull". Insofar as this practice seeks to assure both sets of parents that their children will marry somebody from the "right kind of family" this is a short step away from arranged marriage.
Unsurprisingly, most of my information about the Quiverfull's comes from the Internet. Many families who follow Quiverfull practices maintain family websites that are filled with pictures, quotes from the bible, recipes, FAQ's about how they manage such large families, and tips on how to economise in order to take care of everyone. Without any central organizing body, the Internet becomes an important place for the communities to share support and coping strategies.
The Quiverfull's present me, personally, with a huge conundrum. It goes, I hope, almost without saying that I DESPISE their politics, their oppressive patriarchal family structure, their dogmatism. I worry about the militaristic rhetoric of many of these families, who speak of building up "God's Army" through their enormous families and seem to seek, quite literally, to outbreed other demographic groups in order to move America in the direction of their own religious and political agenda. Many of the things the families do to manage themselves I find distasteful. The children in the Duggar family, for example, have to sign up for one-on-one time with a parent if they are feeling shorted for individual attention. Household chores are divided strictly by gender--the men, for example, never cook. One picture on the Duggar family website shows Michelle looking affectionately at Jim-Bob as the family sits at the table doing family bible study. It is captioned, "Michelle admiring Jim Bob for being the spiritual leader of their home"--which makes me want to scream and tear my hair and beg the woman to develop her own sense of her fitness to have a personal spiritual life, mediated by herself and for herself. I worry about whether the children of these families, and particularly the daughters, will ever have any sense of themselves that is freely developed. How will they ever experience choice, growing up in such rigid homes? Many of these women aren't even allowed to wear pants, let alone make serious decisions about their educations, careers, or day-to-day lives. So these groups frighten me, because they represent in a concrete, 20-person-family strong form, exactly what I most fear for my own life and for the country.
At the same time, the children from these families who keep blogs are cheery, productive, and happy kids. It is frightening but true that what I see as their indoctrination seems to make them happy, a compelling if disturbing example of the notion that ignorance is bliss. They report feeling very loved by their parents, and are grateful for the closeness of their many siblings. The children are healthy, clean, and well-fed. And the families have a much smarter approach to money than many smaller families--a truth achievable for them in no small part because they started out with a lot of white, middle-class privilege, but also because they have learned to do with less, to make or grow their own, to share resources. I find myself wondering if I should be more worried, on an individual level at least, about the children from these families or about the ones who live in poverty, in dangerous neighborhoods, who have no sense that somebody out there really cares about them. There is no question, in my mind, about which kids need society's help more, and it isn't the 18 young Duggars. They don't need my help, not in any way they would understand right now.
Looking at the two hypothetical children in my head as I write this, the one from the Duggar clan (or the Arndt family, or the Heppner, or the Jeub) and the one from the inner-city, I wonder which one has the chance to grow up and take an active part in the fantasy-America in my head, the one with universal healthcare and enough healthy food for everyone and rich communities and art bursting out at the seams. Neither? Both? How would I get these hypothetical children involved in my fantasy-America? Why do I feel, looking at these constructs in my head, like I'm being forced to make some kind of impossible choice between Fascism and Tragedy?