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A question about quiverfull


16strong

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I'm not sure if this has been brought up or discussed here. I've been thinking about the first 4 Bates kids in relationships. Given their ages, religious beliefs, and genetic history of fertility, it seems likely that each kid will be able to have 10-15 or even 20 kids. For Kelly and Gil, that makes 40-60 grandkids just from Erin, Zach, Alyssa, and Michael. This isn't a Bates-specific question, but more a question pertaining to super-sized quivers in general.

 

After the first few get married and the number of grandkids [hypothetically] reaches into the 40's and beyond, how will the grandparents main control over everyone, to make sure they don't deviate from the "family business"? Hell, will they even give a shit after their tenth kid gets married how many grandkids are being popped out or even who they get married to? Seems like a hell of a lot to keep up with.

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They can't keep up with it. Well, at least I don't think so. It's impossible.

Also, these type of families aren't that old, no?

Maybe it will only last one or two generations. Well, at least I don't think that every single child of mega families will also have a quiverfull family. I don't see that happening.

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They won't, my grandparents can't keep track of all of us and there's only 21 grandkids.

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I don't think these types of families are sustainable. I figure that their kids will not have as many as them, maybe up to 10 but probably less. Especially the older ones, they remember not having anything, living in a tiny house, likely being hungry due to food rationing, etc. Not to mention the older girls I'm sure know full well how much it sucks to become the nanny to your parents' brood. I still don't think Josh and Anna are going to have more than 5 or 6 kids, tops.

I suspect that the first few kids married off won't have enormous families. Maybe just big. The younger kids, who know no other life beyond this, haven't watched their abundant resources dwindle down as more and more kids came along, understand only this narrow view, and haven't been the nursemaid to a huge brood of their brothers and sisters will probably have a few gigantic families.

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I don't really think any of these kids are going to have the same mega-family size their parents did either.

1. Homeschool educated fundies aren't high on the hiring list, especially not during a recession. In most of these families only college educations and initial family support enabled these family sizes at all.

2. Only the dad is allowed to have a job.

3. The older ones have already been wrangling small children all their lives and are well aware of the sheer amount of effort and sacrifice involved.

Even if they wanted to have enormous families, there's simply no way they can afford to do so, and the second generation knows personally what it's like when the parents go "God will provide" but money doesn't miraculously fall from the sky. So maybe they still don't believe in birth control but they know there are ways to slow the flow DOWN:

First, marry later than your parents did. Marrying in your late 20's or later versus right out of high school is a lot less total children right out of the gate. Say you put it off until you're 27. My parents had 3 of their 4 children by that age, the Duggars had 6 of 19. That's a huge reduction in overall possible family size!

Then there's even more ways to cut the numbers back- for some people, extended breastfeeding works. If you only have a child every 2.5 to 3 years instead of every 14-18 months, you end up with a lot less total children.

That's completely discounting even using one of the natural family planning methods. While they're usually a lousy way to avoid becoming parents at ALL, they're not a terrible way to ensure that you're parents of 3-7 instead of 13.

If they really want to out-breed liberals, they're going to have to start accepting assistance and sending their children to public school. There's only so many tow truck driver jobs in the world. Most jobs that can feed and house a wife and 15 kids take a college degree. And college minus doesn't count.

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If you look at how many ATI students stay in the program and have tons of kids the numbers are pretty low. Chances are some of them will stay in and be all quiverfull, but most of them will slowly start slipping away once they escape the controlling grasp of their parents.

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I really hope the numbers go down the generations. I recently met a woman (new dog client) who told be her mother-in-law was 1 of 15 kids. However many of the next generation did have as many.

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My grandparents weren't quiverfull, just Irish Catholic immigrants but they were from families of 9 and 12 respectively. My grandmother waited 14 years after marriage to have her first child and only had 2 (and this was in the 30s and 40s*) and she flat out said it was because she had grown up poor and raising younger siblings and had no desire to do it again.

Of all the 21 siblings, one had 6 kids that included a set of twins but no one else had more than 3 kids. They weren't raised with the militant fecundity mindset, but they did all stay in the Catholic Church. I think all of them saw the drawbacks of these huge families and had no wish to recreate their childhoods. I am hopeful many of this newer fundy generation will feel the same way.

*I was 32 when she died and she was 93. We were very close and talked about all kinds of things but I regret I never thought to ask her HOW she managed this in the days before accessible contraception. She was very clear it was by choice, though.

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Interesting question....what is truly scary to me is how many of them DO follow in their parents footsteps. Most of the families we follow have adult children who do the courtship/quiverfull thing. The Bradricks are probably the ones I think of the most. Only 2 of their children remain unmarried and the rest of them have large families ( except for Phillip and Katie.) The Servens are another, even if they don't have HUGE familes, they still subscribe to women not being educated, no birth control, back to babies, etc and so forth.

I pin my hopes on the Coglans girls on not having a boatload of kids. Here's hoping.

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My grandparents weren't quiverfull, just Irish Catholic immigrants but they were from families of 9 and 12 respectively. My grandmother waited 14 years after marriage to have her first child and only had 2 (and this was in the 30s and 40s*) and she flat out said it was because she had grown up poor and raising younger siblings and had no desire to do it again.

Of all the 21 siblings, one had 6 kids that included a set of twins but no one else had more than 3 kids. They weren't raised with the militant fecundity mindset, but they did all stay in the Catholic Church. I think all of them saw the drawbacks of these huge families and had no wish to recreate their childhoods. I am hopeful many of this newer fundy generation will feel the same way.

*I was 32 when she died and she was 93. We were very close and talked about all kinds of things but I regret I never thought to ask her HOW she managed this in the days before accessible contraception. She was very clear it was by choice, though.

That's interesting about your grandmother! Was she ever asked why she didn't have kids yet.

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That's interesting about your grandmother! Was she ever asked why she didn't have kids yet.

I don't know, but the 4 oldest in her family were all girls and 3 of them followed that pattern while one didn't have any kids. If nothing else, it looked like they presented a united front. They all did marry just before or during the depression though, so maybe that cut down on the questions.

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I don't know, but the 4 oldest in her family were all girls and 3 of them followed that pattern while one didn't have any kids. If nothing else, it looked like they presented a united front. They all did marry just before or during the depression though, so maybe that cut down on the questions.

Good point the depression could have something to do w/ it.

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I think there are some key differences between Catholic Doctrine and Practice and Quiverfull. Most importantly, Catholicism has been around for a very long time and has been though many cultural shifts and doctrinal modifications. They have one central authority with a figurehead who does create a cult of personality, but ultimately is only a human being in the role of "Pope". Non-denominational reformed Christianity specifically rejects this sort of leadership. Catholicism has been very tolerant of folks who call themselves Catholic, but use birth control. (I think 98% of American Catholics.) And let's not forget that they have been given doctrinal approval to use NFP.

In the Gothard cult, the women are actually supposed to use NFP to ENHANCE their chances of conception. The amount of time after delivery is proscribed by the religious leader. Prolonged breastfeeding is specifically discouraged because it can delay return to fertility.

My guess is that with the older swath of second generation Quiverfull marriages, there will be a big burst of babies because the first generation of Quiverfull parents are highly invested in the paradigm of exponential Christian Army growth. I think we are already seeing that happen. The grandparent contest is clearly underway.

The problem is sustainability. The majority of the second generation are poorly educated and have few, if any skills. That will put huge economic constraints on these rapidly growing families. I am quite certain that some of them will use their knowledge of the fertility cycle to slow the growth rate and admit to nothing. Even a few more may use mechanical or hormonal contraception privately.

I also think there will be a sizeable number of Quiverfull kids who simply remain single. Many of the younger children will fade into the mainstream conservative Christian community and live relatively normal lives. They will vote for the "right" causes and champion the "right" lifestyle choices, but obtain some usable education/training and live in the world reasonably seamlessly.

And then there are the very few who reject the lifestyle outright and tell the tale. And as an FJ, I await this moment with great expectation.

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My dad is the oldest of 10 kids, and my mom is one of 6. They were both raised catholic, but they've never told me any kind of religious stories from growing up. My dad did mention that he wouldn't force us to go to church as kids because he was forced as a kid and hated it. As a result, after he left home at 17 to join the navy, he didn't go to church again for 20 years. He said he wanted church to be our choice. My dad does have 6 kids, but he had 3 from his first wife and my mom had 1 when they married (he adopted my brother) and then they had me and my younger sister. My younger sister was a surprise and he had a vasectomy very soon after. He's got the most kids out of all his siblings. Two of them have no kids, but one of those 2 is mentally disabled. He has a brother with 4, but that includes a set of twins. Most of them have 2-3. In my mom's family 4 of the 6 have no kids at all and she has one sister with 1 child. My dad's stories of growing up with that many siblings make me not want to subject a kid to that. It was one of the reasons he hauled ass to join the Navy as soon as they'd let him. None of the 6 of us have large families either. There are only 4 biological grandkids and three of my siblings have no kids (though one brother married a woman with 3 kids).

Of course our family is not quiverfull...though I think the reason for the 10 kids (11 pregnancies) in my dads family was the fact that they were catholic...oh and all but I think the youngest were born before chemical birth control was legal.

I can't see the quiverfull thing going on beyond this generation. Are there any families in the group that are beyond the 2nd generation? I think most of the parents I've read about came from non-quiverfull families.

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I'd also like to know are their any 3rd gen quiverfuls of the vf/ati brand? Their families would have been doing it before it was cool. Wouldn't that make them rock stars in his world? Is the movement just too young?

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Well, if Deanna (Coglan) Mullins has children, they would be. Kim is one of 14 and Perry is one of 6....It looks like that may not happen so that's a positive sign. So many of our families are second generation and I feel depending on the ages of their children there is little reason to think there wont be a third.

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Birth control began to be more widely available in the U.S. by the 1930s and was more widely used due to the economic conditions of the Depression. It is likely that people who did not have children in that period were using barrier methods, most likely condoms. My grandparents married in 1933, had one child in 1936 and intentionally did not have another for eight years.

The changes in the economy as well as wider availability of barrier methods of contraception changed family sizes beginning in that time. My maternal grandparents both came from large families (9 and 10 siblings) and neither family was Catholic--it was simply a different time, contraception was not available, and larger families were common (my grandparents were both in the middle of those sibling groups and born in 1910 and 1914). My Irish Catholic great grandparents on my father's side, interestingly, only had four children (youngest born in the early 30s).

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I think there are some key differences between Catholic Doctrine and Practice and Quiverfull. Most importantly, Catholicism has been around for a very long time and has been though many cultural shifts and doctrinal modifications. They have one central authority with a figurehead who does create a cult of personality, but ultimately is only a human being in the role of "Pope". Non-denominational reformed Christianity specifically rejects this sort of leadership. Catholicism has been very tolerant of folks who call themselves Catholic, but use birth control. (I think 98% of American Catholics.) And let's not forget that they have been given doctrinal approval to use NFP.

In the Gothard cult, the women are actually supposed to use NFP to ENHANCE their chances of conception. The amount of time after delivery is proscribed by the religious leader. Prolonged breastfeeding is specifically discouraged because it can delay return to fertility.

My guess is that with the older swath of second generation Quiverfull marriages, there will be a big burst of babies because the first generation of Quiverfull parents are highly invested in the paradigm of exponential Christian Army growth. I think we are already seeing that happen. The grandparent contest is clearly underway.

The problem is sustainability. The majority of the second generation are poorly educated and have few, if any skills. That will put huge economic constraints on these rapidly growing families. I am quite certain that some of them will use their knowledge of the fertility cycle to slow the growth rate and admit to nothing. Even a few more may use mechanical or hormonal contraception privately.

I also think there will be a sizeable number of Quiverfull kids who simply remain single. Many of the younger children will fade into the mainstream conservative Christian community and live relatively normal lives. They will vote for the "right" causes and champion the "right" lifestyle choices, but obtain some usable education/training and live in the world reasonably seamlessly.

And then there are the very few who reject the lifestyle outright and tell the tale. And as an FJ, I await this moment with great expectation.

I don't disagree and I think it was much easier even back in the days of BC being harder to come by for Catholics to find a way and square it morally with their religion - now it's pretty much a non issue except for that "more-catholic-than-the-pope" subset we snark on here. I just think that this quiverfull generation will have many of the same experiences as these huge, often poor families and I hope that they will also make the decision to limit their family sizes.

I do think it might be easier for the younger members of these mega-families. If you've had the first 3 or 4 kids toe the line by courting and starting their families right away to validate your lifestyle, I think there won't be nearly as much of the parents' ego (a la Michelle and Jim Bob or Gil and Kelly) tied in with the younger kids doing it too. Hopefully they'll be able to fly under the radar and not have as much pressure put on them.

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*I was 32 when she died and she was 93. We were very close and talked about all kinds of things but I regret I never thought to ask her HOW she managed this in the days before accessible contraception. She was very clear it was by choice, though.

My mother (married during the Great Depression) and all of her 12 siblings had 4-6 kids, and it was very clear that they worked hard to limit the number of blessings God sent them. My mother made the occasional reference to a method called "leaving church before the final blessing."

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I agree with the posters above who pointing out the doctrinal differences between the Catholic Church's and Quiverfull's prohibitions on birth control. Catholics are supposed to avoid birth control because contraception is a sin. While lots of children are typically the result of that, I don't hear many Catholics other than the fringe pushing one to have a large family for the sake of taking over the world. As I understand it, if you are just really, really successful at NFP, then technically the Church should be cool with you and your 2.5 kids.

However with Quiverfulls, you are supposed to be making as many God warriors as possible. It leaves a lot less wiggle room for couples.

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About birth control pills and Catholics. Both of my parents were from fairly large families, 7 & 11. When my parents were married and she began birth control, she did confess to it and the priest said why, you know the Catholics church stance on birth control... my sister and I both being rhythm control babies within the first 2.5 years of their marriage, Myrtle the fertile turtle she called herself. LOL but i regress, she told the priest that if the Catholic church was willing to pay for her to raise more children, then she would have more, but until that time 2 was enough for my father and her to support. His response ... peace be you my child!

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I think homeschooling also plays a roll. My mother-in-law comes from a family of 8 kids. All of them wound up having small families. Many of them are still quite religious and chose to homeschool and as a result many of their children (the kids of my generation) are much more extreme than their parents. Several of them eschew birth control and college. It'll be interesting to see where this goes in the future. I can't imagine any of their kids wanting to follow this tradition but unless they stop homeschooling it'll be hard to get exposed to different ideas. Technically, none of them consider themselves quiverfull.

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I've long wondered just how this essentially radical new culture experiment will play out in a few generations, myself - for both the Christian quiverfull and some of the more extreme right-wing Haredi Jewish groups.

A big problem common to both is the pyramid-scheme-like population graph, combined with the new (new!) rules they're taking on meaning that the invested capital to sustain the group (family) gets spread thinner and thinner and thinner.

As others posted already, usually these movements are not okay with college, and some aren't okay with any sort of secular education. While the earlier generation came in with invested capital (in the form of an education and secular exposure which meant they could get the well-paying jobs) the younger generation isn't being allowed to do the same.

For the first generation in, the kids can work in a parent's business, or they can get outright massive loans from the parents/in-laws to support the hyper-religious lifestyle. In Israel, it's a thing in some circles for the parents to buy the kids an apartment upon marriage to start them out. But when you have 10+ kids, it's hard to afford that much support for all of them, particularly if the kids can't get very high paying jobs (or some don't work at all). Back in the rural Quiverfull US, there's only so many slots for "working at home, uneducated" type jobs in one small town for all these kids to fill. Particularly with the quiverfull I don't see so many of them even accepting proper trade apprenticeships or the like that would get them good paying jobs (because that too is a form of higher education, and requires mixing with the non-religious and working for someone else). Now look at the kids' generation - if one of those 10 kids, with no secular schooling, himself has 10 kids, who is going to buy the apartment for THOSE kids? Or what "Daddy's business" will his kids work in, if Dad has no education, and all the tow truck slots are already filled with cousins?

The patriarchs of so many of the families we follow here on FJ all have college educations, and yet they deny it to their kids because they want their kids to have this idealized "holier" lifestyle without the taint of secular anything. But it's so limiting, I just don't see how it can possibly be long-term sustainable. It's 2014, not 1914.

Even further off topic probably, but it just strikes me that none of these groups are truly self-sustaining, they all rely on outsiders to do the jobs that they won't allow their own kids to take. You can't be a doctor or lawyer without going to real school. Etc. If everyone lived this idealized religious lifestyle where no one goes to college and people dedicate their lives to studying scriptures only, or selling little handicrafts from their home, who will be the doctors? Who will staff the police force? Hell, who will be able to afford the little handicrafts?

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Interesting point you make about the market for their products and handicrafts. They don't seem to realize they are cannibalizing the limited capital of the first generation. No one outside of Quiverfull circles is going to buy MOTH, and the market is saturated with both fundie and non fundie reusable feminine pads and diapers. A second generation fundie popping out their quiver of kids will not have money to send their sons to

Steve Maxwell's overpriced computer classes. It is an economic dead end, unless they go all FLDS and decide to "bleed the beast".

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There are different strains of fundie, and some I think are more sustainable. For instance, I'm near DC so I see plenty of Patrick Henry, Liberty, and Regent grads from Quiverfull backgrounds going into military, government service, law, etc.., and some of them are well on their way to starting QF families of their own.

In addition, most of the Reformed fundie churches I'm familiar with were not so heavily into ATI. VF had plenty of fans but the move to turn away from college isn't pronounced everywhere. The fundie college grads aren't the folks we see blogging, but they do exist and I could see them continuing to exist for generations. Of the families I know personally, I would say that it seems to be about 50-50 in terms of which kids decide to go QF and which don't. I do see them marrying later than their parents did, though, so I suspect the family sizes will be more like 4-6 kids rather than 8-10+.

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