Extreme Motherhood

What is missing from this conversation (I mean, besides civility, nuance, comprehension, grammar, intelligence and the use of a spell checker) is some sort of definition of the word "submission." The vast majority of Quiverfullers I know don't want to end women's suffrage or refuse their daughters a college education. Instead, they understand submission to be the Biblical virtue of subjecting yourself to a correct authority. Normally, this is the husband but if he should stray submission looks a whole lot more like confrontation or intervention, not mindless obedience.

What is curious to me, as a Quiverfuller, is the vehemence with which these teachings are met. I don't hear this type of screaming about the Islamic takeover of Holland, urban France and parts of Detroit. And they actually believe in the subjugation of women, as in honor killings, female circumcision, and real, actual burqas. Can anyone who thinks Quiverfullers are evil explain this to me?

As our world population continues to rise at a sharp J-curve, Quiverfulls are breeding for world domination. It almost makes me not want to have kids just to battle the harm they're doing; but then, that would secure their takeover. What a conundrum.

There's nothing unusual about having large numbers of children, this has been the norm in the majority of cultures throughout human history - what is usual about it today is the fact that most of these children actually survive! Modern medical technology has allowed people to survive common illnesses that would have killed a large portion of people, many before the age of 5, a mere couple centuries ago.

What I find most interesting is this movement's views on not intervening in 'God's will' when it comes to issues of fertility and sexuality, though I would not be surprised if most of these same people would have no problem taking advantage of modern medical technology when it comes to illness and disease. Isn't death as much a part of 'God's will' as life? If you are willing to leave your fertility and reproduction in God's hands and allow God to give you as many children as he apparently wants you to have, then logically you should also be willing to leave the life of these children in God's hands as well. If God decides to have one or more die of disease and illness, then why should you intervene in 'God's will' with HUMAN technology? I'm not advocating letting children die, but it just seems very hypocritical to not allow human intervention in one natural process - CLAIMING it to be 'God's will", while allowing extensive human intervention in another.

These people are insane and should be ashamed of themselves. Do you really need to have 18 children when there are 1000s upon 1000s of orphaned children worldwide????? I am all for having kids but it is absolutely rediculous to have that many when there are so many orphans who need homes. It is socially irresponsible. The world is overpopulated yet ignorant people continue to breed....

There's nothing unusual about having large numbers of children, it's been the norm throughout human history in most cultures - what is unusual about it now is the fact that most of these children actually survive. Before modern medical technology, it wasn't uncommon for many children to die young.

What I find most interesting is this movement's views that any sort of family planning is going against God's will. It's a mentality of: human intervention - bad; nature's course or God's will - good. If this is the general belief then, wouldn't it also be going against God's will to save any of your children when they are sick? Taking your toddler to the doctor's when he/she has dehydration from illness or getting them necessary surgery for a heart defect - aren't these going against God's will? Isn't death as much a part of God's plan as life? I'm not advocating for letting children die, but it just seems very hypocritical that anything involving fertility and sexuality is supposed to be left to God and yet there is no problem using the means of human technology to intervene to stop death.

Seems more that this is fundamentally about controlling certain aspects of human behavior than it is about allowing God's natural will.

I am a feminist single working professional mommy person who is single due to divorcing a man who would not work and provide for us and so I divorced him and he died. So, I did not look to another man to try to take care of us -- I have worked sometimes two jobs to take care of the needs of my now 13 year old daughter. I worked for the Dept. of Social Services in Child Protective Services for 12 years and have been involved in human servies for 24 years. I have dealt with many large families whose religious beliefs were similar to the Quiverfull mindset. A great many of them were basically anti-government -- UNTIL it came time to reach out for Medicaid to cover the medical costs of having so many children and Food Stamps -- to feed these large families. have all of the children you want -- as long as you can PROVIDE for these children financially and emotionally. I do not want to foot the bill for those large families who deliberately multiplied.....

I wonder how many off these families are on public assitance.

Does the author not know that nearly all parents consider their children to be blessings and have referred to them as such? It's not a usage that "spilled over" from Quiverfull's coinage of the term. I'll be generous and assume that she was simply trying to make an tenuous connection between a extreme group and Sarah Palin for personal political reasons. To think otherwise would be to believe she doesn't see an association between children and "blessings".

My ex-husband & his family believed in the "Quiverfull" movement. The problem is, when I was diagnosed w/infertility & since I couldn't give him a quiverfull of children, he decided to go make a family w/someone else. The Quiverfull belief system is so backwards. It promotes & supports a culture that demeans women & devalues them as intellegent, independent human beings. The sad reality that doesn't get mentioned about the Quiverfull lifestyle or belief system is that they whole-heartedly believe that a woman is only valuable if she can produce children. They believe that if you can not produce children, then it is your Godly duty to not hold your husband back and should have your marriage then disolved. And if you know that you are unable to conceive before you even get married, then the church believes you have no Godly right to marriage.

According to Mary Pride in this article "A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could be popular." That is just historically inaccurate. It bears no relation at all to the actual history of both contraception and abortion. Abortion was a common practice before it was criminalized around the turn of the century, and even then middle class and well to do women could still receive abortions from their doctors. THAT practice was only questioned in the 1950s, ironically at the same time as birth control was actually becoming more accessible. There is absolutely no correlation (other than the fact that they both involve women's reproductive health) between the trajectories of family planning history and abortion history. This comment just shows Mary Pride's ignorance on the topic.

This Quiverfull belief is simply a mortal sin against God and man.

Wow, I wish that Newsweek was so bold as to discuss the other ideologies that have driven other movements. The writer is certainly blunt in proclaiming the ideologies of Conservaticve Christians. I wish she and other writers would apply the same level of transparency to other issues like the abortion ideology, evolutionary philosophy, feminsim, enviromentalism, etc.

Agree totally with doesanybodylisten. Once we stop watching and ratings go down, such "reality" shows will have to end as they will not get the returns that they are getting now.