Maidens of Virtue: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine begins a series of chapters that extol the virtues of loving siblings.  The main drift of "Dwelling in Unity" is that since childhood friendships generally don't last until adulthood young maidens should spend time with their siblings instead.

This is so "modern" and "feminist" of me - but I have good relationships with my siblings and friends who are not family members.  The two are not mutually exclusive. 

Stacy McDonald starts with examples from her life as to why non-sibling friends are a waste of time:

I recall vowing to several different friends in high school that we would never ever lose touch. Even if we moved thousands of miles apart, we would talk on the phone every day and visit each other at least once a year. Guess what --we lost touch. We pursued different interests, vocations, and educational choices. When a maiden weds, she dons her husband's name to signify the "leaving and cleaving" of marriage, and new last names can make it nearly impossible to locate old girlfriends.

The truth is that we probably wouldn't have a thing in common anymore anyways. The memories we made together were frivolous, sometimes sinful, and almost always separate from activities with our own families. Incredibly, many of these memories are slowly fading from my remembrance all together. (pg. 88)

Before the advent of internet and low-cost, high usage cell phones, situations like the first paragraph were more common.  I graduated from high school in 2000 and communicated with high school friends who moved away by email which was much slower than it is now.  I did lose track of some friendships - but I did keep up with friendships that were very important to me.  I remained in contact with my best friend Jessica from when we met in first grade until she died in a car accident at age 29.  Our friendship survived living in different states and different countries.  My mother keeps in contact with a woman who she met 36 years ago while my twin sister and I were in a NICU on the far side of the state.  That's a far longer relationship than the young women who make up the potential audience of this book will have when they graduate home schooling.

Cheap, instant connectivity has completely changed the amount of effort needed to maintain contact with old friends.  Thanks to Facebook, I am more aware of the events in the lives of people I went to high school and elementary school with than I was when we were in school together.   If Stacy McDonald wanted, she could easily search the name of her high school and graduation year and find former classmates.  Yes, she might not instantly know everyone's married name - but lots of women cross-reference their maiden name and a profile picture often jogs a memory of which Amanda, Brandy, or Karen goes with the new name.

Mrs. McDonald implies that she's too holy now to interact with her old friends - but it does open the can of worms of if her old friends would want to associate with her.  Based on some dropped hints in the book, she had a normal fairly carefree teenage life in the 1980's.  She wore jeans,  went to a traditional school, and racked up some "sexual sins" which probably means she dated a guy or two.  Since then, she's gone off the deep end into a fertility cult and has earned her living doing speeches and writing a book slut-shaming everyone who is not like her.    That's not a person I'd want to spend any time with.

The next weird snippet shows that Mrs. McDonald and I have different criteria for a fun game night:

One of my favorite board games is Taboo (TM). I love to play it with the children as a family. Even more, I love to play it when another family is visiting. I especially like to watch my children team up against another sibling group because it is such a wonderful reminder of the way God works unity in families.

You see, the reasons sibling - groups work so well in this game is because to successfully help your teammates guess the correct answer, you must really know each other. The most successful teams have made the same memories together, have shared the same jokes, know the same songs, and recognize each other's expressions. Sometimes while playing, one of the children will need only give a one word clue or even look and the other child immediately guess is the answer correctly. The other group is usually astonished - - unless it's another sibling team that is just as close-knit. I love the fact that my children know each other so well! I pray that it is always so, and I pray that it is so in your family. If it's not, I have good news: it can be! (pg. 89)

Taboo (TM) is a game where a person tries to get the people on their team to guess a word without using 5 or 6 words commonly associated with the target word.  For the word "father", the person can't use the words "family", "man", "parent", "husband" or "work".  There are two ways to win.  The first way is to use verbal fluency and common events to cue teammates to the word.  For "father", I would say something like "When a baby is born, this person can cut the baby's cord."  The other way is to make an inside reference to a shared experience.  In our family, the clue "Dad's favorite outdoor hobby" would elicit the response "trains".  That's the type of "close-knit" expression that Stacy McDonald is talking about.

The problem is that shared experiences with friends don't preclude shared experiences with siblings.  I have a whole bunch of internal references with my family and friends and colleagues. Winning a game of Cranium with the clue "disproved Lamarck" for the word "Darwin"  while at a field station in Puerto Rico didn't destroy my ability to elicit the answer of "mosquitoes" to "the reason the first girl at that camp session we were called the walking wounded had to see the nurse after a night hike" from my sister. 

The fact is, most families today are in trouble. Part of the problem results from rarely being around one another. Group schooling, sports clubs, and church youth groups have all contributed to the fragmentation and breakdown of the family. Simple activities such as eating dinner at the table together are a thing of the past in most families. They all seem to have their own busy and very legitimate sounding activities that keep them apart from those whom God has given them. (pg. 89)

I don't buy that massive home-schooling families have more "together" time than smaller traditionally schooled families.  Stacy McDonald has 10 children. Spending 15 minutes of one-on-one time a day with each kid takes 2.5 hours of time outside of home schooling, cooking, cleaning, writing and the chores involved in keeping small children alive.  Teri Maxwell included her homeschooling schedule for multiple years in the book "Managers of their Schools" where she had one-hour blocks for her three or four school-aged kids once a week to play an educational game with Mom.  I remember this because that's way more time a week with Mom than most home schooled kids in large family gets.   Kimberly at Raising Olives had about 1.5-2 hours a day during the week available for time with her kids outside of school. 

As a teacher, it's hard to get to know someone well while teaching or tutoring - even in small groups.  Oh, you do have bits of small talk every now and again, but both the teacher and the student are busy either working or analyzing the other person's work.    I got to know my students - but mostly by utilizing time before school, after school, during lunch or passing time and while on out-of-school trips.

Why do you think children on sports teams and in youth groups become close friends? They are typically working together towards some sort of goal --winning a game or washing cars to save up for a special event. The same thing happens on mission trips and in dorms. The people we eat, work, sweat, and travail with are those with whom we become close. Why isn't this happening more in families instead of with perfect strangers? (pg. 90)

Working together is helpful to making close friends - but it's not required or a given.  I have had to do lots of group projects during my educational career.  Most group mates become nodding acquaintances; a few became friends and a few became people I avoided like the plague. That's a side of enforced sibling time that CP/QF families don't often discus because not all siblings' relationships are improved by spending a lot of time together.  My dad is one of 8 siblings; he's close with four of them.  The other three tend to be abrasive so they talk monthly about non-confrontational things. 

The last quote recapitulates Mrs. McDonald's theme that good Christian women remain loving and cheerful in the face of nasty treatment by family members:

Remember to create a habit of speaking kindly to your siblings. Even if you've been spoken to harshly, you can respond in gentleness (Proverbs 15: 1). If you have been treated cruelly, remember Paul's call to the elect of God (Colossians 3:12-13). You may find that you have won a brother or diffused an argument before it even starts. You will have also benefited by establishing a wonderful habit of understanding and mercy that will carry over into your marriage and into motherhood. Remember also to forgive just as you wish to be forgiven. (Mark 11: 25-26) (pg. 90)

See, this is especially bad advice in a home schooling family.  Kids who are in traditional schools are surrounded by peers who can choose freely during recess and lunch who they want to be around.  Kids who are angry, rude and cruel tend to learn that their choices of friends are greatly restricted because no one wants to be friends with someone who is mean.  In a home school, your siblings are going to be there tomorrow regardless of how badly a sibling treats them.  When this is combined with the especially toxic theological ideas espoused by ATI and Vision Forum that wronged people need to look at what in their life caused the sin, the set-up is ripe for creating psychopaths.

Next chapter is a saccharine tale of a young woman who learns that she treats her sister badly.  The story is sickly-sweet - but it has some of the funniest and incisive passages in the whole book.