Joyfully At Home: Chapter 3 - Part Four

I've been slacking a bit when it comes to blog posts recently.  Part of the issue has been the round of Spawn-related appointments, but the other fascinating development has been the fact that the Botkin Sisters have re-emerged from their protracted silence to send an officious, overblown and palpably silly letter to a blogger who wrote a series of posts about 1) the lies that Geoffrey and Victoria Botkins have been telling everyone about their families of origin and 2) used the Botkin Family to discuss covert incest (e.g, emotional incest, emotional entanglement) which I generally term "stunting your kids' emotional growth to suit the needs of the parents.

I'd love to tell you that I have a series of insightful posts waiting based on that letter - but, Jesus, it is so rambling and badly written that I find myself skimming rather than reading the letter. 

I'm currently transcribing one of their free podcasts (ugh) as well as part of the interview between Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin and their father in "So Much More" (double ugh) to repudiate one of the claims the Botkin Sisters made in their letter.   Anna Sophia and Elizabeth claim that Cindy Kunsman didn't use the actual writings or teachings or actions of the Botkin Sisters to support her claims that 1) the Botkin parents lie through their teeth about their parents and 2) the Botkin parents have worked diligently to keep their adult children emotionally dependent on the parents in an unhealthy way. 

Well, Cindy Kunsman may not have directly referenced the writings of the Botkin family when she wrote the post ten years ago - but I certainly have along with  Hester over at Scarlet Letters. 

In a cosmically aligned irony, the Botkin Sisters today are a great counterexample to advice given by Jasmine Baucham in her book "Joyfully At Home".   The third chapter in the book has been filled with advice on how to be a good daughter to a CP/QF dad while avoiding the accusation that the daughter is wasting time by remaining a child by living at home until married.

 In the last post, we discussed how Ms. Baucham's belief that a good stay-at-home daughter should be fully conversant in her father's vision fails mightily if her father's vision is wrong.  For example, Kathryn Joyce in "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement" shares the family anecdote that Geoffrey Botkin shared far and wide to catch people's attention about his two-hundred year plan.   When Anna Sofia was born, Victoria had heavy postpartum bleeding and the midwives handed off Anna Sofia to Geoffrey to care for while they tried to staunch the bleeding.  Geoffrey was overwhelmed at having his first daughter and remembered that women have all the eggs they will ever need at birth.  He cups his hand over little Anna Sofia's abdomen and prays that God will give her an early, highly fruitful marriage. 

Now, Anna Sofia is in her mid-thirties and still bears the name of Botkin - so I think I can safely say that her father's vision of an early marriage for her (and Elizabeth presumably) has failed.  The two sisters have 5 to 10 years of childbearing left if they marry soon - but the time left for a large family of more than 2-3 kids is rapidly running out.

The next quotes from Jasmine Baucham's book bring up a different scenario.  What is a girl to do if her dad doesn't have a huge, overarching plan?  On this blog, the families we meet here are strongly biased in favor of fathers who have clear plan for how their immediate family of CP/QF believers are going to do something huge over time.  This bias happens because I'm reviewing materials created by motivated family members - and motivated family members seem to come from motivated parents frequently. 

This bias is important to remember because the CP/QF families I meet in real life rarely have as organized or far-reaching plans for the rebirth of Western Civilization or slowly replacing everyone in Leavenworth, Kansas with Maxwell descendents.  (Ok, I don't know if that is really the plan of the Maxwells or just a side effect of not wanting the grown-up kids to live more than a mile away....)  Most families have two parents who are working hard - really hard - crazily hard - to support a large to extremely large family on multiple blue collar jobs.  They love their kids.  They love their spouse.  They have a deep, personal faith in Jesus.  They try their best to homeschool their kids, but are often overwhelmed by the sheer struggle to provide the basics of food, clothing and shelter for the kids let alone provide the materials to educate them. 

For these families, a response to a teenage daughter in her late teens or twenties to "What can I do to support your vision?" may honestly be "Get a job to help us pay for gas, groceries, clothes, rent...."

I suspect 19-year old Jasmine Baucham ran in more financially stable circles, but the first quote is still condescending to young women:

To cherish your father's vision is not to wake up every morning and expect him to make your life worthwhile. I have received countless emails and inquiries from young women who are throwing their hands up in despair. " My dad doesn't have a vision!" What these girls usually mean is that they are waiting for their fathers to micromanage their time at home, and would feel more comfortable being told what to do every second of every day then actively seek ways to bless their father and their household as their own. (pg. 51)

I doubt that's true.   I'm assuming a young woman who hunts down contact info for Jasmine Baucham after reading her book and writes an email seeking help when her dad says that he doesn't have a vision is both highly motivated and reasonably competent in the first place.  If she was less motivated, her response to a non-vision by her father would be a sigh of relief and kicking back to read a Christian romance.   If she was honestly clueless, that email would never get sent.

I think it's a safe assumption that those young women are in a family without a huge vision. 

But don't worry; 19 year-old Jasmine has your back! 

She realizes that all Christians are called to spread the Gospel - so your dad has a vision even if he doesn't know he has a vision - and brainstorms some ideas that a young woman could bring to her dad in the next quote:

In that Spirit, even if your dad never tells you specific things that you can do to aid him in his vision, you can work on helping him by advancing the gospel in and through your home. Ask your dad if it would be all right for you to arrange for two families from your church to come to dinner at your home every week. See if you can spare you once a week to babysit for a busy mother at your church. Ask him if it would be alright if you had several younger women over to your family's home one day a week to minister to them. (pg. 51)

I'm cringing on behalf of real-adult Jasmine and grateful (yet again) that no one ever showed any interest in publishing a self-help book written by me at 19. 

 Lots of CP/QF families are food-insecure.  If you can barely feed your double-digit family, bringing two more families over for dinner weekly might break your family.  Heck, that would be a financial drain on a lot of blue collar families with a few kids or single-income white collar families.  Instead, find a free meeting place at an easily accessible location for a monthly Bible-based story time.   Local libraries often have free community meeting spaces on a first-come, first-serve basis.  If you have a little more money, reach out to offer free rides to and from to other families who might not have extra gas money.

The babysitting idea is good - assuming you are not needed at home by your family, have reliable transportation, and gas money.  I feel like that is unlikely to be true for most CP/QF families, though.

Oddly enough, the last one is the most annoying to me.  This can inconvenience both parents, your siblings, the parents of the ministered young women and the young women if done right...or maybe I mean wrong. 

The most obvious annoyance to me as an adult woman would be having to clean my house to "ready for outsider" standards.  Additionally, the visitors may want snacks...or to talk to me.  I promise I'm not a anti-social begrudging hermit in real life, but the thought of having my house invaded by young women who need ministering puts me in a bad headspace. 

My husband would like it even less; he's a solid introvert who appreciates a calm and quiet house.

Since most CP/QF houses are overcrowded to start with, dragging ministering targets into the house decreases the room siblings have to play while increasing the likelihood that irritations will happen.

The dynamics in play for the girl's family are at least unlikely to split a church; what happens when the ministering teen teaches something that differs from the other family's belief system?  The CP/QF blog-o-sphere and the blogs of people who have left are already filled with church splits over broken courtships or minor theological disputes.  I am confident this would lead to at least one messy church fiasco a year.

Last - but not least - who wants to be ministered to?  I am extremely easily amused and having a slightly older girl take me on as a personal ministry project sounds hellish. 

My take-away: if your dad doesn't have a vision, count your blessing and read a good book!