Personally, I think that there's an issue in the lot of antibiotic eye drops my husband and I used. We filled the prescriptions from the same pharmacy a few days apart and got them from the same lot of drops. Our son had a completely different antibiotic that covered the same range of bacteria and he's doing great.
I'll keep you updated on the farm of drippy eyes.
One of the claims that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin made at Cindy Kunsman in the letter they sent her is that the kids of Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin have suffered (or could have possibly suffered) loss of potential romantic partners who read Cindy's blog, decided that the term "covert incest" meant "sexual incest", and never started a courtship with a Botkin daughter.
I can't refute that because that's possible...I guess....if the person searched through multiple pages of Google searches for one Botkin sister and eventually found Cindy's blog.
So possible - but is it probable? Are there any other reasons that the Botkin Sisters who are lovely, home-educated, published authors and producers of movies and podcasts are single in their thirties?
Yes.
Most people meet the people they marry through people they meet at school, at work, at church or social activities. Other people meet their spouses at social events. Finally, people meet potential spouses through online dating apps or matchmakers. The Botkin Sisters didn't go to school, don't work, are members of a small church and maintain a very select circle of carefully curated friends. Some people in that situation find spouses, certainly, but they are at higher risk of not having a potential spouse in a small circle of acquaintances. My husband and I met online through eHarmony - but the Botkin Sisters are pretty clear that online dating leads directly to predation and unplanned pregnancy.
The Botkin Sisters have an additional issue that I've never faced - celebrity. I am not a celebrity. I do not have a public persona that is substantially different from my private self. Importantly, my father did not extol my virtues as a future wife or scare guys off by discussing the role of bride price in my future engagement:
A&EB: How strict will you be with our suitors on the bride-price issue?
GB: That will depend on the suitor.
A&EB: Can you tell our readers a little about the biblical bride price?
GB: [...]
The bride price was usually the amount of a dowry, probably about three years wages. Noble suitors would give the bride price to the girl's father and the father would give it to the girl as her dowry.
The bride price tradition benefited every culture that practiced it. Without the tradition, daughters were a financial liability to families and came to be viewed as inferior to sons. Sometimes daughters were murdered at birth. Those who weren't would have been unpopular with brothers because their dowries diminish the inheritance available to sons. Girls with dowries attracted plenty of worthless suitors who wanted the dowry more than the daughter, and the institutions of family and marriage were weakened.
Within the bride-price tradition, both institutions are strengthened over many generations. Good daughters attract worthy suitors who have proven themselves good, productive servants. By giving the bride price to the girl's father, suitors also provide they understand the father's authority over the daughter and their subordination to God's order in the father's Authority. By giving the gift to the daughter, the father signifies his obligations to succeeding generations. (pgs. 303-304)
GB: That will depend on the suitor.
A&EB: Can you tell our readers a little about the biblical bride price?
GB: [...]
The bride price was usually the amount of a dowry, probably about three years wages. Noble suitors would give the bride price to the girl's father and the father would give it to the girl as her dowry.
The bride price tradition benefited every culture that practiced it. Without the tradition, daughters were a financial liability to families and came to be viewed as inferior to sons. Sometimes daughters were murdered at birth. Those who weren't would have been unpopular with brothers because their dowries diminish the inheritance available to sons. Girls with dowries attracted plenty of worthless suitors who wanted the dowry more than the daughter, and the institutions of family and marriage were weakened.
Within the bride-price tradition, both institutions are strengthened over many generations. Good daughters attract worthy suitors who have proven themselves good, productive servants. By giving the bride price to the girl's father, suitors also provide they understand the father's authority over the daughter and their subordination to God's order in the father's Authority. By giving the gift to the daughter, the father signifies his obligations to succeeding generations. (pgs. 303-304)
The first time I read the interview I thought the first two lines of this section were an inside joke between Geoffrey and his daughters. All of a sudden I realized that Geoffrey Botkin was dead-serious - and that's nuts.
On the off-chance that the Botkin Sisters ever decide to sue any bloggers for monetary compensation over lost romantic opportunities, this section of their published book should be read into the public record because I imagine there were plenty of young women who read that section then told their brothers that old man Botkin expected guys to pay him to marry his daughters.
I'd feel bad for the Botkin Sisters - but when you write a book and multiple blog posts bashing the foibles of your friends - turnabout is fair play.
For any guys who hadn't gone running after hearing about the bride price, I suspect there was a moment of pause when they realized that the amount of the bride price is dependent on how much Geoffrey Botkin likes you.
The final paragraphs of Geoffrey Botkin's spontaneous lecture on monetary exchange in marriages illustrates my point that self-education does not mean that the self-educated person understands the subject matter.
If you don't want to read the rest, the basic fact is that everything Geoffrey Botkin says in those three paragraphs are totally wrong. Not even a bit right.
For the nerds, there are three broad categories of wealth transfer when a couple marries.
- A bride price is when goods or services are transferred from the groom or groom's family to the family of the bride.
- A dowry is when the family of the bride transfers wealth to the groom or groom's family which may - or may not - be reverted to the bride in case of divorce, desertion or widowhood.
- A dower is when the groom or his family settle wealth directly on the bride.
Bride prices are very straightforward to understand. The bride is a literal piece of property of her parents. Her parents get to set the price at which they sell their daughter. Creepy? Sure - but daughters do a lot of work in a household and the parents will need to recoup that lost labor somehow.
Notice how Geoffrey Botkin has already messed this up. He's setting the bride price based on the wages of the suitor and how much Geoffrey likes the suitor instead of the value of his daughters' work or goods. Using my benefits and salary package from the year I married my husband, my parents would have been fools to demand a bride price of less than $190,000 for me. And yet - Botkin can't correctly assess his daughters' financial benefit to their home. They've gotta be worth several tens of thousands of dollars in cooking, cleaning and nannying services alone.
Geoffrey Botkin may not have thought out who is disadvantaged by a bride-price: poor sons or non-first born sons depending on the inheritance system of the society. Since he's got five sons to his two daughters, a bride price system is going to hit the Botkin parents pocketbook hard.
Bride prices also disadvantage daughters of highly wealthy families since there may not be any suitors who can afford their price. This can lead to infanticide because a daughter who cannot marry legally can potentially disgrace her family by getting pregnant out of wedlock so bride prices are not the end-all be-all solution for female infanticide.
Dowries are the grab-bag group. Money moves from the bride's family to either the groom or the groom's family. The money might revert to the bride if the marriage fails - but that varies by culture. The money might be available to the new couple - or not. The one overarching theme is that the dowry often is the daughter's portion of her parents' estate paid out at the time of her marriage instead of at their death. Since the daughter is under the legal authority of her new husband or his family, the money goes to them. Botkin missed that factoid somehow - or he really believes that a society where bride prices are unaccompanied by an actual dowry from the parents of the bride exists.
Dowries tend to disadvantage low-income or low wealth women whose families cannot cash out a dowry and still be financially stable. Geoffrey Botkin's worry about the Botkin Sisters attracting fortune hunters is adorably naive; one-seventh of very little is miniscule.
Dowers are the rarest form of property transfer but also easy to understand. The groom or his family decides to settle enough cash or property on the bride to support her and their children in case of sudden death or desertion of the spouse. I don't know exactly how each culture/family decides the amount of property or cash to settle on a bride, but the people making the final decision are the groom's family.
The system Botkin has created from reading the Bible badly...or something...is closest to a form of dower. Yeah, the money pauses (theoretically) in the hands of the bride's parents but it is passed on to the new family. Since women do not lose their legal rights, the money is settled on the bride as well as the groom.
What I love about this whole quote is that it demonstrates how absurdly haphazard Geoffrey Botkin is with his daughters' marriage settlement. Rather than putting aside money for his daughters' dowries and planning to negotiate for the best deal possible from a suitor in terms of a bride price (which is totally Biblical; see Joseph and Laban's negotiations ), he sets up a situation where the groom makes an entire show of giving Botkin cash - but the money ends up back in the pocket of the groom at the end. The cash is never settled on the girls - or the Botkin family - so a suitor could raise the funds temporarily then use the "dowry" to pay off the borrowed funds.
That's a situation that will attract bad suitors in a heartbeat - and Botkin is too addled by the feeling of power to realize it.
Notice how Geoffrey Botkin has already messed this up. He's setting the bride price based on the wages of the suitor and how much Geoffrey likes the suitor instead of the value of his daughters' work or goods. Using my benefits and salary package from the year I married my husband, my parents would have been fools to demand a bride price of less than $190,000 for me. And yet - Botkin can't correctly assess his daughters' financial benefit to their home. They've gotta be worth several tens of thousands of dollars in cooking, cleaning and nannying services alone.
Geoffrey Botkin may not have thought out who is disadvantaged by a bride-price: poor sons or non-first born sons depending on the inheritance system of the society. Since he's got five sons to his two daughters, a bride price system is going to hit the Botkin parents pocketbook hard.
Bride prices also disadvantage daughters of highly wealthy families since there may not be any suitors who can afford their price. This can lead to infanticide because a daughter who cannot marry legally can potentially disgrace her family by getting pregnant out of wedlock so bride prices are not the end-all be-all solution for female infanticide.
Dowries are the grab-bag group. Money moves from the bride's family to either the groom or the groom's family. The money might revert to the bride if the marriage fails - but that varies by culture. The money might be available to the new couple - or not. The one overarching theme is that the dowry often is the daughter's portion of her parents' estate paid out at the time of her marriage instead of at their death. Since the daughter is under the legal authority of her new husband or his family, the money goes to them. Botkin missed that factoid somehow - or he really believes that a society where bride prices are unaccompanied by an actual dowry from the parents of the bride exists.
Dowries tend to disadvantage low-income or low wealth women whose families cannot cash out a dowry and still be financially stable. Geoffrey Botkin's worry about the Botkin Sisters attracting fortune hunters is adorably naive; one-seventh of very little is miniscule.
Dowers are the rarest form of property transfer but also easy to understand. The groom or his family decides to settle enough cash or property on the bride to support her and their children in case of sudden death or desertion of the spouse. I don't know exactly how each culture/family decides the amount of property or cash to settle on a bride, but the people making the final decision are the groom's family.
The system Botkin has created from reading the Bible badly...or something...is closest to a form of dower. Yeah, the money pauses (theoretically) in the hands of the bride's parents but it is passed on to the new family. Since women do not lose their legal rights, the money is settled on the bride as well as the groom.
What I love about this whole quote is that it demonstrates how absurdly haphazard Geoffrey Botkin is with his daughters' marriage settlement. Rather than putting aside money for his daughters' dowries and planning to negotiate for the best deal possible from a suitor in terms of a bride price (which is totally Biblical; see Joseph and Laban's negotiations ), he sets up a situation where the groom makes an entire show of giving Botkin cash - but the money ends up back in the pocket of the groom at the end. The cash is never settled on the girls - or the Botkin family - so a suitor could raise the funds temporarily then use the "dowry" to pay off the borrowed funds.
That's a situation that will attract bad suitors in a heartbeat - and Botkin is too addled by the feeling of power to realize it.
"Since he's got five sons to his two daughters, a bride price system is going to hit the Botkin parents pocketbook hard."
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention that, because in any and all descriptions of the sons' courtship and marriage to their wives, I never heard bride prices mentioned; not even once. If they decided by now that this was not the best idea, I hope that was made clear among their circle. Most likely, the girls have been barricaded like royalty from suitors (on top of being presented as better than most people who ever approach the family).
One of the pitfalls of the EmoPure-courtship system is that there is no system. In every other culture, kids find out what's the expected steps to get married by watching people get married. Bride price, dowry, dower, family settlement on the new couple and community-funded systems all have benefits and drawbacks - but at least everyone knows the basics of the system.
DeleteThere's no consistency within CP/QF courtship because every family makes its own rules - and those rules can change drastically over time. When you look at the Duggar daughters, Derick and Ben got into the family pretty easy. Jeremy and Austin had to fill out a massive questionnaire before being allowed to ask Jinger or Joy to court. (Oddly enough, Ben had to fill out that questionnaire retroactively.)
I doubt the Botkin sisters-in-law's families entered into courtship discussions with a discussion of the bride price paid by the suitors. Why would they? The Biblical version was from groom to the parents of the bride which seems grossly mercenary as well as ignorant of the teachings of the New Testament.
No, Geoffrey Botkin is simply a poor reader - or very, very cheap.
I just get the impression that Geoffrey Botkin pulls answers straight out of his butt. "It depends on the suitor?" What in actual hell kind of answer is that?
ReplyDeleteSeems like whatever passes through his mind at that moment is what he says. I think he hadn't given it a moment of thought beforehand and when put on the spot he didn't want to give a firm answer so he just made something up.
Maybe he feels like he's too enlightened to actually study and follow a principle he says he believes in.
If he's going to follow ancient biblical customs, I suppose he should be preaching about how important having concubines is. Or how when a woman has led an army into battle or made large-scale decisions it turned out well. (see Deborah). Or how it's appropriate to toss your daughters out to the streets to be raped so your visitor doesn't get attacked.
I mean, if he's going to be all "we're following ancient biblical standards" then why go halfway?
He seems incredibly intellectually lazy.
My favorite ancient bible standard is pooping into a hole in the ground, then covering it with sand. Flushing is heretical!
DeleteI think it was Rachel Evans Heard who pointed out that no one actually follows all of the ancient biblical standards. Instead, every group of Christians picks which groups of those standards that they view as being critically important and which they are going to ignore.
DeleteI have no problem with that - I just find it hypocritical when people like Botkin swear that they are doing everything right when they are really picking-and choosing like everyone else.