Joyfully At Home: Chapter 12 - Part Three

I've talked about how being a parent affects my life and I've realized another change:  I can't transcribe CP/QF books when my kid is in the same room.   Oddly enough, my kid is quiet, mellow, and likes playing independently for short periods so his behaviors work well with transcription.  No, the issue is that I don't want him exposed to any of this crap.  I didn't want him exposed to it as an infant even when I knew he didn't understand words.  I didn't want him exposed to it as a toddler even though I doubted he could understand the concept.  I really don't want him exposed to it as a preschooler who is in the mynah bird stage where he parrots back phrases - and then adapts the phrases to use in other situations.

I bring that up because I usually transcribe when my kid is at school or napping.  Well, I've had some errands that needed to be done without a preschooler with me during school time and the kid is on a nap strike so I'm behind on transcribing from "The Battle of Peer Dependency" which means I'm gonna have to do two "Joyfully At Home" posts in a row.

Chapter Twelve from Jasmine Baucham's "Joyfully At Home" gives a crash course in how to answer the most common questions about being a Stay-At-Home Daughter (SAHD).  The first question was "Shouldn't you be career-building?" and Jasmine's answer was "College is a crutch for people who don't trust God to make them wives and mothers - and it's ok to be single - but we're all getting married, right?"    The second question is "Do you want women to be treated as property of their fathers and husbands?"  The question is a bit inflammatory - but there's a real point there.  Women have a long history of being subsumed legally by the rights of their fathers before marriage, the rights of their husband after marriage and the rights of their sons or brothers after being widowed.  Is that the form of legal coverage that Jasmine wants to return to?

Let's take a look at her responses:

I want to go " back" to Scripture and Scripture alone.

When I read God's word, in passages like Numbers 30, and when I read Jeremiah 29 and other passages that speak about the giving of a daughter in marriage, I do not see women being treated like property. What I see is the beautiful provision and protection that they've been afforded in the Scriptures. Allowing your dad to carry out his god-given duty to provide for you is not a sign of weakness or intellectual flabbiness any more than following any other imperative in the Bible is. (pg. 142)

There are a lot of inspirational passages about marriage in the Bible - but neither of those two Bible chapters ring a bell for me so I looked them up again. 

I have to question Ms. Baucham's reading comprehension if she thinks Numbers 30 describes a daughter being given in marriage.   

Numbers 30 is a legal discussion of how women under the authority of a father or husband can make a vow.   Patriarchal societies run into this problem a lot.  Women often do business and make contracts or vows as part of business.  The problem is how to allow their husband or father to remain in control of the contracts or vows made by the woman without having the whole system fall apart by unscrupulous actors who let women make vows, then use the father/husband to revoke the vows randomly when it benefits their family.  Numbers 30 solves this problem by giving the male authorities a single chance to revoke the vow as soon as the husband or father heard of the vow.  Essentially, it lets the other party notify the husband or father and if he doesn't revoke it immediately, the male authority is responsible for the vow if the woman fails to fulfill her end of the vow.

If Numbers 30 is a dreary legal document, Jeremiah 29 is a combination of comfort for refugees from the Kingdom of Judah living in Babylon and a giant "Fuck you; karma is a bitch" to anyone who was still living in Jerusalem.  For the people living in exile, a huge psychological hurdle is trying to decide if the refugees should settle down in the foreign land or keep their lives on hold in hopes of returning to their home country.   Jeremiah tells them to settle in Babylon, marry off their kids and work at getting a good life started because no one is going home for a long time.  That may not be what the refugees wanted to hear - but boy, it sure sounded better than the world of hurt that was headed towards Jerusalem.

I guess Jeremiah 29 is a bit about marriage; it does contain one verse about marrying sons and daughters along with one verse about continuing to have kids. 

Letting fathers live out their dreams of being the head of patriarchal clans is not a major theme in the Gospel.  And, yes, using Numbers 30 and Jeremiah 29 as examples of young women getting married is a form of intellectual flabbiness.

After that non-answer, Jasmine finds a bunch of fluff written by other CP/QF writers to fill some empty space before sharing this:

I do not deny that there were instances and time gone by when women were treated like property. Where I disagree is that God's word is the culprit for this mistreatment. Nothing could provide a woman with a higher status than to understand the security the Lord has given her in the family unit, as a daughter and her father's home first, then as a wife. (pg. 142)

Question: how does an understanding the status that God gives women protect them when they have an abusive father? 

How does that work when a husband is a serial cheater?  Or just turns out to be a poor provider?

How does that work if her excellent husband dies young?

I've been researching the residents of the local county Poor Farm.  Overall, the people most likely to end up at the Poor Farm were foreign-born single men - but women and children ended up there.  Those stories from the 1860's-1880's are heartbreaking; you know, those good old days that CP/QF want to return to.

Celestia Brott ended up there because her husband was killed in the Civil War and she was engaging in prostitution to bring in income.  Three of her children were brought to the Poor Farm and adopted out to other families before she was released. 

Mary Daniels came to the Poor Farm with three of her children when she was dying of tuberculosis. Her children - aged 5, 4 and 3 - were adopted out within a month of arrival.  She left six months later and died a few months after that.  Much to my surprise, I found that she was married and had two other daughters aged 13 and 11.   The best I can figure, the older girls were taken in by their paternal grandmother who was living with her teenage children on a struggling farm; I think that's where Mary lived for the few months after she left the farm until she died.   Where was her husband?   He took off to California and didn't come back to Michigan until he was elderly and needed a home with one of his children.

One of Mary's daughters ended up getting divorced in her 40's when her husband got another woman pregnant.   She was raising a late-in-life son and the orphaned son of her older sister.  She was able to do that because she was a skilled seamstress.

My great-grandmother died when my grandmother was 5, leaving five small children.  Grandma's father was a ne're-do-well who showed no interest or inclination in caring financially or physically for his children when his wife died.   The only reason my grandmother and her siblings didn't end up at their local Poor Farm was that my great-great grandmother raised them on an impoverished farm with financial help from her grown step-daughters.  This was less than 100 years ago.

Women prize education and career training because we are well aware of how desperate life can become for a woman with multiple children if her spouse dies, deserts, or divorces her.    God may want a perfect plan where women are protected by men 24/7 every day of her life - but in this fallen world, a lot of women will end up on their own through no fault of their own.   That's why women - and people of color - have fought so hard for so long to have the same educational opportunities as white men.