Brrrr! I am chilly this morning. I had a temperature reading of -4 degrees when I got my son in the car this morning which dropped to -9 degrees in the lowest topographic point on the drive in.
After another snowfall event, I've got snow depths between my knees and thighs through most of the yard. A few drifts are as tall as Spawn.
Spawn's enjoying the snow. When he sees a snowdrift, he wants to kick holes in the drift using his foot "like an excavator!". This has left a fascinating series of vertical slashes all over the driveway. He also likes to make snowballs - but it's been so cold that the snow is very powdery and dry. That kind of snow doesn't compact well so the snowballs are really fragile and lightweight.
That doesn't matter to Spawn.
He took to throwing them at me yesterday and giggled when the snowballs exploded into dust on impact. My first instinct was to dump the kid into a snowdrift as tall as he was - but that seemed a bit much. Instead, I tossed a snowball back at him.
While I'm huddled under a blanket on the couch, I figured I'd finish writing up this chapter from Jasmine Baucham's book "Joyfully At Home". So far, we've had four posts on the first question "Should women go to college?" I can't remember her second question - but neither the question nor the responses were particularly interesting or objectionable. The third question, though, is a fair question that Jasmine takes seriously:
The only place that I've seen this question tackled is the spectacularly tone-deaf "Our Response to Rapunzel" on the Botkin Sisters' defunct website. The Botkin Sisters' response is no surprise to anyone who followed Vision Forum (VF): Rapunzel is a sinful media creation - but if she were real, she'd be morally obligated to toe the line for her "mother" - e.g., the woman who kidnapped her - until the woman was physically abusive or until Rapunzel had incontrovertible evidence that she was kidnapped.
Lovely.
Jasmine Baucham, on the other hand, takes a more nuanced approach. She recognizes at 19 that there are plenty of ways that a potential SAHD might be thwarted. The most common way, I suspect, is when non-cult member parents refuse to accept having an employable daughter pretending that learning housekeeping is a full-time job for the foreseeable future. An equally common issue among the average 'ideal' huge CP/QF family with one marginally educated manual laboring father for income is that most of those families can't afford to support one or more employable adult daughters at home for years. As a Black young women in CP/QF culture, she may well have recognized that not all adult men are safe around teenage girls; she mentions in her adult blog that she had plenty of horrible things said to her at purity functions.
For whatever reason, Jasmine gives CP/QF SAHD-wannabes an out. If you can't stay home, you can't stay home.
Unfortunately, she leaves us with this gem:
I have no problems with young adults thinking about how they were raised by their parents and deciding how they want to raise their children. That's a good, sensible way of trying to avoid issues that you disliked about how you were raised and deciding what you want to keep.
I do suggest, though, that you use a bit of humility when judging your mother and father as parents - especially if you do not yet have children in your household. Raising children brings great increases in the amount of stress in a family's life financially, emotionally and physically. Deciding how to raise imaginary children with an imaginary spouse in an imaginary future can be a useful exercise - but it's a very different exercise than raising this child with this spouse in this reality.
Similarly, I agree that people who marry with the thought of having children should make sure that their spouse shares some basic ideas about childrearing. First - foremost - make certain you both want children. Marrying someone who has different views on having children in hopes they will change their mind is cruel to both parties and a recipe for disaster. Knowing exactly what kind of father a man will be - or mother a woman will be - is not really possible ahead of time, though. Before I married my husband, I made sure he had the bones of a good father. He wanted kids, showed patience and enjoyment around small children, and didn't have unreasonable expectations about child behavior - but that's about as far as I could figure out ahead of time.
I severely dislike, though, the idea of young women deciding how their moms should have been better wives to their fathers. Being a wife is a very, very different role with very different responsibilities than being a dependent daughter. For a CP/QF SAHD, there are two roles to balance - daughter and sister. Those two are pretty easy to balance in a family unit where obedience is the main family value.
Upon marriage, a wife has to balance her roles as spouse, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, sister-in-law and neighbor. Once she's pregnant, the role of mother gets added - and for each child afterward a separate "mother" role adds each time.
In other words, it's easy enough to say "You should have been more obedient/more industrious/more hospitable" as a young adult daughter looking at her memories of her mom from when she was nine - but it's a different view when you remember that your mother was caring for aging in-laws who didn't want to move in with their children or a retirement home while homeschooling five children, dealing with ongoing medical problems from her last delivery and not having any extra money all at the same time.
Yes! Go back to 1994 and eat dinner weekly with the Maxwells. Or split your dinners up among the Maxwells, Botkins and Duggars.
Watch as the first Maxwell marries only to find out that he and his wife have severe fertility issues. Watch the first Botkin son marry, then bail on the lifestyle.
Watch two Maxwell sons have public engagements called off. Watch two more Botkin sons marry and produce small families.
Really feel the entire stress level of everyone go up as the dual nightmares of the Duggars raising awareness of the sheer amount of sexual abuse happening in CP/QF families collides with VF and ATI collapsing under allegations of sexual abuse by the founder.
Watch the Duggars launch their daughters into marriages that splinter the family cohesion. Compare that outcome with the slow fade of Sarah Maxwell, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, and Jana Duggar as they reach over 30 years without marrying.
Watch one Maxwell son slow fade out of the Maxwell lifestyle after marriage. Watch his younger brother sell his much-lauded debt-free home to go live in an apartment when he marries.
If nothing else, let this sink in: You cannot control the fate of adult children - even if you control their childhood meticulously.
This, my friends, is why I reviewed Jasmine Baucham's book - and why I suspect she turned out as well as she did. In spite of a rigid upbringing, Ms. Baucham recognized that different people can sincerely believe different things.
That one section was a breath of fresh air - and one that I hope swells in homes with CP/QF beliefs.
I do suggest, though, that you use a bit of humility when judging your mother and father as parents - especially if you do not yet have children in your household. Raising children brings great increases in the amount of stress in a family's life financially, emotionally and physically. Deciding how to raise imaginary children with an imaginary spouse in an imaginary future can be a useful exercise - but it's a very different exercise than raising this child with this spouse in this reality.
Similarly, I agree that people who marry with the thought of having children should make sure that their spouse shares some basic ideas about childrearing. First - foremost - make certain you both want children. Marrying someone who has different views on having children in hopes they will change their mind is cruel to both parties and a recipe for disaster. Knowing exactly what kind of father a man will be - or mother a woman will be - is not really possible ahead of time, though. Before I married my husband, I made sure he had the bones of a good father. He wanted kids, showed patience and enjoyment around small children, and didn't have unreasonable expectations about child behavior - but that's about as far as I could figure out ahead of time.
I severely dislike, though, the idea of young women deciding how their moms should have been better wives to their fathers. Being a wife is a very, very different role with very different responsibilities than being a dependent daughter. For a CP/QF SAHD, there are two roles to balance - daughter and sister. Those two are pretty easy to balance in a family unit where obedience is the main family value.
Upon marriage, a wife has to balance her roles as spouse, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, sister-in-law and neighbor. Once she's pregnant, the role of mother gets added - and for each child afterward a separate "mother" role adds each time.
In other words, it's easy enough to say "You should have been more obedient/more industrious/more hospitable" as a young adult daughter looking at her memories of her mom from when she was nine - but it's a different view when you remember that your mother was caring for aging in-laws who didn't want to move in with their children or a retirement home while homeschooling five children, dealing with ongoing medical problems from her last delivery and not having any extra money all at the same time.
Yes! Go back to 1994 and eat dinner weekly with the Maxwells. Or split your dinners up among the Maxwells, Botkins and Duggars.
Watch as the first Maxwell marries only to find out that he and his wife have severe fertility issues. Watch the first Botkin son marry, then bail on the lifestyle.
Watch two Maxwell sons have public engagements called off. Watch two more Botkin sons marry and produce small families.
Really feel the entire stress level of everyone go up as the dual nightmares of the Duggars raising awareness of the sheer amount of sexual abuse happening in CP/QF families collides with VF and ATI collapsing under allegations of sexual abuse by the founder.
Watch the Duggars launch their daughters into marriages that splinter the family cohesion. Compare that outcome with the slow fade of Sarah Maxwell, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, and Jana Duggar as they reach over 30 years without marrying.
Watch one Maxwell son slow fade out of the Maxwell lifestyle after marriage. Watch his younger brother sell his much-lauded debt-free home to go live in an apartment when he marries.
If nothing else, let this sink in: You cannot control the fate of adult children - even if you control their childhood meticulously.
This, my friends, is why I reviewed Jasmine Baucham's book - and why I suspect she turned out as well as she did. In spite of a rigid upbringing, Ms. Baucham recognized that different people can sincerely believe different things.
That one section was a breath of fresh air - and one that I hope swells in homes with CP/QF beliefs.
Jasmine’s dad just flew back to the Stares in severe heart failure. He’s at Mayo in Florida. There’s a Gofundme account for his expenses. Hopefully he recovers as he has lotsa younger kids.
ReplyDeleteOh, shit. That's bad; his wife has some really bad lupus spells too. I hope he recovers as fully as possible!
DeleteSo happy Ben Botkin broke away, just doing what he loves and with a wife who does the same. I hope all the grown kids find their niches if they haven't already, with healthier adjustments to their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteDang your summation of the different families' results is really something, and important to mull over. As for the last quote, I often did find Jasmine more approachable than many others.
ReplyDelete