Maxwell Mania: Sheltering Our Children (and husbands.....) - Part Two

  Hello!

I'm fighting a mild stomach flu bug.  It's nothing that's going to kill me - but I'm already tired of eating saltines.  

It's been a crazy week.  My father-in-law tested positive for COVID last weekend and was hospitalized for a few days.  He's doing better now.   Apparently, he got his first dose of a two-dose vaccine but hadn't received the second dose yet. (His age group has had the vaccine available for several months here in Michigan, so I'm not particularly sympathetic when everyone I know in his age band was vaccinated in February.)   

So far, my sister-in-law has tested positive and my brother-in-law is waiting on his results.  This also mean my 4-year old nephew is stuck at home for the foreseeable future since he could be an asymptomatic carrier which means he's not getting the in-person therapies at school that have helped him a ton. 

Needless to say, I'm angry and rather crotchety right now.   The only reason I'm not incandescently furious is that by a sheer fluke no one in my immediate family was around my father-in-law long enough in the two weeks prior to risk infection.  (The only day my son normally would have been around him was the day that my mom-in-law and I went to the zoo.  She's fully vaccinated + several weeks out.)  

So, yeah.  Disgruntled writer on the loose.  That means it is a great time to take on the second half of Terri Maxwell's "Sheltering Our Children" article.  The first post covers a series of quotes that I'll summarize as "Men are horn-dogs who can barely keep it in their pants as is so it's everyone else's job to keep them from having a spontaneous affair."  The second half continues that theme while building on the Maxwellian belief that even grown-ass men can't handle hearing about sinful practices second-hand without being tempted:

Our twenty-two-year-old son volunteers one night a week at the City Union Mission in downtown Kansas City. In addition to being exposed to secular thinking in his work place, he is exposed to the real world at the mission. He is ready for this challenge. He has a one-on-one Bible study with one of the residents. We have encouraged him in this ministry, but have cautioned against such things as listening to details of immoral, or evil, practices.

Nathan's always had a smidge of a wild child in him that the Maxwells couldn't crush out of him.  In their book on childrearing, they allude to a time they sent Nathan to a teenage computer camp - or something like that - for two weeks and when he came home he wanted all sorts more freedom!   

Oh, the horrors!

Since then, everyone has been sent out in packs of Maxwells beside Sarah who was allowed to sporadically go visit married friends who needed respite care while having their 4th or 5th kid before the oldest kids were of an age to be useful.  The catty side of me thinks that the Maxwells couldn't bring themselves to make a different family pay for room and board for another adult daughter for two weeks under the guise of protecting Sarah.

Back to Nathan.  The Maxwells were sure as hell not going to let him slip up again - so when he worked as a computer support rep at the same company that Steve did - the two of them carpooled 70 miles each way every day.   That's a really long commute even for the Midwest where we're pretty car-centric.  By comparison, I have a 20 mile commute and a lot of people pity me for that.   My dad and I commuted together sometimes when we were both teaching at the same summer school program - but not every day.  We each had outside obligations and social commitments so somedays we each took our own vehicles.  Somehow, I doubt Nathan was allowed the freedom to take his own car to go out with co-workers after work.....

Nathan might have gotten some freedom when he took a job at a different major employer in the Kanas City area - or not.  If he was still living at home, Steve keeps a tight grip on his sons until they marry.

Here's another great example of Steve's need for protection:

Another example of our philosophy of “protectionism” involves not only our older children but also Steve. Steve chooses to not have lunch alone with another woman, or ride alone in a car with one, even when business related. One might ask if this means he is not strong in his faith or not independent. Of course not!

Nah, it just means that Steven is discriminating against female coworkers because he's afraid that his overwhelming attractiveness and suave conversational skills combined with being in the incredibly sensual environment of his high mileage economy car will lead to adultery.

To paraphrase the incomparable Alison Green of "Ask A Manager" -  you can accommodate religious beliefs by doing social gestures with everyone or no one.  If you cannot shake hands with members of the opposite gender, then shake hands with no one.  Yes, it will be slightly awkward - but much less offensive than shaking hands with three guys then refusing to shake hands with one woman.  This holds even more true with refusing to go to lunch with a female colleague alone.   In that case, she's being punished by less access to places where connection and mentorship happen because Steve is afraid of his dick.   Which  makes him A Dick - but I doubt he'd get the irony.  

The more I learn about Maxwell the less surprised I am that he didn't make it through a major downturn in aerospace construction in the late 1990's.   The fact that he was convicted and purposed to start his own business at that exact moment was a coincidence, I'm sure.

Next up: how the Maxwell daughters got trapped as superfluous virgin aunts:

As far as our daughters go, I wonder how many of us developed independent spirits during our college or working days. Has this made it more difficult for us to submit to our husbands in the meek and quiet way we would like? A family shared with us their concerns for their daughter after she began working. They said, “One of our goals for our daughter is for her to have a submissive spirit to a future husband, if she marries, but we are also training her towards an independent spirit.” They did ask her to stop working, sharing their heart’s concerns, and she was willing.

Terri Maxwell would not be on any list for wives who are independent.   To the best of my knowledge, she caters to Steven's whims even when they are directly harmful to her or the kids.   

She supported Steven's desire to reverse his vasectomy and spent fourteen subsequent years of her life depressed while raising eight kids.

At the same time, she was homeschooling her kids who were old enough despite clearly not enjoying homeschooling.   She had objected to homeschooling soon after she brought the oldest three out of private schools - but she caved nearly as soon as Steve asked her to continue.  This lead to the Maxwell Schedule and Maxwell Homeschooling.   The Maxwell Schedule is where a person pre-plans their day in 30 minute increments from the planned time of waking up to the planned time to go to bed.   The Maxwell Method of Homeschooling is the bleak logical next step: the parent decides what section of a textbook kids should read, which questions or worksheets they should answer and which tests they should take.  I assume the parent is around to answer questions - but this is far less interactive than a kid would receive in a bad public school classroom today.

She did fight slightly harder to keep Nathan and Christopher in sports - but Steven won out in the end as well.   

Did she have any energy left to fight by the time the kids were of courting age?  Probably not.  

Maybe the Maxwell girls are glad they've not married.  Their sisters-in-law seem to be doing ok - but the specter of untreated severe depression must hang over their childhood memories even if they don't consciously realize it. 

Did the other girl get married?  Who knows.   The Maxwells don't do follow-up very often.

Finally, one area the Maxwells have succeeded in:

Does this mean we keep our daughters in our house and never let them out? No, but it does mean we determine the learning, working, and ministry opportunities that will best help them toward their goals. One of our goals for all of our daughters is that they would remain holy and pure. When I hear worldly teens, and even some Christian teens, talk these days, I am very saddened by the crudeness and impurity of their conversation. I would hate to have my daughter in an environment where she was constantly exposed to that.

Their daughters have certainly remained pure.  (Also underemployed - but that's a whole other ball of wax.)

Unfortunately, becoming a wife and mother in CP/QF land does require having sex - albeit under the purifying action of married sex.   

The Maxwells seemed to have struggled hard with Jesse's wild-and-crazy idea of getting married, selling his debt-free house, and living in an apartment before moving to Kansas City.  (Actually, none of that is wild or crazy - but cultic living warps views.)   

With that much stress and wringing of hands around Jesse moving out of the neighborhood. I would not want to be around the first time the parents got together with their newly married daughter after she had sex.   They've spent so much time and effort on infantilizing Sarah, Anna and Mary that seeing one of them as sexually active adult women might cause some very ugly feelings and actions to rise to the surface.