Sunday, March 31, 2019

Joyfully At Home: Chapter Four - Part One

Jasmine Baucham's fourth chapter in "Joyfully At Home" focuses on sibling relationships.  The majority of the chapter regales us with stories about how well Jasmine and her brother Trey got to know each other as expats in England who were unable to find an acceptable church family or homeschool community.  In other words, when completely cut-off from other kids the two of them became really good friends.

This is a huge recurring theme in CP/QF parenting: letting kids have friends outside of their family prevents them from developing the closest relationships possible with their siblings.   IOW, isolating your kids from outsiders is a good thing because they will be BFF with their siblings.

My counterpoint: In the absence of "Counting On" and family pressure, how much time do you think Jill (Duggar) Dillard and Jana Duggar would spend around Jessa (Duggar) Seewald?  On TV where she's presumably on good behavior Jessa is often dismissive if not directly contemptuous of her close-in-age sisters.   In a family where siblings have a wide choice of external friendships, siblings generally learn that bad behavior towards siblings means that their siblings don't include the rude or mean sibling in fun activities.   When the family isolates their kids, on the other hand, siblings lose an important lesson that even family members will refuse to be around you if you are a jerk.

My rebuttal: I have two siblings who survived to adulthood and I have great relationships with both.  My twin sister and I are walking through raising toddlers together while my brother has worked his way into a high level of responsibility in a challenging job.   My twin and I went to different schools; my brother is 4.5 years younger than us so we all had different friends - but that brought benefits, too.  We got to know each other's friends as well as our own. 

While the fourth chapter focuses mainly on Jasmine and Trey's relationship, Jasmine does mention that she likes having a very different type of relationship with her four youngest brothers.  Her parents had adopted four more children when Jasmine wrote her book and those brothers ranged in age from 4 to 1 year.   Jasmine works diligently at classing her relationship with her much younger brothers as a different type of sibling relationship, but the stories sound a lot more like she's a second mom.   For example, this story begins as explaining how she has a close-in-age friend who has young siblings as well but quickly sounds like a mother-of-many inspirational blog:

Other outings, however, are very unique to our family situation, like the time when my parents were out of town, and her mother and grandmother took all of us kids to the Houston rodeo.

We had a blast! And I realized something special: With a double stroller in front of me, an infant strapped into his baby carrier, and miles of walking, riding, and eating in front of me - even when wails erupted - even when tempers flared - even when hyperactivity would have put someone else on edge - I was used to my brothers. I was used to diaper changing, potty breaks, feeding schedules, and discipline issues that I was able to have an amazing day full of responsibility... and fun. And I so love my brothers that it is my delight to sacrifice a bit of freedom so that they can have an outstanding time. It makes my day more fun to see the smiles on their faces. (pgs. 60-61)

Um...this sound freaking identical to how I would have described my trip on Friday to the mall with my 28 month old son.  The main difference is that I have a single child, not four brothers under the age of 5 to corral.  Don't misunderstand me; I'm sure Jasmine loves her little brothers very much and gains a sense of accomplishment from being able to care for them.

But 19-year-old Jasmine hasn't fallen in love.  She's never vowed to love, honor and cherish her chosen husband.   She hasn't been pregnant or survived the process of being cleared for foster care or adoption.   Jasmine has had no control over the fact that four adorable little boys have been dropped in her lap - but she's clearly been in the trenches enough to be a surrogate mother for her brothers.

Let's thank Bridget Baucham for freeing Jasmine from the role of sister-mother.   The fact that Bridget told her adult daughter that it was Bridget's job to run her own home and that Jasmine needed to go out and live her own life.

That choice makes this book much easier to work through since Jasmine is now a wife, mother and teacher.

The next post in this series discusses how brother-sister relationships can be used to learn deference towards a future husband.

5 comments:

  1. "On TV where she's presumably on good behavior Jessa is often dismissive if not directly contemptuous of her close-in-age sisters"

    ..Oh my gosh, really? I never saw much of the show.

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    1. I watched the first season while recovering from post-concussion syndrome. Jessa is quite a piece of work. Jana came over to do some light home improvement by placing can lights in the ceiling of Jessa and Ben's bedroom. Jessa was big on telling Jana what to do - and very light on saying thank you.

      She's got a mean girl vibe that I find unappealing.

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    2. Oh wow! Hopefully she improved if that was the first season.

      As for Jasmine, it looks like 2 things were a saving grace for her in this system. One is how late her dad decided to shove them all into it, and the other is how her mom seemed determined to draw a line between her role and the uber-role other QF daughters were expected to fill. The most severe families seem to be the ones who raised daughters from a very young age into this.

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  2. Loving your siblings doesn't mean you need to want to cart 4 of them around to a rodeo all day. I'm sure it's possible she had fun that day. But there's a different kind of fun you have when you're the only one you're responsible for. It doesn't mean you love your siblings less if you want that kind of fun.

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