Preparing Sons: Chapter 11 - Part 2

The first post on this chapter covered Maxwell's wild and crazy views on how to control a son even after he's graduated high school.  I'm not sure how effective those ideas are especially if the son has been prepared enough that he's ready to enter the workforce even at a minimum wage job.  Either way, I saved a subsection of the chapter for a separate post.  This section shares Maxwell's obsession with purchasing a house debt-free along with his exceptionally optimistic views on the amount of earned income for first-time business owners.

Maxwell's views on debt-free homes is that owning a home debt-free prevents white-collar crime:

Is the ability to purchase a home debt-free a good goal for sons? Think about what a burden rent or mortgage payments are. They pressure men to work in places where Christians should not be employed. I have known men, under tremendous financial pressure due to their mortgage, who participated in unethical and illegal business dealings. Concern over loss of income should never hold a Christian to a job with which his Lord would not be pleased. (pg. 166)

As a counter-example, the only person I know who was tried for defrauding the state multiple millions of dollars was a man who earned seven figures who married a woman who had a healthy savings account from years of working in science industry.  They owned a lovely home outright.  I won't pretend I understand exactly why the man decided to inflate the number of students that attended our school (which took a good deal of work including creating records for imaginary students and populating classes of imaginary students), but I've always chalked it up to a combination of greed and hubris.  He received some hefty bonuses based on the growth of our school and he had massive narcissistic tendencies.  If I used Maxwell's line of logic, I should argue that buying a house outright leads inexorably to fraud instead of putting the blame on the illegal choices my boss made.

Maxwell discusses slightly the weight that a mortgage or rent payments put on a worker while ignoring the burden that owning a house places on that same worker.   People lose jobs.  Companies fold, downsize and relocate.  Entire industries do the same thing.  I've lived in Michigan my whole life; when a manufacturing sector declines, there's a massive migration of people out of the state and lots of people moving around in the state.  The industry workers leave first, followed by human service providers and businesses that were supported by the workers' incomes.  It happened in the late 1970's, the early 2000's and the early 2010's.   Owning a home narrows the area where a worker can easily access a job without selling their home and potentially makes the worker less attractive to businesses where the worker will have a long commute.   

If a worker cannot get a job within commuting distance, they have to move.  This adds an another layer of stress and financial demands on a family already in hardship.  Trying to sell a house in an economically depressed area is hard; there are plenty of other houses up for sale of similar quality which depresses prices.  In really bad times, the market values are depressed further by the presence of homes which have been foreclosed on.  The location that the family is moving to is generally in a more competitive real estate market so it's quite possible for the family to have to lose half of their investment on their original home and need to take out a mortgage on their new home.

Teri and I would have loved to provide our children with homes according to Proverbs 19: 14, "House and riches are the inheritance of fathers; and a prudent wife is of the Lord." Unfortunately, we are nowhere near being able to do that. However, we can provide them with room and board for as long as it takes them to save up for their house. Even then it is our desire that they will continue living with us until God provides them a spouse. (pg. 166)

I cannot figure out why Steven Maxwell interprets that verse to mean that fathers should give houses to their sons; if that was the proverb, it would state "Houses and riches are the inheritance of sons..." My understanding of that proverb is that married men who have living children and a prudent wife are economically farther ahead in subsistence agrarian societies.  My interpretation is a no-brainer...but most proverbs are simply pithy statements of general societal trends anyways.

More problematically is the fact that Maxwell blithely assumes that parents can afford to house and feed all of their offspring prior to marriage.   I really doubt that most CP/QF families can do that to the point that the Maxwells do. The Maxwells have eight kids spaced across 20 years supported by a father who had a Bachelor's degree in Engineering.  The oldest three kids were working in external or family businesses by the time the youngest girl started preschool.  Compare that with the 19 children born in the same time frame to the Duggar or the Bates family to self-employed parents.  Additionally, the Maxwells have five sons and only three daughters.  Since CP/QF boys are allowed to work outside the home, the Maxwells have had more children who could support themselves (at least partially) by their late teens.  The Coghlan family of the defunct blog "In A Shoe" has eight daughters and three sons; the seven oldest children are daughters. Trying to support 7 adult daughters until they got married is much more challenging than supporting three adult daughters as the Maxwells do now.

If a young man has been prepared well during high school, he should fairly easily be able to earn $35,000 or more a year when he graduates. Start with a yearly income and then subtract tithes, offerings, and taxes. Then money must be put aside for transportation, insurance - medical and auto, and other incidental expenses. If your son is frugal, he should be able to save 50% or slightly more of its income while living at home. (pg. 166)

I had to stop for a minute or two to stop laughing so hard I was crying.  After I could see again, I hit the internet to double-check my instinct.  In 2001, the median income for men who completed high school without college experience was $34,723.   That figure includes men at the beginning, middle and end of their careers; using it as an estimate for what a recent high school graduate could expect is unrealistically high.    For comparison, I began teaching in 2006 for ~$27,000 a year (plus benefits).

This is where Maxwell begins using magic math.  Through the rest of the topic, he behaves as if $35,000 in sales from a personal business is the same thing as $35,000 in personal income.  It's not because Maxwell forgets about removing business expenses from the total in sales.  I'm extremely skeptical that all taxes, health insurance, auto insurance for a late teenage or early 20's man, and all of the incidental expenses that come with a job/career like clothing, haircuts, networking experiences etc, take less than 50% of a man's income.     

Within six years from high school graduation, your 24 year old son will have saved $100,000, not counting any appreciable interest. I find that very exciting. If he earned less than 35,000 a year, it just means he must save a little longer.(pg. 166)

Here's a more realistic scenario.  I worked at Meijers as a cashier for between $8-12 dollars an hour during that time period.  I worked full-time (or close to it) during the summer months and during Thanksgiving through New Years.  The remainder of the year, I worked between 6-20 hours a week depending on the amount of available shifts.  I made roughly $16,000 per year before taxes and "saved" around $7,500 which I used in real time to pay for college.. 

Now, I passed up some shifts due to attending college - but I also cross-trained in the Men's/Shoes, Cosmetics, Pharmacy and Garden Center so I could pick up more shifts during slow periods.  If I hadn't been in college, I think I could have increased my number of hours across the year by about 30% at most because there's a seasonal dead time in January through April followed by a shorter one in late September through October where shifts were hard to find for love or money.  Assuming that I could save at the same rate, I'd make $20,080 before tax saving $9,750 per year.   My expenses were a little different because my parents covered my health insurance and I didn't have a car so I didn't need automotive insurance outside of a rider on my parents' policy but I did pay room and board to college so I think it about evens out in the end.

Saving $100,000 would have taken me 10.25 years at that rate.  There's no way my parents would have wanted me living at home from when I was 18 until I was 28 in hopes of buying my own home immediately. 

In case the math scared any of the readers, Maxwell immediately moves the goal posts for a home purchase:

Depending on the location, size, and age of the house your son will purchase, he might not even need $100,000. There's so many possibilities and intriguing options, but nothing happens unless a son has a vision, and you help him prepare. (pgs. 166-167)

Yes and no.  Michigan, like most of the Midwest, has low housing prices compared to either coast.  I grew up in an area of mostly starter homes and live in a fairly depressed area of rural home prices.   I have a hard time finding a home now that was under $100,000.   My first apartment was 600 square feet with one bedroom.  I can find homes for sale right now that are 700-800 square feet with two bedrooms and one bathroom in both areas - but they are selling for $110,00-$130,000.

I'm sure I could find cheaper homes if I was willing to purchase a foreclosed home at an auction - but those homes often need a lot of work.  In the best case scenario, the home was well-maintained upto the point that the home was surrendered to the bank and had minimal damage during the period it was uninhabited.  Here's a worst case scenario. A family down the block from us had a house foreclosed on when I was a kid.  We met the poor souls who bought the house sight unseen.  They purchased a home that had been occupied by animal hoarders who apparently decided to destroy everything they could on their way out.    The house had to be stripped down to the studs and built back up again - including new electrical to replace the parts ripped out and new plumbing.    I don't know what they purchased the house for - but they spent a ton more than that making the house habitable again.

I want to encourage you with the possibilities for your own son. If a father says, "My son isn't involved with computers and can't make that much money," my question for him is, "Do you think your son could learn to handle commercial lawn mower?" I think you will agree that most sons are capable of running a lawn mower.

Mark, a recent high school graduate, has his own lawn mowing business. It is nothing fancy, just one man with a commercial, walk behind mower. I spoke with him on his mobile phone and he was about to start on another lawn. I asked him if he thought a young man could clear 35,000 a year by mowing lawns. He chuckled and said,"Yes, pretty easily in fact!" Then he pointed out that income came from mowing lawns for only 5 months, during the growing season. (pg. 167)

Mmm-kay. 

I agree that most adult humans can learn to run a lawn mower.  We're not setting the bar real high here, are we?

I agree that random guy named Mark that Steven Maxwell knows believes that someone could theoretically earn $35,000 a year.  I'd like to point out that Mark never says that he earns that much - just that he thinks it is possible. 

Right now, the internet tells me that people who hire a lawn service expect to pay $80-100 per mowing for a suburban size lawn.  My lawn is a bit over an acre and would be closer to $150 per mowing.  We have a 5 month mowing season and let's assume people want their lawn mowed 8 times during that period.  That's around $800 per suburban yard and $1,200 per rural yard.  To clear $35,000 in sales, that means a teenage CP/QF home school graduate (who may not know anyone in his neighborhood) would need to have 44 suburban clients or 30 rural clients. 

Let's discuss the pitfalls that spring to mind:

• No one in the area I grew up used a lawn service.  It was too expensive for a chore that young working families could do on their own.  CP/QF kids in blue-collar suburban areas are out of luck.
• No one in the area I live in now uses a lawn service.  Everyone owns a self-propelled lawn mower except me.  (I'm the oddball who uses a reel mower on an acre lawn.  I enjoy the exercise and the look of horror on people's faces...)  CP/QF kids in rural areas are out of luck.
• A lot of that income is going to be eaten up by business costs:
• A used walk-behind commercial mower is between $600-$2500.  The cheaper end require local pick-up and have an unknown number of clock hours on them which means availability is spotty and the mower might die midseason.  
• Finishing around the home and walkways requires a commercial weed whip for around $150.  
• The mower and weed whip needs to be transported from site to site.  This requires either a pickup truck or a flatbed attached to a pickup truck.   A used light truck with over 100,000 miles on it runs between $7,000-10,000.  
• Both the mower and the truck require gasoline or diesel to run.  Time spent moving the equipment and truck for refueling is wasted so the business would probably benefit from having an in-bed fuel tank in the pickup truck - but small trucks have small beds so the mower might not fit with an extra fuel tank.  
• I feel like having a late teenage boy driving around in a light truck with an in-bed fuel tank and a heavy commercial mower is a disaster waiting to happen.  I'm thinking this will lead to a higher automotive insurance rate - but I could be wrong on that one.
• I hope Nathan, Christopher and Mark sprung for business insurance when they were running mowing businesses.  That's around $500 per year.
• Adding it up and assuming a 4-year loan on the truck gives a low-end of $3,000 to a high end of $5,650 not including fuel costs and automotive insurance.    I'm also assuming they have minimal advertising costs.   That means the business needs 4-7 suburban clients or 3-5 rural clients to clear costs..  (Rural clients have larger yards, but the cost of transporting equipment to rural clients becomes expensive quickly.  44 suburban clients might live in a 10 mile radius; 30 rural clients may be a 30 mile radius.)  
• Who is funding this?  Most families - ignoring CP/QF status - don't have $3,000 to drop on a family member's start-up.

This means our hypothetical new small business owner just out of high school needs to find 48 suburban clients or 33 rural clients to met easy-peasy goal set by Steven Maxwell after getting $3,000-$5,650 to cover start-up costs. 

Yeah.  Good luck.  They'll need it.

Maidens of Virtue - Appendix on Modesty

Stacy McDonald faced a dilemma at the end of the twentieth chapter of "Raising Maidens of Virtue".  Her enthusiasm for writing was winding down; the chapters became shorter and shorter as the book went on while the quality of writing dropped to perilous lows.   In reading the proof, however, she realized that she still had a few stories from her life that she wanted to include in the book.  She writes up the three stories, slips in a few Bible verses and thus the appendix titled "Modesty Promotes Friendship" was born.

Honestly, I have no idea what Stacy McDonald's writing process is - but my imagined scenario explains this appendix as well as any other scenario.

I think the title for the chapter should be "Dress Modestly so Judgmental Women Don't Bitch about You Behind Your Back", but I suspect that's going to be unacceptable for the book's audience.  I'd accept "I get one standard; everyone else gets another standard" for a working title - but really, we could title 90% of CP/QF books that.  I wish it had been named "Here's How to Bragging About Having A Smoking Hot Bikini Body at Age 22 While Still Judging Other Women in Church."

This paragraph jumped out at me for needing a proofreader desperately:

Even though the Apostle Paul makes the principle clear in 1 Timothy 2:8 that women are to "adorn themselves in modest apparel," and even though older women are instructed to teach the young women in their lives to be "discreet and chaste" (Titus 2:4-5), too often, the subject of modesty is either treated as a legalistic, optional teaching for the week, or it's handled by creating a very distinct and detailed set of rules. (pg, 185)

Yup.  The paragraph is a single sentence of ~70 words.  I can only imagine what my high school English teachers would have said if I turned in a paper including a sentence that uses the phrase "even though" twice.     I concede that this would be a fascinating sentence to diagram.....

I'm curious what Stacy McDonald thinks the definition of "legalistic" in a religion means.  My understanding is that the definition of legalistic IS any list of distinct and detailed set of rules that a given person thinks is too long.   The sentence-paragraph would make more sense if "legalistic" was moved to after the word "or" .  The other option is for her to define what she means by legalistic, I suppose.

The appendix is filled with eye watering paragraphs like that so I'm going to skip the others ones in favor of the stories from Mrs. McDonald's life.  This first story is great.  Mrs. McDonald manages to brag about her immodest dressing while shaming the woman who called her out on it.

I was 22 years old and a brand new Christian when something happened to me that forever impacted my opinion of how to approach a modesty in new Christians. An older woman, the precious lady who had led me to the Lord, became very frustrated with me after she and her family invited me to their beach cabin.

I have been walking around in front of my friend's husband and teen sons all weekend long in a bikini, with just a light, open, button-down shirt thrown over the top of it. Finally, and obvious frustration, she told me I needed to " go put some clothes on!"

I was horrified and so embarrassed! I still remember standing there on the beach wondering if I could run to the cabin or bury myself in the sand. Maybe a wave would swallow me. I felt like the " Emperor who had no clothes!" All of a sudden I realized I was practically naked - and have been, all weekend!

I recall wishing that she would have been frank with me about modesty at the beginning of the weekend ( privately and gently). Her hesitancy caused her own unnecessary frustration, and it cost me immense humiliation. I've noticed her coolness towards me that weekend, I hadn't realized what was causing it. (pg. 186)

Half of this story is humble-bragging on her beach body at age 22.  I've gotta admit that I enjoy that part of the story because she seems so normal. During Michigan summers, a lightweight cover-up and a swimsuit/bikini/tankini/whatever is the official dress code within a mile of the Great Lakes.  I imagine wherever this story happened that the husband and sons of the older lady have seen plenty of women enjoying the beach in similar clothing.  In the real world, the male members of the family might have looked at her appreciatively for a moment or two when she first appeared in a bikini but gaping at her or ogling her would be viewed as crude.  Plus, most guys at a beach display the acclimation over time.  She caught their attention when she first appeared - but the novelty of seeing this woman in this bikini wears off quickly assuming that the bikini is similar to what other women are wearing. 

I agree a bit with Mrs. McDonald; her older friend really should have discussed clothing guidelines at the cabin prior to the trip or as soon as the friend had a problem rather than letting it fester most of the weekend.    On the other hand, Mrs. McDonald is ragingly hypocritical because she's never addressed anything gently in this book.  Remember this is the woman who couldn't be bothered to ask a friend why his hygiene was horrible and decided that when her teenager expressed compassion for people who committed suicide that the best response was to remind the teenager that everyone is a flawed, worthless sinner. 

"But, Mel", I hear you thinking, "maybe she can't remember what she wrote before."  That's fair criticism - but she launches into two other stories that show other women behaving horribly towards immodestly dressed women and clearly sides with the rude women.  Here's a great example:

Years ago, I was sitting with a friend at church when a young woman (with solid Christian parents) who was showcasing her assets in skin tight jeans and a low-cut blouse walked by. My friend glanced over at her husband and sons who were standing nearby and said, " I realize she is very proud of her breasts and all; but, it would be nice if she kept them to herself."
I was a bit taken aback by her bluntness, but it struck me that day that she was onto something. Although, I think a more accurate observation would be that this young woman should have been glorifying God by " keeping them" ( as well as other things) for her own husband, instead of " sharing them" with everyone else's... because, well, because that would be the loving thing to do. (pg. 187)

See, Stacy McDonald needed gentle hand-holding because she was a new baby Christian; even a frustrated aside comment from a friend was enough to wound her.  Cradle Christians, on the other hand, learn best from bitchy, passive-aggressive comments lobbed in their general direction by co-dependent older women.   

The amount of codependency in these stories boggles my mind.  Older woman from story one is poorly policing a young woman in a bikini to protect her fragile husband and sons.  Older woman from story two is policing women at church to protect....her fragile husband..and..sons.   In the third story, a young woman is policing women at church to protect her fragile husband.   Monitoring other women's dress as useless as policing the universe for alcohol when living with someone addicted to alcohol.  Either the men will develop the skills to deal with the presence of an attractive woman or they won't.  Having another woman pointing out all of the immodestly dressed women she sees is not helping the men learn the skill - but it does allow the woman to remain in control of her husband's and sons' lives. 

The last story shows what happens when codependency reigns unchecked:

I remember one friend whose husband struggled with pornography. In tears one day, she shared with me how she didn't even want to go to church anymore ( at least with her husband) unless they were able to sit in the front row. She said she was tired of catching her husband staring at the backsides of the girls in skin tight jeans in front of them (this particular megachurch had a huge problem with sensuality - almost as big as her husband's lust problem).

Sadly, even when they sat in the front row, they had to look up the skirts of the choir members on stage when they sat down. For a woman struggling in this type of marriage, it was torture. But, no one seems concerned about her. If she complain to leadership she would have likely been called the judgmental or legalistic.

Of course, this husband was totally responsible for his own sin. In fact, my friend ended up divorced; but, that isn't the point. In fact, the point isn't my friend's husband at all. The point is that my friend was hurt, not only by the wandering eye of her own husband, but by her many sisters in Christ who gave him such ample opportunity, and who should have known better. (pg. 188)

This is what codependency looks like when the addict is less invested in recovery than the codependent spouse.   Rather than setting reasonable limits with her spouse, the young woman is alternating between attempting to control his behavior and attempting to control the behavior of every woman her husband looks at.    The woman had plenty of options.  She could inform her husband that she would not attend church with him if he's going to stare at other women's asses.  If he continues, refuse to attend church with him.  If he's really dedicated to stopping, he could ask the minister to reserve seats for him and his wife smack dab in front of the altar/pulpit after explaining his problem with staring at the crotches of women at church.   He could find a different church; there's always a conservative church where the average age of the female congregant is over 70 within driving distance.  He needs to man up and do the work - and she needs to stop working harder at overcoming his addiction than he is.

My dream is that if the woman did talk to the leadership of the church they would introduce her to one of the Al-Anon mottos.  She didn't cause his addiction to porn; she can't control his addiction to porn and she can't cure his addiction to porn.   Imagine how much time, energy and freedom she would gain eventually if she let go of his burden.

The last paragraph shows that Stacy McDonald can be codependent by proxy.   She's blaming other women for the bad behavior her friend reports about her friend's husband.   That's absolutely freaking insane - especially when she deflects the vast majority of the blame from her friend's creepy husband onto the women he's ogling in church.  Ew.  Ew.  Ew.

Oh, and she gets a bitchy slam in at her friend by casually mentioning her divorce which is a Big Personal Failing in conservative Christian land.    Because, you know, her friend didn't really do it all right, ya know.   Ew.  Ew.  Ew.

I'm so glad to nearly be done with this book.

*I think conservative Christians often misuse the idea of people being addicted to porn.  There is a world of difference between struggling to not watch porn for religious/philosophical/moral reasons and being addicted to porn.  There's a clear parallel to alcohol.  Most people can consume alcohol without becoming addicted.  For people who choose to abstain from alcohol for religious reasons, there is a struggle in overcoming the sporadic desire to have a drink or two.  That struggle is quantitatively and qualitatively different from an addiction that leads to spending needed money on the drug of choice or having career setbacks because of the addiction or ruining a family because of the addiction.   The man in story #3 might have a porn addiction - but he's a skeevy creep too if he's leering at teenager's rear ends and sneaking peeks up women's dresses at church.

Preparing Sons: Chapter 11 - Part 1

Honestly, I was surprised that the book didn't end immediately after Chapter 10.  The book is about how to prepare sons to earn enough to support a single income family and the last chapter covered what a teen needed to know or do before graduating high school.  In my world, high school graduation is the beginning of adult life.  Parents are still very important for advice, emotional support and financial support - but a person in their late teens needs to start making career choices for themselves since they are the ones who live with the consequences.

Steven Maxwell disagrees with me strongly in the chapter titled "Post Graduation":

If you have only recently begun to consider the subject, there is much to do. It will be difficult to attain what you might have if you had started sooner, but not impossible! Begin by rereading this book beginning at chapter six. Be confident that you are building on a sure foundation. Then proceed gradually to apply the suggestions in each chapter. Proceed to the next chapter only after you are satisfied with the progress your son has made through the suggestions in the current chapter. Be committed that if it takes your son until he is in his twenties to have him properly prepared, you will do it.

For the parents who have been preparing their son for years, be encouraged that the fruits of your labor are close to being harvested. You may decide that your son is to continue his education and training. Or there may be other plans. Possibly he owns a business or is about to begin employment with another company. Regardless of the direction, be sure of God's leading. (pg. 163)

I've had plenty to say in other posts about irresponsible homeschooling, but I've never met a homeschooling family that waited until a student had graduated high school to think about post-graduation options.  Even the least organized, most hands-off parent knows that the next step is for the kid to become employed somewhere.  That often works because there are plenty of jobs for people who do not have a high school diploma in retail or restaurant services that are underpaid and have high turnover. 

Maxwell's plan to have the imaginary family who waited to prepare their kid for the workforce until he was 16-19 years old is ridiculous.  The imaginary family does not need to have their teenage son shadow Dad without helping in the family business as recommended for the 2-6 year old kids or start with extremely basic organizing tasks in the 7-12 category.   Definitely skip requiring that the kid's first job be willing to have a parent stop by whenever the parent wants to judge the Christian nature of the workers and clients.  My two-cents is based on having worked with some really unprepared high school students; have them get a job at one of those retail or food service places I mentioned before.   Those places expect to have to do a lot of employee training on workplace expectations anyways so may as well see if they can teach the kid faster than you can

Maxwell ignores an inconvenient legal truth - in my state, once a person has completed a high school diploma they are a legal adult for purposes of working.  In the US, legal emancipation happens at age 18 regardless of readiness of the person in question.  The system works pretty well, but can require some advanced planning for families with offspring struggling with developmental, cognitive or emotional disabilities.  A parent may be willing to slog through the Maxwell plan of career-readiness for half a decade or so, but they have no legal recourse if their young adult offspring decides to follow another path.  CP/QF parents can use financial restrictions to penalize young adults who stray from the family "mission" and many will restrict access of "wayward" young adults to their younger siblings - but all of these things are time-limited by nature.   Once a young adult has a job at a store or restaurant, they will meet other young adults looking for a roommate in their house/apartment.  Plenty of minimum wage workers make do by holding multiple jobs and sharing costs with multiple roommates.  Bluntly, a young adult who is driven enough to get out of a family-based cult has most of the soft skills they need to move up into positions that pay a bit more than minimum wage on the first step to a long-term career that is closer to lower-middle class income.

The second paragraph is just strange.  As children become teens, they should be taking on more and more of the responsibility and excitement of planning their own careers.  Parents shift from making the decisions on behalf of their children (like "Should Juinor start preschool this year?") to taking on a purely advice-giving role (like "Which job offer should I accept?")

Maxwell begins the chapter topics by rehashing the same fluffy spiritual goals he's been trying to make sound different from the chapter on ages 2-6.   This time, he decides to try to see how scaring his readers goes over:

(... )there are undoubtedly many working men who are not mature believers, but as examples in Chapter One illustrate, there are consequences. Even if your son goes on to receive an advanced degree, if he lacks the ability to make wise, Biblical decisions, there is no guarantee that he will ever earn enough income to adequately provide for his family. (pg. 164)

Who knew that the answer to the War on Poverty was as easy as being saved in a method viewed as valid by Steven Maxwell?  How did the government miss that the best predictor of having a middle or upper-class income was being a conservative fundamentalist Baptist with no advanced education or training and reliance of God to plan family size?   I mean, it's clear that as soon as one of God's Elect becomes an atheist they will lose all their financial freedom.

Seriously, Maxwell.  That's an especially daft one even for this book.

The next topic is service.  Maxwell gives two examples:

For example, several post-high school young adults from our church minister at a local Housing Authority. They work with the children from the complex in a weekly after-school program. Jesus is proclaimed in deep friendships between the children who attend the program and the leaders are developed.

Another example of serving in the post high school years is Christopher. He helps his grandfather with a living Last Supper performance each year around Resurrection Sunday. He is responsible for the lights, staging, sound, set up, and tear down. There are lots of details to manage, including overseeing his assistants during the performance. It takes a significant amount of time each year, but he loves to help. (pg. 165)

I am extremely curious where these post-high school young adults in the Maxwell's retirement home church came from.  Are they employees who come to the service weekly?  Are they grandchildren of residents?   Hmmm.   Equally striking to me was the fact that none of the precious Maxwell hot-house flower young adults were encouraged - or allowed - to participate in that program.  I suspect that participation in that ministry would have been eye-opening if not mind-blowing for Christopher or Sarah.   When the book was written, Nathan was working full-time launching his technology career so he probably wasn't available, but both Sarah and Christopher have talents that would have been appreciated by that ministry.

Instead, Christopher continues the yearly round of doing the same production under the watchful eyes of his grandfather.  I stage-crewed in two plays a year during high school and spent most of my childhood "helping" at my dad's high school productions so I'll let you in on a secret.  The first time a company works in an auditorium (or church) is the hardest because everything is new.  The next hardest thing is when members of the company move up in their job category because being an assistant to the sound manager is different from being the sound manager.   Doing the stage crew work for the same production yearly in the same space is not difficult because the crew has already figured out the kinks of how to build the set, light the stage and optimizing the sound.   Yeah, there are always a few snags each year, but it's not like he's being dropped into a new auditorium with a different show every year.

In the chapter, Maxwell dives into a section on purchasing a home debt-free by having a young adult start their own business.   This section requires a pause for discussion at the end of each paragraph so I am going to separate it into its own post for next week.

After that topic, Maxwell decides to double-down on his objections to academic higher education followed by objections to seeking vocational training from anyone else:

Whether your son continues his education - and, if so, where he goes - may be one of the biggest decisions of his life. Schools are described as learning institutions. The students sitting under professor's teaching will be influenced by that professor's words and attitudes. If the school is a secular institution, your son could adopt that worldview or at the very least be influenced by it. The university he attends, could potentially impact every decision he makes after having attended that school.

[...]

If you choose to send your son on for more education, I implore you to be zealous in your evaluation of the school and your son's maturity. Instead of the Godly influence of his parents, peers and professors will now surround him. That is why you want to carefully evaluate your son's maturity, the school, and God's direction where higher education is concerned. (pg. 168)

Wow.  The sentence that explains that schools are "learning institutions" deserves some sort of Captain Obvious award. 

As a practical matter, if a young adult is unable to hear about another worldview without immediately giving in and following that worldview, parents should simply give up all hope for that kid.   They should also invest in a good lawyer and psychologist because the family is going to be forcibly bailing their kid out of cults for the rest of their lives. 

In my experience, college students are fairly impervious to different worldviews.  The stereotypical atheist professor - or his liberal counterpart of the fundamentalist Christian aimed at conversion - can certain blather on about their worldview, but the students will pretty much tune them out.  More usefully (or less depending on the point of view), the students will also probably ding the professor at student evaluation time for wasting their time if they are off-topic in a class that's required for a major or a minor.

Next, Maxwell decides to mix a real problem with an imaginary one:

Unfortunately, if God isn't directing your son to attend higher education and you encourage him to go, his life may never be the same. If God hasn't provided the finances, your son could carry the financial burden of repaying student loans for many years. Many young men meet their spouses at college. If your son isn't living in the center of God's will, how will that affect his consideration of a spouse? Other wrong influences may negatively affect his walk with the Lord and his relationship with you. All of these can have a potentially damaging in fact on your son's provision for single-income family. That is why I encourage you to be certain higher education is God's will. (pg. 169)

Try reading that paragraph aloud with a dramatic "Dum-Dum-DUUUUM!" at the end of each sentence that includes "God" or "the Lord" in it.  It really improves the experience for me!

To paraphrase: If your adult son goes to college, he will want control over his life.  Avoid that trap or you won't be able to arrange his marriage.

I'm flabbergasted that Maxwell can't see that he's undermining his entire spirituality training regimine in this paragraph.  People have been training their son in being a Godly Christian Who Walks with The Lord (TM) since infancy but the training is so flimsy that taking "Business Finance Law" with an atheist professor is going to cause the student to become an apostate immediately.   

Practically, young adults should be mindful of the amount of loans they take out to pursue advanced education or training.  People can and have ended up with absurd amounts of debt relative to the salary they can expect to earn on leaving college.   Ironically, CP/QF families shouldn't be dismissive of this; it's the direct result of changing private college loans from being highly monitored by the government to opening the loans to free market practices.   The free market is as Christian as the American flag, you know! *rolls eyes*

Lastly, Maxwell makes sure parents know that their kid can totally homeschool their way through advanced training, don'tcha know!

Training is often a high priced commodity, and if your son is able to study on his own, he can save thousands of dollars. For example, we agreed with Nathan that God was leading him to pursue further certification. To learn the necessary material he could either take classes or by the curriculum and study independently. Nathan chose the study on his own even though he knew it would take significantly longer to get a certification. He was successful in achieving a certification and saved himself thousands of dollars. (pg. 170)

I enjoyed a good giggle when I read this part.  There are a lot of well-paid skilled manufacturing and utilities jobs that have training programs that are fully funded by business-union partnerships.  In my area, jobs like pipefitters, HVAC, electricians, plumbers and welders have apprentice programs where a candidate will receive 3-5 years of training that is fully paid while also being placed in local businesses.  This means that at the end of the paid training, most journeymen have multiple job offers in businesses that will support their continuing education to become masters.  Financially, let's just say that a journeyman generally makes at least what I did as a full-time teacher and a master would outearn me easily.   For these trades, studying on his own (like John Maxwell did) is NEVER cost-effective.

Let me demonstrate. 

A lot of my former students were interested in nursing, but wouldn't be able to qualify for a BS or AS program in nursing right away.  Instead, they took a short training course to become an CNA.  The total maximum cost for all tuition, fees, and equipment is $1,580 dollars.  CNAs in our area make between $10-14 dollars an hour.

 $1580 dollars / $10 dollars per hour = 158 hours.

Essentially, if a person can study for the CNA and pass it in LESS than 158 hours (which is 19 8-hour days) of study, they may be better off studying on their own rather than taking the course.   (I'm ignoring some of the other benefits like employment help - but you can estimate it by taking $80 dollars off the total cost of tuition for gained day of employment if you want.)

Let's look at Nathan's choice.  A local program in leading to the same security IT certifications he has takes a total of $7,500 in tuition and fees for an expected salary of $25 dollars per hour.  That means the mathematical breakeven point is around 300 hours of study.  Now, the CNA program took roughly the same amount of time as the breakeven point of studying by yourself - but the IT program moves a person through in 180 hours (or half the time) - so unless the person can study at the same pace as the class, they are better off paying the money for the class.

The funniest one is John Maxwell's choice.  To become a plumber or electrician apprentice would have cost him $0 in tuition plus a paycheck of at least $10 per hour while studying.   Choosing to study for those certifications on his own COST him money.

Good thing he listened to his dad, huh.....

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 19

I am over this book.  I've been over this book for a while, but I'm reaching the point that I'm dragging my feet to avoid having to blog about it.  The stories make me feel claustrophobic by proxy. 

On a positive note, we've got about three chapters left and I skipped one entirely.  Oh, and the remaining chapters are short.   At the end of the chapters, I'm going to discuss my feelings about some of the "projects" included at the end.

Anyway, this chapter is titled "The Heart of a Maiden".  It commemorates the day that Mrs. McDonad's daughters gave their hearts to the safekeeping of their father.  Most of the chapter is reprints of the letters or poems the older daughters wrote and read to their father during the ceremony.  There's not much to discuss there; it's pretty standard teenage writing.

The chapter starts with a snippet written by Jessica McDonald:

This was our morning - the morning we gave Daddy our " hearts." He already had our hearts, of course, this is the moment we showed him we really meant it. Today we gave him a keepsake - a representation of our hearts - a symbol of our trust in him. I'll remember this morning for the rest of my life. From the way Daddy smiled, I think he will too. (pg. 172)

I remembered this quote because Jessica McDonald unconsciously demonstrated how absent the entire idea of consent is in CP/QF homes.  There is no way for any of the daughters to decide that they are perfectly content keeping their own hearts.   There's never any discussion that teens or adult women are capable of managing romantic relationships without a male gatekeeper.  This absence of a way to opt out is important because if a person can't say "no", they can't really say "yes" either.   Yes, Jessica and her sisters are excited about ceremonially handing their hearts over to the keeping of their father - but it is meaningless since he "already" had their hearts.

Before our children reached the " dating" age, we made a decision to explore courtship. There are many different opinions of what courtship should look like, and each family will have to determine how this will play out in their own lives.

In 2003, my daughters decided to give their father a special gift, one that will symbolize their willingness to trust in him with their hearts until the day he walks them down the aisle to entrust them to another in marriage. After the girls and I discuss their plan, I purchase a sterling silver engravable bar pin charm holder and had Malachi 4: 6 engraved on it in soft script. Each of my daughters then purchased a unique heart-shaped charm and wrapped them separately. ( I bought the younger girls' charms.) (pgs. 172-173)

Again, Mrs. McDonald demonstrates that even adult children are not allowed to have autonomy over their romantic lives.  The parents have decided that their children will meet spouses according to a courtship model created by the parents.   I see a practical problem with individual families deciding how courtship should go since this means that every family has a different set of guidelines.  This lack of autonomy is worrisome for the maturity level of the adults who are looking to get married and have children.   Of course, that lack of maturity may well be a feature of raising CP/QF children rather than a flaw; it's easier to prevent people from leaving when they don't have the emotional skills to do so.

I hope that she got all of Malachi 4:6 engraved on the holder since it states "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse".   I know that's a lot of characters to fit on a pin, but he's got a heap of daughters to hang heart charms for on the pin. 

Let's talk for a minute about how old the McDonald daughters were when this whole ceremony went down.  The oldest three young women were certainly old enough to be dating by US standards at ages 19, 17 and 16 so this ceremony makes sense.  The next daughter was 13.  That feels a bit young to me in broader US culture for anything other than going to a school dance or a movie with a young man.  After all, she's too young to drive.  In CP/QF land, it makes even less sense because she's not supposed to be thinking about romance at all since she's way too young to marry.   Their last three daughters were ages 5, 2, and 1.  Oh, there's an implication that the youngest girls will do the same ceremony when their older - but, holy shit, they should simply be spectators!  The five-year-old might remember the ceremony, but the two babies won't.    The only way I can wrap my head around it is that Mrs. McDonald pre-purchased the little girls heart charms to be sure that they matched (but they are supposedly unique) or to be sure that the charms wouldn't have been discontinued in the next 12 years or so. 

So...what happens when one of the girls get married?  Does he rip the charm off the pin?  Does he hand it to her husband at the altar?  Is handing the heart over to the husband the literal moment of marriage since women obviously can't handle something as hard as consenting to a marriage?

That's the end of the main section of the chapter.  In the middle of the "Share your heart" questions, there's a random list of tips for guarding your heart:

Practical tips for " guarding your heart":

1. Read God's Word and pray everyday. Specifically ask God to help you guard your heart. Pray for your father to make wise decisions regarding your training.

2. Avoid being alone with a young man. It is best to fellowship and foster healthy relationships with young men within the environment of the home and family.

3. Avoid fantasizing about who might be " Mr. Right." Stay on guard, especially when you sense that you may be attracted to a young man (or that he might be attracted to you). Remember your goal is to stay pure for the one you marry, both physically and emotionally.

4. Talk to your parents about your feelings. Let them know when you need prayer in a specific area. God has placed them over you for your protection -trust them and Him. (pg. 175)

Let's see. 

The fact that girls are supposed to pray for their father's to make good decisions about their "training" is super-weird in a creepy way.  What are they being trained for exactly?  If it's to be a wife and mother, shouldn't her MOM (who successfully navigated the transition from child to wife/mother) be making those decisions?

The second point is just going to make the awkward preteen and early teenage years when young people are trying to figure out how to interact with peers of the opposite gender without being totally self-conscious last forever.  Heck, Ask A Manager - which I love - already has a decent selection of people who are messing up their own careers by enforcing stricter versions of the Pence Rule.

The third point is going to make people insane while causing them to spend more time obsessing over Mr. Right.  The funniest part is that interacting with Mr. Right alone is the best way to kill a crush quickly. 

Number four is ok assuming that the daughter's parents are sane.  Raising a kid in emotion purity, though, feels like the parents might be a tad overprotective.   Also, remember that Geoffrey Botkin would deride every single guy his daughters were remotely interested in....and the sisters are both unmarried at 30-ish.
 

The following letters and poems were written by our daughters. None of us will ever forget Tiffany's wedding day, and the moment at the reception when my husband, with tears in his eyes, read her poem aloud, and handed to Ben Tiffany's heart on a chain. (pg. 175)

Huh. Tiffany's symbolic heart was handed off to Ben while everyone had to listen to a poem she wrote when she was 17. I 've been through worst toasts, I suppose.    What does Ben do with the charm now?  Does he have to wear it all the time?   Is he buried with the charm or does Tiffany reclaim it if he predeceases her?   

Probably best to simply leave it in Tiffany's jewelry box.

Mally Family rejoices in survival after neglecting basic safety:

I had lost track of the Mally family since I finished reviewing "Before You Meet Prince Charming" and decided to go visit their blog. 

Sarah Mally has written a new book for young women that teaches them to suppress all of their negative emotions or critical thoughts under the guise of following Jesus.   I'll probably review that at some point - but I prefer getting second-hand copies so it may be a while. 

Next up, Grace Mally wrote a post about how her family was in a serious single-vehicle accident during snowy weather.    Their brother Steven was driving when he lost control on an icy area.  The heavily loaded passenger van they were driving hit a post-and-cable center median barrier and went through it.   The van rolled across two lanes of oncoming traffic before stopping on the far side of the highway. 

The accident itself is pretty normal in the northern US.  Steven was trying to pass a semi-truck on the highway.  The passing lane is often less traveled and more slick than the right-hand through traffic lane.  The air flow around semi-trucks often includes areas of increased wind pressure.  A tall vehicle like a van is at higher risk for a rollover and can act like a sail in windy times. 

What really pisses me off is that Sarah, Grace and their mother were all not wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident - in spite of known bad weather and, oh yeah, the fact that seatbelts are counted as one of the most important public safety inventions of the 1900's. 

Grace ends with an asinine reflection about how people will remain safe until God decides to bring them home.   

My take is more cynical: people survive absolutely insanely dangerous life-choices pretty regularly - but I don't think God appreciates people who skip basic precautions. 

Idiots.

Dominion Orientated Femininity: Part Four

I think I've moved on beyond my disappointment that we will never know what Anna Sofia and Elizabeth's point number three is in their podcast "Dominion Orientated Femininity".   My guess for the third point is "A dominion woman doesn't waste time on proofing media" - but I am open to suggestions in the comments section. 

Let's see.  We can cover points 4-6 today.   I should warn you; I adore point six for so many reasons!  Let's jump in:

Point number four is: a dominion woman is invested in the family that God gave her. One verse that we love to look at about this is Psalm 144. And it says in verse 12 "Let our sons in their youth be as grown-up plants and our daughters as corner pillars fashioned as for a palace." This is an amazing piece of imagery we have here. One of the Webster's 1828 definitions of the word "pillar" is "A supporter that which sustains or upholds that on which some superstructure rests." And this helps us understand a little more about what the role of a daughter is in her family. She doesn't just have an ornamental role. She`s there actually to help hold up her family to help support her family. But the other thing that I get from this verse is this is not a crude, roughly hewn pillar that this girl is. She's been polished, very carefully polished, so that she not only gives strength to the home, but she also provides grace and beauty to the home.

Anna Sofia/Elizabeth seems to have gotten swept away in the excitement of the verse and forgot that it's a piece of imagery.  The next verse says "May our barns be filled with produce of every kind; may our sheep increase by thousands by tens of thousands in our fields!"  I doubt the Psalmist was creating lists of what types of produce was in the barn or how the number of sheep could increase by a thousand-fold. 

In terms of describing the human offspring of the family, the Psalmist was symbolically saying "may your children be healthy, fertile and beautiful".   Let's be honest: childhood mortality rates were atrocious. The only social safety net for old age was having living adult offspring to support you.  Having a pretty daughter (or two or three) could mean a better marriage, more grandchildren and a comfortable old age.

It's unlikely that the main interests of families raising girls during Biblical times was raising a daughter who could bring grace or beauty to a home.  A strong girl who was skilled at the tasks of keeping a home, preparing food, making textiles and caring for the ill would be far more useful than a girl who could make the house look nice by arranging flowers.

It's also interesting to me this verse seems to presuppose that a woman would be living at home with her family. But we need to realize that there's a way a girl can live in her home without really living in her home. Her body can be there, but her mind can be somewhere completely different. Her heart can be somewhere different. We've known girls who have removed themselves from the home in every way except physically. And I think the reason is because all families have problems and some girls see the problems in their families and they become sullen. They become bitter. They give up on making anything change and daughters can help make things change.

 Some girls give up and they withdraw into themselves and into their own little private world. Their dreams, their fantasies, their novels, whatever they like to use to help them escape. They are waiting for something better. They say, "We're waiting until we get married. That's when our life is going to really start. That's the family that will be our real family." And so they're not engaged in the home. They're not engaged in the relationships there. They are not engaged in the business of the home. They're not trying to improve the atmosphere of the home. Their energies are not focused on their families and sometimes we've heard them say, "Well, uhnh! Why should I get really invested in this family because I'm just going to be leaving soon?" Those are the girls who never leave. Because what young man is going to look at a young woman who is not invested in the relationships God gave her and say, "That's the kind of wife I want! That's the kind of wife I want helping me and raising my children!"? Those girls do not usually get married. And so we all need to be invested in the families the Lord has given us right now.

I'm skeptical about using an ancient song to discuss the role of daughters in the home because the daughters are described as pillars in a castle.   If we're putting that much emphasis on imagery, the fact that the daughters were castle pillars instead of pillars in a home implies that God wants women to be outside their family at maturity.

In CP/QF homes, unmarried adults daughters have no power in the family structure.  Their father is the head of the household.  Adult sons living at home at least bring in money which gives them some power.  The mother in the household still maintains primacy over raising the children and has a far longer standing relationship with the father.   Telling unmarried adult daughters that they should change the issues within their family is absurd; they have no power to make anything change.

The reason that unmarried daughters mentally withdraw from their families is that they realize how powerless they are.  Staying enmeshed in their family of origin doesn't help adult daughters find a spouse to marry.   There are plenty of examples of good CP/QF adult women who follow this advice and pass years or decades as unpaid au pairs in their parents' home and businesses like Jana Duggar, Sarah Maxwell, Sarah Mally,  and, oh yes, Anna Sofia Botkin and Elizabeth Botkin.

And that takes Anna to our next point which is number 5: A dominion woman lives in the real world.

And I want to talk about something that a lot of us young ladies have a tendency to do. We women love beautiful, feminine, romantic pictures, don't we? But let me tell you something about these images. This is not a picture of the real world. This is not even an accurate depiction of history. This is not what women looked like during the Roman and Greek Era or the Medieval Era. These are romantic depictions of history. Real life doesn't look like this. Real women don't look like this. Real houses don't look like this. But we young ladies can have a tendency to idolize these beautiful, feminine, romantic images and to lose ourselves in the beauty and the romance. But this is something that we need to be extremely careful about. And when we look around our world and we can see that it's unromantic. It's ugly. It's ungodly. It's perishing. It's so easy for us to want to escape into these beautiful, romantic pictures and want to just lie around "Oh, if only the world were liked this! If only homes looked like this! If only we looked like this! I'm sure that things were much more romantic in history. It's too bad things are so unromantic now." This is a very dangerous thing for girls to do. And girls can do this by looking at pictures. They can retreat into books. They can retreat into movies, romance novels. There are so many different avenues for young ladies to want to escape to.

Ooof. 

In the first few sentences, Anna Sofia manages to make a mish-mash of everything I learned in my history and humanities classes in high school and college.   I think she's talking about Romantic style paintings of events in Classical Greece, the Roman Empire and the Medieval Era.   I think that straightens out the first bit because the art types of Greece, Rome and Medieval Europe are not that similar.  Trying to make the images I remember from Greek and Roman art fit the description of "romantic" and "feminine" makes my head hurt.

Once I straightened that out, I realized that Anna Sofia was sharing the fact that paintings don't depict history accurately as a big, life-changing idea!  I'm both horrified and amused by that declaration.  My horror comes from yet another example of how frightening uneducated the Botkin family assumes their listeners are - and the Botkin presumably know that better than I do.  My amusement comes from the fact that my reaction is "No shit."   Have you seen a painting from those times that depicts smallpox scars?  How about women dying in or after childbirth?  How about crushed limbs from farming accidents?  Yeah, successful artists generally do well by selling what people like to see - pretty farmlands, healthy children, beautiful women - rather than what is really there.

If a person is lying around wishing they were alive in the 'good ol' days', they need to study history more.   Everyone enjoys physically taxing labor interspaced with disease and starvation, right?

And we need to be grateful for the battleground that God has given us. And not desire to live in a different sphere or a different generation or a different world or a world that never existed. It's not for us to wish that we could have authority in the gates. And it's not for us to wish that we could live in Jane Austen's England or Victorian high society and we really should not wish that we lived in Greek and Roman times. It's not for us to escape into fantasy worlds. This messed up world, this crooked and perverse generation, this America which is scheduled for judgement is the world that God chose for us. And it's the world that we need to be thankful for.

Got a Bible verse for this blanket condemnation of wanting to live in an easier time or place?  No?

The only sentence in that whole chunk that interests me is the one that discusses how women shouldn't want to have power in society or "authority at the gates".   The idea is out-of-place in the middle of a section on how women should be happy in the time and place that God put them because in Botkin-land women should never ever even aspire to be an authority.  I think that sentence gives a bit of insight into what life must be like for Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin.  They've grown up in the mutual fantasy world that Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin have spun where the Botkin Family is destined for greatness.  The parents and sons have carved up separate spheres of influence and are waiting for the day that God destroys the US and hands leadership over to the Botkins and their ilk.  It's a disturbing vision - but how much more disturbing is it when the Botkin Sisters realize that they've been handed the most inconsequential portion of rebuilding society?  Their job is to reshape women's roles into "helper of men".  See, I just did their job for them in three words; it's not that complicated. :-P   Their other job is to birth and raise children - but Anna Sofia and Elizabeth's children are not counted as part of the Botkin patriarchal line so getting husbands for them is not a priority for Geoffrey Botkin.

Anna Sofia/Elizabeth inserts a random quote by Rushdoony about how bad it is when people don't want to follow God's Law.   I'm skipping it because it is long, I can't verify the quote, and I'm not entirely sure that the speaker doesn't reflect on the quote in the middle.

After that, we learn that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth have done research themselves - online even!

Part of the reason that girls seek to escape is because they're bored. Part of the reason girls seek to escape is because they are not satisfied with where God has put them and it's the easiest way to deal with hardship. This is something that I've had a tendency to do. This is something that Elizabeth has had a tendency to do. I think that is something that we all have a tendency to do. And we need to be very careful about this.

Elizabeth and I have done a lot of research online and talking to young ladies. One of the things that we've noticed is that they all have a tendency to escape into novels. We didn't realize that this was as big a deal as it really is, but 90% of the young ladies that we've talked to have at one point been addicted to romance novels even if they wouldn't call them novels. It's partly because as homeschoolers we love to read, but it can become an idol for us as it has for so many of the young women that we've talked to.

Allow me to propose that the real reason for boredom among young unmarried women in CP/QF families:  the girls know on some level that they are being held back from fully living the lives God gave them.  The CP/QF unmarried women authors I've read seem to have natural talents including intellect and a willingness to work.  If properly educated and allowed to follow their own interests, most if not all of these women would be well-established in a career by their late twenties.  Women who are in their mid to late thirties could be leaders in traditionally female occupations like teaching early childhood, working in community health or home-care aide.    Instead, these women are spinning their wheels in family-based "ministry" businesses where they often do most of the work but receive none of the accolades or praise. 

Anna Sofia's declaration that 90% of homeschooled stay-at-home-daughters become addicted to "romance" novels makes me giggle every time.   I'm trying to imagine the physical side-effects of withdrawal from romance novels.  Maybe the young women become overly skeptical and morose.

Everyone needs a break now and again - and I think SAHD need a break more than the average person.  Reading a book - especially something as un-edifying as a Christian romance novel - is a tame way of rebuilding energy.

Now, I unveil my favorite point: Number 6!!!!  I love number six!

One of the attributes of a dominion woman - number 5 - was she lives in the real world.

Number six is a dominion woman embraces a hard life. And a dominion woman loves a hard life.

That's it. 

There is no more discussion, information, or elaboration on what a "hard life" is or what "loving a hard life" looks like. 

I suppose this lack of elaboration is because they didn't want the entire female component of the audience to start crying or defensively arguing.   From an outsider point of view, women in CP/QF have a brutally hard life from start to end.   They are trained from infancy to ignore their own wishes, wants, desires and talents in exchange for acceptance in their family.  Their academic education is minimal and undercut by implying that learning to do daily chores is the same thing as learning math or science.  Young girls are taught that physical and emotional purity is the cornerstone of their worth as a person.  The young women are indoctrinated that anything other than an early marriage that produces many children is a failure - but they are also prevented from socializing with the young men who would marry them.   If they marry, they will spend their lives juggling the impossible tasks of running a home and school on little predictable income while being pregnant or nursing.   On top of that, many married CP/QF women attempt to bring in income through an additional home-based business.  How the women manage to do that with all of the other work - and without making their husbands seem like poor providers - is beyond me.   Those who married young and continue having children into their 40's will be raising children until they are in the mid-sixties.   On the other hand, some women never marry and live with their parents their whole life.  Even in a healthy family, supporting one or more unmarried adult daughter can be a financial strain.  In an unhealthy family, the daughter(s) are continually exposed to the whims and caprices of their parents.  At the same time, the daughter is aware that she has failed to fulfill God's single, uniform plan for women: to marry and bear children.

Life is hard - but CP/QF creates crushing burdens for women.

Preparing Sons: Chapter 10 - Part Two

The second half of Steven Maxwell's chapter on raising preteen and teenage boys to be workers in "Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family" quickly devolves into a mishmash of educational and vocational topics.  Generally I review the chapter in the order that the topics appear in the book - but this chapter makes the teacher in me twitch a little bit so I rearranged the sections in an order that makes more sense.   In the actual chapter, Maxwell covers computer literacy followed by starting a small business then segues into the evils of employment outside the family before doubling back to discuss college preparatory courses and creating real-life learning scenarios.   For my sanity, I've moved the section on college prep and project-based learning to after computer literacy to link all of the "homeschool" topics before moving into working outside the home.  The saddest bit of the change for me is that I suspect that the nameless non-family member proofreader that the Maxwells employ made the same suggestion and was shot down.

Ah, well.  Hopefully the proofreader gets paid well - or knows how to fire a client.  Perhaps going unnamed is a requirement on behalf of the proofreader.

I'm all in favor of computer literacy - but Maxwell wants major props for reinventing the wheel:

You will want to find computer application projects that require him to learn more. The spreadsheet is very common business application, but you will need to work on coming up with practical projects for him to use what he is learning. If he has his own business, there will be data from the business that he can use in a spreadsheet. We learn by doing. Your job is to find computer projects that will cause him to grow.

You might be good with an inexpensive, generic home office software package. After he has mastered the word processor, spreadsheet, and database, it will be time to purchase a professional business office package. This may be a significant expense, but it will pay dividends for his lifetime. Pray that God will allow your expenditures to be revenue-producing. Then your son will be able to finance his own learning experiences.

What will you do when your son runs into difficulty learning or using a software program? Will you let him quit in frustration? No! Encourage him to persevere, with Dad right beside him. Go to the library, and check out books. Use the web for research. (pg. 150)

Back in the late 1990's, I was in a weekly computer class at my elementary school.  The class was based on age-appropriate academic and business projects that we completed to learn how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  In the early 2000's, I took two college classes on desktop publishing and Excel for general education credits.  Both courses' assignments were based on business or education-ready projects.   (Sidenote: Desktop publishing was a great class to take as a future teacher.  I learned a lot of design principles that let me create classroom materials that looked finished and professional quickly.)  In the last two years, I've taken courses on using R (a freeware statistics program that is very powerful) at my graduate program.  I'm sure you can finish the sentence - because the coursework was based on creating analyses of real data sets found in biological sciences.   

The funniest bit?  Parents don't need to create projects for their kids in these areas.  There are plenty of gently-used soft cover textbooks available on Amazon for under $20.00 that have more projects ready to use than a homeschooling parent could be expected to create.

The second paragraph is a tad dated.  To save money, I've used Open Office which is free for at least 5 years now.  (I think I might be closer to 10 years, but I'm not certain because I can't clearly remember if I was using Open Office or Microsoft Office on my desktop before I married my husband.)  Open Office has a few quirks if someone is used to using Microsoft Office but none of the quirks are deal-breakers in my opinion.   I find Maxwell's sudden solicitude on the price of Microsoft Office strange; a professional version of Microsoft Office (or similar) runs around $300; a home/school version is about half that cost.  It's certainly pricy - but this is a guy who humble-bragged about putting at least $1200 down on Delphi plus a refurbished computer for Joseph.  Unlike Delphi, the entire family can use a copy of Microsoft Office and learning Microsoft Office is a basic expectation for high school graduates today. 

Accepting that one of the costs of homeschooling a high schooler is purchasing a copy Microsoft Office makes far more sense to me than praying that the family will make money from having a copy of Microsoft Office.    The Maxwells have made that work by counting Sarah Maxwell's bookkeeping work for her brother's companies as income, but that feels a bit shaky to me. I think my main objection is that none of the Maxwell kids were allowed to go to college so I can only imagine how much more useful Ms. Maxwell's services would be if she had been allowed to get a finance or accounting degree.

The next topic we're going to look at is Steven Maxwell's ideas on educating teens to be ready for college.  The advice is underwhelming.

If you know your son is headed for college, you will want your son's high school courses geared towards college prep. You will have to spend time researching entrance requirements to potential schools your son might attend. Do this before he even enters high school so you can plan his course of study to meet, and perhaps exceed, the university's entrance requirements!

This would be a good time to check out scholarship criteria since this may affect the course is your son takes. We know a family whose son qualified for excellent academic scholarships. When his university rank the top academic students to determine the amount of scholarship money each would receive, the basic academic courses and test scores were so close that the school rated highest the students who had four years of a foreign language. Information like this can be very helpful in planning your son's high school courses. (pg. 157)

*slow claps*

That's pretty horrible advice on both fronts. 

Colleges list the minimum requirements for entrance. You do not want to educate your college bound child to the minimum requirements because there is no real benefits to being in the bottom 10% of an incoming class.  According to the College Board, most colleges expect incoming freshmen to have had four years of English/Language Arts, three years of math, three years of laboratory science, two and a half years of Social studies, two years of a foreign language and one year of an art/music/performance class.   That schedule leaves lots of space for electives so most high school students who have a sense of if they are more science/math types or humanities types adapt accordingly.  I knew I was a science geek so I took four years of high school math including AP Calculus AB and four years of lab science courses.   My friends who were humanities-bound took the less math and science than I did but took every elective writing course available.

Colleges have scads of scholarships available.  Looking up the major requirements for full-ride scholarships at colleges that a student might attend is an ok idea - but lots of those have individual requirements involving ACT/SAT scores, high school class ranking, GPA, strength of courses and tests created by the college.  A full-ride scholarship is nice - but the vast majority of college students receive a combination of scholarships and loans.  Most students are seeking to get as much scholarship money as possible and that's where traditional schooling has some advantages.  Traditional schools have a broad number activities available for after-school activities.  Many of these activities can lead to scholarships at the college level.  Personally, I received a scholarship that required a demonstrated history of leadership which I showed through my work in Peer Ministry.  This isn't impossible for a homeschool student by any stretch - but their resume is going to be stronger if their activities can be verified through an outside source like a community group or established church.

After shitty advice on how to prepare students for college, Maxwell decides to ad-lib some ideas about how to create project-based learning classes in for a homeschooler:

Courses could be developed for just about any interest. Working models of car engines are available. First he could build the model, and then he could write a paper about how it works. Next you could research air conditioning technology. Go to a junkyard and purchase the components of the system. Bring them home and reassemble them into a simulated working system. Finally take each piece apart and have him describe how it works. In similar fashion, courses for other interests can be developed. (pg. 158)

I created three science project-based learning classes at the last high school I taught at.  I had two separate issues in creating them.  First, creating a good quality project based learning class is extremely time consuming.  Let's assume Maxwell was describing an automotive technology class.  A good curriculum would start with a list of objectives describing the learning goals for the student.  A sample objective could be "the student will describe the function of the parts of an internal combustion engine."  The activities of building the model engine and writing a paper about how it works would (presumably) teach the objective and give the student a way to demonstrate the objective.  For the paper, the teacher would need to create a grading criteria for the paper so both the teacher and student know what is expected.   I'm willing to bet that building the model alone will not teach the kid how an engine works unless there is additional educational material like videos or readings on how internal combustion engines work.   Putting all this together for one unit (and that's one unit, not a course) would take me an hour or so - but would probably take a bit longer the first time a teacher did it. 

The second issue is that project-based learning classes get expensive quickly.  A good - but not great - model engine runs around $50.00.  A used-book on how cars run is around $20.00 - but could save the parent-teachers hours of work in terms of educational material gathering.  The cost of an automotive air conditioning system from a junkyard depends a lot on the junkyard - and how much work the family is willing/able to do to find and remove the AC unit themselves.  (Plus, junkyards are the last home of cars that have been through every other repair option so a working AC unit might be an impossible dream....)  Pulling the unit personally is much cheaper than having the junkyard pull it - but it does require having a bunch of tools available.   I really don't know how much the Holy Grail intact automotive AC unit at the local junkyard costs - but let's assume it's $50.00.   How many CP/QF families have $120 dollars to spend on two units of a course for one kid?  Remember, buying a copy of the professional version of Office is a major expenditure according to Maxwell.

Once Maxwell has shared his educational big ideas - in spite of never having taught homeschool himself - he shares his logic on shorting his kids' academic education to cram in extra computer time.

When our oldest sons were in high school, the Lord was not directing them to college. Therefore, we encourage them to study math only through Algebra II, using further math course time for computer study instead. They were seeing God leading them into having their own computer related business. The computer courses would be necessary for their vocations; calculus might not. If at some point the Lord showed them a change of vocational course that needed higher math, they could always study at at that point. (pg. 159)

Interesting fact: None of Maxwell's kids have been directed to go to college by the Lord!  I haven't been able to find the exact statistics to do the math - but the chances of zero kids attending college in a family of eight with one parent with a college degree due to random chance is pretty damn small.  In a different Maxwell book I snagged second-hand on Amazon, Steve and Teri share two anecdotes of their two youngest kids explaining why they personally don't need college when the kids were 15.  That implies that the Maxwell kids have been indoctrinated to view college as a waste of time.
Sadly, it would require massive amount of time input for the Maxwell kids - but mainly because their parents skimped badly on educating them the first time around. Compared to the College Board recommendations,  the Maxwell family homeschool graduates missed the requirements in English, math, science and foreign language.  They do hit the bare minimum in social studies and art - which is better than nothing, I guess.

Now, Steven Maxwell likes dropping his electrical engineering credentials to gain some level of respect - but his kids are so far behind on the math and science requirements to enter an engineering program that it's absurd.  Engineering schools expect freshmen to be in Calculus I - but many students will have already completed Calculus I in high school.  The Maxwells complete Saxon Algebra I and II. This puts them around 2 years behind; they would need to complete a Geometry class and a Pre-Calculus class.  In terms of science, the family only takes the most basic Apologia Physical Science class in 9th grade before stopping.   That puts them three years behind since they are missing biology, chemistry and physics.

Did Steven and Teri spend as much time explaining to their kids the fact that they were under-educating them as they spent teaching them that college was evil?  Do they have a plan for how an adult will catch up on 2 years of math and 3 years of laboratory science if God wants the adult to be a doctor or an engineer?

Did I mention what the Maxwell parents were swapping out instead of academics?  They were swapping out either working for one of the Maxwell family businesses in one form or another:

Nathan and Christopher to get a lawn mowing business when they were ages 13 and 11. Maxwell's mowing service was an excellent source of income and experience for them. To ensure that there was positive growth for the boys through their business, Terry and I gave it oversight as needed. We had a voice in the business decisions and also acted behind the scenes to provide quality control.

It would be worthwhile to list some of the benefits our sons experienced. The boys learn to work hard under physically difficult circumstances, as summers in Kansas are hot and muggy! They learned to manage money and performed business accounting. They acquired customer service skills. If their business was to succeed, they had to do their best. Within a couple of years, the boys were averaging $15 per hour each, allowing them to save a significant amount of money. They learn the importance of maintaining their equipment. They had to manage their time and spend it wisely. They were able to set their own schedule consistent with the needs of the family. They were never bored. They had good fellowship and avoided evil companions. They also developed a reputation throughout the neighborhood is hardworking, honest young men. A young man's business can be of tremendous profit, and not just financially. (pg. 151)

CP/QF leaders are hard-core believers in starting a family-run small business.  That's definitely one way to earn money - but it's hardly the only way.  Starting a business is hard.  Not everyone has the skill set to launch a successful business and not every business can make enough profit for an owner to use it as a single-income source.   The Maxwell Family already knows this; they've had plenty of successful businesses - but they've had businesses fail miserably as well.

Steven Maxwell began Communication Concepts Inc as a printing and online forms sale company.  Somehow, this company morphed into small-business freelance IT consulting business.  Until a few weeks ago, most of the Maxwell sons along with Steven Maxwell were prominently featured on the website.  Now, the only people on the website are Nathan Maxwell as an IT professional and Annie (the middle sister) as the call center representative.  In the strangest cross-cross marketing I've seen, the Maxwells (as of 2013) still list Communication Concepts Inc as the publisher for all of the Titus 2 books - including the "Managers of their ...." series, "Preparing Sons...." and my current favorite "Raising Great Conversationalists".

In addition to Communication Concepts Inc., Nathan and Joseph Maxwell started a company that sold web-based classes to prepare other homeschooled conservative people to pass computer credential classes.   ITonRamp survived for about four years before closing in 2015.  It currently offers one set of videos to rent for $65.00 for 6 months.  Sarah Maxwell is in charge of sending people who order the videos worksheets to complete on their own.

Christopher Maxwell was involved in Communication Concepts Inc specializing in photography.  Since his photography business didn't really mesh well with CCI's ongoing specialization in computer security, he spun off  his own photography business. He will only photograph weddings that have modest women's dresses, no alcohol and no dancing - and then implies that his schedule is open because of his own choices about his family rather than having eliminated 99% of weddings in the US.   He mentions in the pricing section that he has an assistant who travels with him, but needs a separate hotel room.   I suspect his assistant is either Sarah or Mary Maxwell.

In addition to photographing weddings (and possibly photos for internet sales), Christopher Maxwell has an underwhelming website advertising his skills at fixing websites for small businesses.

Sarah Maxwell is a daughter - but she's been the main force behind Titus 2's online presence including all of the "Managers of Their...." forums and updates since she was in high school. (This becomes weirdly clear if you read the family schedules in the "Managers of Their School" book.  Sarah's schedule from when she was 18-23 has most of the morning dedicated to working on "Managers of Their Home" work while Teri has no time available for that job.)  She's written something like 10 children's books that have been completely scrubbed of any questionable material like kids who disobey their parents.  She also does the bookkeeping for several of her brother's businesses.

Joseph is currently the lead designer at Swift Otter Solutions focuses on e-commerce site design, maintenance and support.  Steven, Christopher, and Jesse Maxwell are all listed as members of that company.  How Swift Otter is different from Christopher's separate business over at FourPointEleven is not entirely clear to me; maybe Christopher works only with sites that don't do business on the website?   In the section on "Work" for Swift Otter, there are ten completed projects listed - but there have been no new projects added in over a year.  The site is also offering free study guides for some Magento credentials in exchange for your email address.  I'm very curious why they want my email address that badly.

The only son who has stepped away from Maxwell conglomerate of businesses (a little) is John.    Instead, he has Maxwell Irrigation which offers an independent service of drafting irrigation designs for farms of all size.  Unfortunately, an independent draft of an irrigation design is useless if the farmer needs installation - and Maxwell Irrigation is light on experience in installing and maintaining irrigation equipment.    John also has a realtor's licence and his bio on that page states that he is a licensed Master Electrician and Master Plumber.  Being a Master Electrician is a major time-investment in Michigan so I was curious how he pulled off completing 12,000 hours of hands-on training in six years in a family that doesn't believe in working for others.  Silly me; Kansas doesn't licence electricians at the state level.  He might hold those credentials at the local level in Kansas City - but both of those simply requires passing a test and getting two people who work in the trade to vouch for your skills.  John's not entirely free of the Maxwell business snarl, though.  One of Christopher's sub-specialities in photography is real estate listings....

Ten adults of working age.  One non-profit ministry that sells a lot of materials.  Five for-profit businesses.  Two shuttered or failed businesses.  So many moving parts.

Perhaps a parent isn't quite sold on having their kid drag a mower around to the neighbors under the guise of a business.  Perhaps a parent is ok with their teenager working at the local greasy spoon or family owned business.  Don't worry; Maxwell can make that US rite of passage the doorway to hell!

The disadvantages of outside employment, if they are present, can offset all the advantages to include his paycheck. The pay is frequently far less than what the teen could earn from his own business. His boss dictates the hours of the son works. He can be exposed to significant worldly influences and temptations. It is possible that the worst negative could be for his heart to turn towards his boss or a co-worker. Work circumstances have even been known to lead to an immoral relationship at this vulnerable age. (pg. 153)

I got so busy tracking down the Maxwell businesses that I forgot to point out my pet peeve with the argument that teenagers can make more money working for themselves.   How did the Maxwell boys at age 13 and 11 finance a commercial lawn mower?  How did they take the mower to and from clients?  When the Maxwell sons were making $15 dollars/hour mowing lawns, was that amount before or after business expenses were removed?  How about taxes?  What did that work out to when including the dead time of late fall/winter/early spring? 

Yup.  A teenager who is old enough to work at a business (usually 15 or 16 years old) may well be exposed to swearing, visibly drunk or high people, unsaved coworkers and clients and people wearing standard American clothing.  I don't see the issue; if CP/QF adherents are supposed to be strong enough to change the entirety of US culture while converting everyone to Christianity, they need to know how to deal with US culture.

Having a teenager fall for a much different in age boss is rare enough; having the boss reciprocate those feelings in extremely rare.   Now, romances between coworkers who are teens are pretty darn common - but again - either CP/QF adherents can deal with being around people who don't believe in emotional purity and still hold their beliefs...or they can't.  If they can't, it's better to find that out at age 16 than at age 26.

Steven Maxwell's solution for this is....unique:

If you choose to let your son work outside the home, visit him often at the job. Make it a condition, with his employer, of his working there. Know who he is working with, and make sure he is learning beneficial skills. If he isn't learning, he probably shouldn't be working there. These are critical years in developing his life skills, and time cannot be wasted for a paycheck alone. If you sent his heart is drifting away from you even slightly, he needs to quit. Parents, you are responsible before God for this son; be zealous for God's best in his life. (pg. 153)

Good luck with that idea.  My parents saw me every once in a while when I worked at Meijers - but I worked in the guest service department as a cashier or bagger.   They didn't come traipsing after me in the backroom when I was sorting men's basics or getting clothing down from the hanging storage.  I can't imagine hiring a teenager who had a parent who was so controlling that the parent wants instant access to the teenager at all times - plus access to all of the teen's coworkers for the purpose of judging them.   It's just not worth the hassle.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 18

I'm sorry that I have to review this chapter.  As with many chapters in "Raising Maidens of Virtue" by Stacy McDonald, the material in this chapter is simply gross.  There's nothing particularly graphic in this section, but I do need to have a frank discussion about sexual assault within the context of military and warfare.   If this is going to bring up painful memories, please skip this post.

Thankfully, this chapter is blessedly short and I've only got three quotes to discuss.  The first quote is standard gender stereotyping:

Every little girl dreams of being a princess- especially one who is rescued by daring and valiant prince! Something in the female design relishes the thought of being cherished and protected by a man- first by her father and later by her beloved husband. This is evident in the way a daughter's eyes light up when Daddy says she's pretty and the way a young bride's heart skips a beat because her enamored husband fawns over her, insisting on carrying the " heavy things" - the same heavy things she managed to carry just fine before they met. It is in the face of an older woman who smiles at a young man who opens the door for her- a disappearing practice. (pg. 163)

I never wanted to be a princess.  The average princess of fairy tale lore has a miserable life.  She's orphaned, dealing with an abusive step-parent, kept in total isolation, and pretty much waits around for a guy to rescue her.   Additionally, princesses wore floofy dresses and heels.  For someone with minor mobilities issues as a child, the idea of trying to walk on stilts with material underfoot was terrifying.

No, I wanted to be an explorer.  I wanted to go to new places and create maps for other people to follow.  As I got older, I realized my courage wasn't equal to the risks of exploration - but I could lead students to new places as a teacher (even if the journey was a bit metaphorical).

As a child, I appreciated the fact that both of my parents loved me and protected me.  I also liked the idea of getting married and raising kids some day in the future.   I don't think I ever really thought of my husband as a protecting force.  My husband generally carries items that are too large, bulky or heavy for me to deal with - but he doesn't make a big deal about it.  I suspect the reason he doesn't preen about his ability to carry in the bags of water softener salt is that he grew up on a farm and knows he's strong.  Likewise, I did giggle appreciatively (and still do occasionally) when he moves something that seems insane to me like his ability to scoop up a 100 pound wiggly damp newborn calf and carry it across the barn.    That always blows my mind - but he points out that he's got much longer arms than I do so he can essentially bear-hug the calf.  My arms don't overlap so I often lose my grip on the calf.   The biggest difference between the newly married groom and my husband is that my husband pitches in as a matter of basic courtesy.  Yeah, he carried water out to the chickens when I was on a weight lifting restriction while pregnant with Jack - and he'd do that for anyone else who needed help.   It wasn't about flaunting his strength; it was about getting the job done effectively.

I generally cared for my son's NG tube including placing and taping the tube.  My husband was quite capable of doing it, but years of crafting, sewing and mass-batch canning has honed my fine motor skills so I could do more quickly and more confidently.   Honestly, placing the NG tube through his nose into his stomach involved a hand-motion very similar to threading a sewing machine needle and I had an easier time feeding the tube down until it was in Jack's stomach.

Cry me a river about disappearing social customs.  *rolls eyes*  The custom hasn't disappeared; it's just adapted.  The main rule now is the person who gets to the door first holds it open for anyone who is passing nearby.  The only exception is that someone who is unencumbered holds the door for people who might have issues opening the door.  Believe you me - I give a grateful smile and "Thank you!" to anyone who grabbed the door when I was carrying my son or dealing with a recalcitrant stroller or had two bags of chicken feed in my arms.

It is no longer unusual for a mother to allow virtual strangers to feed, nurture, and trade her infant while she heads her off to a self-promoting career. Sometimes the father is left home to tend the little ones and applauded for becoming a " Mr. Mom".  Roles are reversed, and everyone cheers.

In our day, young maidens even have the "right" to go to battle to protect and die for perfectly strong and able grown men who choose not to serve their country - or in some cases, not even working an honest job. Young maidens are given equal opportunity to crouch in muddy ditches, shoulder to shoulder, sweating and bleeding alongside " fellow" soldiers in combat. Equal opportunity might just end if she finds herself captured by the enemy, but we're not supposed to think about that. (pg. 165)

Good God, Stacy.  NO ONE leaves their baby with virtual strangers.   When people leave their children with caregivers - either in a daycare center, a home-based center, a relative or medical professionals - the parents get to know the caregivers dearly.  We never picked a primary nurse for Jack - mainly because his nurses were so awesome that we didn't want to exclude anyone - but we got to know the main 10-15 nurses who worked with him very, very well.  The nurses got to know us well, too.  I became the local "no, your teenager is behaving totally normally for a ____ year old" comforter while my husband was known for having great random explanations of how our son was like or unlike a newborn cow.

Yes, men have become much more involved in the lives of their children in the last 50 years - and everyone outside of CP/QF thinks that's a good thing.  I've been so glad that my husband has been directly involved in caring for my son.  I'm sure that it's good for my son - but I know my husband cherishes his time with our son.

Many conservative Christians revere the US military - and yet are completely oblivious to the actual realities of the military.   Currently, the US military is run entirely by volunteers; we don't have an active draft.  This means her yammering about unemployed young men not being in the army is completely pointless.  During both editions of this book, women were excluded from most combat roles in the military.   Mrs. McDonald did somehow realize a truth that many people have pointed out: the 15% of active military members who are women do end up in combat zones and are at risk.  What Mrs. McDonald misses, though, is that there is nothing new about women being present in combat zones.  Wars do not happen in unoccupied deserts or on mountain tops above human habitation.  Wars happen in agricultural fields, in towns, in villages and in cities.   Throughout history, women have followed armies as support workers of all stripes.   Since nursing became a profession, women have been in field hospitals to care for the wounded.  Having military women at risk of death or injury is not new.

Bluntly, only in the US have CP/QF women been cossetted enough to assume that the main way that women end up in danger during war is as soldiers. Most women who are harmed during war are local women who were simply trying to work and raise their families prior to the war - and who are still doing so in terrible conditions.

One of the horrible things about war is the history of sexual abuse of soldiers by captors and by comrades.  Now, Mrs. McDonald cattily reminds us that women are at high risk of being raped if captured during war.   Her off-hand bitchiness about rape is horrifying enough - but she also shows herself to be completely oblivious to the risks of sexual assault for men in the military.  The long-term physical and psychological issues for male victims of rape have been ignored for far too long.  A good first step was recently accomplished when a law was passed that allows veterans to access VA psychological support for sexual assault after leaving active duty so that members of the National Guard and retired service members can get badly needed supports.

Just like Grandma used to say, "If you act like a lady, you'll be treated like one." Likewise, if you act like a harlot, you can be certain there will be those who are more than willing to treat you like one. Furthermore, if you act like a man, you just may get what you ask for.

We do live in a fallen world, and many sweet young maidens have, in fact, been treated like harlots through no fault of their own. Similarly, many harlots who do not deserve honor have been treated with great respect bye well trained Christian gentleman, but the general principle still applies you will most likely be treated according to how you present yourself. (pg. 165-166)

Jesus.   Mrs. McDonald is gross.  Just....gross.

I don't remember either of my grandmothers saying the "if you act like a lady" spiel - but if they did, they only meant it in that case.  If you expect people to treat you with respect, most will.  My family feels that a more important example of this would be "If you treat people with respect, you will be treated with respect."  Stacy McDonald doesn't believe that all people are worth of respect.  Apparently women who are classed as "harlots" are no longer worthy of respect.   My family believes all people are worthy of respect.  We do that because we follow Jesus who was pretty straightforward in his beliefs that all people are worthy of basic respect. 

Stacy McDonald needs to read the Bible more.