Maxwell Mania: Hearts are found in BOTH genders....

Hello, everybody!  Everything involving the Maxwells in this post should be read in either the voice of Dr. Nick Rivera or Troy McClure from the Simpsons.   Don't know either of them?  Here's a video clip.

A bit more than two weeks ago, the Maxwells posted a weirdly cryptic blog post about a medical condition that Steven Maxwell had and that he'd discussed in his email newsletter "Seriously Dad".   The Maxwells are serious about keeping gender roles separate and protecting their unmarried daughters from male attention so I assumed that Steven Maxwell must have had something happen that involved his urogenital system that was important for men to know about but of less importance to women.

I don't have any of the Maxwells' taboos around gender roles so I clicked on Steven's email.

Steven Maxwell had two blocked coronary arteries.   He has been showing exercise intolerance off-and-on for over a year.  He's had two stents placed successfully.   Most frighteningly for me, he was unaware that 1) family history of cardiac disease is a MAJOR risk factor,  2) cholesterol levels need to be checked regularly in all adults - but especially so in people with a history of heart disease and 3) exercise can't undo the risk  posed by the first two facts.

Unlike prostate cancer or ovarian torsion, cardiac disease affects both men AND women.  In fact, the American Heart Association has been working at raising women's awareness of the symptoms of heart attacks for over ten years.  This awareness campaign has been aimed at both letting women know about the differences in symptoms like the fact that women are more likely to have fatigue and nausea as symptoms of a heart attack than men - and getting medical professionals to think of cardiac problems in women since women are much more likely to have heart problems misdiagnosed.  This lowered level of suspicion in medical professionals has dire consequences since  a delay in diagnosis leads to more heart damage in women.

Good news: at least some readers of the Maxwells' blog know that women are at risk and gently childe the Maxwells.   The Maxwells' responses are illuminating.



My first thought when I read Sarah's response was "Yes, the email was for the 'guys' but cut-and-paste would have made the same information available to the mainly female readers of the blog". 

My second observation is that Ms. Maxwell doesn't seem to have any sense of obligation to her blog readers.   Sarah mentions that her mom is all set - but the original poster started her response by pointing out that ALL women should be aware of cardiac issues.    The Maxwells change blog posts fairly frequently.  They removed all traces of Joseph Maxwell's first engagement from their blog.  Sarah Maxwell rewrote the catty and ungracious post penned by a disgruntled Steven Maxwell that his now-daughter-in-law Chelsy's family had announced her engagement with John Maxwell publically prior to the wedding.   (I wish I had taken a screenshot of the first post; it was gloriously petty!) Since the Maxwells have rewritten posts in the past, I assume that their failure to do so on this post means that they don't feel that the Maxwells have any responsibility to inform their readers on women's risk of cardiac problems.

Sarah's non-response triggers a second concerned reader to chime in:



Yup, in response to a direct request to write a post about cardiac issues for all readers, Teri Maxwell doubles down on the family response of "Nah.  The readers will be fine." 

Hint: Not everyone reads the blog comments.   I rarely do - and only when the Maxwells are being especially wacky....like this post.

Equally oddly, I have no idea why Steven's experience of cardiac problems would automatically be filed under "share with male readers only".  Lots of CP/QF bloggers tag, flag or separate items that involve reproduction in areas that are primarily read by female readers - but I've never seen them flag health issues that involved other bodily systems by gender.

I'm trying to imagine my doctor's face if she came into the office one day and found  coronary artery scan and cholesterol test results for me in the absence of any other medical appointments. I think I would get a firm scolding - and I would deserve it!

There are a wide range of ways that doctors can test the cardiac function of their patients - and each test has certain benefits and drawbacks.   Teri Maxwell hopefully had discussed with her doctor her personal risk factors for cardiac disease before her first coronary artery scan 8 years ago.   I also hope she called her doctor and had an appointment to discuss if her risk factors had changed enough to make a second scan worthwhile now.   "The test only cost $40" is a very poor reason to get it again - and a waste of money if her risks of cardiac disease are low to start with.

I feel like some of the blame for this needs to be placed on the cost-sharing ministry used by the Maxwells and other CP/QF Christians to avoid using medical insurance.  There are a lot of issues with cost-sharing plans, but the most obvious issue is that the plans do nothing to cover the costs of preventative medicine.   I hope the Maxwells are getting yearly physicals - but I cannot imagine my doctor letting me get away with not having a cholesterol test done!  I'm 37 with no history of family cardiac disease prior to age 75, but I am obese.  Steven Maxwell is a few decades older than me and has a family history so my doctor would be all over him to have a cholesterol test and additional screenings done.

These folks scare me sometimes....

On a personal note, thank you for all the good thoughts, prayers and wishes for a speedy recovery!  Laparoscopic surgery is amazing.  Four of my five small incisions are firmly healed.  The fifth is making excellent progress but will take slightly longer because the resident decided to leave the incision where the drain was placed open without a stitch.  The attending surgeon was not happy with that when found that out at my follow-up appointment, but it's healed enough that I can go swimming again.  At 16 days out, I can carry my at-least-26-pound son without pain and do all of my daily activities.  I tire out much more quickly than I did before the surgery and my exercise endurance is shot to hell - but I walked at least 2 miles at the mall with my son today and that took me 6 weeks to do after my son was born so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be back to my 6-7 miles of walking or 90-120 minutes of vigorous water exercise within a month or two.

Homeschooling Badly: Forest or Trees?

I think I'd like Amy over at Raising Arrows if we ever met in person.  Of all of the CP/QF bloggers, she started early, has kept up a reasonable online presence and has the fewest crazy ideas of the lot.

Having said that, I do feel sorry for her at times.   Like most homeschooling CP/QF moms, she's got tons, lashings and heaps of ideas about what to do with homeschooling the littlest ones in the family while completely giving up on teaching the high schoolers in her family. Obviously, this makes me sad because I have tons, lashings and heaps of things that I've seen high schoolers do well with some support from teachers.   I wish I was exaggerating her point of view but here's her own words:

By the time your children are high school aged, there should be very few teacher-led subjects, and other than checking in periodically with your child, they should be capable of going through their schoolwork alone.

My first thought is that any parent who is using this 'method' of homeschooling is lying if they describe themselves as teaching high school.    The parent is telling the kid which subjects need to be done, providing the materials to do the subject, and hoping for the best.    With that level of absentee-teaching, providing specific help is a crap-shoot.  My first teaching job involved helping students who had dropped out of high school catch up in twelve separate independent study science courses.  Now, since I have a college degree in Biology and Chemistry, I could figure out what the main idea of the lesson a student was struggling on quickly and adapt as needed.   I question if most CP/QF homeschooling moms are as conversant in science or math to help their high schooled kids in a pinch.

My second thought is that some homeschooling parents have recreated the read - and - regurgitate method of teaching for high schoolers that the parents claim destroyed their love of education while they were in public schools.   That method is antiquated in public schools now thanks to widespread access to computers and interest in project-based-learning, but apparently it's gained new life in some corners of homeschooling.  I guess that proves that all educational theories are cyclic....yay?

In the rest of this post, I worry that Amy is missing the forest of college readiness for the trees of bashing public schoolers.  Take this gem:

One of the biggest things my son noticed during the early months of his Freshman year in college was that most of his classmates needed to be told how to do everything. They couldn’t choose what color of pen to use, where to sit, how to do an assignment, or how to find the answers for the test. They wanted EVERYTHING lined out for them, rather than trying anything on their own.

Well, yes.  Unlike Amy's son, students from traditional schools (and most home schools) are aware that each teacher or professor does things a little differently.

•  Lots of professors will only take assignments in blue or black ink.  
• Assigned seats are pretty common in lower-level lab classes in middle or large universities because different classes need different glassware and lab equipment so instructors save time by setting up the drawers ahead of time for a certain student.  
• In my biology labs at college, I tell the students that I make up the tests and quizzes from the lab manual and the notes from my lectures; I never use the textbook because it varies between lecture instructors.
• I'd also far rather have a student ask a question about what I expect from an assignment than spend hours on a project that I think should take 45 minutes to an hour - or worse, toss it off in 5 minutes and get a bad grade.

I guess CP/QF homeschooled graduates could flail their way through and figure these things out by trial and error - but why not just ask questions?

In the next topic, Amy shares having her daughter work through her fear of dissecting:

Some parts of life are just hard and you just have to walk through that hard part. School is the same. (ahem…Algebra) My daughter begged and pleaded with me to let her skip dissecting. But, I knew she needed to overcome this obstacle. She sat at the table FOREVER trying to psyche herself up to even remove the fish from the bag it was in! But, I wasn’t giving in. I wasn’t going to make her path easy just for the sake of making it easy. And so, we sat there…for way longer than it should have taken anyone to dissect a fish! But when she was finished, she was proud of what she had accomplished! And so was I!

At the risk of undermining a great life lesson,  why was dissecting a hill to die on? 

I graduated in 2000 and dissecting in general high school biology classes was rapidly becoming passe then.   Many students have realistic concerns about the treatment of dissection specimens prior to and when killed.  I have concerns about exposing science teachers to the harmful chemicals used in preserving specimens.  The cost of obtaining specimens is high.  The cost of doing computer versions has become lower and lower - and is now generally included in most HS biology textbook online resources.

The current consensus is that computer-based dissections are the best option for general high school classes.  For highly interested students, some schools use the saved money to fund a zoology or comparative anatomy class so that students who want to dissect can do so.

I mean, we've all gotta do things that suck sometimes - but I think this is an example of how home school families can get locked into doing whatever worked for the first kid to go through the curriculum.  Apologia Biology costs about $400 to buy a textbook, online resources, DVD lessons, lab notebook, lab supplies and the tests/answer keys.  Having a second student use the resources costs about $50.00 for a new set of tests and lab supplies compared to $400+ dollars to purchase a different option for science.

The link Amy includes on determining graduation requirements tells parents that it's rare for students to take physics in high school because physics requires pre-calculus.  I suppose the implication is that most high school students don't take pre-calculus - but that's not true by any stretch of the imagination for kids who are interested in STEM careers.  Also, it is completely possible to learn physics with a solid understanding of algebra rather than calculus.

The next theme is the common lament among homeschool parents that all colleges care about in admissions is the ACT or SAT scores.  That is much more true for home school students than it is for students from traditional schools.   Traditional schools send newly minted seniors off to colleges each year.  Based on how those incoming freshmen do at a college, the admission department develops a feel for how well each program prepares students.  Additionally, each student from that school are ranked within their class which provides a second data point.    There's really no work around for homeschooling families other than the ACT or SAT since taking a standardized test essentially gives the colleges the same data that a traditional high school would include.

The last suggestion is that homeschooled kids ask for help when they need it.  I find that ironic since Amy mocks public school kids for asking too many questions a few paragraphs earlier - but whatever.  The odd bit, though, is that the example she uses.  Her son had gotten all 'A's' in a class prior to the final and received a B overall in the class.   Her son went to talk to the professor and learned some undefined lesson.   There are two ways I can think of for this to happen.  First, the college kid forgot a sizeable assignment or project somewhere along the line. (Happens to the best of us).  Second, the kid got a C on a weighted final.

That made me wonder: how many homeschooled kids have experience with weighted grading prior to graduating?  There are all sorts of rationales for and against weighted grading, but nearly all colleges and universities allow professors to count tests and exams as worth more towards the final grade in the class than the other assignments.  For my biology courses, the classes were graded essentially from four tests each worth ~25% of the final grade.  All the other assignments counted for <10% of the final grade.   My chemistry classes, on the other hand, gave labs 25% of the final grade, divided 50% of the final grade across three tests, and had the final worth 25% of the final grade. 

Look, re-creating pre-K through 12th grade education should be scary - but there's better ways to do it than hefting it off onto the teenager.   Join a co-op.   Have the kid take the GED and dual-enroll at a community college.   Befriend a local college admission officer or high school guidance counselor.   Read up the information at the College Board. 

Just make sure the information you are getting is based in reality...where quite a few high school students take physics and pre-calculus.

Quick Update - Again....

I feel like I'm writing as many "quick updates" about how life goes crazy around here as I am doing anything else!

For those who are following the pink eye saga, my husband and son had the bacterial version; I had a viral version.  The fact that mine was viral became very clear last Friday when I returned to the doctor with swollen glands in my neck.  Apparently, most people catch this between 5-15 years old.   I stopped using the antibiotics, switched over to warm compresses and gentle washing of my eyelashes to get rid of gunk and felt much better by Sunday morning.

By Sunday evening, I was having severe upper right side abdominal pain with vomiting and diarrhea all of which came on suddenly.   I went to the ER and was diagnosed with gallstones.  The one lingering concern for me was that the staff kept saying that the pain should be done in a few hours, but it never really stopped.

Monday afternoon, I go to the local urgent care and get a shot of toradol which takes the pain down from a 4-5 out of 10 to a 2-3.   Since I have to throw-up every 15 minutes I was in a car, my parents offer to have me stay at their house until I'm back on my feet.   They live 7 minutes away from the hospitals, doctor's offices and urgent care centers instead of 45 minutes away like we do.

I call the surgeon that I received a referral for a consultation about removing my gallbladder.  His next appointment is three weeks out.  My personal doctor wants to see me on Tuesday.

By Tuesday afternoon, I'm still in pain and have barely eaten or drank anything since Sunday night.  My doctor realizes that my temperature has crept up to 100.5 degrees.  That means that my gallbladder is either infected or a stone has blocked the duct where bile leaves - but either way the gallbladder has to be removed soon.   She got me admitted within a few hours.

The medical staff spends Tuesday night getting me rehydrated.   I had to take potassium pills.  The pills are not as bad as magnesium sulfate - but the side-effects of being hot, nauseous and everything tasting like salt are similar.   It was doubly annoying since I was on strict no food or liquid by mouth orders.

Wednesday morning, the surgeon decides to put me first in the queue for surgery.   That turned out to be an amazingly good decision because when I was operated on the surgeon found that my gallbladder was gangrenous.  Apparently, I had had an infection in the gallbladder on Sunday, but it hadn't caused my body temp to rise or my white blood cell count to go up as much as expected.  In the intervening days, the swelling from the infection cut off the blood supply to the gallbladder and it died.   Thankfully, they were able to finish the surgery by instrumentation and didn't need to open me up to clean out the area where the gallbladder had been.

If anyone brings up the complexity of organs as a proof of intelligent design, feel free to throw "the anatomy of the human gallbladder is a fucking timebomb" back at them.

I spent Wednesday night in the hospital, Thursday night at my parents and am now back home.  My parents pretty much cared for Spawn from Monday through Thursday night - and I'm so grateful they live nearby.

I feel much better than I did before the surgery, but I'll need to be taking things easy for a while. 

Ironically, the part of me that will likely take the longest to heal are my conjunctiva because the vomiting on Sunday and Monday blew a ton irritated blood vessels in my eyes and I now look like my son did after he had eye surgery - but my eyes still look better than they did before we stopped treating them for bacterial conjunctivitis.

Babblin' Botkins: Bride-Price?!!?!

Well, the pinkeye saga continues.   My son is doing fine.  Two days ago, I received an antibiotic shot and oral antibiotics from my doctor.  So far, I'm not noticing much of a change.  My husband is having the same problem.  His doctor referred him to an opthamologist so I'm assuming that's what's going to happen to me at my next appointment.

Personally, I think that there's an issue in the lot of antibiotic eye drops my husband and I used.  We filled the prescriptions from the same pharmacy a few days apart and got them from the same lot of drops.  Our son had a completely different antibiotic that covered the same range of bacteria and he's doing great.

I'll keep you updated on the farm of drippy eyes.

One of the claims that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin made at Cindy Kunsman in the letter they sent her is that the kids of Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin have suffered (or could have possibly suffered) loss of potential romantic partners who read Cindy's blog, decided that the term "covert incest" meant "sexual incest", and never started a courtship with a Botkin daughter. 

I can't refute that because that's possible...I guess....if the person searched through multiple pages of Google searches for one Botkin sister and eventually found Cindy's blog.

So possible - but is it probable?   Are there any other reasons that the Botkin Sisters who are lovely, home-educated, published authors and producers of movies and podcasts are single in their thirties?

Yes.

Most people meet the people they marry through people they meet at school, at work, at church or social activities.  Other people meet their spouses at social events.  Finally, people meet potential spouses through online dating apps or matchmakers.   The Botkin Sisters didn't go to school, don't work, are members of a small church and maintain a very select circle of carefully curated friends.  Some people in that situation find spouses, certainly, but they are at higher risk of not having a potential spouse in a small circle of acquaintances.  My husband and I met online through eHarmony - but the Botkin Sisters are pretty clear that online dating leads directly to predation and unplanned pregnancy.

The Botkin Sisters have an additional issue that I've never faced - celebrity.  I am not a celebrity.  I do not have a public persona that is substantially different from my private self.  Importantly, my father did not extol my virtues as a future wife or scare guys off by discussing the role of bride price in my future engagement:

A&EB: How strict will you be with our suitors on the bride-price issue?

GB: That will depend on the suitor.

A&EB: Can you tell our readers a little about the biblical bride price?

GB: [...]

The bride price was usually the amount of a dowry, probably about three years wages. Noble suitors would give the bride price to the girl's father and the father would give it to the girl as her dowry.

The bride price tradition benefited every culture that practiced it. Without the tradition, daughters were a financial liability to families and came to be viewed as inferior to sons. Sometimes daughters were murdered at birth. Those who weren't would have been unpopular with brothers because their dowries diminish the inheritance available to sons. Girls with dowries attracted plenty of worthless suitors who wanted the dowry more than the daughter, and the institutions of family and marriage were weakened.

Within the bride-price tradition, both institutions are strengthened over many generations. Good daughters attract worthy suitors who have proven themselves good, productive servants. By giving the bride price to the girl's father, suitors also provide they understand the father's authority over the daughter and their subordination to God's order in the father's Authority. By giving the gift to the daughter, the father signifies his obligations to succeeding generations. (pgs. 303-304)

The first time I read the interview I thought the first two lines of this section were an inside joke between Geoffrey and his daughters.   All of a sudden I realized that Geoffrey Botkin was dead-serious - and that's nuts. 

On the off-chance that the Botkin Sisters ever decide to sue any bloggers for monetary compensation over lost romantic opportunities, this section of their published book should be read into the public record because I imagine there were plenty of young women who read that section then told their brothers that old man Botkin expected guys to pay him to marry his daughters. 

 I'd feel bad for the Botkin Sisters - but when you write a book and multiple blog posts bashing the foibles of your friends - turnabout is fair play.

For any guys who hadn't gone running after hearing about the bride price, I suspect there was a moment of pause when they realized that the amount of the bride price is dependent on how much Geoffrey Botkin likes you. 

The final paragraphs of Geoffrey Botkin's spontaneous lecture on monetary exchange in marriages illustrates my point that self-education does not mean that the self-educated person understands the subject matter. 

If you don't want to read the rest, the basic fact is that everything Geoffrey Botkin says in those three paragraphs are totally wrong.  Not even a bit right.

For the nerds, there are three broad categories of wealth transfer when a couple marries. 

• A bride price is when goods or services are transferred from the groom or groom's family to the family of the bride.   
• A dowry is when the family of the bride transfers wealth to the groom or groom's family which may - or may not - be reverted to the bride in case of divorce, desertion or widowhood.
• A dower is when the groom or his family settle wealth directly on the bride.

I made a visual to help cement it in my mind:

Bride prices are very straightforward to understand.  The bride is a literal piece of property of her parents.  Her parents get to set the price at which they sell their daughter.  Creepy?  Sure - but daughters do a lot of work in a household and the parents will need to recoup that lost labor somehow.

Notice how Geoffrey Botkin has already messed this up.  He's setting the bride price based on the wages of the suitor and how much Geoffrey likes the suitor instead of the value of his daughters' work or goods.    Using my benefits and salary package from the year I married my husband, my parents would have been fools to demand a bride price of less than $190,000 for me.   And yet - Botkin can't correctly assess his daughters' financial benefit to their home.   They've gotta be worth several tens of thousands of dollars in cooking, cleaning and nannying services alone.

Geoffrey Botkin may not have thought out who is disadvantaged by a bride-price: poor sons or non-first born sons depending on the inheritance system of the society.  Since he's got five sons to his two daughters, a bride price system is going to hit the Botkin parents pocketbook hard.

Bride prices also disadvantage daughters of highly wealthy families since there may not be any suitors who can afford their price.  This can lead to infanticide because a daughter who cannot marry legally can potentially disgrace her family by getting pregnant out of wedlock so bride prices are not the end-all be-all solution for female infanticide.

Dowries are the grab-bag group.  Money moves from the bride's family to either the groom or the groom's family.  The money might revert to the bride if the marriage fails - but that varies by culture.  The money might be available to the new couple - or not.   The one overarching theme is that the dowry often is the daughter's portion of her parents' estate paid out at the time of her marriage instead of at their death.   Since the daughter is under the legal authority of her new husband or his family, the money goes to them.  Botkin missed that factoid somehow - or he really believes that a society where bride prices are unaccompanied by an actual dowry from the parents of the bride exists.

Dowries tend to disadvantage low-income or low wealth women whose families cannot cash out a dowry and still be financially stable.  Geoffrey Botkin's worry about the Botkin Sisters attracting fortune hunters is adorably naive; one-seventh of very little is miniscule.

Dowers are the rarest form of property transfer but also easy to understand.  The groom or his family decides to settle enough cash or property on the bride to support her and their children in case of sudden death or desertion of the spouse.  I don't know exactly how each culture/family decides the amount of property or cash to settle on a bride, but the people making the final decision are the groom's family. 

The system Botkin has created from reading the Bible badly...or something...is closest to a form of dower.  Yeah, the money pauses (theoretically) in the hands of the bride's parents but it is passed on to the new family.  Since women do not lose their legal rights, the money is settled on the bride as well as the groom. 

What I love about this whole quote is that it demonstrates how absurdly haphazard Geoffrey Botkin is with his daughters' marriage settlement.  Rather than putting aside money for his daughters' dowries and planning to negotiate for the best deal possible from a suitor in terms of a bride price (which is totally Biblical; see Joseph and Laban's negotiations ), he sets up a situation where the groom makes an entire show of giving Botkin cash - but the money ends up back in the pocket of the groom at the end.    The cash is never settled on the girls - or the Botkin family - so a suitor could raise the funds temporarily then use the "dowry" to pay off the borrowed funds.

That's a situation that will attract bad suitors in a heartbeat - and Botkin is too addled by the feeling of power to realize it.

Babblin' Botkin: Daddy-led Dating

Howdy, folks!

Bacterial pink-eye has hit Spawn and I.  Honestly, my siblings and I seem to be missing some level of biochemical protection against bacterial pink-eye that most humans have; even as a real adult, I get a case every 3-4 years.   Spawn's a bit young for me to declare that he's a walking pink-eye magnet - but he does have our habit of going from a dry, white conjunctiva to running, oozing and bloodshot in less than two hours. 

Spawn has a great sense of timing as well.  His eyes had been a bit more gunky in the morning - but the humidity has been taking wild swings so I didn't think much of it but decided to keep a eye on it.   I looked closely at both eyes when I loaded him into his car seat on the way to physical therapy and they looked normal.   It takes about an hour to get to PT and Spawn had pulled off his glasses and was rubbing an eye when opened the van door to free him.   Between the relatively low light in the parking garage and a toddler who enjoys thwarting weird behaviors from his mother, I couldn't get a good look at the eye he was rubbing until I had him in the gym for PT.  I assumed he was a mobile biohazard site until proven otherwise which is why Robin found me sitting on the floor reading Spawn a board book on my lap.  Spawn couldn't reach anything of interest so the only thing that needed to be disinfected was the board book.   His eye was...gross.

Thankfully, his doctor got him in a few hours later.  Spawn hates eye drops - but getting them through his eyelids is a one person job compared to the eye ointment from a few months ago.

My diagnosis was even faster and easier since I showed up at an urgent care center when it opened today and said "My toddler has pink-eye that's responded well to antibiotics but my left eye is a hot mess."   After a few questions to make sure it was a superficial infection, I got my prescription for eye drops.

Normally, I'd figure out some kind transition between bacterial infections and Geoffrey Botkin, but my affected eye is weepy and itchy so I'm going to let you fill in whatever you want.

Let me just dive into a quote from the interview by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin of their father Geoffrey Botkin:

GB: Deception 10: "Love and marriage is a 'Cupid' thing. Chemistry and all that. Dads have to stay out of the way and let Cupid get his shot."

Most dads are stuptified when it comes to a daughter's relationship with boys. This is one of the more blinding deceptions of our time. the time just prior to marriage is the time in a girl's life when she needs the protection, advice, guidance, blessing [sic] of her father more than at any other time. Marriage is one of the biggest practical decision [sic] she will make, and it is only cowardice that motivates fathers to excuse themselves from involvement.

Solution 10: Raise your daughter from a young age to have high standards of purity and high standards for suitors based on your own example in the home. When she is ready for marriage, thanks to your conscientious training, she will know how crucial is the choice of a man who will become her life's work. She will know about her own weaknesses and be as careful as she can be and lean on you heavily for your advice. If you are wise, you will want to do everything you can to help her meet a man of the caliber she would want, and deserve, and grow old with. (pg. 303)

Have I mentioned recently how grateful I am that my dad was not Geoffrey Botkin and handled my emerging adulthood with far more grace and understanding that Geoffrey Botkin was ever capable of? 

I've spent my whole life in the mainstream US culture where dating was the expected way for people to find a spouse.   I'm not a sociologist so I can't speak to the benefits and drawbacks of dating vs. arranged marriages for societies, families and the couple who marry - but I do have one important factoid that Botkin missed.   Single people have the most number of potential matches when using the dominant method of setting up marriages in a society.  A single man or woman who tries to find a partner through dating in a society where arranged marriages are the norm faces a much smaller pool of potential matches.  Conversely, Geoffrey Botkin eliminated over 99% of possible husbands for Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin simply by declaring that suitors would need to go through him rather than his daughters to decide if they were compatible. 

Most fathers and mothers in the US fade out the amount of direct supervision they place on their daughter's dating life as she becomes more mature and competent.  Parents provide a lot of supervision as pre-teens or young teens start dating.  As their child becomes an older teenager, the parents move to providing more emotional support because their teenager is capable of managing dating responsibly.   Geoffrey Botkin doesn't seem to differentiate between supervision and support.  I greatly appreciated my parents' support while I was dating.  Once I knew I was interested in a guy, I'd introduce him to my parents.  My parents got to know him and I learned more about him by the way he interacted with my parents.  Behind the scenes, my parents provided a lot of emotional support with the highs and lows of dating. 

On the flip side, if I was too immature to be able to date without parental supervision, I was too immature to get married.   I think that's one of the problems that people who promote supervised courtships miss; the obsession with having chaperones all the time makes the people in the relationship seem exceptionally immature. 

If you've missed the theme of Geoffrey Botkin's need for control, consider the implications of marriage as a huge decision that women must listen to their father's advice on.   The idea that a father should guide his daughter to the right marriage partner makes very little sense under Botkin's own worldview.   Daughters are essentially blank slates writ large; once married, a woman is supposed to instantly shape her thoughts, preferences, beliefs and actions to the desires of her husband regardless of how life worked in her family of origin.   In that system, a father needs to find a suitor who has similar religious beliefs, can support his daughter financially, and is reasonably attractive/suitable to his daughter.    That's it.  Heck, in the ideal emotional purity (EmoPure) courtship model, all of that can be done behind the scenes before the daughter has any inkling of the suitor's interest in her. 

Why hasn't Geoffrey Botkin found suitors for his two lovely, self-educated daughters who have some income of their own from their books and movies? 

Control.

 Once Anna Sofia and Elizabeth exchange vows with their husbands, Geoffrey Botkin loses all control over his daughters.   After all, his daughters have had all other major life decisions stripped from them.  They had no choice over their educational plan.  They have been told college and vocational training is unwomanly and worldly.  Because of that, the Botkin sisters have no real options for jobs, let alone careers in their early and mid-thirties.   No job or career translates to no money - and money is critical in making other adult choices around housing, transportation and entertainment.

One last point: Don't let CP/QF parents blame-shift when their daughters remain unmarried.
 
EmoPure and courtship-based relationships offer a very straightforward deal: unmarried women give their fathers a great deal of power in the romantic relationships of the daughter in exchange for a promise of an early, happy and fertile marriage. 

 The Maxwells have already started to blame-shift Sarah's unmarried status at 37 from Steven Maxwell to God. *rolls eyes*   I'm sure Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin have already started to get some pushback on how the two of them messed up their prospects by....I really dunno .... but someone will blame them instead of putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of Geoffrey Botkin.

The Botkin Sisters, the Maxwell Sisters, Jana Duggar - they're simply following the playbook that their families drilled into their heads as girls: wait patiently at home and Dad will find you a good husband. 

The fact their dads bought into a critically flawed system isn't the fault of the daughters - but the daughters are the ones paying the price.

I have one more post from the interview at the end of "So Much More".   Geoffrey Botkin demonstrates in a few chaotic paragraphs the dangers of self-education...and how it can endanger your daughters' marriage prospects.

Babblin' Botkins: Teaching Your Kids to Fear

My Spawn-baby is now a Spawn-toddler.  He's reached the pre-walking stage where he grabs our hands for support and tries to walk.  We've been offering him our hands for months now - but until this week he was not interested at all.  Suddenly, a switch flicked for him and he wants to learn how to walk.  Right now.  He's walked the length of our house from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room.  He only stops to look up at me or my husband to see if we are proud - and we are SO proud - then grins happily at us.

The overarching theme of mothering Spawn this year has been helping him manage his anxiety.  Like many medically complicated kids, Spawn had scary and painful medical procedures starting from a minute or two after birth when he was intubated so that they could place surfactant in his lungs.   He's had a lot of tubes, tape removal and shots in his first 18 months.  On top of that, we had to keep him in isolation or semi-isolation for eight months out his first twelve months so he missed out of being exposed to a wide variety of places like grocery stores, churches, libraries, malls, museums....you get the idea. 

New experiences scared Spawn.  Understandably, he believed that new places and new people - e.g., places that are not our house and people who are not in the "Inner Circle of Trust" - would lead to painful or scary things happening.   I hate that pain and fear was his experience of new things during his infancy, but he needed shots and a ventilator and blood draws to stay alive - and to get him healthy enough to go to libraries, malls, playgrounds....you get the idea.  It still sucked for him - and for me.

I've been working with my parents (who care for Spawn overnight once a week) and his developmental team to help him learn techniques to feel safer when he is anxious.  We tell him about what is going to happen next.  If he is scared, he likes sitting on a safe person's lap.  If he's really anxious and starts to stiffen or shake, he responds well to having a gentle hand on his chest and reminders to take a deep breath while the person holding him breathes deeply, too. 

Honestly, the process has been tiring at times.  As much as I know that having Spawn sit military straight on my lap during a library story time is huge for him, I struggled with feeling like he was missing out because of his anxiety - and I know how painful that experience is from before I entered therapy.

And then....something shifted. 

He found a metal bookend at a library, grabbed it, climbed under an empty shelf, and tried to climb down stairs - without looking behind him to see if I was watching.  At our WIC appointment, he took off down a long hallway to return to a playroom he liked - and he was totally OK with leaving me behind.   Spawn stayed with his PT up in the gym while I went to retrieve his shoes from the car and waved happily to me when I came back instead of trying to escape from her.    Spawn willingly sat on the lap of a new PT - without making her describe that sticker* he left on the gates of hell like he did with Robin his main PT.  (And Robin rocks.  She is the best PT for Spawn - and he's finally admitted that he agrees.)

My Spawn is exploring the world joyfully; all the effort to teach him that the world is safe paid off for him and for me.

That's why the interview between Geoffrey Botkin and his two daughters is so fucked up at the end of "So Much More", a book written by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin when they were teenagers and published by the now-defunct Vision Forum.  Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin don't say anything particularly unusual in the interview - but Geoffrey repeatedly hammers home that the girls should be afraid of the wider world.   Here's a particularly egregious example:

A&EB: Can we make a list of the deceptions? How about "the top ten lies that rule the lives of modern fathers?" A list like this would be welcome to many fathers. Or would it?

GB: It would be welcome to many. To others who are even mildly deceived, their response would be angry hostility to such a list. This is the nature of deception. If you publish this list, many of your critics will say, "These things are not lies, or transgressions, or problems. We can be Christians and still think like everyone else thinks. We have Christian liberty to live the way everyone else is living, and this list smacks of legalism."

A&EB: In our book we define legalism as the fleshly pursuit of man's moralism in hopes of earning salvation. Joyful obedience to all of God's precepts is the response of the grateful believer who has been saved by grace through faith.

GB: Well put. Careful conformity to God's standards for righteous living is not legalism but faithful maturity. Accusations of "legalism" are the first defense of the man (or woman) who is ashamed and reluctant to repent. Are you sure you want to publish such a controversial list?

A&EB: What is your advice, Daddy?

GB: Good answer! I'll give you an abbreviated list that's not too....dangerous. I'll share it in love, and you can print it in love. When the critics land on you with boots and spurs, I'll protect you. Ready? (pgs 295-296)

Let's go over this response by response. 

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth sound like excited teenagers following an interesting new idea.  They are pumped about creating a helpful list for dads of CP/QF daughters.  Sure, the topic isn't my cup of tea - but that's the kind of energy teachers try to get from students in a classroom.

Geoffrey replies by telling the idea is palatable to some people - but most people will respond with hostility.  Not just anger - but anger directed at Anna Sofia and Elizabeth with the intent to harm them.   Remember, the daughters are in their mid to late teenage years.  The book they are publishing is running through a "ministry" that is somewhat larger than most vanity press operations - but not much larger.   Their book has probably been read by tens of thousands of people - in a nation of over 230 million people. Geoffrey's attempt to reinforce a pathological fear of outsiders reflects his mental status and obsessions rather than a rational outcome of publishing a list to a niche market.

Geoffrey's prediction of how most people would response sounds like most people would listen to Anna Sofia or Elizabeth, consider their ideas, then feel it was important to respond to the ideas.  Honestly, I think most people's response would be "That's weird" followed by wandering away.   Arguing about the practical implications of an obscure theological interpretation is not high on the list of most Americans.  Heck, I like doing that - but I wouldn't start an argument with a few teenagers.    Teaching your daughters that strangers will surround them with anger and derision is twisted - but there is a level of self-importance.   A fierce public rejection is a sign that a person is important and controversial in some way; the realization that the Botkin Family is as average and workaday as the rest of us would be far more traumatizing for Elizabeth and Anna Sofia after years of being lauded as the belles of CP/QF young women.

Wow.  The paragraph where Anna Sofia/Elizabeth rattles off a brand-new definition of legalism is stunning for naivete and arrogance.  Legalism already has a definition: a religious believer who relies on rules or rituals in lieu of personal faith in Christ.   Billions of words have been written around various charges and rebuttals of legalism - so two teenage girls with no academic credentials at all should not be encouraged to write a de novo definition to shield their family against charges of legalism.   If the Botkin Sisters want to engage in apologetics around their family''s practice of Christianity, their parents should have encouraged them to become well-grounded in systematic theology instead of teaching the girls to change the working definition.

On a more technical note, the legalism paragraph is nearly incomprehensible thanks to the theological version of purple prose.

Geoffrey gives the girls faint praise for publishing his new definition of legalism and reinforces that their family is not legalistic.  Nope, not the Botkin family!  Just look at our definition of legalism!

 He must have regretted letting that faint praise break his tone of doom because he quickly doubles down on the scariness of outsiders by giving the girls a faux chance to not publish the list.  Does anyone honestly believe that Anna Sofia or Elizabeth could say "On second thought, let's not publish it.  I'd just as soon not be killed by a mob this week, thanks!"  No, good Christians in tiny cultic belief systems are supposed to be fearless and relish the idea of being a martyr so the Botkin Sisters can either fall on the sword of cowardice or on the mob wielding swords.   Since the sword of cowardice comes with failing to live up to the expectations of their father and mother, the possibility of a mob of outsiders' swords seems less fraught to me.

Thought experiment: how long would the circle of the Sisters trying to get praise and engagement from their dad only to be shot down continued if left uninterrupted?  A few hours?  A few days?  A few years?  A few decades?

Because the strongest praise Anna Sofia and Elizabeth receive is when they relinquish control over publishing the controversial list to their father.    Geoffrey Botkin rewards subservience in his young adult daughters; what does that say about Geoffrey Botkin as a father?

The Sisters are rewarded by being given a watered down version of the "controversial list"**.   Just in case the Sisters feel a moment's relief at the idea of publishing a safer list, Geoffrey twists the knife one more time by telling the Sisters that he'll protect them from the angry mob that's coming for them.  What does that say about Geoffrey Botkin as a father?

About that mob of angry rablerousers?    It's been 14 years since "So Much More" was published.  The Botkin Sisters have had some people express anger about their book, I assume, but the critics who attack them physically - the boot and spurs brigade - never materialized.  Oh, I'm sure the Botkin Family will tell you that the reason the brigade never came is that the Sisters are armed concealed carriers who are always escorted by their dad or brothers and adhere strictly to curfew as they shared in the "Good Girls and Bad Guys" podcast. 

I think the real reason is sadder; the mob existed only in the fevered, paranoid daydreams of Geoffrey Botkin. 

After all, the Botkin Sisters are still living as stay-at-home daughters freely.  No one has forced them to work outside the home - not even economic forces.  No one has forced them to get educational credentials.  No one prevented the publication of their second book.  No one prevents them from publishing blog posts.    Sure, being unmarried and childless in their thirties was never in their childhood dreams - but that's true of plenty of single men and women who are members of other religions or no religion who wanted a spouse and children.   They have every right to be sad or mad about that - but it's a sadness shared by many people in the US.  Not all dreams come true.

I'm proud of the work I've done to free my son from needless fear; my heart breaks that the Botkin kids have been trained to live in fear.

*When  Spawn was giving Robin hell at PT, I joked that Spawn was giving hell to a woman who would gladly go to the gates of hell and back to help Spawn.  Every time I said this, Spawn would give Robin a baleful look like "Mama thinks you'd go to the gates of hell for me.  Prove it.  I left a sticker on the gates of hell.  Describe it to me and we'll be friends." Don't tell Spawn I told you - but the secret is that he didn't leave a sticker on the gates of hell!  Only someone who went to the gates of hell for him would know that he didn't leave a sticker.  Robin figured that out somehow - and Jack thinks she's a great buddy.

**I might review all 10 list items someday - but there's nothing new or groundbreaking in the list.  The controversy comes mainly from the fact that Geoffrey Botkins likes drama to spice up his life.

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 3 - Part Four

I've been slacking a bit when it comes to blog posts recently.  Part of the issue has been the round of Spawn-related appointments, but the other fascinating development has been the fact that the Botkin Sisters have re-emerged from their protracted silence to send an officious, overblown and palpably silly letter to a blogger who wrote a series of posts about 1) the lies that Geoffrey and Victoria Botkins have been telling everyone about their families of origin and 2) used the Botkin Family to discuss covert incest (e.g, emotional incest, emotional entanglement) which I generally term "stunting your kids' emotional growth to suit the needs of the parents.

I'd love to tell you that I have a series of insightful posts waiting based on that letter - but, Jesus, it is so rambling and badly written that I find myself skimming rather than reading the letter. 

I'm currently transcribing one of their free podcasts (ugh) as well as part of the interview between Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin and their father in "So Much More" (double ugh) to repudiate one of the claims the Botkin Sisters made in their letter.   Anna Sophia and Elizabeth claim that Cindy Kunsman didn't use the actual writings or teachings or actions of the Botkin Sisters to support her claims that 1) the Botkin parents lie through their teeth about their parents and 2) the Botkin parents have worked diligently to keep their adult children emotionally dependent on the parents in an unhealthy way. 

Well, Cindy Kunsman may not have directly referenced the writings of the Botkin family when she wrote the post ten years ago - but I certainly have along with  Hester over at Scarlet Letters. 

In a cosmically aligned irony, the Botkin Sisters today are a great counterexample to advice given by Jasmine Baucham in her book "Joyfully At Home".   The third chapter in the book has been filled with advice on how to be a good daughter to a CP/QF dad while avoiding the accusation that the daughter is wasting time by remaining a child by living at home until married.

 In the last post, we discussed how Ms. Baucham's belief that a good stay-at-home daughter should be fully conversant in her father's vision fails mightily if her father's vision is wrong.  For example, Kathryn Joyce in "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement" shares the family anecdote that Geoffrey Botkin shared far and wide to catch people's attention about his two-hundred year plan.   When Anna Sofia was born, Victoria had heavy postpartum bleeding and the midwives handed off Anna Sofia to Geoffrey to care for while they tried to staunch the bleeding.  Geoffrey was overwhelmed at having his first daughter and remembered that women have all the eggs they will ever need at birth.  He cups his hand over little Anna Sofia's abdomen and prays that God will give her an early, highly fruitful marriage. 

Now, Anna Sofia is in her mid-thirties and still bears the name of Botkin - so I think I can safely say that her father's vision of an early marriage for her (and Elizabeth presumably) has failed.  The two sisters have 5 to 10 years of childbearing left if they marry soon - but the time left for a large family of more than 2-3 kids is rapidly running out.

The next quotes from Jasmine Baucham's book bring up a different scenario.  What is a girl to do if her dad doesn't have a huge, overarching plan?  On this blog, the families we meet here are strongly biased in favor of fathers who have clear plan for how their immediate family of CP/QF believers are going to do something huge over time.  This bias happens because I'm reviewing materials created by motivated family members - and motivated family members seem to come from motivated parents frequently. 

This bias is important to remember because the CP/QF families I meet in real life rarely have as organized or far-reaching plans for the rebirth of Western Civilization or slowly replacing everyone in Leavenworth, Kansas with Maxwell descendents.  (Ok, I don't know if that is really the plan of the Maxwells or just a side effect of not wanting the grown-up kids to live more than a mile away....)  Most families have two parents who are working hard - really hard - crazily hard - to support a large to extremely large family on multiple blue collar jobs.  They love their kids.  They love their spouse.  They have a deep, personal faith in Jesus.  They try their best to homeschool their kids, but are often overwhelmed by the sheer struggle to provide the basics of food, clothing and shelter for the kids let alone provide the materials to educate them. 

For these families, a response to a teenage daughter in her late teens or twenties to "What can I do to support your vision?" may honestly be "Get a job to help us pay for gas, groceries, clothes, rent...."

I suspect 19-year old Jasmine Baucham ran in more financially stable circles, but the first quote is still condescending to young women:

To cherish your father's vision is not to wake up every morning and expect him to make your life worthwhile. I have received countless emails and inquiries from young women who are throwing their hands up in despair. " My dad doesn't have a vision!" What these girls usually mean is that they are waiting for their fathers to micromanage their time at home, and would feel more comfortable being told what to do every second of every day then actively seek ways to bless their father and their household as their own. (pg. 51)

I doubt that's true.   I'm assuming a young woman who hunts down contact info for Jasmine Baucham after reading her book and writes an email seeking help when her dad says that he doesn't have a vision is both highly motivated and reasonably competent in the first place.  If she was less motivated, her response to a non-vision by her father would be a sigh of relief and kicking back to read a Christian romance.   If she was honestly clueless, that email would never get sent.

I think it's a safe assumption that those young women are in a family without a huge vision. 

But don't worry; 19 year-old Jasmine has your back! 

She realizes that all Christians are called to spread the Gospel - so your dad has a vision even if he doesn't know he has a vision - and brainstorms some ideas that a young woman could bring to her dad in the next quote:

In that Spirit, even if your dad never tells you specific things that you can do to aid him in his vision, you can work on helping him by advancing the gospel in and through your home. Ask your dad if it would be all right for you to arrange for two families from your church to come to dinner at your home every week. See if you can spare you once a week to babysit for a busy mother at your church. Ask him if it would be alright if you had several younger women over to your family's home one day a week to minister to them. (pg. 51)

I'm cringing on behalf of real-adult Jasmine and grateful (yet again) that no one ever showed any interest in publishing a self-help book written by me at 19. 

 Lots of CP/QF families are food-insecure.  If you can barely feed your double-digit family, bringing two more families over for dinner weekly might break your family.  Heck, that would be a financial drain on a lot of blue collar families with a few kids or single-income white collar families.  Instead, find a free meeting place at an easily accessible location for a monthly Bible-based story time.   Local libraries often have free community meeting spaces on a first-come, first-serve basis.  If you have a little more money, reach out to offer free rides to and from to other families who might not have extra gas money.

The babysitting idea is good - assuming you are not needed at home by your family, have reliable transportation, and gas money.  I feel like that is unlikely to be true for most CP/QF families, though.

Oddly enough, the last one is the most annoying to me.  This can inconvenience both parents, your siblings, the parents of the ministered young women and the young women if done right...or maybe I mean wrong. 

The most obvious annoyance to me as an adult woman would be having to clean my house to "ready for outsider" standards.  Additionally, the visitors may want snacks...or to talk to me.  I promise I'm not a anti-social begrudging hermit in real life, but the thought of having my house invaded by young women who need ministering puts me in a bad headspace. 

My husband would like it even less; he's a solid introvert who appreciates a calm and quiet house.

Since most CP/QF houses are overcrowded to start with, dragging ministering targets into the house decreases the room siblings have to play while increasing the likelihood that irritations will happen.

The dynamics in play for the girl's family are at least unlikely to split a church; what happens when the ministering teen teaches something that differs from the other family's belief system?  The CP/QF blog-o-sphere and the blogs of people who have left are already filled with church splits over broken courtships or minor theological disputes.  I am confident this would lead to at least one messy church fiasco a year.

Last - but not least - who wants to be ministered to?  I am extremely easily amused and having a slightly older girl take me on as a personal ministry project sounds hellish. 

My take-away: if your dad doesn't have a vision, count your blessing and read a good book!

Maxwell Megalomania: Bunnies and Eggs Have Nothing to Do with Easter

Great combination of events this morning, folks! 

We got hit by an ice storm and I'm getting over a bout of the stomach flu. 

Honestly, it worked out well for me.  The school I was scheduled to work at was closed so I spent the morning sleeping and feel quite a bit better already.   My son is safely packed out with his grandparents for the night so hopefully I'll be good to go by tomorrow.


I greatly appreciate a dose of humor to keep my spirits from sagging when I'm sick so I decided to review an old blog post by the Maxwells that made me laugh so hard.  In 2012, several people asked the Maxwells why they don't have anything involving bunnies or baskets of sweets when they celebrate Easter, - sorry - "Resurrection Sunday**".

Maxwell decides the best option is to write an entire blog post:Bunnies and Baskets that he swears in the comments sections he wrote to be non-judgemental.  To my eyes, the judgemental portion outweighs his occasional sop towards tolerance like the first paragraph response after re-posting the offending comments:

Christianity is not a democracy, and if millions of “devout” Christians exercise their faith in a particular way, it doesn’t necessarily make it pleasing to the Lord. Living one’s life according to the Bible should be every professing Christian’s (sic) desire and practice. I do understand that many churches have bunnies and baskets to perhaps reach the lost. Each person/church’s conduct/choices are between them and the Lord.

Hmmm. 

See, that sentence about how millions of Christians are doing Christianity wrong....that's judgemental. 

Additionally, that sentence is incredibly arrogant.  And dumb.   Has anyone - even the commenter who talked about how millions of Christians who involve candy bunnies in baskets  for Easter - implied that Christianity is a democracy? 

I'm one of those devout Christians who includes bunnies, eggs and flowers in Easter celebrations - so allow me to reverse Maxwell's assumption.   Oddly enough, Steven Maxwell views himself as theologically educated enough to run his own church - but he declares in the middle of the next paragraph that there is no "natural tie-in or segue" between the Resurrection and bunnies, eggs, or candy baskets.   Why have millions - or billions - of Christians through history connected Jesus's miraculous rising from the dead to bunnies, eggs, and flowers?  What have they seen that Maxwell misses?

Rabbits, eggs and flowers are all symbols of new life.  Jesus' resurrection opened to the world a new life where everyone could be saved by God.   The birth of a new animal or child is wonderful today when we understand reproduction - but the ability of life to continue onward was literally magical and connected to the divine through most of history. Eggs are especially miraculous - how does an animal that requires mating get the sperm or the baby into a hard shell?

Now that's I've vented my spleen about the first sentence, let me move on to the second sentence. 

I love Protestants of all stripes - but seriously - the majority of Christians on the planet fit into the denominations of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Coptic Church.  Those three denominations have lots of disagreements - but none of them prioritize Scriptural revelation over revelation that happens through church traditions.   Yelling "Sola Scriptura!" is not a winning argument in the three older Christian traditions; all it does is cause the members of those religions to exchange exasperated looks around the person yelling it.

Let me express this another way. 

It's as irritating as me yelling "You have no church cultural tradition of skipping bunnies, baskets and eggs!" every time Steven Maxwell strips away a cultural tradition.   Since my religion's frame of reference is different from Maxwell's, holding him to the my religion's frame is ignorant at best and presumptuous at worst.

Sentence three is a hot mess of qualifiers; the stripped down sentence of "I understand that churches have bunnies and baskets to reach the lost" is elegant compared to the original.   The qualifiers serve the critical purpose of watering down the sensible statement into a mishmash of babble.   Without the qualifiers, Maxwell would be open to the question of "Your family attracts people for tracting by offering face-painting - including the logos of sports teams - despite the fact that you teach that participating or watching sports at any level leads inexorably to immoral habits.  How is your behavior more moral than offering kids candy shaped like bunnies at Easter when no one (including you) argues that candy bunnies leads to evil?"

The fourth sentence was clearly added later to be less judgemental along with the weak/weakened third sentence.    How can I tell?  Mainly because the rest of the essay reads much more smoothly without it.   Hell, there's even a nice transition between discussing the second sentences ideas of ideals of Christian living and the next paragraph's hook about looking at two objects at once.   That original writing worked - and I rarely compliment.

The rest of the essay alternates between sketchy Biblical interpretation based on Maxwell's weak understanding of the word "idle" and how the meaning of words change over time and cranky air-quotes about "Christians" and "holidays".   There's even the required denouncement of Halloween as evil.  I'll skip my required denouncement against denouncing Halloween and against the dangers of reading the KJV without an advanced degree in Medieval Studies.

Finally, I'll leave you with my favorite idolatrous quote of the essay:

Having an egg hunt for the family on Resurrection Sunday is similar to celebrating Mother’s Day by the family watching basketball, when Mom hates basketball. Resurrection Sunday is a day that is to be all about Jesus!

I'm pretty sure "Jesus hates family egg hunts" insults Sola Scriptura more than the family egg hunts do. 

As Luke 10:21 lovingly shares " At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do."

Kids understand what to do when we receive good news.  We rejoice with our whole bodies, minds and souls!  And what better day to rejoice than the day Jesus conquered death for us! 

Amen.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Thanks for listening :-)

**"Resurrection Day" messes with my head since I keep confusing it with "Reformation Day" - the Lutheran celebration of Luther nailing the theses to Wittenberg Cathedral door on November 1st when Catholics were expected to attend Mass since it was a Holy Day of Obligation.  Pretty brilliant, Luther!

Quick Update!

Hiya, folks!   The quarterly set of the Spawn's medical appointments has hit again.   He's doing great; the follow-ups are examples of medical CYA according to his primary doctor - but all of a sudden we've had a slew of appointments all at once. 

Since the Spawn is still an obligate crawler - albeit one who now cruises and pulls-to-standing on everything he can reach - dragging my laptop with me places gets heavy in addition to a 24 pound two-year old who likes to smack the keys and tries to put things in the USB ports.  Oh, and wonderfully, he's getting more comfortable in new places which means he now bolts down hallways if he thinks there's an interesting toy at the end of it...so blogging on the run is a thing of the past.

I'm hoping to work on one either late tonight or tomorrow evening and should be back to 2 posts a week within 10-14 days.

Joyfully At Home: Chapter Three - Part Three

Well, we are in day three of Snowmageddon and I am pre-loading a bunch of blog posts.

Michigan has two nice seasons of spring and fall when people can spend the whole day outdoors without too much planning.  In the summer,  we have spells of weather in the mid-eighties or higher with 90% humidity.  Outside excursions are possible, but are best undertaken early in the morning or in the early evening when the sun is low.   During the winter, the temperatures stay below freezing for weeks at a time - but as long as the temperature is above 0F - we don't usually need to make any special accommodations besides winter clothing.  We usually have 2-3 winter storms a year that disrupt school and travel for 24 hours or less before the roads are cleared.   Multi-day winter storms like this are very rare in this area of Michigan; I don't remember one like this in my life.  My parents lived through the blizzard of 1978 which shut down their town for a week.   We're probably going to be melted out by Saturday, I hope.

I'd never realized how much I depended on being able to go outside until these last three days while the storm has made it too dangerous.  My husband's truck was in the shop and we planned to pick it up this morning.  The three of us got bundled up, hopped into my minivan and started off.   We made it about a half-mile before deciding that traversing the 5 miles to the auto shop would be too dangerous.  The next street was a half-mile farther along and I made a U-turn there.   The road alternated between 12-18" of drifted snow and bare ground thanks to the constant wind we've been having for a few days along with an average of 6" of snow each day.

Making decisions about when (or if) to do basic chores during a winter storm is part of being an adult.   The problem facing young women who are stay-at-home daughters (SAHD) is that these women are expected to conform to the vision of their father.   It's most obvious in courtships.  The Duggar daughters who have married were all expected to conform to the Duggar parent ideals - no "front hugs" and no unchaperoned time with their suitor.   The daughters were all legal adults when they entered their courtships, but the rules for the courtship was set up by the parents.   Based on the book "Before You Meet Prince Charming", the Mally family agrees.   The Maxwell Family views their sons to be under the authority of their father until marriage so presumably the daughters are too.

In "Joyfully At Home", Jasmine Baucham includes a swipe at adult SAHDs who follow their father's vision without being fully conversant in the details of the plan. 

For instance, I once had a friend over, and we were talking about various movies that were playing in the theater at the time. I brought up a movie that I had not seen or read about yet, but was interested in looking into, and my friend - a wonderful, Godly 19 year old woman -quipped, "Oh, my dad says I'm not allowed to watch that movie."

When I asked her why, she shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "He just said so." I questioned her further, intent on getting to the bottom of her helpless attitude towards the situation. " Did he say you couldn't ask him why?" I wanted to know.

She shook her head. " No. He read something in the paper and said we probably shouldn't be interested in that movie."

" Did he burn the paper afterwards?" I asked.

" No, he left it open on the coffee table."

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a young woman who trust fully in the wise guidance of her father. However, to do so without caring seek the reasoning behind the decision might show laziness or an indifference on the daughter's part. (pgs.48-49)

I think Ms. Baucham's intention for stay-at-home daughters is clear.  Daughters should put the time and energy to fully understand why their fathers believe certain things and be able to explain that belief clearly to outsiders.

It's a nice idea - but there is an assumption that once daughters learn the reason for their family's belief, the daughters will both agree with the belief and want to continue the behavior.

Allow me to create a thought experiment around Jasmine's story.   The next time her friend wants to see a certain movie, her father says she shouldn't watch it because of something he read in the paper.  The friend picks up the paper and reads it.    How might the daughter's belief in her father's vision be shaken if she finds that:

• The movie "God Is Not Dead" is described as a collection of how conservative Christians wish the world worked, but because of that the movie is completely unobjectionable and edifying for people within a certain belief system.   Too bad her dad refuses to let anyone in his family watch movies because he thinks they are a waste of time a la Steven Maxwell.
• The movie "Hidden Figures" has no objectionable content in terms of sexuality or language. It does, however, show adult women working while they have children at home - and that's immoral according to Ken and Lori Alexander.
• The movie "Selma" has some content-related violence - but the thing her father really objects to is the idea that black people are equal to white people.  That's against the Bible according to anyone who raves about Rushdoony like the Botkin Family.

Exploring the beliefs held by your family is a critical component of growing up - but 19-year old Jasmine Baucham hadn't yet grappled with the reality that it is very natural for adults to reject some beliefs that their parents hold strongly. 

This rejection of reality illustrates one of the flaws of the expectation of SAHDs that living under their family's vision automatically moves them closer to being a woman who is ready to leave her family of origin and marry.  For a SAHD who objects to an item of her family's belief system, her only option is to crush her disbelief and stick with the family's beliefs.  If she openly questions the beliefs, she's being worldly so it's better to shut down those nagging thoughts and feelings before they destroy her family.

If a person ignores their thoughts and feelings long enough, they will stop hearing those thoughts and feeling, certainly - but at the cost of losing the ability to think critically about situations as well as losing the benefits "gut-instincts" bring to the table.   The person will be less likely to discomfort their friends and family - but are at very high risk of being taken in by cult leaders, conmen and predators.

I suspect that 28-year-old Jasmine Holmes has a more nuanced understanding of belief formation among adolescents and adults, thankfully.  I hope her mature understanding makes inroads into CP/QF beliefs.

The last post in this chapter is my favorite.  Ms. Baucham explains that your dad always has a vision - even if he swears he doesn't.....