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

 Good morning!

We are into the spring crazy time of year at my home improvement store.  I worked in the garden department for four hours today.  During that time, I sold three riding lawn mowers - which blows my mind.  I used to be really hesitant in talking to customers about large-ticket items that were for sale because I didn't feel like I knew enough about the products. 

To remedy that , over the slower winter season, I used downtime at work to research the major selling points of the models we carried in each brand - and I was surprised how much that increased my confidence. 

We're not sales people - I would hate to work under a required amount of sales per week - but I do like being able to help people who have decided that they want a riding mower find the best option for their lives.   

I also gained a lot of time at the Service Desk which has benefited my sales ability in a way I didn't expect.  Lawn tractors and zero-turn mowers generally need to be either ordered online or set up as a "Will Call" to be picked up when the person rents a trailer because relatively few people own a large enough vehicle to transport the new mower home.    Both of those methods of selling are done by service desk workers - but few garden associates are trained service desk workers.  This meant that the garden associates had to find a free service desk worker to finish the customer's order.   I, on the other hand, can find the right tractor for a customer and complete the order which saves a lot of time for everyone.

I didn't have time to transcribe a section I was hoping to this weekend because I covered an extra shift when so a coworker could attend a funeral.   Instead, I'm treating myself to the low hanging fruit that is Terri Maxwell's article "Sheltering Our Children" published on March 1st, 1999.  This was published after two articles where Terri described how the Maxwells slowly removed their kids from all interaction with outsiders.   There must have been a tiny bit of pushback - this was before the Maxwells disabled comments on their website - so Terri attempted to explain their rationale.     

The result is a great example of how sexual gatekeeping sits weirdly with the ideal of male headship.

Here we go!

The past two months’ Mom’s Corners have made me wonder if some of you may be thinking, “This sounds like too much sheltering to me. Shouldn’t we teach our children right from wrong as they grow up, and then let them sink or swim in the real world?”

Um....that's not what the rest of us do, Terri.     That's what CP/QF parents do when their kids finally become full-adults - but that's not what the rest of us do.

We teach our children right from wrong - and we let them move about in the real world.  This means that the first times that our children get conflicting messages from people outside of our family group the stakes are generally very low.   

I've worked diligently to suppress my vague unease around certain insects because I want my son to view insects as a normal, healthy part of the environment.    I have worked hard not to kill any insect if I can help it - and express a sense of remorse on the rare occasion when I do.  

And by the second week back at school this year, my son (in cahoots with his entire class) has decided that "bugs go squish!"    I found this out when we came home from school one day and saw a box-elder bug on the steps.  Spawn asked me what it was.  I told him.   He said - in a very sweet voice - "Oh, how nice!"   then yelled "SQUISH!" as he stomped on the insect.

He's getting two responses to insects.   

Did I yell at him for squishing the bug?  Nope. 

I said, "Oh, we don't squish outdoor bugs in our family" in the same calm, gentle tone of voice as I say other great moral lessons like "Please don't pull on Mama's ponytail; it's attached to my head" and "I love how you are pretending to be a puppy, but please don't lick the floor."  (Yes, the last one is more a social norm than a moral lesson - but please don't lick my floors; I know where we've been.)

Did I pull him out of preschool when I dropped him off the next day and his classmate was refusing to go on a piece of playground equipment unless an adult squished the insect on the equipment?   Nope.

I asked the teachers if I could use a piece of wood to remove the spider and show it to the kids.   With their permission, I showed the ones who wanted to look the eight legs on the spider and moved it to a safe location to eat mosquitos.  

Spawn's getting two responses to insects now - and eventually he'll get different responses to inclusion, sexuality, and recreational drugs.     My hope is by walking him through how we make our choices based on our values when he is very small he'll have an idea of how to do it when he is larger, too.

Subject change: Terri Maxwell and I have very different opinions on affairs:

How many of you have known a godly man who has fallen into immorality of some kind, perhaps adultery? It happens to pastors, deacons, elders, Sunday School teachers, even homeschooling dads. Do you think these men purposed to be unfaithful to their wives? I seriously doubt it!

Terri wrote this when I was 18 years old - and even that young, I would have called this as bullshit.

Yes, Terri, those men purposed to be unfaithful to their wives.   

Did they sit down one night alone in the living room and say "Yes, I am going to find someone to have an affair with tomorrow!" followed by a Montgomery Burns-style laugh?   

No - at least I hope not - but having an affair is not an accident.   It's not like tripping over a shoelace or slipping on some ice.   Being attracted to someone is far more accidental; a lot of physical attraction is simply a matter of unconscious preferences.  

Actions, on the other hand, are conscious.   A married man who is attracted to a coworker can choose to stay professional, on-task, and restrain conversational topics to the same level of intimacy that he has with coworkers who he is not attracted to.   If a woman flirts with him on a business trip, he can ignore the signals or let her know that 's he's unavailable because he's married.    That should work fine at stopping the relationship's momentum as long as the man is clear that he's not going to act on his feelings.   

Compare that view of male responsibility to female responsibility found a little later:

Unfortunately, the girls today are very aggressive, and while we discuss with our sons the need to guard themselves, we would not want them placed daily in the path of temptation.

Married men who were in positions of spiritual leadership had affairs - and Terri Maxwell claims that those men didn't plan or set a course that lead to the affair.

Teenage girls, on the other hand, are ravening man-eaters who will seduce and betray a virginal Maxwell son. 

Now, those girls are single and therefore can be involved in a romantic relationship with another single person without any condemnation from societal or religious mores - but Terri Maxwell slut-shames them far more fiercely than she condemned the men who broke a Commandment.

That might be because she's never detoxified her thinking from the 1950's - or it might be because the stories her husband has told her about his coworkers are wild:

Despite the better working environment of the corporate world, my husband has been happy to leave it, with its immodesty of dress, aggressiveness in women, and the propensity toward doing whatever is deemed necessary to get ahead.

I bet Maxwell's former coworkers love to hear that Steve's been telling his wife that he worked with wild party girls who wore bar-hopping outfits to work.   The bitches who weren't actively trying to seduce him were proteges of Nurse Ratched.   Meanwhile, his male coworkers were trying to outdo Gordon Gekko and - although Steve was too delicate to discuss it with Terri - everyone was snorting lines of cocaine in the bathroom.  

On a similar note, I have a pet unicorn named Starshine who I ride to work.   At night, Starshine snuggles up with our pet Tauntaun Chomp-Chomp.  *rolls eyes*

Seriously, he worked at an aerospace contracting company.   There might have been some solid angling for promotions - but I've never heard anything too horrible about his former company.  Similarly, the women he worked with most likely wore clothing that was more flattering than the tube-jumpers that Terri was sewing en masse for her daughters during this period - but that says more about how unflattering tube-jumpers are for every body type than anything else.    I do wonder how much of his condemnation was reserved for when people told him to knock off trying to convert people related to his job- or they'd go to HR?  
   
Well, that was fun.  Have a great day!

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 16 - Part Four

Good morning!

I'm nearing the end of my vacation and have got nearly none of what I hoped to get done - but I had a lot of fun and feel far more rested than I have in months so I'm satisfied.

Spawn and I went to the zoo with his paternal grandmother and had a blast.  Spawn is so much more mobile than the last time we went to the zoo that I was blown away.   As always, I brought our stroller - and he clambered in and out of it without any help.  The zoo has a small petting zoo area.  Spawn has always been a bit agnostic about petting animals; he likes looking at them - but generally doesn't want to touch them.   

This time, he decided he was going to chase chickens.   He'd look up at me and say, "Mama, let's run and chase chickens!"  I'd say, "Sounds good!" and we'd take off at a fast walk (for me) and a wobbly run (for him).   

Whenever he'd get close, he'd pipe up, "Chicken!  Wait!"  Unfortunately, the chickens didn't respond to that by waiting.

If he got close to a stopped chicken and the chicken started walking again, he'd say "Chicken!  Come back, chicken!"   

At no point did the chickens come back.  I have no idea who was training these chickens, but they don't respond very well to verbal commands from strange 4-year olds.   :-P 

He was so adorable I kept giggling.

Occasionally, he'd stop chicken chasing to go talk to the goats and sheep.   "Goat, how are you today?  Are you sleeping?  Time to wake up!  Oh, you are asleep."

Eventually, he decided to pet the goats - who felt like a dog according to Spawn - and he touched the sheep who were very soft.   

I petted a chicken.   The petting zoo chickens were so tame that one teenage girl was able to catch a hen and pick her up - but I didn't want to tempt fate.  I don't think Spawn petted any chickens; he enjoyed being able to chase an animal that was much smaller than him - but every time I broached the idea of petting the chicken, he looked at me as if I was insane.

I had a great time with my little boy - who I often cannot believe was the tiny, fragile baby I cradled on my chest in the NICU - even though he is.

Over time we all grow and change.  Jasmine Baucham mentions on her adult blog that having people read chunks of "Joyfully At Home" to her is awkwardly painful because she doesn't believe a lot of the same things as a woman in her late-twenties as she did at 19.    

I think nearly everyone can agree with that.  I often tell my husband that I am incredibly grateful that no one thought I should write a self-help book at age 19 or 20; I'd hate my book as much as she does.  

This next quote is one that didn't age well after being rather priggish and self-important when it was first written.  

But what about missionaries like Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, and Mary Slessor?

I know a lot about these women. They were all heroes of mine growing up! (...) My opinion of women missionaries in no way invalidates the sacrifices they made, or that the sacrifices did, indeed bear great fruit.

However, I am not a pragmatist -- just because a Christian has done something that bears fruit, does not mean that there is a Biblical provision for that action. When I approach the question about the biblical validity of a female missionary, I try to approach it from a Biblical perspective, not necessarily a historical perspective, because even God's people are prone to misunderstanding his precepts.

These women were brave. They were incredibly virtuous, and they loved God with all their hearts. But that does not mean that they were above ignorance of the Lord's precepts, or above correction. We will never know if the same work could have been done by different people in different ways at different times, because the Lord ordained to use them, even if they were misguided. (pg. 193)

Allow me to paraphrase the quote:

Question: What about well-respected female missionaries who practiced the kind of service that Jesus preached while remaining single throughout their lives?

Response: While I cannot fault their works or the fruit thereof, they failed miserably because none of them conformed to the ideals my family preaches!   If they had stayed at home, gotten married and raised a brood of kids, God would have totally brought a man in to do the exact same thing they did.  Instead, they destroyed God's Real Plan - which I as a 19 year old stay-at-home daughter am privy to more than those women."

Now, I knew nothing about these three women - but the fact that a CP/QF writer disapproved of them is always a good sign in my opinion.

I've done some cursory research into their lives and here are the major themes in their lives:

1) Extensive work experience outside of their homes:  None of these women lived anything like a sheltered middle class life prior to entering missionary work.  Amy Carmichael's family planted a church in Ireland and she was intimately involved in working with girls who worked in the local mills.  By age 20, Miss Carmichael had expanded the building of the planted church by finding a single donor to buy a $500 prefabricated building that would hold 500 people at a time and by finding a mill owner who donated land to build on.  Gladys Aylward worked as a domestic worker from her teens until she was 30 years old to save up enough money to travel to China.  Mary Slessor's father was an alcoholic so she and her mother worked in the mills to support the family.  Slessor was working 12 hours shifts by the time she was 14.   

Ms. Baucham may have objected to working beyond the confines of a family - but self-reliance is an important skill that working gives women and helped these missionary women in the field.

2)Willingness to adapt to the culture of their new country:  All three of these women were raised in British or Irish homes but recognized that the local culture had equally valid traditions.  Amy Carmichael dressed in Indian clothing and gave rescued children Indian names.   Gladys Aylward spoke fluent Chinese and became a naturalized Chinese citizen.  Mary Slessor learned fluent Efik, ate local food, dressed far more simply than required by missionary codes, and lived among the people rather than at a mission station.  

American culture is fine for America - but Christianity is about more than forcing everyone to adapt American middle-class cultural norms regardless of what CP/QF leaders believe.

3) Attempted to facilitate change in cultural traditions that were harming local people:  Amy Carmichael provided homes and training for women and young girls in India who were members of the Dalit caste involved in prostitution.  Gladys Aylward worked with the Chinese government to monitor the progress of ending foot-binding for girls while caring for orphans.  Mary Slessor brought change in abandonment of twin babies into an area where that was still practiced while bringing vocational training opportunities to the local communities.

There's a saying attributed to St. Francis that I love: "Preach the Gospel always- and if necessary, use words."   This saying causes preachy theologians and priests to start explaining that we are really allowed to verbally teach people about the Gospel - but I think it provides a needed push-back against sermons without action.

4)Single motherhood:  Amy Carmichael spent 55 years raising girls who had been engaged in prostitution and the children born to women engaged in prostitution.  Gladys Aylward adopted several orphans, gave them meaningful Chinese names, and lead nearly 100 orphans through mountainous territory to avoid Japanese occupiers in the Second Sino-Japanese War.  She was particularly annoyed by a movie made on a biography written about her life because her movie character leaves the orphans at the end of a movie to follow the male love interest to another country.  This was particularly galling for a woman who prided herself on never having kissed a man at age 60.  Mary Slessor adopted and raised at least four abandoned babies.  

I often think single women adopting children is the largest threat to the CP/QF way of life.  After all, the 'prize' of motherhood in CP/QF land is the main carrot dangled out to sweeten the gall of being a subservient wife for the rest of a woman's life.    If a woman can become a mother without being a wife, why sacrifice her freedom?  Normally, the answer is an aghast "Sex outside of marriage is immoral!".   Well, ok, but then why not motherhood without sex?  These women pulled it off - and they seemed to have a lot more freedom to choose how to live their lives than, say, Terri Maxwell.

One last thought:  Young Jasmine objected that each of these women blocked the "correct person" - who is obviously a married man with pastoral training - from doing God's Work.   

That assertion ignores the fact that none of these women were working in areas that could be described as the mythical 'uncontacted people'. 

India was a colony of Great Britain nine years before Amy Carmichael was born.  China had been aware of Christianity for a millennia prior to Gladys Aylward. Similarly, traders had brought the ideas of Christianity to Nigeria overland and by sea for hundreds of years before Mary Slessor.  Each of these women joined existing missions in the country they served - although Gladys Aylward wins an award for crazy amounts of pluck in getting to her mentor.  

In other words, there were already enough white dudes in the area trying to convert people.   

What Carmichael, Aylward, and Slessor brought to the table was a recognition that women can often work in different ways than men can.  Raising children is often viewed as the major contribution that women bring to societies - and each of these women was able to tackle an area of humanitarian reform that fit under the scope of women's purview.   

Relatedly, I suspect the women's willingness to raise local children opened far more doors than standard missionary work.   Mary Slessor said as much when explaining why she was welcomed and incorporated into the local government of the people she approached.  (That and her willingness to drop all of the colonial cultural ideas when she realized that they were not serving the community she wanted to serve.)  Now, I suppose the local mission could have sent in more male missionaries - but since all the previous ones had been killed - Mary Slessor's methods are both effective and life-saving for more than one group of people.....

How many people did they convert?  I have no idea - but I suspect that their willingness to care for the "least of God's people" did more for interesting some people in Christianity than all of "The Good Person" Tests ever have.

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 16 - Part Three

Hello, friends!

I'm enjoying mellow spring weather here in Michigan.  My job has a use-it-or-lose it policy for paid vacation time so I'm taking this week off to use my hours before they expire.   My son and I are going to the zoo tomorrow and I am cautiously optimistic that I can get my garden ready during this week as well.

We're in the middle of Jasmine Baucham's self-help book "Joyfully at Home".  In Chapter 16, she makes a game attempt to define living as a sheltered, dependent stay-at-home daughter from after high school graduation as exactly what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to go out and make believers of all the world.

Needless to say, the result is less than convincing.

These last two posts in the chapter deal with two questions about missionary work for single women.  These two quotes are about a broad question if single women should spend the years before they marry to do work in the mission field:

I take issue with young women traipsing off to the mission field less because of my beliefs about womanhood then because of my beliefs about disciple-making. Long-term missions are far more effective than short-term, and church planting ( from my perspective) is the work of men. When entire families plant their lives on foreign soil, they minister to foreign communities in a whole new way. They impact entire families instead of just individuals. They change the tide of a culture instead of a few people.  They perform hospitality and show people Christian family life -- what are Christian culture -- looks like. (pg 192)

I agree in part with Jasmine; long-term missions are far more useful than short-term missions and the best missionaries plan to become members of the community in which they work.

We disagree with nearly everything else.  

First, church-planting is the least important and relatively easiest job in the mission field.   Running a church is pretty much fundraising, caring for members and leading worship.   All of those require some skill - but many pastors in the US essentially work as part-time ministers and have additional jobs.

The reason that long-term missions are more successful than short-term missions is that long-term missions have the time to find out from local community members the major problems the community is facing.  The missionaries, then, work at creating solutions to problems in areas like education or health.   In my church, missionaries are primarily members of religious orders who are adults who have taken vows of chastity.   The vow of chastity is to devote their energies to God - but as a side-effect - these are adults who do not have to burden a community with a dependent spouse or children.   The absence of a traditional nuclear family lets the sister or priest focus all of their career energy on their missionary work.

On that note, wouldn't it make more sense for a single man or woman who wanted to be a missionary to settle in their new country, marry someone from that culture and raise their family there?  I find it exceedingly hard to believe that a single woman missionary would be unable to find a man in the local community who was also Christian.   There's going to be more areas of tension in the marriage on paper - but a spouse who understand the local community and who can raise any children as full members of the community they live in is going to be more useful in spreading Christianity than two Americans who think that hospitality is a virtue found only in middle-class American household.....

Is the purpose of missionary work to spread Christianity or to spread American culture as interpreted by CP/QF adherents?  Ms. Baucham seems to be confusing the two and skating very close to the erroneous that Christianity comes with an obsession with nuclear family.

This next quote inadvertently points out how little a SAHD is honestly capable of helping out in her community:

Ministry in and through the home is simple. The Bible has given a clear directive for that as well: hospitality (Romans 12: 13, 1 Timothy 5:10; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9).   Mothers without children have opportunities to invite families into their home several times a week to get to know them and minister to them; they can volunteer at their local crisis pregnancy center, counseling other women; they can help other women in their church who have children and may need a break; they can go out and witness to the sick and aid the elderly. Wives of missionaries across the world can do the same for unreached people groups. (pg. 192)

None of the cited verses support a SAHD whose family throws a barbeque for the local church twice a year in my humble opinion.  

I don't know if Baucham's editor missed something - but why is this entire paragraph about "mothers without children?"  Did she mean "women without children?"   That kind of makes sense - but it makes even more sense as "women with grown children" - who are really not the audience of this book. 

Even in the United States, the idea of sending members of the stay-at-home daughter cohort out to do these jobs is painful.   

As an wife and mother, I do not want to go to a young single woman's house to hear about how I'm raising my kids wrong or how I'd doing my relationship with Jesus wrong.   It would be doubly surreal to be lectured to by a young woman who is living at home in her twenties while not pursuing a career or education.

I can't imagine how a single woman who has been raised to view bearing children as her entire life goal would be good at crisis pregnancy counseling; the physical, psychological and financial costs of pregnancy and infant rearing are real and having a very sheltered, very naïve young thing tell me about how great motherhood is (based on her non-experience) might cause me to lose my mind.   Or start yelling while crying; I really don't miss pregnancy hormones.

Please don't witness to the sick; they're having a hard enough time without having to pretend to listen to a spiel about Jesus from the Evangelical Glee Club.

I will accept the SAHD girls club might be passably good at giving mothers breaks and aiding the elderly in household chores and errands.    That is something my siblings and I were expected to be able to do by age 16 - but SAHDhood is mostly about preventing women from growing beyond early adolescence prior to marriage so that's a feature, not a bug.

I've been waiting for the next post for a while; Jasmine attempts to teach her readers about why famous female missionaries did it wrong - and comes across as an entitled brat rather than an educated woman.

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 16 - Part Two

Hello!

We had a fun Easter egg hunt for my son and my nephew yesterday.   I was struggling to figure out how to make the event fun for both boys.   My nephew is high-energy and likes to run around a lot.   My son is fairly low energy and needs support to walk.   I wanted to make sure that my son had a chance to find eggs but didn't want my nephew to be stuck moving at the speed of my son.  

I ended up putting two eggs (or two toy cars) in each hiding spot.  Now, the boys are four so I dropped the eggs in easy to spot locations and we still needed to lead them about to help find all of the eggs.  I hid a few sets of eggs right next to the starting area and demonstrated that each boy got one egg.     I assumed that my nephew was going to run off pretty quickly - but he and Spawn actually stuck pretty close together and worked well as a team.   My nephew was great at picking up the eggs and putting them in a basket.  He'd also bring eggs he found back and put them in Spawn's basket.   Spawn, on the other hand, is built to search out an entire area carefully before moving on - so he'd find egg stashes that my nephew had missed.  Both boys had a blast and their shared grandmother got plenty of photos for her albums.

I'll let you know when the egg hunt ends.  I hid five sets of cars - but we only found four.   I have no idea where I put the last set - but I'm sure we'll find them soon.  :-)

We are working our way through Jasmine Baucham's chapter on how being a stay-at-home daughter (SAHD) fulfills the Great Commission in Matthew 28.   Her answer - in a whole lot more words - is that being a Christian Patriarchy/Quiverful (CP/QF) middle class family is fulfilling the Great Commission.    The reason she needs a lot more words is her dogged attempts to drag "normal daily life" into "major ministry contributions" like this relatively short quote:

The most obvious way I can think to do this would be to show hospitality to strangers ( Hebrews  13): visiting missionaries who need a place to stay-- unchurched neighbors-- those in need. We use it to train up children who may set up their homes in other states or on other continents as headquarters for ministry ( Psalm 127). We use it for a place to recharge and refocus after we've been out doing ministry in the community. (pg. 188)

 The first group - visiting missionaries who need a place to stay - is unintentionally ironic since adult Jasmine gets to see her parents twice a year when they return home from Zambia for furlough/fundraising. 

For a wider audience, how many visiting missionaries are there per year to room and board compared to the number of families in a church community?    Jasmine's family probably got more than their fare share since their family was small for a long time and her dad was the minister - but I'd be really impressed if their congregation had more than four visits a year.   

As for showing hospitality to unchurched neighbors and those in need - I agree that's bona fide Christian ministry work - but how do families pull that off while sheltering their kids from the malign influences of the unsaved?  Unchurched neighbors probably watch TV!  The women likely work outside the home!  OMG, they might have advanced degrees and no family business!    That's why I'm highly skeptical that much official ministry work gets done out of most CP/QF homes; the main thrust of the homes is to shelter children so effectively that they never have a chance to rebel against their parents' chosen lifestyle.   Interacting with people who need ministry makes sheltering kids much, much harder and a whole lot of this system is set up to make life easier for the parents.

I love that one example is kicking the can down the road.   Yeah, we're not doing ministry right now, but the kids who are being raised will do real ministry at some date in the future!   Spoiler alert:  that's not terribly likely.   Most of the former SAHDs who are my age are raising a family like their parents did while the women who remain SAHDs in their 30's and 40's are settling into the role of the spinster aunt of Victorian times.

Maybe Jasmine realized that kicking the can down the road was a cop-out - but she's very slim on details of what the ministry that is so demanding that people need to recharge at home entails.   

This next quote reminds me that Jasmine's surrounded by teenage and very young adult believers.   May God save us from being surrounded by the very young and very immature:

Even if your parents are "weaker" believers than you are - if you were saved first, or you have more conviction in certain areas that they do -- honor them by praying to the Lord for their spiritual growth, and letting them know that they are in your prayers. Instead of being puffed up in a sense of pride, model honor and submission before them, and encourage them as they grow in grace. Even if your dad is new to leading the family in family worship, for instance, do not laugh at any awkwardness he shows, or snicker when he trips over his words or become frustrated because you think 'other dads' could do things better. The Lord gave you the father you have or (sic) a purpose, and that man is precious in God's sight, especially when he's striving to carry out the Lord's commands in his family. (pg. 190)

Good Lord.  So young and so cocksure about their moral superiority over their own parents.

Being saved is not like seniority in a workplace.   A teenager who was saved 6 months before their parents does not automatically qualify to be the spiritual director of the entire family.   (Although I can see how teenage me might have been confused by that.  Life is linear, right?  Effort in gives direct result out, yeah?  I'm so glad I'm not 15.)  

If you are saved - or whatever the correct term is for a given denomination - and you are making fun of a new worship leader who is learning the ropes of leading prayer time,  you really have a long way to go in term of maturity.

But most importantly of all: don't tell your parents that you are praying for them to become more convicted or for their spiritual growth.    There is no way to say that sentence as a dependent member of a family structure and not sound weirdly passive-aggressive.

"Ok, Mom.  I understand you are not as convicted as I am about the importance of wearing skirts.  I'll pray for God to further your spiritual growth."

Yikes.  

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 16 - Part One

Hello!  Happy Easter!

At the end of February and beginning of March, Voddie Baucham had to return to from Zambia to the US for emergency medical treatment.   In Zambia, they had determined that he was in heart failure - but I'm not sure if the doctor was able to determine the cause prior to encouraging Baucham to travel as soon as he was stabilized back to the States to seek advanced care.  The original itinerary was nearly two weeks of travel; thankfully, one leg was able to be done much faster due to seats opening up on a flight.  

That reduced travel time likely saved his life.   

By the time Baucham arrived in Florida, he was in severe heart failure and had to be hospitalized in the cardiac ICU within a few hours of arrival.   

I was very worried for him and his family when a reader flagged that development for me.  (Thank you!).   Heart failure is often due to irreversible structural damage - and I was highly concerned that Baucham was facing a life-shortening diagnosis.   

Thankfully for Rev. Baucham, he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) which is when the upper two chambers of the heart (the atria) have an unorganized beat pattern compared to the two lower chambers known as ventricles.   Most people have a sensation of their heart racing or uncomfortable palpitations while also feeling fatigued or short of breath - but atrial fibrillation can be symptom free.   

The issue with A-Fib is that the disorganized pumping means that the heart needs to work harder to pump blood - and untreated A-Fib can lead to heart failure due to that increased work load.

The good news is that Rev. Baucham's doctors believe that the A-Fib caused the heart failure which means that he should have an excellent recovery after having surgery.    The surgery is fairly simple for a cardiac procedure; the doctors use a catheter to destroy areas of the right atria or pulmonary vein that are sending the wrong electrical signal.  

I feel like I've said this a lot this year - but while I disagree with nearly every statement ever made by Baucham - he's got a large family depending on him along with a wife and two adult children who love him a lot.   I sincerely wish him an easy, quick and full recovery.

We are beginning Chapter 16 of Jasmine Baucham's book "Joyfully at Home".   Ms. Baucham devoted a quick chapter to defending stay-at-home daughterhood from the charge of "How does that square with Jesus' Commandment to go out and make disciples of all the world in Matthew 28:19-10?"   

Jasmine's response is "Christianity means living like a middle-class American who is a bit out of date on cultural references and ignored the history of women working outside the home, right?"  

As an answer, that sounds a bit off - even to a very sheltered 19 year old woman - so she occasionally makes a point that illuminates far more about how Christian Patriarchy/Quiverful adherents view the Bible than it does about the topic at hand:

For me, whenever I receive that question, I always point out, for most, that Matthew 28:19-20 is not the only passage in God's Word. Titus 2:3-5, Proverbs 31:10-31, Ephesians 5:22ff; 6:1-4, Deuteronomy 6; 1 Peter 3:1-6 tell us that the Christian family is to be a priority to God's people. (pg.186)

For traditional Christians - and in this case I mean every Christian who supports some form of literary analysis of the Bible - not all books of the Bible are created equally.   

The four Gospels are written specifically about Jesus' time on Earth.   Those four books have higher authority than any of the other books within the Bible.   The Old Testament is important for understanding how God has been faithful to Israel through the generations and for the messianic prophecies that Christians believed were fulfilled by Jesus.   The books of the New Testament outside of the Gospel are important for seeing how early Christians dealt with emerging theological and practical question.   All of these other books are important - but a contrary statement in the Gospels often quashes scads of references in other books.

To explain it a bit more bluntly, Ms. Baucham's response is "I know Jesus' said to get out of your homes and convert people - but a bunch of other people said that I could stay home and I'm going to follow them."

This kind of slap-dash use of Epistles (primarily) to support an insular, female-subordinate home-focused life is part of the reason why some people - including me - believe that CP/QF adherents have actually become Paulines - people who follow the writings of the Apostle Paul in lieu of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Here's Jasmine Baucham's launch into explaining why living in an American family as a CP/QF stay-at-home daughter is totally what Jesus meant by "Go out and make believers throughout the world":

Imagine, though, a different sort of place: home as a hub for ministry and discipleship. Home: where children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, diligently trained to impact the world outside their doors. Home: headquarters for visionary men to lead and inspire their families. Home: the domain of visionary women who desire to bless their families, their churches, and their communities. Home: the place were those who understand the critical importance of a strong biblically functioning family unit to the well-being of society flourish. (pg. 187)

Oh, I don't have to imagine it; Jasmine has described a pretty average American household.  Parents are running a household and raising their kids.  Kids are being raised while being kids.  To make it more CP/QF, Ms. Baucham jazzed up the jargon by adding "visionary", "biblical" and references alluding to Christian churches - but the family with children she's described is pretty standard issue in most communities.

My bigger question - how many CP/QF families are fundamentally different in more Christian ways than the average American families?  

CP/QF kids are brought up to change the world - but the first wave of the perfectly raised generation is is in their mid-forties and the results are underwhelming.   

- The Duggars:  Josh Duggar abused his sisters and cheated on his wife.   Nine of his siblings have married; John David seems to be over his family of origin and his sister Jill has had a falling out as well.   John David seems to have started his own construction work business.  The rest of the sons are working in their family business.

-The Botkins: One son started a family business that is supporting five siblings and his parents.  One son has left CP/QF; two are married with kids and in CP/QF.   The business son and one brother are still single as are both daughters.   Their ministry output is non-existent unless you count Geoffrey Botkin's obsession with QAnon as a new cult as I do.  

-The Maxwells: The family seems to have started two thriving computer businesses along with a vanity-press disguised as a ministry and a few failed businesses.  The two thriving businesses have scrubbed all mention of Christianity from their sites.  Three of the sons have married women who are much less sheltered than the Maxwells and seem to be raising their children in more "worldly" ways.  The youngest son sold his house when he married and is living in an apartment - which is approximately equivalent to Satan-worship in the Maxwell home One son married a woman who could out-Maxwell the Maxwells.   The three daughters are unmarried.

-The Bauchams:  Voddie and Bridget Baucham moved to Zambia to raise their still-at-home members of their family.   Jasmine married, has two sons and works part-time for a homeschool co-op.  She seems happy enough and has visibly rejected several of her family-of-origin's beliefs like Voddie's belief that racism in the US doesn't really exist.  I don't know how her younger brother is doing - but I worry less about him simply because the Bauchams seemed to take education a bit more seriously and Jasmine was able to get a college diploma which bodes well for her brother.

-The Mallys:  Sarah and Gracy Mally genuinely started independent ministries.  (They are literally the only people I can think of who did.)  Grace Mally married in her early thirties and has an infant daughter.   Sarah Mally wrote a book recently and got married in her early forties.   Both women look happy - which is nice to see.

The funny thing is that I don't begrudge the families I blog about here following their own lifestyles.  I think the lifestyle is harmful - but I do believe that adults have the right to choose how they live.   I just wish they'd offer the same grace to the rest of us.    I know my family has benefited from post-secondary education for me and my husband.  If nothing else, it caused both of us to delay marriage until we had some workable adulting strategies in place.   Raising my son has been a challenge and a joy - but I occasionally wake up in a cold sweat when I dreamt that I had Spawn when I was 22....or worse 16.... instead of 35.   Having another decade of life and work experience made caring for Spawn workable - especially becoming his medical scheduler and undertrained PT, OT, SPL and psychologist.   

I am planning to get back into "The Battle Of Peer Dependency" by Marina Sears - but the chapter we are in right now is such a stream-of-conscious rant with ADD subject jumps that reading it and finding quotes is a bit of a nightmare. 

Good news is that Geoffrey Botkin produced a darkly funny video about how to prepare for the dangers of the Biden administration where he explains how he procured multiple passports for his family.  I transcribe a bit and read it aloud to my husband.  We then laugh immoderately for a few minutes.   It's a nice way to kill some time on rainy days.

Babbling Botkin: What If My Husband Dies? Part Sixteen

 Hello, dear friends! 

I received the Janssen one-dose COVID-19 vaccine on Friday!   

I hadn't expected to be called up for vaccination until sometime between April and May of this year, but Michigan opened vaccination to parents and in-home caregivers of children with special needs on March 8th.     Even then, I didn't think I'd qualify because I assumed that the target group was kids with medical needs rather than developmental needs.   Thankfully, my son's PT told me that any child who needed in-person therapies at school or outpatient rehab was in the group the health board was targeting.    The rationale was simple: my son isn't at high risk - but he goes to school and PT with kids who are very high risk so vaccinating his parents expands the zone of safety around those kids.

I received a updated questionnaire on Friday, March 19 and completed it the same day.   On Wednesday, March 24 I received a email telling me to choose an appointment time and place for Friday, March 26.   The closest location only had times in the evening that conflicted with my work schedule but the second closest location had appointments available all day.     Because that vaccine is stable under the same conditions as the influenza vaccine,  a local grocery store with pharmacy was running appointments out of their pharmacy.   

For me, it was easier than getting my yearly influenza shot because the pharmacy had pre-completed all of the paperwork before my appointment.   

In terms of side-effects, I had more side-effects than most flu shots but much less than I got from the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine earlier this year.    I started running a fever within two hours of the shot which is pretty standard for me.   Unlike the flu vaccine, I couldn't get the fever to break using NSAIDs.    I was fatigued and feverish for most of Friday and most of Saturday - but not so sick that I couldn't take care of my kid for the basics when my husband was at work. I stayed home from work Friday and Saturday.  The fever broke around 7pm on Saturday night.   I'm a bit tired - but I'm also fighting off the same cold that my son has so who knows?   My right arm where I got the shot is decidedly sore; I can use it, but rolling over onto it at night is painful.   By comparison, I was still running a fever, all of my muscles were aching and I had a 2inch by 2inch welt where I got my tetanus shot.

On that note, let us finish up with Geoffrey Botkin's video advice column "What If My Husband Dies?"   With my dark sense of humor, the title makes me want to reply "Well, clearly, you're screwed."

I digress.    

After 16 minutes of listening to a rambling monologue about re-written history and the idyllic glories of a family business, someone is clearly signaling to Botkin that he needs to stop.    A father who has set himself up as the master and commander of his family-based cult can lecture his offspring for as long as he wants.   You-Tube viewers, on the other hand, are not going to watch a 45 minute video with less than three minutes of unique content.   

Let us enjoy his attempts at finishing up a question about what a woman should do if her husband dies:

[00:16:01] Young boys, yeah, they should know about things like COPD which can kill, you know, good, strong men.  So, all boys, and I'll try to wrap this up now, should be preparing to launch themselves into responsible manhood at the earliest possible age.   You know, and what is that? I.... you know,,,,centuries ago, the typical date that was in the minds of parents and children and young boys as they were being trained at 13 you become a man.  At thirteen, you get to step into the real world.  At thirteen, you get to carry your arms if you are responsible and this is how people thought back then and we've really destroyed that idea now but there's no reason why we so misunder...muh....underestimate the ability of children to really grow up and take on really huge responsibilities.  Understand things.  Be able to learn things at young ages.  Much younger than we typically feed it to them in today's society. 

Back in Vision Forum's heyday of the early 2000's, Botkin could spin his dream of CP/QF families raising sons and daughters to maturity by age 13 without any discordant notes.   His children were either young teens or elementary school aged kids - so of course Botkin was going to be able to launch his kids perfectly at a Biblical mandated age!    Plus, an unforeseen benefit of extensively sheltering your kids is that parents don't have to compare their kids to anyone else's kids.     Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin's ability to write a full-length non-fiction book in their teens looks spectacular at a glance.  The fact that the book is a series of poorly researched essays that pad the length with multi-page quotes from published authors knocks the shine off the accomplishment.   

Actually, I can't imagine turning in an essay with a multiple page quote from another author.   In secondary school, I'd have been given a very poor grade for padding the assignment.  By college, I understood that if the topic I was writing on was so well encapsulated by someone else's writings, I should pick a different topic. 

I digress.

Hearing the same song-and-dance about how to correctly raise children from Botkin in 2020 is darkly amusing.    For a CP/QF son, full adulthood is reached when the son is able to marry and support his wife and children; the fact that he'll remain in CP/QF is assumed.    For Botkin's first two sons, the plan got them married and producing a few kids.   They work in the family business and seem to be onboard with CP/QF life.    The third son is married, has kids, and is the only member who is employed outside of the family business - but his family seems to have left CP/QF behind.  His wife posts pro-LGBT and pro-BLM posts on her Facebook feed - which must make family gatherings with Geoffrey Botkin a hoot.   The two youngest sons are unmarried in their twenties.   One of the single sons founded T.Rex Arms - the paramilitary business that supports his oldest two brothers and (I assume) the rest of this family of origin besides Ben.    The youngest son seems to be killing time  keeping up the family websites which is arduous in the extreme since most of them are defunct.  

So....he's launched two sons out of five to be married, employed CP/QF husbands and fathers.   That's not great odds considering the amount of effort the Botkins put into sheltering them.

His odds with his daughters are worse.   The Biblical admonition for daughters was really simple: marry them to men in the faith so they can raise families of believers.   Both of his daughters have been marriageable for 15 years - and neither of them are wives and mothers.    

He's got seven adult children - and a whopping two of the seven have reached adult status under the restoration Biblical rules that Botkin loves.    No wonder he's joined QAnon as a new cult rather than admit the miserable wreck he's done at raising his kids to the standards he espoused just a few years ago.

Minor production note: I'm a firm believer in doing a practice run prior to taping anything.   Botkin's understandable whiff when he substitutes "COPD" for "COVID-19" is the kind of unforced error that a practice run can eliminate. 

 [00:17:02] And so..... (jump cut) Boys should not be planning to be dependent on anybody.  So what is their plan on growing up?  Now, this is good thing to talk about.  "Boys, what are you thinking about? How are you going to step into manhood?  How are you going to launch yourselves into manhood?  We've provided these things for you; now what are you going to do to really make that a powerful fuel to launch yourselves into adulthood.  So work this out now with them and your husband as a family.  And the family can rely on this strength no matter what happens.     Thank you for writing to me.

I keep feeling like some bone-headed preteen is going to build a cannon out of a felled tree and black powder in his backyard if Botkin keeps harping on about "launching" kids into adulthood.

Look, most of us don't get launched into adulthood.   

We push off from shore like a canoe entering a lake from shore.     

The first bit is wobbly and uncertain because the same shallow waters that keep us safe if we fall make it harder to pick up steam.   For most young adults who circle between independent living and moving back with parents, the relative uncertainties of the labor market, little personal assets and no adult partner to increase household income, make it hard to pick up steam.   

On the flip side, those same drawback allow young adults to pursue more career options in wider locals than settled adults.   

Over time and with more experience, we move deeper and deeper into adulthood and away from the shores of childhood.   By that point, we've picked up the skills in managing our boat that we can handle stronger currents and waves without capsizing instantly.   

In spite of our skills, sometimes we capsize.   

We lose a job,  people divorce, a family member needs extensive care.   An adult - and an experienced canoeist -  knows that capsizes happens - and all we can do is get the canoe turned over, the people back in the canoe and head to a safe location to drain the water.

Being able to care for others, develop a plan to mitigate an unfortunate series of events, and the ability to recognize that this too will pass - that's the mark of adulthood.    

Not the ability to carry a gun.   Not the ability to snare a husband.  Not the ability to bear a child.   

Boys are not men at 13 - and that's ok.   Girls are certainly not women at age 12 - and that's ok, too.

For the original LW, I hope you and your family are in good health. By the time you wrote Botkin in July was over, the most dangerous part of the pandemic was over.   We handled it poorly in the US - but by July - we knew how to remain safer.   Stay home.  If you cannot stay home, stay 6 feet apart while wearing a mask.  Wash your hands before removing your mask and before eating.

I hope you listened to your husband's pulmonologist and followed the guidelines they set out for him.  

If your husband did catch COVID, I hope he had an uncomplicated illness with a quick recovery.

If he passed away, you have my deepest condolences.    

Please - don't ask Botkin for advice.    

Babbling Botkin: "What if My Husband Dies" - Part Fifteen

Hello!

I'm sorry I disappeared for a week and a half.   I had an unexpected outbreak of atopic dermatitis and needed to go on prednisone.   Normally, prednisone doesn't bother me much - but I was nauseous, jumpy and an insomniac this time through.     I mostly feel like myself again finally.

During the same time, Spawn's had another big jump forward in his confidence in walking by himself.   Like a lot of kids, he doesn't like to try a skill in a new place or in front of people until he's comfortable - and he's started walking short distances in new places.   At the local restaurant he waved my hands away when I reached out with the statement "Leave it alone.  Maybe do it later!" as he started walking towards the exit.   The regulars were so excited for him - and so was I.  

Thankfully, we are close to the end of Geoffrey Botkin's video titled "What if My Husband Dies?"   He's spent a lot of time rambling about how important he thinks a family-based business is and how important it is for a father to plan out exactly how he wants the kids raised - but none of that's particularly useful for keeping a roof over the heads of a family if the business is not profitable.

He's just finished encouraging women to figure out how much more money they could make in a family business rather than in low-wage jobs - of which I am skeptical - when he launches into this major subject change without any transition:

[00:15:02]  Part of life is protecting life the best you can and sometimes.....sometimes men....sometimes men are required to go off to war to protect homes and families and nations.   During those time periods, everyone knows they can die and maybe never come back.  And small boys know this.  It's a reality that they face, they talk about, they kiss their daddies goodbye at the train station when their dads are going off to war.  They know about this.  There's no reason why young boys shouldn't know about this kind of probability right now and talk about it.

Wait - are we talking about family businesses, foreign wars, or risks of death during a pandemic?   

I'm assuming this is an attempt to bring back the idea of the letter writer and her husband talking to their sons about their father's COPD and the increased risk level he has if he gets COVID - but what a strange way to re-introduce the topic.   CP/QF families are so staunchly individualistic that they don't join organizations where someone else would be able to give them commands like the military or a police department which makes Botkin's willingness to trot out military families ironic.

I think being open with the boys as far as their age allows about their father's higher risk of death due to COVID is a good idea.   I would also talk about what the entire family is going to do to help keep Dad safer like wearing masks, social distancing and washing hands.

I think it would also be a good idea for the sons to be aware of how much their life will likely change if their dad dies as well.  I don't see a way for a family with many small children with presumably limited assets to have a mother who is a full-time stay-at-home mom who homeschools especially once the youngest child is old enough for full-time public schooling.

[00:15:40]   I mean , these are the truths and realities of real life.  Life is short.  Life is fleeting.  We may not be around tomorrow.   If, if, if Dad's gone tomorrow, what would life look like?  Boys, would you be able to take care of your mom? Would you know what to do to take care of your mother.?"

Throughout this video, I've often felt enraged on behalf of Victoria Botkin. 

Like a lot of CP/QF moms, she's done the heavy work in her family for decades. 

She's given birth to seven children.  When she was hemorrhaging after having a home birth with Anna Sofia,  Geoffrey's response was to pray over the ovaries of her newborn daughter.   Geoffrey's told that story so many times publicly that  it's the opening vignette of Joyce's book on Quiverfull.   

She homeschooled her large family while Geoffrey was busy playing religious leader, lobbyist, media mogul, religious leader and pretend advisor to the president.   She's created plenty of media about homeschooling and worked the homeschooling conference circuit for decades.   I'm sure the income that she's brought in has equaled or exceeded the amount that Geoffrey brought in in certain years.    

And yet, when a question comes in about how a woman could support a smaller family after her husband's death,  Geoffrey never bothers to loop his wife in.   

Would Victoria Botkin be devastated if her husband died?  Of course she would.   

Would she have been able to take care of her family?   I believe she would.   She was already pulling more than her fair share of the responsibilities in the family between child-rearing, homeschooling, keeping up a home and running a small business while  Geoffrey dabbled in whatever new brilliant plan this year brought.

Would she need her sons' help?   I think that depends entirely on how many small children were in the house more than anything else.    Her oldest sons' ability to work part-time jobs as teenagers would have been a large help when there were still elementary school aged kids to be supported.    In one of those ironies that point out the flaws in the idea of "every man should own his own business" the son whose business is supporting most of his family members is the second youngest kid in the family.   To my way of thinking, that would mean that most of the family would have needed to get jobs as teenagers to help keep enough income coming into the family.    Geoffrey Botkin would be horrified at the idea of his precious, super-sheltered children mixing with the common riff-raff - but the kids would have likely benefited from that exposure.   

If nothing else, the Botkin offspring would have picked up that the family's habits of photographing the unmarried daughters and sons cuddled up together accidently sends a message in the US that those people are a romantic couple rather than available adults to be courted.    Different families are comfortable with different forms of affection - and that's great - but the conventions of formal family photographs in the US are that single adults stand without anyone's arms wrapped around them.  Married and committed couples stand together and are usually either turned towards each other or have some visible contact.    When Anna Sofia and Elizabeth sent an overwrought letter to Cindy K. years ago bemoaning how many romantic relationships never happened in their family due to her blog, I remember thinking that the family had probably had more damage done from friends of friends seeing the family Christmas picture and thinking "Oh, how nice that all of the Botkin kids are married now!" instead of "Huh, that cute Botkin girl or boy is still single.  I should mention that to so-and-so."

Such is life - and I've digressed a bit.

We are almost at the end of this series and I've not heard from the one person who could probably give actual advice - Victoria Botkin.

Maybe ask her for advice next time?

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 15 - Part Two

Good morning!
.
Spring has finally returned to Michigan.   I saw daffodils plants peeking out of a southern-facing slope.  My lilac bush has had enough snow melt around it that I can continue taking down most of the woody stems.  It's more like a small lilac tree - and that's not healthy since a lot of the stems are cracking under their own weight at the ground.   My parents have received their first doses of a COVID vaccine.  My twin is fully vaccinated.  My younger brother and I are in a friendly race to see which of us can get vaccinated first since we are both essential workers.

My mood has greatly improved since I can get outside for walks every day again.  Armed with a new cheery mood, let's dive into the fifteenth chapter of "Joyfully At Home" by Jasmine Baucham.  In the first post on this chapter, we saw that Jasmine's definition of a novel, ground-breaking home-based education was confined by the dictate that students learn to support the exact same ideas as their parents.  In this next quote, Jasmine gives us a glimpse into the educational method of her family's school while reminding us that the educational goal of total agreement with her parents' views worked in her case.

When we graduated from high school, therefore ( in 2007, and my brother this past year), we knew about evolution; we'd read Darwin's magnum opus! But the difference between our education and the schooling other than our generation were receiving was that we learned about evolution from a Christian worldview. When we graduated high school, we knew about Marx socialism; we'd read Marx and Engels for ourselves! But the difference between our education in the schooling of others in our generation with what we learned about socialism from a Christian worldview. (pg. 177)

Page 177 is a long, call-and-response style recitation of what Ms. Baucham learned - and how different it was because it was taught from her family's exact Christian world view.  

I was struck by how Ms. Baucham's education in science and economics mimicked the Christian Patriarchy/ Quiverful slap-dash method of Biblical studies. 

In traditional, mainline Christian churches, studying the Bible seriously demands more effort than cracking open the Bible and reading it.  Serious scholars discuss the methods used by the person or people who wrote a section of the Bible to reach their target audience.  That audience came with cultural and experiential expectations that were both universal - like how a mother comforts a child - and very alien - like how to morally act as a slave owner.  Armed with information about the culture of the writer and important current events at their time, we can begin to suss out the difference between temporal matters that bleed in and larger theological truths.

In CP/QF land, on the other hand, no one needs external context for anything.   Anyone can crack open the Bible, read a verse or two, and expound on that verse without providing any context.   

The Bauchams educated their children in the same manner.   Jasmine believed that she completely understood evolution at age 19 because she read "On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin.  She believes that she completely understood communism because she read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.   

Now, I don't have much experience in economics - but I have a ton of experience in evolutionary biology.   Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" is not required reading for evolutionary biologists at any academic level.   It was a seminal book in the history of evolutionary science - but it was published in 1859 so there is 162 years of experimenting, refining and change since then!   I have read "On the Origin of Species" because the history of science fascinates me.  The book was an interesting read - but Darwin had many, many unanswered questions at the end of the book.   And - to be fair to Darwin - the chances of him intuiting mendelian genetics, the structure of DNA and the genetic code from what was able to be observed in 1830-1858 was zero. 

I realized mid-sentence that I was forgetting that Ms. Baucham's biggest objection to Darwin wasn't that he couldn't explain the finer details of how island finches developed different beaks.  Her objection is that evolution didn't directly support the timeline of creation lined in the Bible.     From that perspective, her critical reading of Darwin is spotty and underwhelming.   "Yup, Darwin certainly deviates from Genesis 1 therefore his entire hypothesis is invalid" is a poor effort on all fronts.

I was - and still am - a voracious reader.   My mom attempted for a while to pre-read most of our books just to be sure we weren't venturing into nightmare territory - but between my twin sister and I trying to read our way though the library in elementary school she had to settle for asking us about what we were reading and discussing any themes that might be more adult than the average elementary school kid ran into.   

That's my life experience so this next quote is baffling to me:

As an important no, there were things we didn't read, not because our parents were afraid we jump ship if we were exposed to opposing viewpoints, but because there was a much more edifying way to garner the information my parents wanted to teach me. Thus, I took a pass on Madame Bovary. Also, as an aside, my parents didn't just send us to wade through secular humanist texts without first discipling us every step of the way, or, without first - before the texts were even presented to us - know (sic) that we were mature enough to handle what we were learning without becoming confounded or confused. They were very discerning about our level of discernment. (pg. 177)

Yeah, Mom probably would have had me avoid "Madame Bovary" in elementary school - but as a teenager?   As a young adult?  Oh, hell no.   

If CP/QF adherents are supposed to convert the world, they need to be mentally strong enough to hold a belief in the face of strong opposition.   I, for example, am quite vocal about how harmful many of their beliefs are to the development of their children. 

That's the level of disagreement they need to handle in life - but Ms. Baucham is saying that her parents didn't trust that she could handle mild cognitive dissonance as a teenager.   After all, reading a book from a different century in a different culture - which is essentially what she's doing by reading Darwin and Marx rather than Dawkins and Davis - is about the least threatening form of exposure to an idea that I can think of.   

I know that Ms. Baucham is trying to present her education as broad-reaching, modern and inspiring to other Christians, but I feel like she was raised in a glass cloche instead of a field.   Cloches, cold frames and greenhouses are great at protecting young plants when they are small and the weather is extreme - but if used too long, the plant develops a weaker central stem and poorer roots due to the lack of exposure to wind and periodic drought.   Yup, the growth of a plant seems to slow down for a week or two during the hardening off process when the cloche is removed and the plant starts to solidify their stem and expends more energy on root growth - but that time of slowness is needed for healthy mature plants.   

Raising kids is the same thing.  I shelter my son a lot right now because he's 4.   Explaining the details of why we wear a mask in public to avoid COVID-19 would be truly disturbing to him - so I fudge the details.   On the other hand, I shelter him much less than I did when he was a small infant.  I let him run around with kids his age.  I send him to school with adults who are not his parents.  There are moments that he is sad or uncomfortable for short periods of time - but that's part of the process of growing up.   

Better to start hardening your kids off a bit at a time during childhood than launching them into the world without a strong core.

Babbling Botkin: What if My Husband Dies? - Part Fourteen

 Hello, friends!

After a few days where the temperatures never dipped below freezing, the snow has melted back far enough that I can go for walks again.   When I came back from my first walk, I realized that part of why I was so agitated by being stuck at home was because it was reminding me of how trapped I felt after my son was born.   I was so sick after Spawn was born that I needed a wheelchair to get around the hospital where I was staying and to navigate the unit where Spawn was at for the first week after he was born.  In the second week, I could make shift to walk around my house and Spawn's unit but I  needed a wheelchair to get to and from the parking ramp.   I could walk slowly from a car to the unit by the third week although I usually flopped into a chair and caught my breath as soon as I could.    The day before Spawn was born I walked two miles in spite of being a bit winded and having a sore hip.   I was able to walk that far eight weeks after Spawn was born.  

The cycle of restrictions continued after I recovered.  The four months Spawn was in the hospital was fairly simple; I was pumping every few hours, but I got good at packing a pump with me.   When Spawn came home, I couldn't leave the house with him alone until he had good head control.   Before that, I needed one hand to hold his body, one hand to hold his head, one hand to carry his oxygen tank and oxygen monitor and one hand to open doors.    This wasn't the end of the world since we were social distancing a few years before we had a term for it - but I did get sick of having to make lists of things I needed to do as soon as someone could watch Spawn at home.

We got a bit of a break the summer after he came home.  He was off-oxygen for long periods of time and was robust enough that I could take him places where he wasn't going to be around children.   He was also small enough that I could carry him easily and he fit well in a stroller.   Now, according to Spawn, I was kidnapping him illegally outside of the house against the rules lined out by the Baby Geneva Convention.   He'd glower at me whenever I looked at him in the stroller.

When winter came, we went back into isolation to avoid RSV.    By the spring, Spawn was big enough that he was out of the danger zone for RSV - but he was also getting big enough that carrying him long distances was harder and harder for me.     I've only really appreciated how much work that was now that Spawn is able to walk up to a mile with two handed support.   I no longer have to pre-plan outings to make sure I can move him by stroller and carrying on my hip to playgrounds - and that feels awesome!

Random subject change - Geoffrey Botkin's "What if My Husband Dies?" has been heavy on the importance of a family starting a business from scratch and very, very light on the details of how to financially support a family of 5 if the only breadwinner dies.    Next, he tosses out this sop of comfort that this not-yet-formed family business could be the financial savior of the family:

[00:14:31] Families which can lever their respective talents into a family business can often earn far more together working together than they could if they split up to find lots of different low-paying jobs.   And you can just run the numbers on that.   Do the math on that and you can find out that that's really true.  The combined effort of working together in a business can be way more powerful than splitting up and getting lots lots and lots of different jobs.  

Yup, the listeners should totally do the math instead of Botkin!   After all, we have no idea the age of the four boys, the career history of the letter writer, or the part of the country they live in.   It's like a family with sons who are 14, 15, 16, and 17 born to a mom with lots of connections in a rural farming area will have the exact same outcome as a newly arrived family with sons aged 4, 3, 2 and infant in the same community.   

Nevertheless, let me make a whack at it.   With a family of five, the federal poverty level is $31,040.   That's not going to be nearly enough for a middle-class living - but it's a number to work with.   

Out where I live, many people have side businesses like raising livestock, seasonal you-pick crops,  farm stands, or custom crafting. When I lived in the city, I knew a lot of people who did gig work (the city version of a side business), nannying, house cleaning or specialized in refurbishing home goods collected at a low cost. 

I don't know any people with small, home-based businesses that clear $31,040 a year after expenses and taxes, though.    

For one adult working 40 hours a week as an employee somewhere, the lowest wage that will work for that is $15.52.    

Is the mom going to earn that her first year?   That really depends on her work history.   If she's got specialized trade knowledge, a client base of house cleaning, a college degree with some work history, or great connections, she might make that.    If she's Botkin's idealized SAHD who married young without any advanced education....that's very unlikely.

I work a pretty basic retail job at an employer who hires lots of people with little or no work history.   Thanks to the pandemic, my employer realized bargain-basement wages normalized in the South was not working for a company that is spanning the US.   We got a good pay jump and I now make a whopping $13.50 per hour.   I'm assuming that most people are hired in at around $13.00 per hour.   Without overtime and no vacation, the mom would take home $27,040 a year - which is still more than she'd make at an imaginary home-based business.  

Other ways to make the numbers work - hope a son is old enough to work part-time or use government benefits.

If she's got a son who is 16 or 17, he can find a job at most fast-food restaurants for $12-14 dollars an hour.    My state has pretty strict laws on how much a kid who is still in school can work - but if he graduated from homeschooling at 16 - which a weirdly high percentage of CP/QF kids do - he could work 40+ hours a week since completing high school or a GED allows a person to circumvent the labor laws around hours.   

If he's still in school, he will probably be able to work 12 hours a week.   At $12.00 an hour for 50 weeks of work a year, he makes $7,200 dollars a year - which brings his family to $34,240 per year.  For a family at the poverty level, that's a make or break amount of money.   That's the reason I had many, many, many teenage students who were working one legal job reported to the IRS and a half-a-dozen under-the-table jobs; their income was literally critical to feeding and housing their younger siblings.

What if none of the kids are old enough to work?   That's where the skimpy safety net for poverty prevention in the USA comes in.    It's not enough by a long shot - but it's something that can make a difference in poor working homes. 

The first one is the public school system AND its free and reduced meal program.  Yeah, yeah, I know that homeschooling is the only way to raise a proper Godly(TM) child.   Think of that as an aspirational goal for when you have enough income of some kind and as your kids get older and need less direct supervision.   If you've got a kid aged 5 or over, you are all set.  Call the nearest elementary school from your house and tell them you have a kid who needs to be enrolled in school.   The secretary will set up a meeting time and tell you what to bring.   A birth certificate, immunization records and something that demonstrates you live in the district like a driver's license or a utility payment will be on the list.   Many districts automatically have parents apply for free or reduced lunch during the enrollment process.   The income limits for getting free or reduced breakfasts and lunches are generous; in my state, the program reaches to 185% of the poverty level.     

Why am I starting by putting your kids back in school first?   Well, public schools are an easy way to access government services.  They also provide excellent education for 6-7 hours a day while feeding your kids two meals.    Accessing this form of governmental childcare with free food is a major support of families living in poverty.

While you are there, inform the secretary that your family is dealing with the recent death of your husband which is causing severe financial hardship and you need to speak to the district social worker.  (Ideally, I'd prefer you put the kids in school ASAP so they've had some transition time in case your husband does die - but I'm also assuming that if you are writing Botkin for help, you are going to avoid that option until the last moment.)    Every school I've worked in has had either a social worker on staff or has a social worker on call through the county.   This social worker can smooth your application for other government services.  

What other services?   Well, that depends a lot on the makeup of your family and how many assets you have.   

If you have less than $15,000 in assets, limited income and children under 18, you may qualify for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) - also known as welfare.  You'll receive a small cash payment to cover non-food essentials.  You'll also be under a lot of pressure to get a job and get off of TANF.   Don't blame me; I'm a gleefully tax-and-spend liberal and have been for decades.  No, the same politicians who are pro-life are also extremely pro-work - to the point that one serious worry of Sen. Romney's (a Republican from Utah) proposed monthly payment to families of children is that the payment might cause single mothers to work fewer hours.   You know - single mothers like a widowed former homeschooling mom with four kids.   God forbid they spend some time at home.

If you have less than $15,000 in assets - but your home is excluded if it is your primary residence - and meet income requirements, you'll receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Payments - known as food stamps or SNAP.   You receive around $1 per meal per day per person - but scale tends to work in the favor of larger families rather than single adults.   For example, I attempted to live on $86 dollars per months of food items for half a year when I was a single adult to raise awareness about our crap-tastic benefits.   I did it - but my meals were very monotonous because I had to make the same bulk buys stretch.   For a family of five, the benefit would be around $430 dollars - and the mom would have ten meals per kid covered by school lunches.   My $86 dollars had to cover 90 meals or $0.96 cents a meal.  For the LW's family, the $430 dollars would need to cover $400 meals which is $1.08 per person per meal - which means a food budget of $5.40 per meal.   

If you have a kid under five, you will qualify for the Women, Infant and Children's Supplemental Nutrition program known as WIC.    I'm very fond of WIC.  We've qualified for WIC since Spawn was born because he's covered by Medicaid since he's got some fantastic medical diagnoses and enrollment in Medicaid automatically qualifies a child, pregnant woman, or postpartum woman for WIC.   WIC covered all of Spawn's expensive pre-digested formula as a baby and nutritional high-calorie drinks as a tot.   That was around $100 - $150 dollars in food for him per month covered.  On top of that, some counties allow children to receive formula and food at the same time - especially after age 2 if they have special needs.   We receive around $125 dollars in healthy foods each month for Spawn.  What does that look like?   There are booklets that describe what brands and sizes of food you can get but here's what we get in an average month: 3 gallons of 2% milk, 2 18oz boxes of Cheerios, a pound of mild cheddar, two pounds of whole-wheat spaghetti, 2 64oz bottles of juice, four cans of beans (or one jar of peanut butter), a dozen eggs and $9.00 worth of frozen veggies - which is around 9 4 serving bags.    It's a huge amount of food for our one, slightly-built child - and would make SNAP stretch even farther. 

You'll qualify for CHIP - free or very-low cost health insurance for your kids - and Medicaid or highly subsidized marketplace health insurance for you.   The hardest part for some people is finding doctors who take it; where I live, that's not so hard because the local Catholic hospital system takes all Medicaid options.  My doctor is in that system; my family started at a practice that helped an area with very high poverty and homeless rates because the practice was taking clients when they moved.   We've stayed because the staff is caring and highly competent.   When I've had private insurance, I go there because I know the higher reimbursement rates will help subsidize care for others; when I was on Medicaid, I had the exact same excellent medical care as I got in private insurance.  

I digress.   

Are there other benefits out there?  Yup - but a lot of the benefits are scattered and patchy so that's why I'm trying to attach you to a school social worker who can get your family into the Medicaid/CHIP program ASAP.   In that program, you'll be assigned a government social worker who can help navigate that system.  

Look, I know you've been told that putting your kids in public school, working outside the home, and depending on the government for welfare is a sign of being an anti-Christian communist who hates babies.

You've been lied to.   Sorry - there's no easy way to say what is true - Botkin and his buddies have been selling lies to other people to put off actually working for their own living.   

Most Christian kids go to public schools - and plenty of them "keep the faith".

Most moms work part or full-time outside of the home - and their kids do fine.

Many, many, many people need government benefits for some period of their lives.   That's why they are there - to support you and your family in a time of extensive need.   It's not a sign of weakness; it's a sign that life is fucking shitty from time to time and no one can do it all alone.

Hang in there.  You'll do fine in the long run - but please - don't ask Botkin for advice.

    

Joyfully At Home: Chapter 15 - Part One

 Jasmine Baucham's fifteenth chapter in "Joyfully At Home" is Jasmine's reasonably sensible plan to deal with a problem she sees among extensively sheltered homeschooled daughters.    Jasmine wrote that chapter to help the readers of her book spend some time learning a deeper explanation of why the family homeschools, runs their own business, keeps their daughters at home etc. than "That's what my family does" or "Because my parents want it that way."

I don't have a wide enough base of experience with Christian Patriarchy/Quiverfull families who shelter their kids by homeschooling to have a feeling if this is a widespread problem - but I trust that if a young woman in that society thinks the problem exists, it exists.

In some respects, the need to justify a family's religious practices is a relic of Protestant Christianity's formation.   For many religions, the actions of worshipping matter far more than the believer's ability to understand or explain exactly why they worship in the way they do.   I am Roman Catholic and the Church thinks the discipline of attending Mass on Sunday and receiving the Eucharist matters far more than a person's ability to explain consubstantiation or why we worship on Sunday instead of Saturday.   For many religions formed prior to the Enlightenment Period, this focus on right action rather than right thought still exists.    

The net outcome of this is that many believers of a variety of religion are rather bewildered by the aggressive questioning of 'why?' a religion does what it does.   When your religious belief is based on faith in the actions of worshipping God, dealing with someone who expects you to justify every action from a scripture feels bizarre.   Why do we do that?  Because that's how we worship God.   If you want to know if it works, do the action; don't expect me to rummage around in my Bible for a verse to justify it.

That's a bit of a digression - but Jasmine's attempts to explain how her family taught her shows a frequent paradox found in CP/QF homeschool discussions.    Ms. Baucham attempts to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.   The first idea is that CP/QF methods of homeschooling create students who are more creative, better at flexible thinking and more articulate than public schooling.  The second idea is that homeschooling allows parents to raise children whose beliefs and thought processes are in perfect alignment with the Christian ideal.  

And there's the problem in a nutshell.   You can't raise a child to be the perfect defender of CP/QF - or Catholicism or atheism or any other religion, philosophy, or belief system - without suppressing some critical thinking skills.     

I know this from personal experience.  I did K-12 schooling in a Catholic school system and received an excellent academic education.   Because I received an excellent academic education, however, I rejected quite a few social teachings of the Church.   Thanks to a strong background in academic reading comprehension, Biology and statistics, I recognized that natural family planning (NFP) is a ticket to a very large family for most adult women.   Thanks to the wide amount of reading required and a high school morality class that pushed critical thinking over indoctrination, I recognized that the Church's view on LGBT issues was harmful and obsession with clerical chastity strange.  

Was this the end of my faith.  No.  For better or worse, I am Catholic.  I see the world through a certain series of lenses involving human rights and dignity that I learned from the Church.  I order my year around a Liturgical Calendar that is as ingrained for me as the seasons.  I find attending Mass to be comforting and invigorating and I hope to pass on similar experiences to my son.

But I digress.  I'm a 39-year old woman raised by parents who wanted me to own my life and religion.  This section of "Joyfully At Home" was written by a 19-year old woman whose father prioritized formation of ideal Christians - and this is what you get:

My parents knew this.  In growing up – in the safety of my home - was a perfect place for me to search the scriptures for myself, to learn to come to my own conclusions... under the watchful guidance of my parents ( Ephesians 6:4).  I'm always learning something – from  my parents, from my research, from my Bible study, from family worship, from  conversation and I'm always questioning would have learned. I've also learned how to phrase my questions a little differently: instead of, " Daddy, is Obamacare a good thing?" It's " Daddy, I was reading The Communist Manifesto and came across a passage that had to do with this healthcare issue; I was searching God's Word, and needed some guidance about how to defend my position on healthcare, which is -" ( okay, so perhaps I'm not that eloquent, but I think you get the gist of it). Then, we can talk, and our conversation is fruitful. (pg. 174)

The italics are original to the book - and the italics drive home the Bauchams' expectation of right thought over critical thinking.   Young Jasmine was allowed to research and defend ideas vigorously as long as the ideas were pre-judged to be correct by her parents.      That's normal when dealing with kids who are in early elementary school - you don't want to encourage kids to adopt negative moral ideas while they are too immature to understand all of the facets of morality - but Jasmine is plenty old to start wrestling with more complicated issues and disagree with her parents.

The example she choose is telling.   Because CP/QF Christianity is militantly devoted to the Republican Party, every reader of Ms. Baucham's book in the US would instantly recognize that the Baucham's answer to "Is Obamacare a good thing?" would be a resounding "no!".   A deep aversion to any form of government regulation or safety net over rugged individualism is a key plank of the Republican Party.   

It's important to the pro-business Republican Party - and the interests of various insurance companies and for-profit medical businesses - but does that mean that resistance to a single-payer governmental medical insurance program is Biblical?   

Not really; the Bible is so broad with so many different times and genres represented that people can make Biblically based arguments for both private medical insurance, public medical insurance, mutual aid societies like Samaritan....pretty much every method of paying for medical care I can find.

Why doesn't Jasmine know this at age 19?  Because her homeschool experience prioritized right doctrinal thinking over critical thinking.   

When I taught high school, I encouraged my students to write one opinion paper a year (out of several) that contradicted their personal belief systems.   For example, write a paper against nuclear energy if you were in favor of it or a paper about why steroids should be legal  for professional athletes if you believed should be illegal.  I got a whole heap of papers about outlawing marijuana each year :-). 

Why did I do this?   Well, I'm sure the Bauchams' or Maxwells or Duggars or Botkins would tell you I was a godless teacher trying to corrupt their kids - but I had no interest in changing the viewpoints of students.   

No, I wanted my students to take the time to assess what the major points that motivated people who disagreed with them.   Unless you can see the major motivation points of another person, you can't really understand their viewpoint.    By teaching young adults to assess a different viewpoint - then support that point using real data points - I was attempting to show why well-meaning, educated people who care can reach radically different views on the same subject.   

That would also help students see that people on the opposite side of an issue weren't evil or stupid; they were usually just putting different weights on certain values.   That viewpoint is a bit more compassionate and gives a starting point for working together.

As I type that, though, I realize that teaching the Botkin kids that "liberals are people, too!" or "that person who wants to reform drug laws might be doing it out of care for others!" is a form of corruption of their worldviews.    Whoops - but I was teaching kids to become citizens of the current USA - not a theological  autocratic regime run by their father.

Now, I want to add that, whenever my parents sent me off to find answers to my own questions, there was always a time when I came back to share my findings, and a discussion about what I learned.  Because my father is the head of my home (Ephesians 5) and because it is the job of both my parents to impress the law of the Lord on my heart (Deuteronomy 6), they have always guided me in my study. However, they also impressed on me the importance of being able to articulate our beliefs - my beliefs - for myself.(pg. 175)

What would have happened if young Jasmine came back with a handful of Bible quotes that supported Obamacare based on the shared responsibility of Christians to support each other, Jesus's statement about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and multiple passages about healing the sick?

Where I went to school, that'd be an A paper - but would it be in the Baucham house?

What if Jasmine read the Communist Manifesto - *rolls eyes* - and declared that it reminded her so much of the portions of the New Testament where the local community supported each other by sharing what everyone had to fulfil what everyone needed?

I think we can safely assume that Jasmine would be sent back to collect the right ideas - but I'm more concerned about the fact that Jasmine has been so sheltered that she seems oblivious to the idea of how her beliefs could morph over time.    

The good news is that twenty-something Jasmine has been vocal about how her personal beliefs have changed markedly from her father.

I rolled my eyes about reading "The Communist Manifesto" because CP/QF homeschoolers seem to have an obsession with reading out-of-date materials as a sign of academic prowess.  We'll see that more in the next post in this section.