“When a child is raised a quiverfull family, there is core belief involved that stipulates that older children should help raise their younger siblings. This is commonly known to those outside the quiverfull movement as the ‘buddy system’, but survivors sometimes call this ‘sister-moms’.”
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“Bullying in homeschooling families and homeschool groups is a serious issue. In a well-meaning homeschooling family from a conservative background, there are several patterns.”
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“I couldn’t put my finger on either my anxiety when reading about the mistreatment of Christian girls or my strange negative reactions to other generic mentions of Christianity. Why did I cringe when I saw a post on Twitter recommending a book about God’s love? Why do I skim past the tweets with Bible verses and references to good times at church? I believe I got my answer in a dream I had Saturday night.”
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“I’ve been fairly critical of homeschooling in a good number of blog posts over the past two years. One thing I’ve been asked a number of times is whether, looking back, there was anything about my homeschooling experience that was positive…So here it is, my attempt to write about the positives side of my homeschool experience. But I’m going to warn you up front that I don’t think this is going to go all that smoothly.”
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“As I was growing up, I got very used to hearing remarks and jokes about how many children we ourselves would have when we grew up. Some people would sit down and start doing the ‘if all 8 of you have 8 children’ equations. Then they would start joking about what family reunions would look like.”
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“Many young women who grew up in the type of environment I did are freaked out by even the idea of having children. I get that, I really do. Being the oldest of 9 (or more/less kids) is not something I’d wish on even my worst enemy. You either come out from that specific situation never wanting to see children again, or you don’t.”
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“One day, when I was fourteen years old, I remember asking my mother if she had ever wanted more children than just me and my sister. Her response was an automatic ‘of course.’ And she cried for the rest of the afternoon. That was the first time I heard the word barren.”
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“I, being the second oldest daughter, didn’t have quite as many responsibilities as my older sister Maia. However, I was very aware of her important servant role in our home. She was responsible for meals, taking care of the children, and all the cleaning, as well as getting us to do our endless chores. She was supposed to home school us, as my parents, both unemployed, were either out ‘somewhere’ during the day, or in their bedroom fighting over authority.”
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“My father’s way of parenting during my mother’s recovery time was to lock us outside to fend for ourselves except for meals. This was for about several weeks. It is important to note that this is also when my father stopped working. He interpreted some of the ATI based teachings to mean that it was improper for him to be under a woman’s authority in a workplace…That was also the end of effective homeschooling.”
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“I had been changing diapers for a couple years already, so I didn’t have to learn anything new in that department, but I learned how to make do on little sleep, or to do things half-asleep. My mom loves babies. She kept having them because the old babies grew into ‘little brats’ all too often. Well, that and she believed she had to be Quiverfull.”
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Homeschoolers Anonymous 