Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Six, Mary’s Story

“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.”

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Five, Samantha Field’s Story

“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.”

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Four, Electra’s Story

“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.”

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Three, Maia’s Story

“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.”

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Two, DoaHF’s Story

“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.”

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part One, Introduction

“Within this sort of isolated, dogmatic, and restricted environment where the parents are consumed by what they see as duty to “the Father,” the eldest daughters of Quiverfull families are enlisted as junior mothers to their own siblings…The drawbacks of the lifestyle to the daughters doing this constant care are numerous. They are only recently coming to light because, as these daughters ourselves, we speaking are out about them. That is the focus of this ‘Voices of Sister-Moms’ guest post series.”