c. 2011 Religion News Service
(RNS) When Meg Moseley gave birth to her third child 20 years ago, doctors cautioned her against having any more babies, fearing that another difficult pregnancy might jeopardize her life.
So Moseley and her husband decided three was the magic number, at least for their family.
Then came an unexpected hospital visit from a couple of women who, like Moseley, had chosen to home-school their children.
These women "thought it was wrong to be limiting children, although the doctors said I was looking for trouble if I had more," Moseley recalled. "I felt intense pressure from (these) people who actually came to me in my hospital room and put their propaganda in my hands, which I put in the waste basket."
Moseley's unwelcome bedside visitors were involved in what is commonly called "Quiverfull" -- a movement within segments of conservative evangelical and Catholic Christianity that eschews all forms of birth control and teaches that the only faithful response to childbearing is to have as many children as possible, leaving the number and frequency up to God alone.
Quiverfull takes its name from a verse in the Psalms that says: "Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them."
The movement has appeared in various contexts throughout history; most recently, the ever-growing Duggar brood on TLC's "19 Kids and Counting," has popularized a charming tribe of devout Baptists in Arkansas who hope to have even more children, if it's God's will.
Moseley's encounters with adherents of the Quiverfull ideology led her to write a novel, "When Sparrows Fall," published earlier this month, about a young home-schooling mother of six children trapped in the movement's most extreme manifestation: An all-consuming, separatist community of Quiverfull faithful who are shepherded by a domineering, corrupt religious leader.
The novel is not what one might expect. Far from a saccharine story of automatons terrorized by their spiritual leader, Moseley's characters are complex and nuanced, rounded out with a romantic subplot as compelling as it is surprising.
Moseley says her characters are completely fictional, but elements of the plot and the ideas expressed are based on real experiences.
Moseley home-schooled three children -- now ages 30, 27 and 20 -- all the way through high school. It didn't start with a conviction that "this was God's way for us," Moseley said. It was more practical.
When her eldest child turned 5, the Moseleys were leery of putting their daughter on a public school bus with a bunch of "big, rough boys" from their neighborhood.
"We just couldn't stand to do that to our little 5-year-old," she said. "We thought, 'How hard could kindergarten be? Let's do home school."
At the end of the school year, pleased with their experience, they decided to do it again. Their youngest graduated in 2009.
"As time went on we saw good results. We saw good academic results. We saw fun. We saw the love of learning and we just kept going," said Moseley, who now lives outside Atlanta.
"Looking back now, I sometimes wish I had not done that. They have done well, but I think that I could have done better by putting them in school. ... Parents do the best that they can and then they look back and say, 'Oh, I wish I'd known what I know now."'
Moseley is quick to say that she has "many perfectly normal friends" who home-school their kids. "I certainly don't want to imply that all home-schoolers believe you should have as many children as you can. Not everyone thinks that," she said.
In part, what led the author to write her novel was a desire to push back against a "glamorization" of the Quiverfull movement in the media, particularly with the Duggars, which "doesn't show the dark side" of the movement.
"It's just not as pretty as it looks on TV sometimes. The leaders of the movement, or at least the fathers of these individual families, have the best of intentions. They think they're doing the godly thing and if God wants to give them umpteen children then God bless them, let them come.
"But so many of these families are struggling to survive financially," she said.
Mothers who are full-time home-schoolers can't or aren't allowed to work outside the home, which makes time and finances tight, leaving some childcare of the younger children to the older children.
"That can work if it's done right. But it can also be a hotbed of resentment among the children because they feel they are being used and abused," she said. "I don't believe that's what God intends when he gives children to parents."
Follow Cathleen Falsani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/godgrrl
Frank Schaeffer: God vs. Women
Valerie Tarico: Sixteen Wives, Twenty Children: The Role of Machismo in Overpopulation
Frank Schaeffer: We Need Freedom From Religion Not Just Freedom of Religion
Katy Hall: 'Sister Wives': TLC's Polygamist Family Asks Us To 'Rethink Marriage'
Quiverfull - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Inside the Duggar Family's Conservative Ideology - Newsweek
Life with a “Quiverfull” Family – the story behind the story ...
The K-12 years of a person's life are about more than an education; it's 12 long years of growth as a member of society and learning how to make friends, how to lose friends, and how to deal with difficult or adversarial people. Even with the advent of the Internet, there is no substitute for real-world social interaction. By home-schooling kids parents, in my opinion, are harming their children by putting them in a situation that only delays some of the most crucial and difficult life lessons that a person has to go through.
Many of those I met while home schooling were doing so because of bullying, bigotry, or unmet needs of the gifted.
....Well, they're probably not paying attention to the science that shows that the odds of a male turning out to be gay increase dramatically the more previous male pregnancies a woman's had (Whether or not these came to full term or the kids were raised anywhere near each other. )
This is just a gussied-up 'Keep em barefoot and pregnant' though.
Granted, that is definitely true, but that wouldn't be high on my list on why people should find it morally offensive.
I had health professionals checking in with me to make sure I had the necessary information about post baby birth control, was this bullying? I was free to disreguard this well intentioned but unsolicited advise.
My kids went to public school, and in high school they took biology, anatomy, AP chemistry and physics. They also took maths up through calculus, Shakespeare and college comp., played in the orchestra, participated in theater and chorus and student government, and made lifelong friendships.
As a teacher, I was qualified to teach them several subjects at home, but could not have done the advanced math and chemistry nor any foreign language. These subjects helped prepare them for university and their chosen fields. But, in addition to missing some key subjects, with home-schooling, they would have missed out on the social experiences that prepared them to live in the real world and be able to deal with a variety of people.
Oh, and as for the bus thing: My oldest went to school on the bus her first day of kindergarten. Turned out that we were the first stop and it took an hour for the bus to pick up everyone and get her to school in 90 plus degree weather. The same on the way home (we were the last stop). She arrived home drenched in sweat and crying. I drove them to and from school every day after that. Bus problem solved.
My first child, homeschooled through 8th grade and then in a public online school, is now an EMT. He sees the public every single day and has done very well. He loves his job. I suppose in your eyes he's a failure because he didn't go to a 4-year college, but I don't think everyone is cut out for that.
My second child has been homeschooled since K and is now a senior. He got a part-time job as a pizza delivery man and has done just fine dealing with the public. He and his y ounger brother also have a little rock band and play gigs at coffee houses and other places in our community. So they're doing just fine in the real world, able to deal with a variety of people and doing well. My senior son also has 6 college credits banked through CLEP and is working on another 6. A local public school girl has also asked him to the prom.
Why would I consider your son a failure? My friend's kids could not go to college because they were unprepared in every way.
Two of her kids went to prom with my daughter and a friend. They all had a blast. Then the oldest girl asked her mom if she could start attending school. They were not allowed to associate with my kids after that. My kids were too "worldly".
What I saw with this family was, in my opinion, poor homeschooling. They lived far out on a farm and usually only saw other kids from their small church. There were no kids there the age of the oldest 3, so they mostly just had each other. We saw them seldom, but her two oldest were the ages of my two kids, and they enjoyed each other's company.
Now the two oldest are over 30 and still live and work on the farm. The third has 4 children already. All the boys are truck drivers. All are married. Nothing wrong with any of that, except they never had a chance to see if they wanted to be anything else.
And would these women be around if Meg had died to rais her 3 childern and possibly a fourth? I doubt it. They're bullies, just like the rough boys on the bus.