Quiver Me Timbers!

Lo, children are an 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:
they shall not be ashamed. -Psalm 127:3-5

In honour of mother's day, I want to talk about the Quiverful movement. Upon first hearing of this, I thought it must be describing something like a small-scale erotic fiction publishing house.
But the truth is even more sexifying!

It is an evangelical christian movement whose basic operating principal is "be fruitful and multiply," with cues taken from Biblical passages such as the one above.

I first heard of the concept in passing, in reference to the Duggar family of Arkansas who were all over the news a few days ago. They are expecting their 18th kiddiwink next year. At least everyone looks happy. Mawmaw Duggar has been pregnant 135 months of her life!

Cruising through the Net looking for more details made my womb scream, cover it's eyes and and try to run out of the room, but this is what I've gathered:

All children are a gift from God so open up your fertility to His control.
Actively trying to control your family's size, or the distribution of littleuns, is closing yourself off from God. Regulating sex is like closing the door on the Greater Plan.

Growing up Catholic, this notion is kind of what we always took for granted only we didn't have a fancy word for it. However, there were some escape clauses.

For example, "natural family planning" allowed you to have a sex life while remain pleasing to God. The issuance of bebes could be somewhat controlled if you regulated the sexing. This involved charting variables like temperature, hormones, spit and vajayjay goings-on as painstakingly as Cook charted Pacific Oceania.

But quiverful families don't even have these escape clauses. God is at the helm. If you're "meant" to have 3 kids, so be it. If 8, 13, or 20 are in the cards, then Amen and let it happen. Only God or a shredded uterus can control when the children end!

Naturally, this is apparently what they used to do in "olden days." Many fringe societies are fond of making reference to the grand olden days, so that they may live according to the tenets of a vaguely-defined past era, instead of abiding by the secular circumscriptions of the modern world!

Aside: Did you know Fundamental Christians are also all history scholars? Because they are. In fact, many fundamentalists of every stripe are fond of referring vaguely to a more beautiful and upright past, in which everyone lived (because they wanted to) according to whatever extreme idea is being idealized. They were just naturally smarter in those days!

I'm left with a lot of questions. First, the financial.

How do people afford to send 4, 8, 16, 20+ kids to college? Never mind that, how do you feed them, clothe them, and keep them in Wii controllers? I suspect if you ask, the answer will be a variation of "God will make a way." But seriously. Quiverful families must be rich!

Not to generalize (OK, well sort of) but in my reading, it did seem Quiverful fams were wealthier than the norm, and didn't live in big cities. They sort of were far enough removed from the pulse centres of our squalid planet to allow themselves the indulgence of thinking their unlimited breeding is unequivocally wholesome and good.

Is adoption part of the Quiverful plan or would that be considered too decisive a means of acquiring kidlets? I suspect terms like "fruit of the womb" and "children are a gift of God" should read "fruit of MY womb" and "MY children are a gift of God." Yuck to outsider babies.

Is it really "pleasing to God" to spend so much time on creating your own little empire when so many others go without? Let's look at the big picture! No one likes to do that, I admit. But childless or small families are always being pooh-poohed by the fundies. We're just gin-sipping, nail painting, recreational abortionists trying to dismantle decency one day at a time. Yawn!

Left: Children at play.

True, some of our ilk may be tiresome neo-yuppie-fatalists who don't want any kids diverting income away from overpriced real estate, leased Mini Coopers, and adventure tour getaways. But really, when I look at one of those Quiverful family portraits I can't help but play a game of "Spot the Future Serial Killer." Better to lavish your love on a pet or one wee bebe instead of rationing it out amoung dozens like it's World War II oleo.

Anyhow, in honour of Mothers everywhere I'm not going to fall too heavily upon the Quiverfullians. I hope they are making well-thought-out choices that suit their situations. I hope they all can afford their kids and have the time to give very one a happy childhood. Their life choice isn't as crazy as many others out there so I won't give them too much guff. But (as with everything) you've got to hope that people are honestly trying to source their motivations, especially as they are getting others involved.

In this case, is it about the children, or is it about you?

Don't bring Jesus into it either. Don't you see he doesn't return calls? Whenever He gets these requests for His endorsement of one or another of our crazy human antics, He mouths "I'm not in!" to St. Peter.

His eye is on the sparrow and we keep trying to divert it!!!