Random Exceedingly Repressive Rules And Rituals From Hyper-Conservative "Quiverfull" Christian Movement (7 items)

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  (#8) Feminism Is Bad And Patriarchy Is The Way Of The Lord

  Feminism is more than frowned upon if you are in the Quiverfull movement. According to one Quiverfull blogger, things were better back in the old days when men had complete control over women. He even admits that sometimes they could be jerks about it, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is women knew their place. He calls feminism the “equality cult” and says that it has infected the church and ruined traditional marriage. Feminism is also responsible for divorce, abortion, birth control, and gay marriage.

  Patriarchy is absolutely the name of the game in the Quiverfull movement. One pastor went so far as to say that if you can’t completely submit to your husband, even when you know he is wrong, then you shouldn’t get married. If you are a woman, men are in control of you. Not just your father when you are young and your husband after you get hitched, but even your brothers have authority over you. You are there to be a “helpmeet” to all the men in your life.
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  (#2) Women Must Be Completely Sexually Available To Their Husbands

  Why do they have so many kids? Because a woman is virtually never allowed to turn down their husband if he wants sex, and there's no protection involved. 

  One Quiverfull blogger put this oh so romantically when he made the analogy that after you buy the cow (your wife) you expect to get the milk (sex) for free. You shouldn’t have to do anything to earn it. According to him, a wife can never really reject her husband’s advances, at best she can ask for a rain check that she needs to deliver on as soon as possible. A wife who refuses her husband’s sexual desires is apparently not only defying him (a big no-no) but also God (which is like the worst no-no.)

  He even says a man shouldn’t feel bad about basically forcing sex on his wife if she is not in the mood, which dangerously advocates marital rape.
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  (#3) Children Are “Arrows For The War” Against Non-Believers And These Are The End Times

  Having many children is not just important because God said to, but because they believe there is an ongoing spiritual war. The idea is to get more devout Christians in every rung of society by having more children than non-believers do. They think it is especially important to get believers into positions of power in government. They estimate if eight million couples (far more then the 10,000 or so who actually practice) started having at least six kids they would win the war against non-believers within a hundred years.

  But it isn’t just a metaphorical war they advocate. Quiverfull fundamentalists believe they are living in the end times and by birthing good Christians believe they are setting the scene for Jesus’ return, and the final war against evil that will bring on the Second Coming.
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  (#9) Women Can't Have Their Own Bank Accounts Or Email Addresses Without Their Husbands' Permission

  Quiverfull women are severely isolated, which isn’t helped by the practices of homeschooling and homesteading. But it gets worse than that. According to an ex-member, wives are not allowed to have their own bank accounts, or even their own email address unless their husband says they can. And not all husbands say yes, meaning they have complete financial control over their wives, a form of abuse. Women aren’t even supposed to leave the house without the patriarch’s permission.

  One ex-member compared it to The Handmaid’s Tale, but for some people in the world today it is all too real.
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  (#4) Childbirth Is Usually At Home, Completely Unassisted

  There is a new fad for home births, but even the most New Age-type moms-to-be will have a midwife on hand to help through labor. Not the Quiverfull practitioners. They believe that you can get through this difficult experience all on your own. That’s why many of them choose not only to give birth at home, but to have no medical professionals around to help. For some, this isn’t a problem and they get through it fine, with both mother and baby perfectly healthy. But as any doctor could tell you, birth is tricky and sometimes things go wrong. When they go wrong at an unassisted home birth, people die.

  In 2009, one Quiverfull blogger suffered an amniotic fluid embolus and her baby died, and she ended up in critical condition. She had decided to go through with an unassisted birth even though her pregnancy showed signs of complication, with tragic consequences. And an ex-member has also written about how she ended up in the emergency room with a partial uterine rupture after one of her home births.
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  (#5) Technically, It's A Cult Based Around Male Leadership

  Most cults have one supreme leader who makes all the decisions and controls their followers. Quiverfull is different in that there is no singular cult leader personality, but according to people who have left the movement, each family becomes its own little cult with the father at the center.

  Fathers especially have weird relationships with their daughters. Dad is supposed to be the only man in a daughter's life until he allows her to get married, at which time her "leader" becomes her husband. But when girls are still young they have a special connection with their father, taking purity pledges, attending special father-daughter dinners, and sometimes even becoming his emotional support if his wife can’t supply it (since she is so exhausted from all the baby-making and child rearing). One ex-member called this relationship “emotional incest.”

  What adds to the cult mentality is the fact that Quiverfull families tend to isolate themselves. They usually practice homeschooling and "homesteading," wherein they are self-sufficient in a rural area. The people with whom they do interact are usually other Quiverfull practitioners.

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