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

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  (#1) God Is The Only Form Of Birth Control And He Will Give You The Number Of Children You Were Meant To Have

  The main thing that sets the Quiverfull movement apart from other fundamentalist Christian movements is the idea that you should have as many kids as possible. Birth control of any kind is completely out of the question. And don’t even mention abortion, or "women's rights." Even “natural” family planning like the rhythm method is seen as something prostitutes do.

  Each child is seen a gift from God and they believe He won’t give you any more than you can handle. But apparently, God seems to think women can handle a whole lot of kids. The Duggars with their 19 kids might be an extreme example, but 10 or more can easily be the reality for many families.

  This means most Quiverfull wives spend all of their time pregnant, breastfeeding, and raising a whole lot of children. And they never get a break: since most of the families homeschool, they can’t even send their brood off to be a teacher’s problem for part of the day. 
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  (#7) Women Must Be Modest So Men Don’t Lust After Them

  If you have ever watched the Duggar’s show you might notice that they aren’t the most fashionable people in the world. High necklines and long skirts or pants are the look. And there is a good reason for this. Quiverfulls believe that if a woman flashes the flesh she can literally destroy a man.

  It works like this: a woman dresses even slightly provocatively. A man sees her and he is overcome with lust. He feels ashamed of himself and suddenly there is an epic battle inside him of good and evil and evil might win if he can’t control his sinful lust. But it’s not his fault; it is hers for being so slutty. They even say that one day she will have to stand before God and answer for it, since she was the one who caused those terrible feelings. It's all rather ironic, considering Quiverfulls also believe unfettered sex is part of the man's prerogative.
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  (#11) Daughters Are Basically Unpaid Servants

  Being a wife in a Quiverfull marriage doesn’t sound very fun, but it is almost as bad being a daughter in one. You have to submit to all the men in your family and you are basically looked at as unpaid labor. On ex-member talked about how it was her job to do the dishes for her whole family for ten years. She also was the one who got up at night and assisted her mom with feeding any new babies, because obviously her father needed his beauty sleep.

  Other former members talk about the stay-at-home daughter movement. This encourages girls to be available all the time for childcare, cooking, and cleaning needs, and most crucially it discourages them from going to college. Education isn’t valued since they are expected to get married and not hold down a paying job. But it is also so they can be available to help with the younger kids even once they reach an age where they might normally be expected to move out.
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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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  (#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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  (#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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