sister-moms – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Self Preservation and Mental Health

May 21, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Henderson’s blog Feminist in Spite of Them. It was originally published on her blog on September 3, 2013.

In my last post, I made a brief mention of how living in a state of survival affected my mental health. I thought it would be a good idea to expand on this issue, because in my opinion it is the crux of why having quiverfull families and homeschooling in chaos is abusive to the children involved.

As I have mentioned before, doing something that causes harm to your child is abusive regardless of your intentions or religious justification. Children are do not become raised in a vacuum. Children do not have the ability to protect their own interests, and as I have shown in a previous post, in fact unfortunately do not have the right to do so. Therefore it is a parent’s job to try to protect their children from harm as much as possible – no perfection required – and to introduce good things and reduce negative influences as much as possible. It is my belief that that most parents would not argue with this assertion, because most parents have their children’s best interests in mind.

When a child is raised a quiverfull family, there is a core belief involved that stipulates that older children should help raise their younger siblings.

This is commonly known to those outside the quiverfull movement as the “buddy system”, but survivors sometimes call this “sister-moms”. The use of older siblings to care for younger siblings can cause various levels of neglect depending on how organized the family is and whether there is homeschooling involved. It is typically simply impossible for a mother of 6 or more children to recover from childbirth and unending pregnancies at the same time as being able to provide adequate care to that many children, provide adequate schooling for that many different grades, cook nutritious meals, do laundry, and keep house. Don’t get me wrong, I do not object to children having chores. I do object to a ten year old child being responsible for a whole department of parenting or housekeeping, such as all cooking, or all laundry or all cleaning or all child care.

This is the difference between a child helping with chores, and “the use” of children to help raise other children or “take over” certain aspects of being a housekeeping mother. When there is a high level of chaos, the older children can become invested in running the household. Indeed, that is the goal of quiverfull families: to pass on the ideals of raising a big family and having women stay in the home and replicate the family values as soon as they are old enough. However, this emotional investment will have one of two outcomes: either the sister-mom will succeed in pulling off an inappropriate amount of responsibility in the home and move on to their own submissive marriage and many children without ever experiencing her own life, or she will fail at the vast amount of work required to raise a family as a young teen. If she succeeds, it is a tragedy.

If she fails – and many fail – she will be subject to shame by others inside and outside the family. The problem is, in order for a daughter to participate in the investment I described above, there is a certain amount of self-deception required. The girl must become oblivious to her own needs and desires, ignore her own sexuality, and truly believe in the moral obligation to participate, to the exclusion of all other life paths. Otherwise she will object to what is being taken from her.

The other important factor apart from self-deception is self-preservation.

In a chaotic situation, there is difficulty in maintaining discipline, and some parents do not have the skills to do so with a few children, let alone over half a dozen. Child abuse and “squeaky wheel” parenting is very common, where children are punished for being loud and only receive help when they are insistent enough to get it but not loud enough to warrant punishment. In this type of environment, there is not enough parental supervision to guarantee good behavior, so they may depend on older children to help supervise the younger children. Sometimes this means that if younger children misbehave, the child responsible for watching them may also be punished for not preventing the infraction. When this happens, the goal becomes less about moral behavior and more about each child protecting themselves from punishment.

A sister-mom who has juggled age-inappropriate levels of chores and child care for years, and is responsible for the behavior of others, lives in a haze of survival. They do not let themselves fully absorb what is going on around them, and do not allow themselves to experience the unfairness in their lives. When a failure takes place, the entire facade crumbles down. The girl will realize that the very parts of herself, the very skills she takes pride in, are what makes her different and scarred compared to others the same age. She will realize other girls have something she does not have: an identity outside of someone else’s children and ideology. If a girl fails at being a sister-mom, there is nothing left unless she makes something happen. If you have no other identity and no social skills, building these from scratch as a teenager seems like an insurmountable task.

The process of disillusionment that takes place is terrifying and horrifying.

Imagine spending several years working on something you really believed in, and investing every moment of every day in it, and believing that it was your life purpose, and one day it simply falls away. Teenaged girls in this situation are typically quite sheltered as well, and tend to not know much about depression and self-harm, which means that they are exposed to the life-changing effects without understanding what is going on, and believing that they are deficient in some way and are the only one in the world going through those feelings.

Quiverfull families are not open to exploring such issues and seeking help, and such help would be counter-productive to the goals of the ideology. Sometimes such girls retreat from their moment of clarity back into the haze and try again. Others are given help within the ideological circle, and the girls are encouraged to suppress their feelings. Others leave.

For the ones who leave and start their lives over outside the quiverfull community, it can take years to start to feel normal. It is difficult to feel normal when you are not living the purpose you have been taught, and are no longer pursuing those goals. Another important aspect is that as a sister-mom, a girl will raise children who are not hers. When she leaves, she walks away from small children who she loves and they know her as the source of food and comfort. It is impossible to fully describe the loss this causes, and the unselfish teachings from childhood can make it difficult to move forward with one’s own life when there is a huge part of the soul that is still attached to the raising and protecting of younger siblings.

When a girl starts to open up to her own life, she will start to realize how much of her life has been used up to pursue the goals of someone else. There is resentment towards both the parents and the siblings, which brings with it the conflict of not wanting to resent siblings for what they had no control over. Sister-moms are taught to not pursue their own goals and to malign typical ‘worldly’ goals, and it can be painful to process what is right and wrong and pick a moral code to live by. Sister-moms who leave will often also simply miss their families and feel rejection because they cannot stay and live their lives. They will feel confusion and shame, and be afraid of going to hell for their actions.

They experience the conflict of self-preservation both while living in the haze and while getting out. All these experiences can trigger depression, self-harm, and self-destructive behavior, and when a girl is used to living in a haze of denial, it is very difficult to get out of the new haze of depression if she falls into it.

A parent risking a girl’s mental health to get help with child raising other children is abuse.

Two Messages that Children Internalize that Contribute to Bullying in Patriarchal Church and Homeschool Groups

February 14, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Henderson’s blog Feminist in Spite of Them. It was originally published on her blog on January 4, 2014.

Homeschooled children sometimes experience bullying from peers. Part of this stems from the messages that children absorb about themselves.

1. Children respond to the tiered authority by owning the message that they are the not as good as other people and exist to serve people who appear to be more powerful than they are;

2. Children respond to the opposite message that they are the best and brightest and most privileged and enact that power on others.

I have mentioned the issue of bullying in homeschool groups in passing in a previous post, but bullying in homeschooling families and homeschool groups is a serious issue. In a well-meaning homeschooling family from a conservative background, there are several patterns, such as adherence to patriarchal family systems and the sense of responsibility held by the parents to teach their children to succeed in life and grow up to be adults with the same mindset and goals as the parents. There is also often a commitment to having a large family.

This creates unique family power dynamics.

Depending on how the family works, they will send a message to their children that corresponds with one of the point above: that the child is valued and special, or that the child is part of a plan that has nothing to do with the child.

Socialization has become almost a joke to both sides of the homeschooling debate, but the reality is that children who are homeschooled spend less time with other non-siblings, and sometimes this is even the goal of homeschooling. In patriarchal families, children are often authority-tiered in birth order, although preference in the ranking is sometimes given to boys. Sometimes this happens in large families due to the difficulty in parenting large numbers of children, and mothers bring in older daughters to take on various aspects of homemaking and parenting.

There is a large amount of anecodotal evidence that speaks to how damaging sibling parenting can be. There is a series posted by Heather Doney that tells the stories of sister-moms. Many of the personal stories shared on both No Longer Quivering and Homeschoolers Anonymous also outline the difficulties of being an adult who helped raise their own siblings. Children who are part of this tiered authority find themselves always as part of a ranked system, which is different from the experience of children who attend school, who are grouped with peers in spite of status struggles.

Homeschool groups and church “families” are touted as a significant source of socialization opportunities for homeschooled children. However, this means that children who spend most of their time in a tiered family structure are then tossed together as an artificial peer group and left to find their own status among themselves, which is one of the things that some homeschooling parents say they are attempting to avoid. The source for the information in this post is lived experience.

Children in homeschooling groups and church groups vie for status at the expense of each other, just as children do in public and private schools. They put each other down, and use similar ways of determining popularity as public schooled children do, including appearance, status of parents, ownership of desired items, and overall apparent confidence levels. They sometimes use physical strength to exert control as well. Parents do not always see the bullying but it does take place.

However, homeschooled children in these families are also subject to real responsibility/authority status and a tight social circle that is includes all available peers.

Girls sometimes compete to exhibit which is the more capable parent, and it is not uncommon to see these children carrying other children around, usually their own siblings or the young children of family friends. Because it is valued for girls to learn to perform homemaking tasks, girls are put on display to demonstrate proficiency in cooking and parenting, which creates resentment between peers. Financial struggles are a common problem among families with a stay-at-home mother and many children, so girls find themselves ranked in their peer groups according to whose parents have time to contribute to social activities and by common status symbols such as clothing. These families also share clothing, so children with a lower financial status have to wear the cast-off clothing of the more affluent families.

Very young boys in patriarchal families do not always realize that they are being groomed to take part in a power structure, but they do attempt to exert power over each other as much as public schooled boys do. The big difference here between public schooled children and homeschooled children is that since children tend to be part of a self-regulating system (and the parents are busy) there is not as much supervision and few complaints. As stated above, children either internalize that they exist to serve or exist to control. This results in children who are taught to stick to their ranking and do not usually object to unfairness.

Mental health problems are often not identified and treated in children in these circles, and some of the aspects of patriachal homeschooling life may contribute to the development of mental health disorders. This leaves suffering children even more vulnerable to bullying since children suffering from depression and similar struggles may only appear to be quiet and awkward, whereas in a public school they may have been identified as needing a teacher-mentor or recommended to see a mental health professional. An additional problem unique to church and homeschool groups that prevents children from being protected from bullying is that there is no central figure that children can turn to if their life isn’t working like a teacher or principal. Each parent usually has faith in their own children, and all parents in the church group or homeschool group has faith in their system, and it threatens their choices if the system doesn’t work, so there is simply no room for a bullied child to seek help.

Please share your input regarding the differences between bullying in public schools and patriarchal church and homeschool groups!

The Reason I Despise Fundamentalist Christianity, As Revealed to Me In a Dream

October 23, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sean-Allen Parfitt’s blog Of Pen and Heart. It was originally published on August 26, 2013.

Recently there has been a series over at the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog, called “Voices of Sister-Moms”. I began reading the introductory post, but could not finish. My entire body was having a negative reaction. I mentioned this to some of my fellow LGBT Homeschooled friends, and they wisely suggested that I step away from the article till I could calm down. I was seriously angry, and had beginning symptoms of a minor panic/anxiety attack.

I was surprised at my reaction to the article.

After all, I am a male, the eldest in my family, who, in the patriarchal/quiverfull system, is in a position of privilege. It’s true that I was expected to do a lot of housework and helped homeschool the kids (see last Friday’s post), but I went to college, got a job, and was allowed to live my own life. (And by “my own life” I mean going to work and coming back home and going to church with the family and sometimes hanging out with friends.)

Well, in the last two years, I’ve come out of the closet, left the fundamentalism my family calls Christianity, meet many new kinds of people, and discovered that what I was taught isn’t necessarily the truth. I am in a relationship with another man, which is for me a clear illustration that the traditionally taught family dynamics are not the one true way. I have even begun to question Christianity itself.

But I couldn’t put my finger on either my anxiety when reading about the mistreatment of Christian girls or my strange negative reactions to other generic mentions of Christianity.

Why did I cringe when I saw a post on Twitter recommending a book about God’s love? Why do I skim past the tweets with Bible verses and references to good times at church?

I believe I got my answer in a dream I had Saturday night.

In my dream, I was visiting my father’s childhood church, which my family had begun re-attending. Mom was in a small-group discussion, and brother T was in the main sanctuary. I walked up to T, but he distinctly turned away without acknowledging me. Once Small Groups was over, Mom came back into the sanctuary. I began following her as she straightened the pews, talking to her. She was upset with me for living openly gay, and I was getting more and more angry with her as the conversation continued.

Then I exploded at her. This is very much out of character of me, as I have only raised my voice at her on a few occasions. I almost tremble is reverent fear of my mother, who has power to unleash unheard-of retribution. Or at least, that’s how I feel. So for me to yell at her actually took me by surprise in retrospect. But what I said to her showed me exactly what I had been feeling but had been unable to express before.

It was the very innermost turmoil that I had not been able to understand.

“Do you know what I hate about Christianity?” I shouted at my mother, standing in the very sanctum of the religion I was at that very moment criticizing. “Do you know what it is that makes you unable to accept the fact that ‘I’m gay, and it’s OK’?” My mother just stood there, not replying. And then I said the word. Just one word, a simple 8 letters that encompass the root of my dissatisfaction with the religion in which I was raised, and which has caused irreparable pain to so many people. I opened my mouth, and with conviction, the word thundered through the church:

“Misogyny.”

According to Wikipedia, “Misogyny /m ɪ ˈ s ɒ dʒ ɪ n i / is the hatred or dislike of women or girls.” When used in a religious context, it usually refers to the belief that women are the “weaker sex” (see I Peter 3:7) and are under the authority of men (see I Corintians 11:3and I Timothy 2:12). In practice, this means that women and girls are to be humble servants to men. Girls are groomed to become wives and mothers, and should not aspire to be successful on their own. They are to submit, never questioning their fathers, husbands, or pastors.

When I awoke form my dream, I was surprised at what my mind had expressed while I slept. However, upon reflection, I realized how so very true it is. Misogyny is at the heart of much of the pain I have experienced in my life.

It is the root of the pain that countless other women and gay men have felt.

Wait, sure, you can see how misogyny has caused incredible pain and discrimination for women, but how dare I include myself and other gay men in that category? This is the question I asked myself. But even though I did not express it verbally in my dream, I knew what the answer was.

One major argument used against unions between two men is the call to remember God’s biblical definition of marriage. Thus, marriage is commonly interpreted as a union between one man and one woman. Traditionalists maintain that the proper balance of power places the man in the position of leader and the woman in a submissive position. Women are expected to take care of the home, cleaning, cooking, shopping, teaching, raising children, making life easier for men, and providing sex on demand. Men are expected to go to work, provide money and housing, spiritually lead the family, and lead the family into ministry work.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to extrapolate the effects of misogyny onto gay men. If two men are in a relationship, who has what duty? Men aren’t supposed to do the women’s work. Who leads the family and makes the decision? Which one goes to work and which one cleans the house? In short, which one is the man and which one is the woman?

So many straight fundamentalists can’t grasp the idea that gay men are still men.

A flamboyant gay man is called effeminate and looked down on. When I came out to my mother over the phone, she prayed for me. In that prayer, she cried, saying that she didn’t want me to be her daughter; she wanted me to be her son. I have had several people ask me who is the man in Paul’s and my relationship.

Besides being entirely misguided, such notions and comments are very hurtful. I have been completely cut off form my family. My old friends have told me that we cannot fellowship anymore. They see me as a deviant from the natural order and desires. Because I don’t want to be with a woman. Because I don’t want to exercise headship over my partner. Because I like to engage in “feminine” pursuits such as sewing. Because I care what I look like and plan my outfits to coordinate. Because I wear earrings. Because I am “acting like a woman”, when I am really a man.

I admit I am not sure where I stand on the issue of Christianity. The pain and hurt I have received from the church has made me very wary of the religion of the Bible. When I see others facing the same discrimination I have, I become enraged. It is hard not to be bitter against the very religion that brought me up.

It’s a world of pain, hurt, and rejection, all because of one word: misogyny.

Can’t You Say Anything Good About Homeschooling?: Libby Anne

August 30, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Can’t You Say Anything Good About Homeschooling?: Libby Anne

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on March 31, 2013.

I’ve been fairly critical of homeschooling in a good number of blog posts over the past two years.

One thing I’ve been asked a number of times is whether, looking back, there was anything about my homeschooling experience that was positive. It’s true that Sierra of the Phoenix and the Olive Branch and Lana of Wide Open Ground, while generally critical of many things about homeschooling and their own homeschool background, have both written posts outlining the things they found positive about their homeshooling experience. Can’t I do the same? So here it is, my attempt to write about the positives side of my homeschool experience.

But I’m going to warn you up front that I don’t think this is going to go all that smoothly.

1. Self motivation.

I’ve always been a very self-motivated person. There were some years I worked ahead in my subjects and finished all of my schoolwork for the entire year by the end of March. I was always extremely hard working and driven, and this followed me into college as well. No one had to make me study. My parents have always chalked my self motivation up to the fact that I was homeschooled—and I used to do the same. Indeed, self-motivation is one thing I always see listed as a benefit of having been homeschooled. But I’m afraid I no longer buy this—at the very least, it’s not this simple.

Even as I was self-motivated, many of my siblings weren’t. I watched many of my siblings procrastinate and drag their feet and sometimes flat out lie about whether or not they were doing their work. I watched them work all summer trying to catch up for everything they’d fallen behind on during the school year. There were several years when my siblings literally finished their math textbooks for the previous year a week or two before the next school year started. Even today, I see this same thing happening with some of my siblings who are still at home, being homeschooled. Some of them seem to lack self motivation entirely, and will only do their work when there is the threat of losing some privilege over their head.

Now after high school I attended a state university on scholarship. Because of my grades, I was enrolled in the university’s honor college and lived in the honors dorms. I suddenly found myself surrounded by a cohort of extremely self-motivated public school graduates. This confused me. I honestly had not expected to see that level of self motivation in the products of public schools. I had thought they all just did the bare minimum to pass standardized tests, because of the way public schools were set up, and that they weren’t self motivated like us homeschoolers. I was wrong. Yes, I know that these kids were honors kids, and thus not representative of the public school population as a whole, but still, they proved to me that you absolutely didn’t have to be homeschooled to be self-motivated.

So did homeschooling make me self-motivated? After thinking about it, I doubt it. Some homeschoolers are self-motivated. Some aren’t. Some public schoolers are self-motivated. Some aren’t. I have no idea what makes people self motivated, or what part is simply innate, a chance of birth. But I can say with confidence that, if the family and homeschool community I grew up in is any indicator, being homeschooled does not automatically make someone self-motivated. So yes, I was homeschooled and I ended up being self-motivated. But does that really mean anything? Probably not.

2. Love of Learning

As a child, I loved learning. I checked out books from the library, explored the fields beckoning from my back door, and taught myself to knit. The world was my textbook, and I loved it. At the time, I was taught to chalk my love of learning up to being homeschooled. And for a long time, I thought there was a connection. But I don’t anymore, and for—I think—good reason.

For one thing, being homeschooled does not guarantee that you will end up with a love of learning. I know a guy who was homeschooled K-12, and his experience actually stunted his love of learning. For him, homeschooling consisted of sitting at the kitchen table, or at a desk in his room, filling out workbooks. And that’s it. Every day for twelve years—thirteen if you count kindergarten. Nothing interactive, nothing collaborative, just workbooks. To this day, thinking of school or any sort of formal learning gives him mild PTSD symptoms. So this idea that being homeschooled automatically makes one love learning? Yeah, that’s absolutely false.

Further, the friends I made in my honors college dorm in college all shared the same passion and love for learning that I had—even though almost every one of them had attended public school. They didn’t just study what they had to for their classes, or just do their homework because they were required to. They went above and beyond and loved learning for its own sake, whether it was required or not. And they didn’t limit learning to their academic coursework, either. For them, learning was a part of life, as natural as breathing. Once again, this confused me. I had been taught that public schools stunt children’s love of learning, and also that attending public school causes a person to divide their life into learning—i.e. formal school—and not learning—i.e. everything else. But I found that, for these honors kids at least, this was absolutely not the case.

So did homeschooling give me a love of learning? In the end, I don’t think so. I think my love of learning came from my parents, not from being homeschooled.

They made it obvious that they loved learning, and they sought to make every moment a teachable moment—and in a fun way.

We were always learning things, whether it be gardening or carpentry or zoology or the culinary arts, and my parents encouraged us to love learning, and worked to make learning fun. If I’d attended public school, my parents still would have taught me to love learning. They wouldn’t have suddenly stopped making every moment of life interesting and teachable. They wouldn’t have stopped encouraging us to learn, and teaching us to see learning as enjoyable and just a part of life.

In the end, I honestly don’t think gaining a love of learning is determined by the method of education.

3. Freedom

One thing both Sierra and Lana hammered on in their discussion of the positive aspects of homeschooling was the sense of freedom it gave them—freedom to follow their own interests and study at their own paces, and freedom from the constriction of a public school schedule.

When I look back on being homeschooled, this is indeed what I look on most fondly.

In elementary school, my mom set my schedule, including what I studied and when I studied it. However, homeschooling did allow the flexibility for spontaneous trips to the zoo, or spur of the moment park dates. In middle and high school my mom still set the subjects I studied each year—always asking me for input first—but I was free to determine when to study and for how long. I wasn’t required to have fixed hours, I was merely required to complete the textbooks I’d been given by the end of the year.

I loved this—like I said above, I sometimes rushed through and finished some or all of the subjects early.

I loved the flexibility of choosing when to study, and in what order to study. I frequently got up early in the morning and would set myself the challenge of finishing all of my seatwork—meaning things like math and science and vocab, but not things like free reading or debate research or music—by breakfast time. I wasn’t usually able to fit quite everything into that time, but I was always finished by lunch time, leaving me the afternoon free for reading or sewing projects or digging for medicinal herbs or baking a pie.

But—and this but is important—this freedom was limited to choosing when and at what speed and in what order to do my academic work. I wasn’t free to go to the mall with friends, or free to have a part time job, or free to randomly go over to a friend’s house. I wasn’t free to go anywhere at all. Because I was homeschooled I didn’t have an outlet away from my family. Instead, I was home all of the time, both home to have my comings and goings and friendships micromanaged and home to be on call as a junior mom 24/7. As I’ve mentioned before, my parents didn’t believe in teenagers. They expected me to go straight from child to adult, and I wasn’t allowed to do the sort of things normal teenagers do.

In some sense, was given the freedom of a two year old and the responsibility of a thirty year old.

I grew up as the oldest of twelve children. There was always a baby in the house, and there were always toddlers and preschoolers who needed constant attention and help. When I think back on my time spent doing school work, the image I get is of sitting at the desk in my room doing math problems while also supervising two or three toddler and preschool age siblings playing nearby, because mom needed them out of her way so that she could teach the middle ones. For several years I was also in charge of all of the laundry for the family, and for a while I was in charge of all—yes, all—of the cooking. I was also expected to teach some subjects to my younger siblings, as a sort of tutor. My mom figured that teaching the subjects would help cement them in my mind, and also that helping with the children and housework was good practice for my future, when I would be a homemaker and stay at home homeschool mom.

All of this responsibility also meant that I rarely got to actually spend time alone with friends, or out of the house—in fact, when I think back on hanging out with friends, the image I get is of chatting with a friend while making mountains of peanut butter sandwiches and watching our 15+ collective younger siblings, our mothers having gone out for lunch together. I don’t want to give the impression that I begrudge my mother these lunches out—she needed them for her sanity! And besides, by that time watching kids came as second nature, and I savored what time I did have with friends, so the memories I have of chatting over mountains of sandwiches and quick roll counts of children to make sure we hadn’t lost any are actually pleasant ones.

So did homeschooling give me more freedom? In the end, I think it was a wash.

Yes, I had more freedom to set my academic schedule—when to study and what to study and how to study—and I thoroughly enjoyed that. But at the same time, because I was always at home under my mother’s watchful eye and able to be on call to help with whatever needed doing, be it children or food or housework, I had much less personal freedom than I would have had I attended public school. And when I compare my thoughts here to those of Sierra and Lana, I am reminded that Sierra was an only child and Lana was one of only four. So it’s not surprising that my experience here might be a bit different.

Conclusion

So, are there positive things I can say about my homeschooling experience? Sure. But every time I locate one, I end up finding a negative flip side. And maybe that’s why I haven’t spend a lot of time trying to draw out the positives.

I simply don’t feel that I can discuss them outside of the more nuanced context.

Homeschooling can help students develop self-motivation and a love of learning—or it can limit both of these. Some kids simply work best with formal teachers for each subjects, and with the firm academic deadlines formal schools provide. I’ve also seen cases where homeschool kids end up well educated in the subjects their parents find interesting, and not well educated at all in other subject—and this is something having the variety of teachers formal schools offer serves to counteract.

Homeschooling frees kids from the formal schedule of the public school—but it also places them 24/7 under the complete control of their parents, who may give them personal freedom or may, well, not. And besides that, some homeschool parents—like the parents of the young man I mentioned—simply reconstruct the formal schedule of the public school at home, just without the same level of peer interaction.

In the end, it’s complicated.

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

August 24, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. “Mary” is a pseudonym. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

Mary has previously shared her story in full on Homeschoolers Anonymous and is the author of the “Home Is Where The Hurt Is” series.

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Part Six: Mary’s Story

So I’ve been reading the articles this last week about the sister-moms and they have been hitting home.

I am one of those sister-moms.

I am the 2nd oldest of eight and the oldest girl. Most of the time I felt like the oldest because my older brother wasn’t in the picture much for various reasons. But anyway, in the Quiverfull movement, there is a world of difference being a boy in the family versus a girl. I don’t really feel like going into my story in this document, especially as it is already posted on HA.

This is about another frustration that arises from my position in our family.

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.

We didn’t go to a conservative church. In fact, for most of my younger years, we were the only home schooled family. As far as I know there was never another family as large as ours. Because of that, the jokes ran all the time.

My parents relished in the attention and would laugh right along with everyone.

For me, however, I seemed to be getting some very clear messages: First, everyone expected me to have a large family (and why wouldn’t I when I was “so good with children and would make such a good mother”?). Second, I would be a failure if I didn’t have a big family — but also a joke if I did. When anyone would ask me while I was in my teens how many kids I wanted, my answer was always what I was taught to say: “as many as God wants.”

I never let on that the jokes and even just the normal comments hurt me deeply. I never let on that I really didn’t want to have a bunch of children.

I wasn’t allowed to.

One thing I always wanted to scream at people making rude comments was that I had no choice. I had no choice that my parents wanted to be crazy and follow a cult. I was just the second one to come out.

I am now a mother and I have 2 amazing children. But I only have 2 and don’t plan on changing that anytime soon — if ever.

The problem is that it seems I will never be able to shake all those jokes and insults from my past. For example: on my Facebook page on my birthday, there is this one guy that feels the need to always say “Happy birthday” by making some joke about how many more kids I need to “catch up” with my Mom (as if I couldn’t figure that one out on my own).

When I did get pregnant with my oldest, the comments and jokes were merciless. I was working at a Christian bookstore (where I had worked for 5 years) and I knew about 80% of the customers that came in. Many others would recognize me because my family all looks alike and ask if I was a ____ (my family name), notice that I was pregnant and proceed to make a joke.

It hurt.

It hurt very deeply.

I would say the incident that hurt the most was when a lady (who I thought I respected) made a comment to my younger sister about how I was such a failure to my parents and was a rebellious child that obviously never learned a thing from my parents growing up. Why did she say that?

Because my sister told her that I wasn’t planning on having a bunch of children and that I wasn’t planning on home schooling.

Never mind that she didn’t have a bunch of children and that she had never home schooled herself. But somehow because I wasn’t doing it, I was rebellious (at 26 years old at that time and married). I have so many more examples that I can’t forget that I wish I could. As a result of all of that, I fled that church as soon as I could. I fled my hometown, too. Right now am on the other side of the country.

So I guess my point is really aimed at “normal” people. Yes, those jokes hurt. No, we (as the children) didn’t have any choice in those things our parents chose.

Please be mindful of that when you speak.

*****

End of series.

When We Whisper In The Dark

August 23, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

Photo: "Empty Cradle" by Cory Marchand. Image links to source. — Photo: “Empty Cradle” by Cory Marchand. Image links to source.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. It was originally published on August 8, 2013.

I stumbled across a short post the other day that has had me in its grips ever since. This is an thought that has taken root deep inside my heart and it is burning brighter than anything I’ve come across recently. I’m working on putting together a project that means a lot to me called I Have a Voice, and one of the guidelines I gave is to write about what burns in you. Well, people, this is burning in me.

Frankly, it freaks me out to write about it. But I strongly believe it needs to be said.

Infertility

I hate this word. I hate the hush hush nature that comes with it, and I hate going through this alone. I hate that very, very few people talk about it, talk about what it is like to be on the dark side of the room.

It is a sensitive topic and one that for me at least, makes me struggle with feeling damaged, broken, which I already feel anyway.

I hate the cynicism that comes from feeling incredibly disappointed time and time again. My mom was pregnant 14 or 15 times, during one year, she was pregnant 3 times. I thought the path to expanding our little family would be easy, quick, one thing that would actually go smoothly when it came to my body. My dad used to joke that my mom was a “fertile myrtle” and would say that all he had to do was look at her and she would be pregnant. It made sense that that would be the case for me.

But the past year and a half has been utter torture on my body. No longer can I count on actually making it through the month on a normal schedule. Add that to the massive shaking of my entire mental, emotional, and physical state of being, and it’s been another personal hell.

I don’t talk about my siblings often on my blog. Being the oldest of 9 isn’t really something I like to advertise. It’s not because I’m ashamed of them, it’s because I have a hard time explaining what life was like being their second mother, being the chief cook and bottle-washer, being the housemaid, being the one who had more responsibilities than all of the kids put together. I don’t like trying to explain what it was like being hated by my siblings because I got to do certain things. They couldn’t see the back breaking effort I had to put in to get those special things.

It is especially difficult when someone asks me how many kids Phil and I want to have.

I feel like I have to give many prerequisites as to why Phil and I don’t want a large family. Or I have to give a prerequisite for why we even want children to begin with. I will not repeat my family. I will not repeat it out of a lack of love, but because I want to be able love my children individually and give them the love and affection I never experienced. Our goal is to be able give as much love and care to each child and if that means only have a few (2-4) then we are okay with that.

Many young women who grew up in the type of environment I did are freaked out by even the idea of having children. I get that, I really do. Being the oldest of 9 (or more/less kids) is not something I’d wish on even my worst enemy.

You either come out from that specific situation never wanting to see children again, or you don’t.

Every person is affected differently by their life’s circumstances. I felt like I had to join them and stand with their banner. I then realized that I couldn’t apologize for something that burns so deep and inexhaustibly in my soul that even though I have tried to give up completely, it still burns with increasing intensity. Danielle, at from two to one, asked this question the other day, “Why have kids?” I felt an immediate answer and told my therapist when I sat in front of her on Tuesday.

I want a child so I can love that little one in the ways I never felt loved.

I want to see who God will create with part of Phil and part of me. Will our little one have Phil’s nose, but my eyes? Will our little one have the quirky personality of their dad? Will they have Phil’s and my love for music? I want to see Phil be a dad, he’s going to be an incredibly awesome dad and will love our children as my dad has never loved. Our children will be safe with him. I can’t protect my siblings, but I can start over with my children.

I want to be the mom I was meant to be, not a mom to my siblings.

I feel like Jesus has given me a glimpse of what being healed will look like for me. I want to replace the memories I have of my mom with being a loving mother to my child.

It would be like walking down a street which holds ugly memories and creating new, beautiful memories to replace the old ones. It will be another massive step towards healing. This is what burns in me and is not letting me go no matter how much I sob and try to wrench it out of my heart.

I have a purpose, I have an inextinguishable dream, but I’ve been waiting for it longer than I thought I’d have to wait. Do you know what it’s like to have a specific day coming, you just know it’s going to be good news, your hope starts rising? Your heart beats faster as the day gets closer, you pray harder and you choose to ignore the dark whispers taunting you. The day arrives and with it debilitating disappointment. The thing you eagerly hoped for, excitedly anticipated, held your breath for was held back.

Imagine this happening 5 times in a row, 10 times, 15 times, 20 times.

I thought I knew disappointment when I wasn’t able to shake the fibromyaglia. I thought I knew hope crushed when my headaches came back more intense than before. I was wrong. Pieces of me are torn from me each month my period comes. Holding that negative test in my hands, knowing the thermometer never lies, my heart dies. My therapist looked at me straight in the eyes a few months ago and asked if I felt like not being able to get pregnant was a punishment. I started crying and nodded my head because I knew she was right.

After this past month, I looked at my therapist on Tuesday and told her I’ve given up. The deepest level of my heart has truly given up. I don’t feel like I can trust God with this. I feel alone, but I know I am not alone, but no one talks about it. That part of me that holds this dream and fuels the fire will not let me give up, but a part of me already has.

I feel like God has let me down.

Praying for him to answer someone else’s prayer is easy, but praying for myself, trusting that I will actually get pregnant is another matter altogether. There have been months that have gone by where I have one day full of tears, questions, doubts, disappointed sobs, and I can’t find God. I can’t find anything good. I believe, even if it is just for an instance, that it is my fault. I am broken. I am messed up. I am being punished. I didn’t pray enough. I didn’t ask God early enough during that cycle. I have even gone through cycles telling myself I wasn’t going to pray because maybe, just maybe that would change something.

God has become less real to me over the past 18 months of trying.

18 fricking times I have crawled back into bed, trying hard not to cry, but tears always come. The feeling of being incompetent always come. The feelings of being incapable of doing the one thing me, as a woman, is supposed to be able to do. The one thing God specifically created me to do; carry a child in my body. The feeling of having done something wrong and not knowing what I did creeps up on me. The dark despair of feeling like my body is utterly broken beyond repair haunts me for days on end at times.

There are days when these feelings are very present, but for most of the month I stuff it all down and try to not think about it.

I have no idea what the next year is going to bring. Medical science has only advanced to a certain point and there a lot of things it can’t yet explain. I had so many doctors tell me that they couldn’t find anything wrong with me when I was physically fading away with the fibromyalgia. Do you know what it’s like for a doctor cheerily looking you in the face to tell you everything looks great when you can barely sit still on the table because of stifling pain? I do. I am already starting to experience that feeling again of not being believed with infertility. That feeling when you walk out of the doctor’s office, they just told you everything looks great, but you know deep inside that something isn’t right.

Can I tell you guys something? Telling me that I’m so young I have nothing to worry about, or that when I stop thinking or worrying I will get pregnant are some of the worst things to tell me. Yes, I am young, but that doesn’t make my choice any less important.

Please don’t tell me that I have to live my life more before having a baby.

Hearing that makes me question the things that I know for sure. There are so few things right now that are solid and sure for me. Questioning those things I am confident in only makes it worse.

Can we please stop whispering in the dark about this issue and instead come alongside each other and lift one another up? Can we simply say “I’m sorry,” and give comfort and love to someone dealing with chronic illnesses or situations?

Can we?

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

August 23, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team10 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. Part Five was originally published on July 11, 2013. Samantha Field blogs at Defeating the Dragons about her experiences with and life after Christian patriarchy and fundamentalism. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

*****

Part Five: “Barren,” Samantha Field’s Story

My mother was in labor with me for almost three days, and by the time she finally delivered, she was nearly dead.

If it hadn’t been for my father, she probably would have died. But, in 1987, no one was familiar enough with my mother’s medical condition to tell her what her safe options were. When my sister was born, my mother’s uterus prolapsed. Doctors warned her against getting pregnant again. Within a year, she ended up needing a complete hysterectomy.

My mother used to refer to herself as barren.

However, I never remember hearing her use that word to describe herself until we had been attending an Independent Fundamental Baptist ~~Church~~ Cult (IFB) for a few years. When we first began attending, the Quiverfull teachings weren’t readily apparent. Quiverfull ran underneath the surface of almost anything having to do with women, but not obviously. However, when I was thirteen years old, my cult-leader’s wife became pregnant with twins when she was already past 50 years old.

At that point, Quiverfull ideas jumped to the forefront.

Other members joined, many with large families, and I remember families coming through our church (usually to perform music) that the cult-leader held up and praised. These honored families usually had at least a dozen children, and one family in particular had 20. Women in our church were first encouraged, then compelled, and then ordered by the “word of God” to have as many children as possible, from whence comes their salvation.

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.

When I was fifteen years old, I sat in a cold doctor’s office, shocked and trying to constrain myself from breaking down in front of my doctor. She was telling me that I had poly cystic ovary syndrome, possibly endometriosis, and it was bad enough that I would probably struggle with having children and I would likely need a hysterectomy before I was 30. She offered what I’m sure she thought were assurances– that women who have hysterectomies today have plenty of options to delay menopause and that there wasn’t anything to be concerned about.

Barren.

I might be barren.

When I was attending a fundamentalist college, I formed a friendship with another young man in my major. At the end of our sophomore year together, when my PCOS was causing me severe enough problems that even the faculty in my department was aware of it, I confessed that I might not be able to have children.

“Oh, Samantha. You’re never going to be able to get married. That’s so sad.”

The sliver of me that had always known this wilted inside. “Wait… what… what do you mean I’ll never be able to get married?”

“No Christian man will want to marry a woman who can’t have children.”

I went back to my dorm room and sobbed.

*****

Growing up in the intensely fundamentalist environment not only taught me that my value — not as a person, but as a woman — was largely based on my ability to bear children. The fact that my anatomy threatened that ability terrified me because becoming a wife and mother had been what I had been trained to do. The only thing that I was allowed to do.

Because the leaders at my church-cult knew that I would not have younger siblings, many of the women took me under their wing. While I was not permitted to baby sit for money — only the cult leader’s daughters had that privilege — I was assigned to work in the nursery during services far more often than any other “young lady” at my church-cult. I was frequently tasked with managing the children in a variety of capacities and at different functions when others were given the freedom to play and roam.

All of this was done in the name of “preparing me for motherhood.”

Everything I did around children was sharply monitored and harshly criticized. Other “young ladies” who had the experience of looking after younger siblings at home were not watched as closely, and were trusted to perform basic tasks like bottle feeding and diaper changing while I was not allowed to do any of those things on my own for months. It was humiliating that I couldn’t be trusted to change a diaper on my own, that I had to do every single task with the utmost perfection or risk a lecture.

I was mocked because I didn’t know how to operate a diaper genie the first time I tried to use one. The first time I burped a baby, the older nursery worked literally held my hand and patted the baby’s back with it. Every experience was degrading because I wasn’t lucky enough to have had younger siblings to look after. I was given the most onerous, tedious tasks. Even when I grew older and other “young ladies” were coming up underneath me, I was still considered their inferior because these young teenage girls were considered more “domestic” than I was. I was not lady like enough. I was not as interested in the feminine arts like everyone else was. I was considered an unfortunate aberration.

The barren daughter of a barren woman.

******

Sometime after I started dating my now-husband, I was kneeling in the middle of my hallway at home, talking with him over the phone. Because of my medical conditions, my periods had steadily grown worse over the years– to the point where now they are almost unendurable.

In the environment I’d been raised in, the very idea of considering a hysterectomy (the only real long-term ‘cure’ for me, although it has its own set of problems that may or may not be better) was anathema, blasphemy.

Heresy.

It was not to be considered.

I would do everything humanly possible to preserve my fertility, and that was it. No other option was available.

It was fertility or ruination.

But, that day, on the phone, talking with the man who I was already becoming certain I would marry, I asked him the question. What would he think if I decided to have a hysterectomy. If we never had children together. If I gave all of that up, all these years of “protecting my fertility” because I couldn’t stand the pain anymore? If I wasn’t willing to do whatever it took?

“You need to do whatever is best for you, beautiful. If we never have kids, we never have kids. I love you and I want to be with you. You matter more to me than anything else. And this is your decision, not mine. It’s your body, and you get to decide what happens.”

My decision. Mine.

He’d made it clear over the course of our relationship that he was open to all the options– childlessness, adoption, fostering, or pursuing fertility treatments if that was what I wanted.

What I wanted.

Not what I was expected to do. Not what I’d been trained to do. Not what I’d been taught was my ultimate and best purpose.

What I wanted. For the first time, that mattered to me. And, for the first time, when I again decided not to pursue a hysterectomy, I made that choice not because it was what I believed was the “only right thing,” but what I decided I wanted. I looked at my husband’s twinkling eyes and mischievous grin, his mop of red hair, his cleverness, motivation, loyalty, and empathy, and decided I wanted to have children with that man. Someday.

After I’ve written a book or two, after we can buy a house . . . when I’m ready.

*****

To be continued.

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

August 22, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. Part Four was originally published on July 5, 2013. “Electra” is a pseudonym chosen by the author. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

*****

Part Four, Electra’s Story

(HA note: Yesterday, we shared the story of Maia, Electra’s older sister.)

My life started out just as my parents’ belief in the quiverfull/patriarchal system began.

I had two older brothers and an older sister, and my parents had just started homeschooling them when I was born. By the time I was 6, I had two younger sisters and another brother. Another younger sister and brother were born by the time I reached 8 years old.

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.

She also was in charge of the discipline, and expected to submit to the authority of my older brothers. She would give some of this authority to us younger kids, to delegate some of the responsibility. I had some duties too, I was responsible for making my younger siblings beds, doing all the dishes, sweeping the floor, among other cleaning duties, and being full time baby sitter for my youngest brother, who had medical issues. If he got out of line, I was the one punished.

Our home school, like many others, cannot really be defined as education.

It was more a cover so that my parents could do as they pleased. When my older sister went to high school when I was 12, I was expected to take on her servant role wholeheartedly, and enjoy it. I tried for a while, but I became very ill, with pneumonia.

I have long term respiratory issues because my parents chose not to vaccinate for whooping cough.

I had it when I was five and was ill for months with little to no medical care and as a result have had pneumonia many times, only receiving medical care one time. I was sick in bed for over two months, during which time my parents’ marriage continued to fall apart.

My role as a sister-mom completely failed.

There was a lot of physical abuse in the home, and when my older sister moved out the physical abuse loosened up a bit. The emotional abuse and blame game however, was intensified. It was flavour of the week, and my parents blamed whoever they were most annoyed with for the changes happening to our family.

I rarely talked to my parents at this point, and most of our interactions were them rebuking me for not respecting my role in the house, by having friends they didn’t approve of and hanging out with them behind their backs, and me trying to reason with them. It grew to the point that by the time I got better, I was rarely speaking to my parents, simply doing my duties as a daughter and then disappearing to my room.

Luckily for me, I was enrolled into high school later that year, unknown to my father. My illness and inability to properly mother my siblings was one of the many determining factors in their eventual separation.

Soon after my parents were separated the power struggle at home with my mother trying to maintain control ended with me moving out to a friend’s house. Over the next four years, I worked at getting my high school diploma while moving from couch to couch, living with my mother off and on. Eventually I cut her off altogether along with my father, and am now able to live a life free of power struggles, control, and cloistering.

With a stable job and income, heading to university while living independently I can definitely say, it was difficult to find a life for myself in the normal world after being a sister mom. I worry about my five younger siblings. They are still with my mother, and her rules and problems with neglect have gotten much better, as she is now under close supervision by CPS.

But I sincerely hope they somehow get out of there, and are able to make a life for themselves like I did.

*****

To be continued.

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

August 21, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. Part Three was originally published on July 5, 2013. “Maia” is a pseudonym chosen by the author. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

*****

Part Three, Maia’s Story

My family started out in a pretty normal way.

But where most families stop creating new children and start raising them, my parents forged ahead having more. I don’t know what came first, but my parents got excited about having a lot of children (being Quiverfull, as the Bible says), homeschooling, and being very literal Christians.

I am child #2, the oldest daughter. My daily activities were pretty normal until I was 8. I was asked to do a few chores but not too many. We were somewhat effectively homeschooled until that point, and my parents were ramping up their enthusiasm for radical religion.

Then came child #6. I was 8 years old.

It was explained to me by my father that my mother had cervical cancer during the pregnancy and was at risk of losing the baby, and therefore I needed to step up and help. She was born in May. As I understand it was a difficult labor. 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.

When we were allowed back, my life was totally different. Overnight I learned how to cook meals for my family and clean bathrooms, etc, under the tutelage of my father.

That was also the end of effective homeschooling.

Child #7 came when I was 9, and child #8 when I was 11. I was present for both these births, one in the hospital and one at home. In that time my parents fled the province to escape from a CAS investigation. #7 and #8 were mine. #8 was born with the cord wrapped around his neck, and did not breath for almost ten minutes after birth. My father was still in hide-from-CAS mode [HA note: CAS are Children’s Aid Societies, similar to CPS).

So he didn’t seek medical care for him until day 3 when he started having seizures.

So I learned how to administer medication to a baby. I got them dressed and fed them and loved them and rocked them — knew what they liked and didn’t like, and they called me mom. My parents encouraged all of this — except if they heard the boys call me mom. Then I got in trouble (I didn’t discourage them from saying that, it made me happy).

When I was 13 child #9 came along. By then I was very established as a mini-mom. My parents didn’t work but would frequently leave the house in the morning and come back late at night.

To this day I have no idea where they went.

So I would cook, serve and clean up three meals a day, care for an epileptic toddler, care for a new infant, and teach child #6 and #7 the best I could. When they didn’t leave the house they would often lock themselves up in their bedroom and yell at each other. When child #9 was an infant, my mother went to have gall bladder surgery and then went to recuperate a family member’s home.

There was some help in the house through some of these times, but I was still the trophy oldest daughter.

My father was proud of showing other people how much work I did in the home.

One day a young woman who was over was asked by my father if she also fed meals to her younger siblings when they were infants, and she said no. So I didn’t have to do that when we had company anymore, but still in private. I believe that my mother had a lot of health problems and post-partum depression, and that is part of why so much of daily life fell to me to run.

I wouldn’t even mind it so much if it wasn’t that she completely denies that this took place.

She thinks she was home that whole time and cooking, etc. I know for sure that some of what my parents were doing when away from home revolved around conservative ideology and reading parenting books, because one day they came home with a set of dowel rods in various sizes and tried them out on my younger siblings to see what was the most effective size for spanking each child.

I believe this comes from the Pearl parenting books.

Leaving my siblings when I was 17 to go to school and pursue my own life was the hardest thing I ever did. My three youngest siblings still live with my mom to this day and they have no understanding of the feelings I have about them based on what I did when they were infants/toddlers. I pushed so hard to get them into school, coming over at night to confront my father and pressure my mother into signing so my next youngest siblings could go to school, which she eventually did.

When I moved out, sister-mom duties immediately shifted to Electra, the next girl in the family, who is #4.

(HA note: Tomorrow, we will share the story of Electra, Maia’s sister.)

*****

To be continued.

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

August 20, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. Part Two was originally published on June 25, 2013. “DoaHF” is a pseudonym chosen by the author. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

*****

Part Two: DoaHF’s Story

I loved kids and I always wanted to help with the babies that my mom kept having.

I was always “too young” to help out with baby #5, and when baby #6 came along she was fussy and stuck to only my mom or my older sister. She hated anyone else who tried to hold or care for her, and my mom still mentions to this day how I ‘reneged’ on my desire to care for babies when #6 came around.

Why does she mention it? Because her next babies were mine.

When the oldest child in our family (a girl) turned 10, she began caring for baby #5. At 12, she took care of baby #6. When I was 10 and a half years old, baby #7 was born.

I was downstairs with everyone else that January day, trying to focus on doing school work when I got called upstairs to take my mother’s blood pressure. My grandmother and my father were the only ones attending the birth. They had covered her lower half with a sheet. My grandmother’s automated blood pressure cuff could not get a bp reading. I had gotten a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer for Christmas that year and I had learned how to use it at the local hospital where the nurses all thought I was cute.

I took my mom’s blood pressure and I mumbled out some numbers. They didn’t seem right, so I tried again. It just wasnt making sense or working. I got pushed aside as they readied my in-and-out-of-consciousness mother for a trip to the nearest real hospital for an emergency D&C (we lived outside of the United States at this time).

Somewhere along the way it was decided that the oldest girl would stay at home with the 4 kids. #7 was handed to me and I kept close to my dad and my mom on the mattress. Halfway to the main city, the ambulance broke down. A call was dispatched and the ambulance crew from that city had to be woken up and come to pick us up so we could resume our journey. As we waited and my dad haggled with the locals and I tried to keep the curious hands from touching the new baby and lifting sheets and opening the broken down ambulance doors.

At the hospital my mom was rushed to surgery and I remember sitting in a cold air-conditioned room either sleeping or holding baby #7. At one point I sat beside her as she was recovering from anesthesia. She kept asking me the same questions over and over again.

And that is how baby #7 became mine.

During my mom’s convalescence, I was usually called upon to care for her and she seemed to love being in my arms. When it was bedtime I was always handed her because she fell asleep in my arms so fast. At night when my mom would nurse her and couldn’t get her back to sleep she would wake me up to “deal with her.” I learned how to sing softly, rock in the glider rocker, and manage to lay her in bed without waking her very quickly.

Nights that I couldn’t get her to lay down I would hold her for hours, rocking with one foot while I dozed in and out. 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.

Baby #8 was a similar story. She had a much better delivery (still with complications, but not as severe) and after #8 graduated from the swinging cradle in my parents’ room (about 4 months) he slept in my room. I was almost 13 at the time. Every night I would wake up with him and take him to my mom to nurse. I would wait in the hallway (catching sleep where I could) and then take him back to my room to get him to sleep.

I still have a very angry diary entry at 14 where my mom scolded me for “being irresponsible” and letting him cry till his face was bright red about something. She told me I was bad at taking care of him and I stormed off to my room.

I wrote in all capital letters that he was MY BABY and that she had no right to take him from me.

To this day she disputes my claim to both #7 and #8 especially. She says that I overestimated what I did and that I was being dramatic.

Once our family moved back to the US in 2004 I had to do a lot more housekeeping duties than I had otherwise done. The babies were getting bigger and not in diapers any more, so I spent more time cooking and folding laundry than specifically caring for them.

As a girl, I wasn’t allowed to get a job.

But once I got ‘done’ (unofficially) with high school I spent hours in the garden weeding and planting. I turned our hundreds of tomatoes into tomato sauce and I spent almost all day cleaning up after kids. My younger brothers (#s 4 and 5) seemed to alternate hating my guts passionately. I don’t know if it was because they resented the power I held as a second (or third) mom or if they just were reacting to me ordering them around, but without fail once they hit a certain age they fought with me every second they could.

At one point my mom wouldn’t allow us in the same room without a parent.

The younger siblings were still small enough for me to intimidate/control although it fluctuated. Sometimes I was not allowed to spank/slap them, and other times it passed under the radar. Technically I was never allowed to hit them, but other times I was told to administer discipline.

It was severe cognitive dissonance.

My dad would be out working with the boys, my mom would take #6 with her grocery shopping and I would be left with the other 3 or 4. I would be given a list of duties (usually dinner, clean the rooms, vacuum, dishes, and a certain amount of work from the younger kids).

If I didn’t get everything done I was chastised or disciplined.

Technically the younger kids needed to help since they made all the messes, but when I wasnt allowed/supposed to be disciplining them, I was given a toothless command. I felt like for every room I cleaned, they made a mess of two more. They told on me for spanking them or yelling at them, but at the same time I was under a huge amount of pressure.

I resented them and they resented me.

However, I definitely favored my babies. I called them both “my” babies and they sometimes called themselves that. I would try to protect them from some of the mental and spiritual abuse going on, but I felt helpless myself. I tried to take all of their anger and frustrations myself so that they would not have to deal with the repercussions of having the parents see.

Even so, my baby #8 developed severe anger issues.

By age 5 he was having insane tantrums where he would scream at the top of his lungs and writhe about wildly, hitting things and lashing out.

Once my dad tried to spank it out of him.

Only once that I remember. And that night I wanted to die. My little “shun-shine” #7 developed severe self-acceptance issues, always afraid that she was fat and/or ugly. It was a downward spiral.

I left home at age 20 against the wishes of my parents.

I have not seen the kids again, except for the two older boys who are on good terms with me and call me semi-regularly. I see pictures every now and then and I can’t imagine how their lives are now. They are so much bigger. I get to hear them over the phone every now and then. Baby #8 keeps asking me to come home again to visit him for his birthday. I tell him that I want to desperately, but that situations that he cannot understand keep us apart.

I only hope that someday they can forgive me for abandoning them.

I did it to save myself, and in doing so I left them exposed to every horror my parents might bring down upon them. I wish there had been another way.

When people ask me these days if I want to/plan on having kids I usually say: “Once I get over losing the babies I already had.” Most people look at me strangely, but it is the truth. I cannot be a good mother because I am too afraid of losing my kids once they turn 8 or 10. Until I can clear my conscience with how I treated them, I fear I will not be a fit mother to any biological children I might have.

*****

To be continued.