What is quiverfull

This is considered by Quiverfull adherents to be a central part of their Christian calling in submission to the lordship of Christ. A healthy young Quiverfull couple might thereby have a baby every two years, meaning that as many as 10 children or more might be born during a couple's fertile years.

In reality, however, most Quiverfull families do not become that large because general health problems or infertility may intervene, or the couple may have married later in life, or the decision to stop using birth control may have come later in the marriage.

Quiverfull adherents advocate for child spacing through breastfeeding , so return of fertility after childbirth could be delayed by lactational amenorrhea , though the method is not certain.

Quiverfull authors advocate for Biblical Patriarchy and for adherents to protect their children from culture, which it deems adversarial to Christianity. Quverfull mothers are inclined to be homemakers who homeschool their children under the authority of their husband.

However, these are more correlates to Quiverfull practices than integral parts of them. Both Roman Catholic and Quiverfull theology interpret Genesis creation and post-Noahic flood passages to "be fruitful and multiply" see Genesis ; as commandments rather than only actions that result in blessings.

They both consider childbearing both a duty and blessing of marriage, and extoll the blessedness and beneficial results of having children.

However, Roman Catholic theology emphasizes the relationship between sexual intercourse and fertility, rather than children per se , as part of the natural law of God, and considers artificial interference with fertility such as barriers or hormones to be a grave sin. While frivolous or materialistic reasons for avoiding children are seen as immoral, the Roman Catholic Church does permit natural family planning NFP for grave reasons although the translation of the word grave is sometimes debated.

In contrast, the Quiverfull position emphasizes the continual role of Providence in controlling whether or not a woman conceives due to God "opening and closing the womb", and considers childbearing an aspect of marriage which should normally not be avoided. The movement views all contraceptive methods as alike in simply furthering such avoidance.

The principle is that one should not try to avoid conception in the first place, so the qualities of one contraceptive method versus another are irrelevant, except as regards potentially abortive birth control methods such as IUDs and oral contraceptives. Confusion arises when Roman Catholics adopt the Quiverfull label without understanding the distinctions. Christianity Knowledge Base Explore.

Top Content. Augustine of Hippo A. It's really hard for me to sit through them after so many years of just not watching much or any film-based media. I'm still learning how to discover new music on my own — it took me years to find new artists I liked after decades of only contemporary Christian music. Oh, and club dancing. I can't take it seriously. I can do it, but I just end up feeling snarky and laughing until I'm weak. And I'm still pretty slow on the uptake with pop-culture based humor.

What's your relationship with your family now? Would you still consider yourself religious or spiritual? My mom and siblings and I are still really close. I've navigated some boundaries for relating healthily — we know we disagree on some things and just don't talk about it. My siblings who are closer to my age are pretty well ideologically aligned with me these days, and we're really tight.

I'm not religious and I'm definitely spiritual but agnostic. I practice mediation and yoga and read tarot, but hold all of that super loosely. I'll probably never be a true believer in any ideology ever again.

What were your reading habits as a child? Were there books you wanted to read but couldn't? As you left your childhood religion behind, were there books that were especially meaningful to you?

I have always been a voracious reader and at some point, my mom just couldn't possibly keep up with what I was reading, not with the chaos of big family life. So I read everything I could get my hands on — finished Tolkien's books at age 9 or 10, read my mom's nursing textbooks at 12 or 13, read East of Eden at 15, and Crime and Punishment and Dante's [ Divina ] Commedia at I wasn't allowed to read some kids' classics early on, when my mom was still screening books for me — I missed out on most of Roald Dahl and Judy Blume, and I didn't get to read Harriet the Spy because she was disrespectful or some such thing.

Once I started to explore feminism, I discovered a language to describe my experiences in Christian patriarchy and books like bell hooks's All About Love: New Visions , and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale profoundly affected me I even have a Handmaid's Tale -inspired tattoo. When we first met, what did you think of my idea of writing a YA novel set in the Quiverfull movement?

I was worried, on behalf of my fellow ex-QF "survivors," about voyeurism and getting the story right. In a world where stay-at-home American moms watch 19 Kids and Counting for laughs, it's sometimes hard to talk to anyone about my story. My father, Chris Jeub, controlled both my education and my occupation.

A Gen X middle-class man, he first carved a place in my small world by controlling the uterus of my mother, Wendy, who gave birth to me and my 15 siblings. Alicia, who is nine years older than me, committed the unforgivable sin of wanting to date boys. Alissa, who is six years my senior, converted to Islam when she was in her 20s, making her dead to our family.

In the eyes of our tight-knit Christian community, a rebellious child is a great shame and failure on the part of the parent. For us kids, this meant we had to give unconditional love to our parents without questioning their beliefs or authority. For our parents, it meant that God wanted them to have more children.

My parents believed that God created the universe in six days about 6, years ago, and they refused to have my mother give birth in a hospital or to vaccinate me or my siblings. Jeub, age 5, holding baby No. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Jeub. Once born, children were welcomed as blessings but brought up, above all, to be useful and to honor every whim of their parents. I was put to work early and quickly learned to do everything from bathing five children at a time to waking up in the night to tend to fussy toddlers while I prayed for the strength to handle my Sisyphean workload.

My parents convinced me that my work was a duty to God, so it was impossible to view it for what it was: exploitation. At home, it meant breaks from work were a reward for good behavior. What happened? After being home-schooled all my life, I started attending local college classes at age The term "quiverfull" has its roots in Psalm , which states: "Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Unlike Roman Catholics and others who believe that refraining from sexual activity during a woman's fertile periods is an acceptable way of managing family size, quiverfull families reject any effort to control childbearing.

Some may even take the extreme position that it is wrong to avoid conception in cases where a woman has medical problems that could be aggravated by pregnancy.