“I have too Many Children:” Leaving the Quiverfull Movement

There’s still a couple of days left before I’m completely done with this semester, but I wanted to share one of the websites that I have been using to procrastinate: Nolongerquivering.com

This website shares some of the experiences of women who have sought to leave the Quiverfull movement, which forbades the use of birth control, encourages women to stay at home, and requires women to wear conservative clothing.  The most restrictive groups won’t let women wear anything but skirts and dresses, and many of the groups encourage homeschooling.

The movement that they are talking about is profiled on the TLC Show 16 kids and Counting (Is it now 17 kids?)  and has received a lot of press in recent years.  One of the posts that I read today is called “The Beautiful Girlhood Doll.” It chronicles the story of a young girl who desperate to find a future for herself that includes something beyond motherhood and submission to her husband.  She writes about how she longed for her father to give a boy permission to court her and cherished her purity ring.  She also talks about how she was never  able to fell pure – in spite of the fact that she had never kissed a boy, never held his hand, and knew few boys her own age.

The stories on the site are beautiful and haunting.  When I was first discovered it, I spent two hours on the site.  I had never been raised in a house that conservative, but something about it resonated with me.  Check it out.

*Note: The quote in the title is also from this website.  I can’t remember which entry I found it in, but I liked it too much not to use it.  The quote if I remember correctly is from someone who had 10 or 12 children, if not more, and found herself wishing that she had fewer so that she could devote time to each one.  She stressed that she loved them all, loved them so much in fact that she regretted her decision to have so many that she couldn’t adequately provide for them.

Random Procrastination Post

Something seen: Sacred Heart of Mary.

Something read: “Hills Like White Elephants”–my favorite Hemingway story.

Some things heard: Sad, sweet folkies. Kim Taylor, “Fruit of My Labor”; Nanci Griffith, “Once in a Very Blue Moon”; Eva Cassidy, “Songbird”; Adrianne, “10,000 Stones.”

Women of Faith in the Latter Days

So, the lovely Brittany Chapman reminded me today of the tremendous ongoing work she and Richard Turley are doing in editing Women of Faith in the Latter Days. The seven volumes are organized chronologically, and the first volume, women born before or in 1820, will come out sometime this year.

But, this post is to urge you women’s historians out there to submit something for the second volume, which includes women born between 1821 and 1845. The beautiful thing is that the editors provide a list of women to consider researching. So, in case your list of early nineteenth-century Mormon women is scarce, like mine, you have a readymade guide (along with relevant collections and scholarly materials).

The proposal deadline is June 1, 2011 (Brittany says the final product expected will be 10 pages; about 4,000 words). Here you can find how to submit. I am so excited for the first volume to come out! And please submit, you scholars, you.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

I found General Conference, on the whole, to be wonderful. Many talks addressed the exact problem I found with the Young Women meeting. The message? Life is hard and the atonement helps us deal, helps us grow, helps us endure, helps us repair parts of ourselves we didn’t even know were broken. I appreciated Elder Kent F. Richards‘ acknowledgement of suffering as an inherent part of the human condition and not something for which we are necessarily culpable.

Happily Ever After is the Name of a Kid’s Movie, Not a Description of Reality

I must admit I’m a bit ashamed that as someone who studies Mormonism I had no idea that the Young Women’s Conference was coming up or even that such a conference existed.  After reading Liz’s post and the explosive feedback that resulted, I was reminded of my favorite poem by Adrienne Rich called “Living in Sin.”

She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf amoong the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own–
envoy from some village in the moldings…
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

Although the poem is about someone living in sin, it reflects my general feelings about marriage.  As a kid, I never thought about the day-to-day aspects of marriage — washing the dishes, cleaning the toilet, mopping the floor, all the things I hate to do and yet have to get done.   Yet, these aspects make up a significant part of my day.  The poem also captures the general ennui that sometimes catches people by surprise when they have been married for awhile.  Marriage isn’t a happily ever after.  Even after they get married, people fight.  They get annoyed and sometimes even bored with another.

The message that marriage is like a fairy tale as suggested by the promo video for the Young Women’s General Conference seems innocuous, but I am not sure that it is.  One of the things that sometimes strikes me in discussions with my friends is how much we expect out of relationships with men.  We expect to find someone that completes us, that continually makes us happy, that shoulders our burdens.  It is ridiculous to expect another person to fulfill us.  No one person can do it.  Although my husband listens to my complaints and tries to help lift my burdens when he can, I don’t expect him to fulfill all of my needs.  I need other people to connect with and talk to.  Whenever I hear that marriage is a fairy tale and that girls should aspire to it, I shudder.  It’s as though Betty Friedan never wrote the Feminine Mystique.

Sometimes I think that the nineteenth century Mormon women that I write about were closer to the truth than those men and women that I hear about today.  In the Woman’s Exponent, Mormon women argued that monogamy was a problem because it expected women to find happiness just in their husbands.  They saw love as a potential part of the oppression of women because it tied women to men who were unworthy of them.  They argued that women should have careers outside of marriage and encouraged women like Romania B. Pratt to attend medical school, even if it meant leaving her family behind for years to do so.  It seems difficult to find such rhetoric within the Mormon Church or even Christianity as a whole today.

Part of the reason I am so invested in this is because of my little sister.  Although I am not Mormon, she is and she attends the Young Women’s group in her ward.  I don’t want her to hear such messages.  Laura, if you ever read this, know this:

1.  You may never get married.  That’s okay and is preferable to getting married to a jerk or someone who’s not worthy of you.

2.  Even if you do, marriage will never be all that fulfills you.  You need some other purpose.

3.  Happily Ever After is a myth.

To view the video, visit this link: http://ldsmediatalk.com/2011/03/25/2011-lds-general-young-women-meeting/