Courtship, 18 kids, and other thoughts

I just read this post at Donna's blog about the Duggar family, and instead of leaving a huge comment, I thought I'd write my own post in response.

First of all, I've never actually seen the show about the Duggars (the homeschooling family with 18 kids) because we don't have cable, so I can't comment on that specifically.

When Rachael was a baby, I met a local women named Lisa who spoke a lot at homeschooling conferencing and ran a local homeschooling group. Believe it or not, I hosted a couple of her talks in my home, and enjoyed doing so. They were not about homeschooling. One was about hospitality, and one was about parenting in general.

Lisa was very strident and bold, even in one-on-one conversations, and made it clear that any form of family planning, natural or otherwise was a sin. She also said that if you were not homeschooling, you were not in God's will. I never agreed with either point.

Why, then, did I host this woman's talks? There was something charismatic and inspiring about her. And they made me think.

At the time, her oldest daughter, Doris (who I had also met a few times) was about twenty-two and pregnant with her third child.

Doris had apparently decided as a teenager, together with her parents, that she would not date, but would rather "be courted."

I'm not sure how this works or how Doris met her husband, but I do know that Doris and her parents actually interviewed her future husband together to decide if he could court Doris. I have no idea how well they knew him, or what they knew about him, when this interview took place.

Two of the interview questions were "Do you want your children to be homeschooled?" and "Do you want God to bless you with as many children as He's willing to?" (ie no birth control -- none, not calendar planning or semi-abstience, nothing).

Doris (who was about 17 at the time) said to her parents before he arrived at the interview, "If he says 'No' to either of those two questions, then we have nothing else to talk about."

I have no idea where any of these people are now. I will say that Doris struck me as very calm and mature, especially for someone who was pregnant and had two children under the age of four.

I have sometimes wondered if Doris (and others like her) would find themselves at 30 or 40 saying, "Gee, I went straight from being a teenager to having several children. I never had the chance to date, to go to college, to pick or pursue a vocation or profession or any kind, to decide anything about my future. I thought I wanted to get married at 18 to someone I never even dated, and have unlimited children with him, but I was pushed into that from every angle and was too young to really make that decision."

But maybe not.

One more story:

Around the same time I happened to read some article in some homeschool magazine by a girl who was about 18 or 19. She was saying that now that she "graduated homeschool," she was an apprentice to her mother, helping with the housework and with homeschooling her younger siblings, until she got married. No college, no job, no living somewhere else ... just hang around the house helping Mom indefinitely until someone comes along and marries her. She was under her father's authority, she said, until she got married.

Weird.

One quote stuck with me, and I hope I'm not mis-quoting her, as it was years ago:

"If I went to college, I might begin to think independently. That would be a bad thing, because I want to be a submissive wife someday."

Weird!