The Quiverfull Families Next Door: Part 4
"A capable, intelligent and virtuous woman, who is he who can find her? She is far more precious than jewels and her value is far above rubies or pearls."
Proverbs 31:10
The final strand of the Quiverfull ideology is gender hierarchy, typically called patriarchy. CFC enthusiastically promotes patriarchy as a biblical framework for Christian families. This handout from one of Rick Sinclair’s Father’s Day sermons in the early 2000s illustrates CFC’s approach to patriarchy. Note that Rick’s evidence for patriarchy is that the word patriarch exists in his translation of the Bible.
Because Quiverfull communities like CFC preach patriarchy as the only biblical framework, individuals who challenge the gender hierarchy must be labeled rebellious and sinful.
While husbands and fathers are charged with leading their households, the actual labor of raising a family and running a household falls on female caretakers. Much of this labor is performed by wives and mothers. As soon as they are old enough, daughters are recruited to help with domestic labor, both out of necessity and to "train" them for their future roles. Quiverfull communities teach that women are meant to serve the kingdom of God by being stay-at-home mothers who serve their husbands.
This excerpt from the Mom and Us blog written by Darlene Sinclair highlights the imbalance in Quiverfull marriages.
While learning your partner’s preferences and listening well are essential qualities for a healthy relationship, nowhere in Darlene’s writings is it implied that this is a mutual arrangement. Women are expected to carry the immense burden of anticipating and accommodating their husband’s and children’s needs at all times in the home. This is not optional, as though it is something a wife can freely offer out of her own personhood, but Darlene’s instruction requires a wife to eliminate her own needs, desires, opinions, tasks, and even personhood in order to replace them with her husband’s.
Furthermore, Darlene’s post demonstrates how Quiverfull marriages can easily become physically abusive. Darlene tells women to “never hold back” with sex. Numerous stories from women who have come out of CFC confirm that Rick and Darlene encourage what is essentially marital rape.
In Quiverfull communities like CFC, and even in many more mainstream evangelical churches’ teaching on marriage, a wife is never allowed to say no if her husband wants sex.
In Keeley’s story, a pastor’s wife encourages her to submit to her husband sexually even though Keeley has disclosed that he has abused her and raped her:
“I remember her asking me if I was giving him enough attention in the bedroom.
‘You know, if they are not satisfied there that frustration can spill into other areas of life.’
I explained how he had held me down and raped me on multiple occasions causing bleeding and bruising, and that I had decided that past summer that I was not going to even sleep in the same room as him until he proved he could control himself.
I explained how I felt I was following [1 Cor. 7:1-5] and trying to find the sacredness of sex with my husband again while also ensuring my safety.”
Darlene’s suggestions also encourage emotionally abusive relationships. CFC wives are not only supposed to manage their husbands’ clothing and meals, but Darlene also says: “screen phone calls when he is in prayer or study. Train your children to respect his need for privacy and time with the Lord. Keep non-family members from interrupting unnecessarily during special times set aside for the children or you.” The wife is supposed to perform all of this unending labor with a “pleasant countenance” because the husband “needs to know you are happy to belong to him.”
One Sinclair daughter shares her thoughts on the role of women in the gender hierarchy in a Mom and Us blogpost from 2008:
“Behind every feministic view lies a deception that has settled into the core of a person and manifested itself as something our current worldview thinks attractive and even worse, correct. Often it is insecurity, self-protection, rebellion, or anger. Whatever the first whispers of lies or un-dealt with sin, the result has been years of our culture embracing something that is opposite to what God has intended.”
This Sinclair daughter goes on to describe her own experience with being raised in a home with a strict gender hierarchy.
The intersection of gender hierarchy, large families, and the isolation that can come with homeschooling provides a hospitable environment for abuse to thrive. Quiverfull daughters are groomed to be accommodating and submissive to men from birth. They are also not taught agency or empowered to succeed outside the home, so it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that they would “fall in love” with the protection of a patriarchal authority.
Within the privacy of an individual family, there is no check to a father’s power or authority. In fact, Quiverfull churches assert a father’s uncontested dominion as part of God’s created order. This provides fertile ground for all kinds of abuse, including the following which have all been found in Quiverfull circles: husbands “disciplining” their wives through spanking or fathers spanking young adults; fathers who expect special attention from young adult daughters; father-arranged marriages when girls are still very young; the entire household expected to obey the patriarch’s whims, however abusive, illegal, or wrong.
Gender hierarchy is always dangerous for women and children when adult men abuse their power, but a largely overlooked and sadly common phenomenon in Quiverfull families is inter-sibling abuse.
Children in any family naturally assert hierarchies and power dynamics:
“Well I’m the oldest so I’m in charge!”
“I’m the tallest so I should be the leader in the game!”
“I’m the fastest so I should run to the corner store for mom!”
When Quiverfull families grow so big that they must rely on the eldest siblings to “stand-in” as parents, siblings are often given absolute authority of their own, sometimes being instructed to spank younger children or enforce household rules in lieu of the parents. When patriarchy joins the already existing family hierarchy dynamics, it fosters abusive attitudes in young men.
Quiverfull ideology encourages the belief that men inherently have the authority to dominate women and children, and young women pay a hefty price for it. This paves the way for abusive men to wreak havoc on their families and can train boys and young men to act in abusive ways even before they leave home. Because the typical homeschooling curriculum contains little to no sexual education, this can also lead to incestuous sexual abuse.
An example of this pattern is the highly publicized story of the Duggar family. Josh Duggar, the oldest of 19 children, was caught molesting several of his younger sisters (as young as 5 years old) and a family friend at the age of 14-15. Josh Duggar’s behavior was handled “in-house” by Josh’s parents, their insular church community, and a police officer family friend (who was later convicted of CSA charges of his own). Years later, public disclosure of Josh’s abuse eventually led to the cancellation of the reality show 19 Kids and Counting, which was centered around this Quiverfull family, though his sisters never received justice due to the statute of limitations.
Note how the family dynamics and Quiverfull culture shaped this failed abuse response: The Duggar parents did not report Josh’s criminal activity. Instead, they took what actions they deemed best: Josh was made to apologize to his victims, and they were in turn made to forgive him, despite several of them being far too young to understand the gravity of what had happened to them.
CFC handled Sean Ferguson’s case in a similar fashion. Sean was allowed to remain at home under the supervision of his wife and the abuse was handled “in the family.”
The Duggar’s broader community was unaware of Josh’s abusive behavior until he molested a young woman who was not a member of the family. Michelle Wilbur observed a similar dynamic at CFC: “Rick Sinclair’s insistence on handling abuse inside the family allowed the perpetrator to move on to one of my children. God wants sin dealt with in the right way, not hidden from the authorities.”
Men in the church encouraged the Duggars to enroll Josh in a physical labor rehabilitation “program” run by a family friend affiliated with Bill Gothard’s homeschooling seminars. When Josh returned home from this three-month program he was taken to meet with another family friend who also happened to be a state trooper. The state trooper learned of Josh’s abuse, talked with him about it, and took no legal action.
Individuals who fail to report abuse often do so because they themselves are abusers. It is unsurprising that the state trooper, who took no action to report Josh’s crimes despite being a mandated reporter in the state of Arkansas, was later convicted on charges of Pandering or Possessing Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) in 2012. Josh, who by this time had 7 of his own children, was convicted of possession of CSAM in 2021 and is now serving time. A special agent assigned to Josh Duggar’s case stated that the CSAM was "in the top five of the worst of the worst that I've ever had to examine."
When the original story of Josh’s molestation of his sisters broke in 2015, his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Jim Bob stated that “it was a very difficult situation. But we talked to other parents and different ones since then, a lot of families have said that they have had similar things that happened in their families.” It is unknown how many children raised in Quiverfull families experience inter-sibling abuse, but Jim Bob’s comment is revealing. In his own experience, Josh’s actions were normative.
Inter-sibling abuse can also go unnoticed because Quiverfull parents in large families are physically unable to pay attention to all of their children at once. One individual who grew up in a Quiverfull family reflects:
“I grew up in a large homeschooling Christian family. I was deputized from a very young age to care for my younger siblings in very much parental ways. I was heavily involved in cooking, cleaning, teaching, supervising, and caretaking for my younger siblings when I was still very much a child myself. Quiverfull families DEPEND on the parentification of the older children, especially the older female children, to function. My mother, even though she was a stay-at-home mom, simply could not have managed a brood of 6-12 young children all on her own. We had to parent each other.”
For many Quiverfull children, delegated authority is a task they shoulder with as much kindness as they can manage. Unfortunately, parents who shift responsibility to the older siblings can fail to notice the warning signs when older brothers take advantage of their gendered authority to sexually abuse their sisters.
The isolation inherent in homeschooling prevents others from noticing the warning signs either; too often daughters are trapped in environments where their abuse is normalized or swept under the rug.
It is a heartbreakingly common phenomenon for young women to watch as their parents and spiritual leaders cover up the abuse they’ve suffered to protect the reputation of the family and their abusers rather than protecting the victims.
Taken individually, the components of Quiverfull ideology do not have to be abusive. Together, they form a deadly environment ripe for abuse. Quiverfull families can be good neighbors. They might send their kids to shovel neighboring sidewalks during the winter or drop off homemade applesauce. But it is imperative to understand the ideology that sits behind Quiverfull communities like Christian Fellowship Center.
If you have left a Quiverfull community like CFC, CFCtoo is here for you. If you live in the North Country and want to understand CFC’s place in your community, we’re here for you too. Abuse wears many masks, but it is never acceptable.
