The Quiverfull movement

I thought this subject would be interesting to any atheist women who are not yet aware of it.

The Quiverfull movement is based on having large families, as many as would naturally occur without birth control, in order to show submission to God's will, and to spread the religion.

Some relevant links:

Quiverfull on wikipedia

No Longer Quivering - blog run by former Quiverfull adherents

Razing Ruth - blog of a woman who ran away from a Quiverfull family as a teenager

I discovered this movement through reading about it on the forums at mothering.com (which has an interesting mix of left wing and right wing, and also lots of fundamentalist religious people). Interestingly enough, some of the women there find out about the Quiverful movement, and want to convince their reluctant husbands to convert to the movement. It is not always forced on helpless women by their husbands or fathers, it has some aspects that are appealing to some modern women.

I think it is interesting because this movement is essentially subsidised by modern technological society, which allows families to provide for 10+ children often through internet based businesses (i.e. selling quiverful based home schooling materials to other quiverful members). Also modern health care allows such large families to exist, and the women to survive repeated childbearing.

I found it interesting that some women in the movement will often describe "competetive piety", in which their family will start at one church, gradually become more modest and fundamentalist than anyone else, and then eventually move to another stricter church, and then finally end up with the father of the family leading his family in prayer at home, because the churches were too corrupt and godless.