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Notes -
I mean, to be clear, quiverfullism was very much a fad in fundamentalist Protestantism and isn’t necessarily a better representation than the Amish. Most Protestants who agree with the core theological points don’t identify as quiverfull- iirc the duggars fall into the category of being quiverfull in belief and practice but strongly disidentifying with the movement.
I suspect that you’d need need to compare proxies and/or better organized representative groups to get data on the fundamentalist Christian lifestyle. Last time I saw any data on religious stay at home moms with 5+ children they were extremely happy and reported a high percent of their children in the same denomination. Selection effects galore, obviously, but the same can be said for self-described quiverfulls.
Sure, I suppose I was mostly responding to the first two items on the list being "patriarchy, gender norms." I grew up in a conservative homeschooling community, and the families that were more serious about patriarchy and gender norms (also very heavy on "cheerful obedience") than about the other items experienced some poor results. The families that were more serious about the exposure to nature part through small agricultural operations run by the mother and children generally seemed happier.
I can believe that- I live in a conservative homeschooling community- although I’m curious what you mean by ‘other items’.
So I guess looking at Coffee Enjoyer's list:
media restrictions -- common and generally seems like a good idea. Even secular academics like Jonathan Haidt are now advocating for this. I'm unsure how much I want to apply it personally, though -- so far very little.
simplicity -- I'm not sure that I've seen this seriously attempted, or what exactly it means in most contexts. For instance, look at a grown up homeschooler Paula at the Cottage Fairy Youtube channel. In general, I like her, and she likes to talk a lot about simplifying her life and home, and about "simple living," but actually, she's always buying craft kits off of Etsy, filming complex shots from multiple angles, moving her artwork around, and dusting the bundles of dried herbs artfully decorating her wall space. I sort of get what she means (contrasted with a complex social and work life in a city, more or less), but also somewhat don't (contrasted with playing DnD with friends once a week in the city? Going to bars? I'm not actually completely sure) People in Bronte novels sometimes advocated for it seriously, and they seemed to mean only owning three dresses, all of them grey, keeping one's hair in the same basic bun every day, without curls or lace, and only leaving the house to go to church. This has been found undesirable and left untried in my circles.
social competition predicated on virtue -- I'm not very clear on this one, either. It seems to depend somewhat on the virtues that are most focused on. The people I most genuinely respect seem to be the "beauty will save the world" sorts. The ones who were eventually disgraced, their daughters prostitutes, their wives divorced, focused very hard on controlling other people in their household, to get them to act virtuous for social credit. Mostly, the men seemed fine and stable, but often boring and bored. There were a few years where several of them got really into Wild At Heart, with not only book studies and conferences, but also a salmon fishing trip and beating on drums in the forest. Our church bought the pastor a claymore sword. The men occasionally got a beer together, despite mostly not drinking. It seemed interesting sociologically, related to contemporary alienation. Several of these men worked a engineers at a missile company, and came home every night to their two to six basically fine children and an expectation to "give everything to God," but it's still important to provide for the children, so nothing too wild is on the table, really.
emphasis on tradition -- I suppose that the people I grew up with were mostly in the American Evangelical tradition, where it is traditional to talk a lot about the unimportance of following traditions of man, and then there are traditions like giving testimonies and going on mission trips. I did traditional to my family things like reading George MacDonald and complaining about Calvinism. Then I was Orthodox, so of course there are general traditions, much talk about Tradition vs traditions, and some people went around checking out the different cultural traditions and cobbling things together. This is all a worthy project, but fairly complex in America, in a way I don't think Coffee Enjoyer is representing realistically.
I mean, given what you’ve listed, emphasis on patriarchy and gender norms sounds like the norm and more emphasis sounds like an obsession that probably betrays mental illness or an unstable personality.
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