Daughters, part 2

An evaluation of the Stay-At-Home Daughters movement

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

It took me about a week, maybe two, before I dug the Botkin sisters’ book out again (“the book” being So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God, discussed in last week’s post “Daughters, part 1”) and moved it to my desk in preparation for this post. Rereading the same early sections of the book again, I realized that I was reacting differently. I had weathered the shame storm triggered by that first rereading, and had emerged onto an emotional high ground from which I could see the unfairness of the expectations that I had placed on my dad. I knew he really loved me, but the demands of his job had meant that he was mostly absent for the first six years of my life. Quitting that job and moving to Ohio, where he was from, coincided with his father’s diagnoses of terminal lung cancer. He brought us back home to meet his dad and get to know the network of close-knit Catholic extended family that had raised him. I can only imagine how emotionally chaotic that must have been. It was just a little more than a year after moving that we became involved in an Ohio homeschool community, which was as Christian and patriarchal as our California homeschool community had been…not. My mom and dad quickly became close with a group of parents who were all looking for “something better than how they were raised” for their kids. At the time, this idea of Biblical Patriarchy looked like something better. It certainly looked different, that’s for sure. Our parents wanted to protect us from the things that hurt them, and patriarchy is, at it’s core, all about protection. It was a decision made in love and desperation, and my heart went out to my parents, and every parent in our group, who tried so hard to give their kids a less hurtful entry into adulthood than they had had.

Of course, the thing about protection is that it can look an awful lot like control. The fact that my parents were only trying to do what they thought was best for me doesn’t change the fact that I was hurt by it, and so were a lot of us. And our church group wasn’t alone in seeking after so-called “Biblical Patriarchy” (it isn’t actually all that Biblical) as the something better that would transform our families into healthy, happy, stable and dynamic units and ensure that none of us girls ever got pregnant outside of marriage. A quick internet search brought me to the website Rethinking Vision Forum which linked me to a number of articles criticizing Doug Phillips, Vision Forum Ministries, the Botkins, and the Biblical Patriarchy movement in general. Some of the articles were written by ex-Stay-At-Home Daughters (SAHD, like me, who had lived the lifestyle and understood the pitfalls of the cultural expectations. Most of them brought a refreshingly clear and logical evaluation of the SAHD movement and why it was so damaging to so many of us who were raised that way. There is healing in knowing that I’m not alone, and I’m not crazy.

Rethinking Vision Forum, a website created by a group of former Vision Forum employees and church members (and some people not directly affiliated with Vision Forum but who knew enough to be concerned about the teachings of Doug Phillips and the ministry’s other leaders), raise two points about those teachings that I think are really important. First, they believe that the Vision Forum brand of patriarchy “elevates the family to the position of an idol” by ignoring the fact that Jesus was all about developing relationships with individuals and repeatedly in the Gospels asked his followers to forsake all else, including family, in order to follow him. Secondly, and even more dangerous in my opinion, Vision Forum “lays out a one size fits all ‘formula’ for the perfect godly family,” which “leads to frustration for those who don’t fit the mold and can have the effect of stifling and smothering all those involved.” Jesus preached freedom, and the early church was all about freeing the individual from prescribed religious dogma so that each person could grow closer to God through a personal relationship. It was anti-formulaic, and any teachings that attempt to reimpose a formula for “right” religion fly in the face of Jesus and everything that he taught, because “formulas distract from trusting God and distract from diversity and individuality¹.” Wow, when did that start going so badly askew?

Part of that “formula” for becoming good Christian women, of course, involved staying home and waiting for a husband—that prize of all prizes you weren’t allowed to win—to find you. Blogger Darcy of Darcy’s Heart Stirrings speaks to the perils of waiting patiently at home for life to happen, as so many of us SAHD were apt to do after high school. In response to a post about waiting constructively for marriage written by the Botkin girls, Darcy first quotes from Anna Sofia and Elizabeth’s blog:

“Our brothers and their friends have told us that they’re not looking for mere live-in maids and nannies; they want wives who would be capable of coming alongside them in the rigors of their lives; being engaging, iron-sharpening companions; and assisting them in business, ministry, adventure, risk, conquest, and uncertainty. The young men we know are asking, ‘Where are those girls?’”

Before replying:

Where are THOSE girls?? Those are the girls who these people label as feminists because they dare to believe that God has gifted and called them too, not just the men, and they are the ones living out those callings. They are the girls who aren’t staying home practicing to be Daddy’s helpmeet and learning for years on end how to cook and clean and tend babies. They are the girls who are living for Christ, some inside and some outside their parent’s homes, who have been sent into the world to fulfill their callings as daughters of God. They are the ones who have been ignored, looked down on, and labeled rebellious feminists and “harlots” for leaving their father’s “protection” and learning how to live life and walk with Jesus. This is amazing. These people preach for years what a “Godly young woman” should do and be and now the guys want something else!!! And they blame the poor girls?!?!

I know too many girls, including myself, who can relate to this. By the time I was twenty, and with no prospects of “the One” noticing me, I made the decision to stop waiting and wondering and threw myself into school and even dared to imagine what a career outside of the home might look like. I spent that year beginning the process of figuring myself out and building my own relationship with God, and it was the single best year of my life up until then. It isn’t our fault that the “something better” we were offered turned out to just be a different kind of hurtful than our parents had been given. As Darcy points out:

…as a result of a pendulum swing against the culture, our parents were a little too over-zealous about promoting ideas such as courtship, betrothal, and “emotional purity”, to the point that girls are afraid of speaking to guys and guys are scared to death of even looking at a girl. We bought hook, line, and sinker that if we “gave away pieces of our hearts” that we would have nothing left to give The One someday. And, thanks to a certain author that wears a fedora and will remain nameless, we had nightmares of all our “crushes” standing at our marriage alter claiming us for their own. Is it any wonder that we can’t have normal, healthy relationships with each other??²