“My mother always told me that people who chose not to have children were selfish,” says Abbi Nye, a Quiverfull daughter who grew up at CFC. “And of course being selfish is sinful.”
cfctoo.com/blog/the-quiverfull-families-next-door-part-2
Quiverfull communities romanticize large families and pressure women to have many children. In many Quiverfull communities, this instruction is explicit: women are to place their reproductive functions in God’s hands, thus allowing God to “open and close the womb” as he sees fit.
Quiverfull parents sometimes say that “it takes three [man, woman, and God]” to conceive a child, positioning conception as a divinely sanctioned meńage à trois. This reproductive philosophy is also referred to as pronatalism.
The pronatalist goal is not simply to birth many children but to ultimately produce model Christian children who will go out into the world and shape it to be more like them.
The idolization of large families does not merely concern those within Quiverfull communities. Militant fecundity is a hallmark of the Quiverfull movement, but it has become far more common in more mainstream Evangelical Christianity.
Kevin DeYoung writes at @tgc, “Here’s a culture war strategy conservative Christians should get behind: have more children and disciple them like crazy. Strongly consider having more children than you think you can handle.”
thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/its-time-for-a-new-culture-war-strategy
When combined with homeschooling and a strict gender hierarchy, the large, smiling families associated with pronatalism take on a more martial appearance.
As David Bentley Hart phrases it in @firstthingsmag: “Probably the most subversive and effective strategy we might undertake would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing.”
firstthings.com/article/2004/06/freedom-and-decency