Reactions of Parents to New Recruits (QF: The View from Here)

This series of posts results includes excerpts from information shared with a journalist in August of 2015 who had questions about the Quiverfull Movement as it related to the Duggar Family.

Find the Index of all posts HERE.

Find the previous post HERE.

Question:

What changes did you see among the many peers that did join QF? How did their personalities, dress, happiness levels et cetera alter?

Response Part Four:

I would be remiss if I did not note the concerns of parents whose adult children chose QF/P as a method to raise their own budding families. Many parents of the acolytes of the movement have described to me how their once fun loving and happy adult children have become hardened and cold over time. I have heard from many parents who have watched the gradual changes take hold of their loved ones, turning their adult children into militant and recalcitrant strangers. As everything in life becomes spiritualized, their children express disdain for anything that does not involve their life within the QF/P movement — even those things which are common and pleasant for all people. 

The elitism causes them to reject anything secular to the point that they no longer recognize the loving children they once knew. They don’t know how to reach them or how to remind them of how they used to be. These parents can be encouraged to love their children where they are and to prepare to help them when they inevitably come to terms with their disillusionment with the empty promises of QF/P. 

Again, their best power of influence involves creating a safe and nonjudgemental place for their adult children to entertain their natural doubts about the system and to learn how to tolerate the painful rhetoric that deems them to be evil outsiders who just don’t understand.

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~ Cynthia Kunsman

The view of Quiverfull from my vantage

August 2015