A Well Trained Wife by Tia Levings

A Well Trained Wife is a memoir about Leving's experience in the Quiverfull movement, a high control, Christian faith based "birth cult". Basically, God has dominion over the father, and the father has total dominion over his wife and kids. The goal is to outbirth the non-Christians. It's called Quiverfull because children are seen as arrows in your quiver, and if you're going into war, you want your quiver full. They are often referred to as "fundies" (short for Fundamental Christians). Not all fundies are Quiverfull, but all Quiverfull are fundies.

I've always been kind of fascinated with the fundie lifestyle because on one hand, their ideology are offensive, but on the other hand, there is something kind of attractive about that frugal, off the grid, homesteading life. I've spent enough time on the snark boards and blogs to know that life was hell for these women, but reading a first hand account of the domestic abuse, the religious trauma, and watching a vibrant young woman quickly fade away, was heartbreaking.

There were two things that really stuck with me because it's relevant to what's going on in my country (US) right now. The first is the importance of easy access to information, education, art, and the humanities- anything that encourages thinking, anything that makes us feel human, anything that validates who we are as individuals. While Levings deeply loves being a mother, being reduced to nothing but a mother was causing her to disassociate from life. One of the big catalysts for her escape was when she rediscovered her creative side and started to feel like a human again. The second is the importance in building a community. Her fundie church worked hard to keep people isolated. They discouraged women socializing with other women and encouraged her husband to move to the boonies to discourage his family from being too integrated into their local community. Her escape, both from her repressive ideology and her abusive marriage, would not have been possible without the community of women she found online.

This book left me feeling torn. On one hand, it's hopeful and inspiring. On the other hand, her story is basically The Handmaid's Tale with a healthy dose of 1984 mixed in, only it's real, it's happening right now in the US, and it's already started to spread beyond the fundie world.