The United States birth rate is rising and Evangelical families in the Quiverfull movement (named after a verse of Psalm 127) are playing their part in the trend -- to the alarm of the greens, no doubt. A few weeks after the New York Times looked at the subject of large families, National Public Radio has run a feature on the movement, which comprises about 10,000 families, mainly in the Midwest and South of the United States.
NPR interviewed some families in Michigan. Kelly Swanson and husband Jeff say they didn't want any children when they first married, but then began to notice that the Bible gave special value to big families. Now they have seven children and would like more. They are leaving it up to God to decide how many they can handle. The average family at their church has 8.5 kids, which compares with a national total fertility rate of 2.2 children per woman. (In 1976, 20 per cent of American women had five or more children, but by 2006 that figure had fallen to 4 per cent.) - https://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/4846
It’s 2019 and all too easy to dismiss or even mock women in bonnets and men with colonial wardrobes. And don’t get me wrong the “Quiverfull” movement is replete with problems and corruptions.
But perhaps the joke is on us, in mainstream society. That perhaps: Amish types really do, not only have bigger families — but better and more happening sex lives.
That perhaps: one of the main reasons why mainstream America is at its most emotionally unhealthy it’s ever been (as opioid addiction and other evidences point to) has to do with failure to pursue, achieve, and experience genuine, INTIMACY on GOD’S terms. Not just between opposite sexes within marriage, but intimacy and connection in general.
Too many things contracepting and getting in the way. And when you literally INVITE such instruments of blockage into what is supposed to be the most intimate and ‘sexy’ relationship of all...how much more will all other relational interactions suffer?