The so-called "quiverfull" movement potentially subjects women to spending their entire adult lives pregnant, wearing out their bodies, and dying young.
This practice treats married women as less than human, vessels and caregivers for male children and not much else.
However, these married women, if they are in the second generation of such families, have been raised to feel that they are less than human, that their bodies deserve little respect, that their lives are meant for drudgery.
It is just common sense that the movement will exploit young girls as well as their mothers. This is a practice that has been happening for centuries.
By the time married women are pregnant with their seventh or eighth child, they can usually begin to count on one of their older daughters to start taking care of the housekeeping and child care. And by older, I mean 6, 7, or 8 years old.
This practice was a known phenomenon in the late nineteenth century. These young women were called "Little Mothers." Jacob Riis wrote about them in "Children of the Poor" (1892, p. 172) and prosperous older women actually formed philanthropic societies to relieve these burdens on the youngsters.
“The ‘Little Mothers’ Aid Society follows the same plan in reaching out for the little home worker whose work never ends, the girl upon whom falls the burden and responsibility of caring for the perennial baby when scarcely more than a baby herself, often even the cooking and all the rest of the housework....These little slaves the Society drums up, ‘hires’ the baby attended in a nursery if need be, and carries the little mother off for a day in the woods up at Pelham Bay Park where the Park Commissioners have set a house on the beach apart for their use in the summer months.”
Riis calls these girls "slaves" and he's not much off the mark.
Within the quiverfull movement, I am sure that this practice continues today.
So, with such lack of regard for the humanity of women, both adult and child, why would we be surprised when a family espousing these beliefs forgives its sons and denigrates or minimizes the abuse heaped upon the female members of the family?
For an interesting insight into the "Quiverfull" movement from a woman and an ex-member, see this blog:
http://www.patheos.com/...