There is one thing for sure about Quiverfull. It’s a theology that can strip personal boundaries off those that follow it. Whenever you have a high demand organization that thinks it has every right to control your reproductive choices, or just the minutia of daily life you have lurking boundaries issues.

This is particularly true for women in Quiverfull. Sprinkle in some family dysfunction, lack of learned boundaries from childhood, and a desire to ‘fix’ your husband into a better man that is pervasive in QF and it erodes what few boundaries you might have up.

It does not help that the “Good Patriarchs” own personal boundaries are so twisted. Just look at Michael Pearl of No Greater Joy. He does not recognize any personal boundaries for his kids. Michael has stated many times now that he does not allow locked bedroom doors, or even closed ones. Michael has said it keeps people ‘pure’, keeps them from touching themselves and sinning.

You have to have some seriously messed levels of enmeshment to worry that one of your kids is busy masturbating to the point where you remove all their boundaries for them.

Which leads us to today’s weird boundary issues in Quiverfull. The Facebook group Pickles and Hairspray posted a very disturbing series of photos that they claim came from inside the Duggar family home. I don’t know if that’s true, considering that this is coming out of the Pickles and Hairspray page, but it raises some interesting issues if it is true.

Screen caps from the Pickle’s page:

While I’m glad that the Duggars seem to have some rules in place governing bathroom behaviors. But let’s be real here, it’s not because Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar believe in personal space boundaries. This is more likely another attempt to show the world that they are trying to keep the girls ‘pure’ and unmolested by the boys. That they are safe.

This is one hardest things to recover from when you leave Quiverfull, developing good personal space boundaries. It’s another hard change that sometimes takes help from mental health advocates to overcome. In particular when this is all you’ve been raised with, this notion of smiling submission to everyone else – Jesus, Others, Self.

When you’re taught that the needs and wants of others always take precedence over your own needs it creates a compliant victim pool.

I admit, I am curious as to why the Duggars would have a framed photo of mom and dad macking on each other in the kids bathroom. Makes me hope that someone is trolling Pickles and Hairspray and that this photo is made up.

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