Record: Melissa Sherfinski and Melissa Chesanko, “Disturbing the Data: Looking into Gender and Family Size Matters with US Evangelical Homeschoolers” in Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 7, no. 14 (2014): 1-18. [Abstract Here]
Summary: Sherfinski is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction/Literacy Studies at West Virginia University. Chesanko is a doctoral student in the same department. In this qualitative study, the authors examine gender matters in Evangelical homeschooling families of various sizes.
Little research has been done on gender relations in the homes of evangelical Christian homeschoolers, a very powerful group of homeschoolers in the US. Previous research has suggested a trend of strong patriarchal and heteronormative structures and/or the overvaluation of genetic offspring and siblings in Evangelical homeschooling families with more than three children. Building off this, Sherfinski and Chesanko desire to investigate how the size of the family affects gender issues in the family.
They begin their discussion by explaining the Quiverfull movement in the context of a well-known example, the Duggar family. Essentially, in the Quiverfull movement, women eschew birth control in order to produce many gospel-spreading children. You can read more about Quiverfull in this three-part review of Kathryn Joyce’s informative book on the topic. Sherfinski and Chesanko claim that this movement could be seen as a backlash against the feminist movement, reproductive rights, gay marriage, and early-education reform. It disperses ideas and challenges cultural norms by promoting conservative orientations toward gender roles and sexuality.
Women in these circles carry intense burdens. They are said to have full responsibility for the health of a fetus, even when much is beyond their control. They are also primarily responsible for their children’s outcomes. Beyond academics, they teach their children about the Evangelical norms of Biblical submission, where the husband is the head of the household and his wishes supersede those of his wife. Evangelical homeschooling mothers have been said to “take on political leadership and curriculum roles from the space of the home, dispersing ideologies associated with movement leaders from their home bases while actively engaging in family life and the world that affects it” (p. 4). Homeschooling makes it easier to teach these values without interference.
For the study, Sherfinski and Chesanko interviewed 18 participants from 12 families and observed homeschooling practices in one community. The data collection was done in two phases. Phase one involved a year-long case study of Evangelical homeschooling mothers’ experiences and practices in one Midwestern US community. In-depth interviews and a year’s worth of observations were conducted in a variety of settings (homes, churches, etc). However, through doing this, the authors grew interested in large families. This led to phase two, which expanded the original data-set to include additional in-depth interviews of large families (defined as four or more children). Phase two also integrated more voices of fathers and youth, as well as greater variation within the Evangelical community and a greater geographic diversity. The first families were found through discussions with friends and acquaintances of Sherfinski, and their sample was expanded through those families reporting other families that they knew, a method commonly known as snowball sampling.
All the families were white, middle-class, and had homeschooled for at least 6 years. Most reported that they homeschooled primarily for religious or moral reasons, but 3 families said they homeschooled mostly because of academics. The interviews with the families lasted from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Most of the interviews were in-person. Some of the questions in phase one asked for information about gender roles, space, place, and educational practices. Phase two questions focused directly on family size in homeschooling.
Next the authors discuss their results. They begin with some general findings on gender and family size. Most of the families supported the idea that God is in control of reproduction, but some individuals expressed hesitations. Several thought that some large families were being irresponsible if they could not support all their children, and others said that girls might have diminished opportunities.
Sherfinski and Chesanko provide several anecdotes from their data. First is the story of Janie Barrett, mother of 11, and her 13-year-old daughter Rhianna. Since Janie is busy teaching her younger children, Rhianna learns on the family’s only computer. She does not thrive, and Janie is only able to make minor adjustments to try and help.
Next is Sonja and her only son, 16-year-old Jeff. This is an example of a small Evangelical homeschooling family that the authors use to contrast with the bigger families. Sonja was put in charge of Jeff’s education by her husband. Smaller families may have it easier than larger ones, but there is still a large amount of pressure on the wife to create a faithful Evangelical.
Finally the authors discuss an atypical family where the husband is doing the homeschooling while his wife pursues her doctoral studies. This had some impact on their children, as their eldest son said imagined himself as the one to stay home and educate the children in the future.
Sherfinski and Chesanko conclude that Evangelical homeschoolers are much more diverse than the picture presented by the Duggars on television. Homeschooling can be a tremendous challenge for Evangelical mothers. They must juggle the needs of their children with the desires of their husband and their calling from God to raise good Evangelicals. They are faced with a large amount of pressure, and contrary to the image of the supermom who seems to do it all, they all have weaknesses. Many use technology with older children to ease the burden on themselves, but the technology does not alleviate the challenges that the mothers face. Nevertheless, despite the challenges, daughters are not miseducated in large families. Furthermore, several families give some indication of flexible gender roles, though almost all of the families are silent about the idea of multiple sexual orientations.
Appraisal: Sherfinski and Chesanko present their findings in a very balanced manner. While they admit that they are “liberal feminists and public school advocates,” they are extremely careful to look at the issue from different viewpoints (p. 9). It can be weird sometimes when they use the family’s staircase or dining room as metaphors to analyze the family’s situation, but these unique methods of analysis arose from a desire to present their findings in an unbiased manner.
Like Sherfinski’s last article, the writing and research quality are very strong; however, I believe that they should have done more to bring out the 500 pages of field notes and memos that they say they have. Their discussion was mostly limited to a few families rather than trying to draw out broad trends from all their research. If they have data on 12 families, they should give us some sort of quantitative breakdown of how many families ascribe to Quiverfull ideology, how many are more moderate, and so on. Though their sample is in no way representative of any broader population, it would still be nice to have a big-picture analysis that provides some generalizations, for then other researchers could test these generalizations on other samples to see if Sherfinski and Chesanko’s findings apply more broadly or if their subjects are outliers.
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