Summary
Basically the cult the Duggars belong to is colloquially called the “quiver full movement” or just “quiverfulls”. This name comes from this bible passage:
Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
They will not be ashamed
When they speak with their enemies in the gate.
So, basically they think the final battle for good (read: their specific values) is coming and that their children are their arrows, which will they will send into the world to defeat satan. Yes, really. As such, the goal is to have as many children as possible. They eschew even natural family planning and common sense things about, like, not getting pregnant instantly after having a baby. Because of this you get massive families, like 10+ kids is pretty common. Of course there’s lots of other traditional nonsense about women having long hair and wearing skirts only and modesty and courtship and all the other typical fundamentalist of basically any religion stuff.
Quiverfull is not what most people think of as a cult because it’s de-centralized, so there’s no compound or big mega church. Instead, families join (often following the attendance of a convention, which I’ll talk about in a minute) and each family becomes its own tiny cult with the father as the cult leader. Think of it like a franchise. So each family that’s part of this cult franchise tends to utilize the same types of resources and applies similar standards to their families. Most of these families homeschool, for example, and they use the same homeschool curricula. They usually do not believe in attending a brick and mortar church and opt for “home church”, which they say is due to convenience but is mostly because even the most conservative anti-gay conservative Christians would like, still absolutely not approve of half the shit these people do. They operate on a high control model and do not allow either sex to go to higher education.
So how do all these people end up living such a weirdly similar lifestyle? The main woman who founded this, lol jk of course it was a dude, haha, was named Bill Gothard. He founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles, or IBLP. This org hosts lots of conventions and retreats and nonsense which is many families’ first foray into bananas fundamentalism. All the usual creepy shit occurs at these. Young girls are sent on retreats alone, as it’s an honor to be with Bill, etc. etc. etc. He is also the reason for the insane hair styles as he was super into big ass hair and so made all the women in the cult have Michelle Duggar style 80s hair. If you look up older photos of the Duggar family all the girls used to have it. Maybe he also owns stock in a hair spray company, IDK, but it would explain a lot (humor is how I cope).
The other main organization involved in all this shit is called the Advanced Training Institute International or ATI. What ATI brings to the table is homeschooling curricula which is specifically approved of by this particular brand of crazy religious nonsense. So it’s not just Christian education like you might find at, say, the mormon run college BYU. It’s wayyy past that. The earth is 5,000 years old type stuff, and half of it is straight up religious teachings. Most ATI families live in states where there is NO state standard for homeschooling. ATI is also made (I believe intentionally) so that it’s very easy to cheat, which means kids can spend as minimal time as possible studying. This leaves more time for girl children to do childrearing and house work, which they start as soon as they can walk. And this brings us to Michael andDebbie Pearl, who wrote the book “To Train Up A Child.” The title comes from this bible quote:
Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Now what most Christians understand this to mean is know your child. Instill in them both positive characteristics that represent your religion AND ALSO help them to achieve things in accordance with their talents and according to their unique personality. The Pearls and Quiverfull people take this to mean beat the living hell out of your kids until you have broken their spirit. This is not an exaggeration. The book details how to break a child’s spirit. They advocate for corporal punishment starting at about 3 MONTHS old. The first step is called blanket training. A baby is placed on a blanket. You use either a glue stick or something similarly hard yet flexible and hit the baby whenever they move off the blanket. In time the baby will stay on the blanket. This is the least intense of the punishments. Several child deaths have been associated with parents following this book. There is also an old video floating around the internet of Michael and Debbie giving a talk in some auditorium to a room of parents. They demonstrate abuse on a plush doll and it is pretty sickening. Again, the reiterating breaking their will or spirit. The goal of all this is to create children who are so obedient that you do not even have to give them orders with words, just a glance. Michelle Duggar is very good friends with Debbie Pearl.
Women are underneath their husbands, which means similar things are done to wives, as well as far worse things. Submitting at all times (and in all ways) is 100% essential. This is where you get the idea of a helpmeet, which is also outlined in the bible. There are a ton of references to this, which you can peruse here. Most translations don’t use the term helpmeet anymore but the meaning remains. Girls of all ages are helpmeets in training, so their #1 goal is doing house work 24/7, which is kind of essential if you have like 15 kids. Girls who grow up in this cult report almost no education but often say they felt like mothers to their siblings. This also makes it very hard for them to leave, as often the siblings are more bonded to the sister-helpers than the mother, who is basically constantly pregnant. You can read stories of ex-members here and I believe a few have written books as well. :
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/what-is-quiverfull/
Vision Forum – Homeschoolers Anonymous
There is one other homeschool organization you will see referenced called Vision Forum, which is now defunct but was basically also part of this mess and run by a guy named Doug Phillips who was buddies with Bill Gothard.
If you want to deep dive further I recommend this forum:
https://www.freejinger.org
This video is also excellent. This young woman talks a lot about being a sister-mother to her siblings, which means she also used the Pearl method on her siblings, which of course she feels horrific guilt for. But she was literally also a child and had that done to her :
Growing Up Quiverfull - The Duggar's Destructive Cult - YouTube
Also AMA! I have been following this stuff for years. My family homeschooled for a while and I met some of these folks, and I was also raised crazy pants religious though not this hardcore brand of fundie. Mine was more “mom has untreated mental illness and unaddressed trauma and uses religion to cope/control everyone around her” but we went to normal school for most of the time (all the time for me, most for my brother), and always a mainstream church. It’s how I got interested in cults though, because the brainwashing was 100% real for me as well. I literally thought she had powers and…a lot of other messed up crazy stuff. So I empathize a lot with ex-cult people and have always wanted to understand the dynamic that happens, particularly with brainwashing and high control. I have a lot of theories about brainwashing, haha. Shocker!
