I like the attitude behind “Quiverfull” but don’t think it’s Biblical orders. Good as a preference.
Were we all to embrace quiverfull the world would be a way better place in 30 years I’d say wouldn’t you? Overall.
But “stewardship” is also important. It is biblical and it matters. We must be honest about it. We are to provide for our families and if we can’t I’m not sure we should keep turning out kids, for example. Or if you get severe anemia for a year after having one and you already have four. Or etc.
Demographers study the phenomenon that when a given country reached an economic plateau unique to it, the birthrate quickly drops to just maintenance level of around 2.3 children per family.
Most recently this is happening in several Arab nations as well as Mexico.
However, while government cannot typically *raise* the national birthrate, government and the prevailing culture can effectively *lower* it further, so the population will be in decline.
This is the trap of “stewardship” and “provision”, because both of these are government and culturally determined standards. That is what the government and culture *demand* of parents as the quality of life of their children.
Other than the basics, every single addition to the quality of life demands convinces more parents to have fewer or even no children. Often based on crude materialism.
This is the big breakthrough inherent in Quiverfull, and other organizations with similar goals that might exist in the future: to be able to meet the *needs* of their children, not the *wants* of the government and culture.
But wait, there’s more. When the government and culture insist that higher education is a requirement for children, typically with egregious student loans, this handicaps these children by breaking their timetable after graduation, making it much harder for them to get married and have children themselves.
That is, when people graduated from college after WWII, most of them had no, zero resources. But they had the education to make money, and from that point what they made, less taxes, meant they could get married, mortgage a house, and have children.
Today, graduating with a much less valuable degree, with both men and women deeply in debt, they have to *delay* marriage, children, and home ownership. And these delays can be fatal, “starting out” decades later, if at all.
The alternative, not a doctrine of Quiverfull, but might be for similar organizations, is to disdain college education entirely, spending those years earning money, so that they can support their spouse and children.
And there’s the bottom line: no matter how you as a person define success in your life; if you do not have descent, you will have failed.
It will not be the meek that inherit the world; but the children of parents that put their children at the head of the list of important things in life.