Mary Pride

Mary Pride (born 1955) is an American author and magazine producer on homeschooling and Christian topics. She is best known for her homeschooling works, but has also written on women’s roles, computer technology in education, parental rights, and new age thought from a conservative evangelical perspective. For her role in authoring guides for the homeschooling movement, Pride has been described as "the queen of the home school movement" and as a "homeschooling guru".[1][2][3] Stemming from her first book, The Way Home, she is also considered an activist in the Christian Quiverfull movement.[4][5][6][7][8][9]

Early life

Pride was born in New York City, New York, in 1955. She graduated from high school at age 15, after which she entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1974, and a master's degree in computer systems engineering a year later. She married her husband Bill around this time and both soon converted to Evangelical Christianity. Pride had formerly considered herself a feminist activist.[10]

Before the first of Pride’s nine children were born, she had decided to homeschool them.[10] The lack of homeschooling guides she encountered prompted her to begin writing her own.[11]

Influence

According to Kathryn Joyce, Pride's 1985 book The Way Home "did much to recreate the homeschooling movement along patriarchal and militantly fertile lines."[12]

Books and views

On women's roles and contraception

In Pride's first book, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, she chronicled her journey away from what she argued were feminist and anti-natal ideas of happiness, within which she had lived as an activist before her conversion to conservative evangelical Christianity in 1977. She described her discovery of happiness surrounding what she felt was the Biblically mandated role of wives and mothers as bearers of children and workers in the home under the authority of a husband. Pride argued that such a lifestyle was Biblically required of married Christian women but that most had been unknowingly duped by feminism. She meanwhile countered in the book various versions of Christian feminism.[10]

As the basis for her arguments, Pride selected numerous Bible verses from which to lay out what she felt was the Biblical role of women. These included verses she saw as containing her ideas of the importance of childbearing and forswearing any form of birth control. Pride argued that the mindset that led to use of family planning was a root cause for inadequate influence in the world by the Christian religion.[10]

She explained that she believed Christian couples should not attempt to limit the number of children they have or to space them out in any way, writing that God would then take over the family planning:

There is an alternative to scheming and plotting how many babies to have and when to have them. It can be summed up in three little words: trust and obey. If God is willing to plan my family for me (and we Christians all do believe that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives), then why should I muddle up his plan with my ideas? Only God knows the future. Only he knows how much money we will have next year, or when I will reach menopause, or when his Kingdom will desperately need the unique talents of my yet-to-be-conceived son or daughter. Why not leave the driving up to him?[13]

Pride's rejection of every method of family planning in The Way Home was soon noticed by prominent members of the Couple to Couple League, a Catholic natural family planning (NFP) movement. John and Sheila Kippley in their The Art of Natural Family Planning describes how representatives of the organization contacted Pride to express concerns over her position. In 1989, Pride in her HELP for Growing Families periodical published portions of the correspondence between the Kippleys' and herself, during which Pride accepted NFP use only for couples who wished to remain healthy until they were ready to use no fertility control at all.[14] Sheila Kippley credits the correspondence as the reason why Pride accepted NFP in such circumstances in her sequel, All the Way Home.[15]

On child abuse and children's rights

In chapter 7 (called "Who Owns Our Kids?") of The Way Home, Pride wrote that there is never biblical justification for removing a child from the home, even in cases of abuse. She claimed that the true goal of the children's rights movement was actually to undermine parental rights, not to protect children, and she used the example of Sweden to suggest that outlawing spanking might result in high rates of suicide among young people. She also claimed that "[a]ny attempt to control a child at all, from spanking to sending him to Christian school to sending him to his room, is grounds for the state screaming 'Abuse!' and stepping in to take him away. In places where the children's rights people are active, parents have been convicted for ridiculous things like forbidding their children to attend movies." Sources were not provided for any of these claims.[16]

Criticism
"The major problem is that the public has been convinced that child abuse is a major problem."

Mary Pride, The Child Abuse Industry (1986)

She has been accused by R.L. Stollar (an advocate for children and abuse survivors) and other bloggers of minimizing child abuse statistics.[17][18]

Mitchell Stevens, a Hamilton College sociologist, has criticized Pride for exhibiting feminist values in her lifestyle much more than in what she espouses.[19] Similarly, Frank Schaeffer, who was the agent for Pride's book The Way Home, wrote in 2015 that "[t]he irony was that Pride preached a dogmatic, stay-at-home, follow-your-man philosophy for other women while turning her lucrative home-schooling empire into a one-woman industry."[20]

Publications

Books
  • The Way Home (Crossway Books, 1985)
  • The Big Book of Home Learning (Crossway Books, 1986)
  • The Next Book of Home Learning (Crossway Books, 1987)
  • The New Big Book of Home Learning (Crossway Books, 1988)
  • All the Way Home (Crossway Books, 1989)
  • The Child Abuse Industry (Crossway Books, 1986)
  • Schoolproof (Crossway Books, 1988); (Blackstone Audio Books, 2002)
  • Unholy Sacrifices of the New Age and Ancient Empires of the New Age (Crossway Books, 1988, 1989 both with Paul deParrie)
  • The “Old Wise Tales” series (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1990): Too Many Chickens, The Greenie, The Better Butter Battle, Baby Doe
  • The Big Book of Home Learning 4 volumes: Getting Started, Preschool & Elementary, Teen & Adult, Afterschooling (Crossway Books, 1991)
  • Pride’s Guide to Educational Software with husband Bill Pride (Crossway, 1997)
  • The Big Book of Home Learning 3 volumes: Getting Started, Preschool & Elementary, Junior High Through College (Alpha Omega Publications, 1999)
  • Mary Pride’s Complete Guide to Getting Started in Homeschooling (Harvest House, 2004)

Periodicals
  • HELP For Growing Families
  • Practical Homeschooling
  • Big Happy Family
  • Homeschool PC
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See also

References
  1. Joe Woodard (9/09/96). "Number one doesn't try harder: Calgary's public board complains that 'the others' are cherry-picking their students". Newsmagazine, Alberta Report. 23 (39). Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-01-07. Check date values in: |year= (help)
  2. Joe Woodward (Mar 31, 2001). "The godliness of fertility: A growing Protestant movement is rediscovering the sanctification available in large families". Calgary Herald: OS.10. ProQuest 244455568.
  3. Angie Kiesling (2004-08-16). "Why Johnny Learns at Home". Publishers Weekly. 251 (33): 25–26. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-01-07.
  4. DeMoss, Nancy Leigh (2002). Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers. ISBN 0-8024-7296-6.
  5. James B. Jordan (1993). "The Bible and Family Planning" (PDF). Contra Mundum (Fall 1993, no. 9): 2–14. ISSN 1070-9495. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-02-04.
  6. Myers, Jeffery J. (1990). Does the Bible Forbid Family Planning?. Niceville: Biblical Horizons. pp. 1–31.
  7. Joyce, Kathryn (9 Nov 2006). "Arrows for the War". The Nation. Retrieved 2006-12-20.
  8. Eileen Finan (13 Nov 2006). "Making Babies the Quiverfull Way". Newsweek Magazine. Archived from the original on 2007-01-03. Retrieved 2006-12-21.
  9. Kathryn Joyce. "Quiverfull: More Children For God's Army". RH Reality Check. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07. Retrieved 2007-01-09.
  10. Pride, Mary (1985). The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality. Good News Pub. ISBN 0-89107-345-0.
  11. Pride, Mary (2006). Mary Pride's Big Book of Home Learning. Master Books. ISBN 0-89051-459-3.
  12. Joyce, Kathryn (2009). Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-8070-9622-2.
  13. Pride, Mary (2010) [1985]. The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality (25th Anniversary ed.). Fenton, Missouri: Home Life Books. pp. 77–78. ISBN 9781453699300.
  14. "Is Natural Family Planning Natural?". HELP for Growing Families (4). 1989. Archived from the original on 2006-12-14. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
  15. Kippley, John; Sheila Kippley (1996). The Art of Natural Family Planning (4th ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: The Couple to Couple League. p. 285. ISBN 0-926412-13-2.
  16. Pride, Mary (2010) [1985]. The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality (25th Anniversary ed.). Fenton, Missouri: Home Life Books. pp. 86–87. ISBN 9781453699300.
  17. Stollar, R.L. (June 5, 2018). "Thread by @RLStollar: "So I'm gonna review Mary Pride's "The Child Abuse Industry." I just got my MHS in Child Protection and, y'all, this book is a mess. It is fu […]" #ChristianAltFacts". threadreaderapp.com. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  18. "Christian Homeschooling and Child Abuse Denialism". Love, Joy, Feminism. Patheos. 2014-06-02. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  19. Christine Scheller (2002-09-09). "The Little School in the Living Room Grows Up". Christianity Today. 46 (10).
  20. "The right's home-school conspiracy: How I helped GOP launch a religious war". Salon. 2015-01-20. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
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