FINNS: An Oral History- Keeping Services - Pattie (Barney) Hoard
New Ipswich Historical Society
FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region
Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.
Pattie (Barney) Hoard
Participation in sports was discouraged because it was considered part of the ‘world’: “You don’t want to associate with them.”
And I guess there were people who would look at school sports and say, “There’s going to be nothing but negative coming from it.” Then there are people who will say, “It’s a sin.” Those who didn’t play sports in school played them with friends after school—Saturday-afternoon-kinds-of-things —and felt that was going to be enough.
Then there were people like my husband who, the minute he was 18, joined every softball league he could, played basketball six nights a week, and hockey at 12 o’clock at night because that was when they could get rink time. Their inability to participate in organized sports programs was based on peer pressure which, of course, doesn’t end when you turn 16 or 18 or 25.
It would be remiss of me not to say that, when you talk about women who are part of this church, especially between the ages of 20 to about 50, other changes are happening. Recently a couple of younger women decided to start a ladies’ Bible study. Ten years ago when I did this, I was rebuked. The elderly women really gave me a hard time: “That’s no place for you to be.” Two women in their late 20s put together a program and said, “Hey, would you like to be a part of this?” At the first session, 25 to 30 women attended. The second session, they ended out with more than 40.
And this is where I’ve seen really comprehensive changes. First of all, women are no longer just saying, “Okay, whatever’s coming from the pulpit is gospel.” Instead, they are opening the Bible to read for themselves, sometimes for the first time in their lives. Our particular Bible study group meets Wednesday nights. They asked me to lead and I’m not even a regular in the church. But the fact that they still come and that they accept me—as an educated woman who cuts her hair, wears makeup, only had four kids, and hasn’t produced a baby in five years—is very interesting.
Some of them are extremely conservative and it’s very powerful to see them taking the work upon themselves: studying, reading. There’s going to be great growth that will come from it. So the fact that their husbands allow them to participate is quite significant. The hunger, the need, the desire has been there for years.
There will always be women who have 14 kids who will be upset because others don’t. A couple of weeks ago someone said from the pulpit, “This church has grown and continues to exist because of the children you put in the benches. And if you stop having babies, it may terminate the existence of this church in America.” And so there was incredible pressure, not related to scripture in any way, on women to continue having babies. Some people will find scriptural reasons for having large families. I’ve heard a few rumblings about the aforementioned sermon; however, people mostly accept large families as the norm. I don’t think some of the older women would tell younger ones “Don’t have 10 kids.” But they might say, “Don’t have 10 kids because you’re under the pressure of somebody saying you need to have them. Have 10 because you want them.” And there are still women who have this many babies and more because they want to.
But a lot of women don’t want to be having babies alongside their daughters because these women are ready to be grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Think about it. A lot of women are grandmothers by the time they’re in their late 30s, early 40s. I have friends who married in their teens whose daughters did the same thing. And it really pained them to see this happening because they admit that having babies that young is difficult.
There will always be people who say, “I can tell who’s saved and who’s not when I look in the back of church and see who’s got their hair up and a bench full of kids.” Do people still chastise women for cutting their hair? Absolutely. People will say that Finns that were born and raised here didn’t have hang-ups with things like hair or women teaching the little kids in Sunday school or putting on Christmas programs. They say Finns who came from other areas started laying out rules. And there are other issues that in past were not addressed.
I have a wonderful friend who grew up in an extremely conservative town in Northern Michigan. She started her undergraduate work at about age 42 and will graduate this year. She’s hoping to go to a Bible-based college to complete her masters in family counseling.
She has been rebuked by some older church members who say, “We knew your dad and he would be so disgusted,” but she’s seen what counseling has done and believes this is what God has planned for her. There isn’t a lot of divorce and remarriage, but there’s discord and people are more accepting today of counseling from outside the church.
I’ve had a lot of interesting—sometimes what I would classify as very conservative—people say, “Boy, does this church need an educated person to do counseling.” People are beginning to recognize that some of these marriages need help.