How awful am I for cringing inside as I watch this family? How awful am I for secretly agreeing with my husband that they appear cult like and to laugh when my husband says, "great another soldier for Christ" when we hear they are expecting their 18th child. They are even having a contest to pick a name for the 18th baby. Are they out of ideas for names that begin with "J" after 18 kids? Darn they already used Jinger.
Am I wrong to think of the horrible impact those 90,000+ diapers are having on our environment?
We were watching Chelsea Lately last night and she mentioned them during the round table portion of the program. She brought up an interesting fact, statistically one or more of these children will be gay. Will they still be accepted by the Duggars? Would they accept it if one of their children had a child out of wedlock? married a person of another race? left their religion? got into trouble with the law? Statistically some of this is likely to happen.
They have already beaten the odds having 17 seemingly healthy children with no obvious health issues or deficits. Maybe they do have someone looking out for them upstairs. I am an only child (so is my husband) so maybe this explains why we think this is so strange. I can't imagine having 18 children. I can't imagine being one of 18 children. I can't imagine the responsibility and the lack of solitude either situation would entail. I had a friend that grew up in Japan and she told me that you were never really alone. That must be what living in the Duggar family must be like only without the electronic entertainment. (They have no televisions, heck they have no time for it).
They home school. (it's a religiously based program) I had a cousin that was home schooled from the 2nd grade and was raised in a similar religious environment and when she couldn't pass the GED, as all home schooled children must do if they want a recognized degree and to be able to continue on to any type of college (they say they are planning on some of their children doing so, that is good at least), she ended up marrying the first guy that she dated and staying home raising her 2 biological, 1 adopted, and various foster children with no career or friends. She lives in the same small town that I couldn't wait to escape from after spending my high school years there. Only it is worse now as 90% of the business have closed since the new highway bypasses the town completely. Forgive me for saying the following but, her life sounds like hell to me. I am sure it is just fine for her and for many of you out there, it probably doesn't sound too bad but my spirit would be dying daily in that kind of near existence. Same with The duggars. I would have a nervous breakdown if I was the mother. I would have snuck out and got birth control, my tubes tied or at least put a lock on the bedroom door and invested in a nice sleeper sofa for my husband.
I am not saying that all home schooling is bad or that all home schooled children have social development delays but imagine going out into the world after living in an environment like that? What is going to happen when some of these kids go away to college? Assuming they do get to "go away" to a college that isn't religiously based and isn't near their parents. What would you have to talk about at the office water cooler, assuming you had the skills (computer, social, busisness) to get an office job in the first place, assuming your religious beliefs permitted you to get an office job. I get the distinct impression that their religious beliefs encourage the females to stay home pregnant don't you? Seeing the mothers and the daughters attire also makes me shudder. I saw so many of the girls from the types of religions that encourage (notice I didn't imply that they require them to do this, wink wink, nudge nudge) the girls to dress this way, made fun of as a teen, sneak out and drink and have sex to prove they were "normal".
My mother had a sleep over for me when I was 16 and when she called to invite one of my friends who was a member of one of these religions, the mother replied that she didn't know if her daughter could attend as I was a little, "wild". So my mother took great pleasure in calling that same mother a few weeks later when her daughter left her bike at our house and left in a car with a grown man while I was at drama practice.
How are these children learning the social skills necessary for normal day to day life in the outside world? I know my cousin never did. They never say whether these children are getting any computer experience/ training. Do they have friends that aren't in their religion? are culturally diverse? are a little wild?
The older children all have a littler child that they help take care of as well as jurisdictions/chores (Lucky 17 year old Jill gets to make everyone lunch and 18 year old Jana gets to make everyone dinner )and they have to schedule one on one time with mom. I think that is so sad. I can't imagine being so very busy that I have to make an appointment with my child. They also teach Jesus first, others second and yourself last?!? There is a reason they tell you to put oxygen on yourself first before placing it on a child or other needy individual. If you are too stressed, neglected, or overrun from putting yourself last all of the time, how are you possibly going to be any good to anyone else? Sounds like these children are going to be prime pickings for some unscrupulous people and romantic partners. I can easily see how that kind of thinking (let me clarify this isn't a criticism of the Jesus first part of the teaching) can end one of these children in an abusive relationship.
I am honestly very surprised that the older children aren't married yet and starting their own tribe (especially the older girls). I bet this is what the older Duggar son is going to announce during their next television special, what do you want to make a bet? Do they even get to watch their own specials?
I also have to wonder how they make enough money to support these children. I know every thing changed for them when they attended the "financial freedom" seminar (religiously based by the way) but lets get real. I found on their website an old interview with parents magazine (back when they had a small family of only 14 children) where they say they spend $1500.00 a month on food. What type of food can you get for 16 people for $1500.00? Well, if you read their recipes and watch their specials, it isn't the healthiest or the freshest and you had better love cream of Mushroom soup! They state in the same interview that the fresh fruit they do buy is usually gone in 2 or 3 days! I am sure they are making a tidy sum from these specials and they both have real estate licences according to their website, but again, lets get real. Having A child is expensive. I am sure their 18 children don't have as many toys and games as my single child does, it's probably considered sinful. They really don't have much scheduled "free" time according to their website so having very many toys and games would be wasteful. Now I am not anti religion but I am anti misogynistic anything and this really borders on misogynist to me. The girls parading along with their uncut hair, long dresses does remind me of having to wear the burqas in the middle east. You may think that is quite a stretch but is it really? Their dress ostracizes them just the same.
Praise the lord and visit their website here!one of their recipes, (weight loss surgery friendly it is not!)
TATER TOT CASSEROLE
2 lb ground turkey cooked, seasoned, drained
3 2lb bags tater tots
2 cans cream of mushroom
2 cans evaporated milk
2 cans cream of chicken
Brown meat & place in large cass. dish.
Cover with tater tots. Mix soup & milk together.
Pour over top. Bake at 350 for 1 Hour.
(One of Daddy’s Favorites!) Makes 2- 9”X13” pans
God Does Not Want 16 Kids
Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?
Is it wrong to notice how all the Duggar kids' names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I'm not judging.
I have a friend who used to co-babysit (yes, it required two sitters) for a family of 10 kids, and she reports that they were, almost without fail, manic and hyper and bewildered and attention deprived in the worst way, half of them addicted to prescription meds to calm their neglected nerves and the other half bound for years of therapy due to complete loss of having the slightest clue as to who they actually were, lost in the family crowd, just another blank, needy face at the table. Is this the guaranteed affliction for every child of very large families? Of course not. But I'm guessing it's more common than you imagine.
What's more, after the 10th kid popped out, the family doctor essentially prohibited the baby-addicted mother from having any more offspring, considering the pummeling endured by her various matronly systems, and it's actually painful to imagine the logistics, the toll on Michelle Duggar's body, the ravages it has endured to give birth to roughly one child per year for nearly two decades, and you cannot help but wonder about her body and its various biological and sexual ... no, no, it is not for this space to visualize frighteningly capacious vaginal dimensions. It is not for this space to imagine this couple's soggy sexual mutations. We do not have enough wine on hand for that.
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin' tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?
Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?
You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God's little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty's own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: "We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them." This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.
Let us be clear: I don't care what sort of God you believe in, it's a safe bet that hysterical breeding does not top her list of desirables. God does not want more children per acre than there are ants or mice or garter snakes or repressed pedophilic priests. We already have three billion humans on the planet who subsist on less than two dollars a day. Every other child in the world (one billion of them) lives in abject poverty. We are burning through the planet's resources faster than a Republican can eat an endangered caribou stew. Note to Michelle Duggar: If God wanted you to have a massive pile of children, she'd have given your uterus a hydraulic pump and a revolving door. Stop it now.
Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want with their families if they can afford it and if it's within the law and so long as they aren't gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn't they? Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as "co-parent"), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.
No, no one says that. That would be mean.
Discovery healths Duggar specials
see them on msnbc!
see them on CNN!
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