The Duggar family

[tirtlegrrl]

Hey guys,

Has anyone here seen more than one episode of the TLC/Discovery show "18 kids and counting"? After losing one pregnancy to miscarriage and blaming it on birth control pills, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar decided to "Let God be in charge of the order and timing" of their children and now have 18 of them, all homeschooled.

Back in my own conservative super-Christian homeschool days, I would have near-idolized this family. They're all so smiling and happy (on camera, at least), and they all LOOOOOVE Jesus. And the girls all have long hair and long skirts. And the boys all look like the pictures I've seen of my dad as a kid in the 1950's: slicked-down hair, parted on the side, button-down nicely tucked into khaki pants. The only character flaw I've noticed in the kids is a general condescension toward people who don't believe as they do (big surprise!). Like people who dance (the Duggars are some version of Baptist and their oldest son didn't even have dancing at his wedding), or people who hold any respect for the biological Theory of Evolution.

If you haven't seen the tv show, do a few engine searches.

What do you think? Is this a good way to raise kids? Will the Duggar 18 turn out to be missionaries or atheists? Will they be naive and arrogant adults? Are they a threat to the future of science research (as far as I can tell, not one of them has ever conducted a lab experiment)? Or would more families like this make the world a better place, with less violence, petty meanness and general selfishness?

[NH Baritone]

What do you think? Is this a good way to raise kids? Will the Duggar 18 turn out to be missionaries or atheists? Will they be naive and arrogant adults? Are they a threat to the future of science research (as far as I can tell, not one of them has ever conducted a lab experiment)? Or would more families like this make the world a better place, with less violence, petty meanness and general selfishness?

Instead of "It takes a village," this family twists the proverb into "We are a village!" And just like any village, a collection of folks this large will have a variety of characters.

I haven't seen the show, but here are a couple of observations on families, including the fundamentalist minister's family with 8 home-schooled kids that lives directly across the street from me.

In a child-oriented family like this, I imagine that the children do feel loved, but not particularly special to their parents. There is much greater pressure to comply with the family's social norms, if only to make sure they can get through each day. This is akin to how a military troop may work. Everyone is assigned their task, and the weaker links in the chain are kept in line through social pressure.

When they reach adolescence, though, a litter that large means that some things will fly below the parents' radar. That is the time in which the urge for individuality and separation from the family naturally develops. The particular way that this occurs will vary from child to child (from sneaky to rebellious, from being even MORE hyper-Christian to being a drunkard, etc.). With so many kids, alliances and intra-family feuds will arise, and if the family has difficulty solving particular problems, they may become stuck.

Ultimately, the older ones will have taken on some of the parenting responsibility, which will both help them to feel useful to the family, but for some, can help engender resentment. The younger ones will have no opportunity for this, but will also have fewer ways to surprise their parents and gain individualized attention.

The dad across the street was in the military, and he runs his household in a military fashion. The kids feel loved, but the youngest boy is quite a handful. On him are dumped the family's anxieties, so he gets scapegoated a lot. The others, who can rebel in more subtle ways, get to feel self-righteously different. They encourage the parents to focus on the problems caused by their brother, often because it means that Mom & Dad don't then notice their own "misdeeds."

The older brother & sister are now in college (the boy, not surprisingly, at a military academy), so they are obviously successful academically. But these two also provide difficult models to live up to. Mom seems somewhat tired of teaching her brood, and so one of the sisters is picking up the slack for the younger ones. None have yet become juvenile delinquents, but neither are the a very creative bunch. They never have friends over. They're clearly somewhat anxious about having a gay guy across the street, but they are more than happy to care for my cat (for generous pay) when I go away. (This is, after all, New England, and here both fundamentalists and gay folks are a minority.)

[StillSearching]

The biggest problem I have with the Duggars is not with how they are raising their kids, but with the fact that they have made 18 of them. I personally believe that population overgrowth is one of the major problems that we will soon face, and folks like these aren't helping matters.

As to the question of how they'll turn out, I think NHB hit the nail on the head. The effects of being in this family will manifest in a variety of ways among the children, with some clinging to the ways of the family and others rebelling against them.

Why on earth anyone would want to raise 18 kids is beyond me. I'd be curious to read the mind of the wife and see what she really thinks, deep down, about using God as a birth control device. I wonder if she's sneaking in some method of birth control behind her husband's back in order to reduce the chances that God should "bless" them with number 19.

[dunc289]

firstly, when you have 18 kids, you're not raising them, kids 1 to 9 are raising 10 to 18. it's actually a form of child labour.

secondly, this woman clearly has such low self esteem that she only feels gratification through mothering infants.

not behaviour restricted to the religious, but not laudable either.

[Brad]

+1 absolutely on each reply above.

Did the woman actually give birth to 18 children or are some adopted or something?
And surely some of the births were multiple?

OK, I searched and found the answer to those questions here.
Wowzers!

[Redpower]

Why don't they kill them all? Why don't they have as many abortions as possible? It'd save their souls for sure! We wouldn't want them to go on living and read an argument contrary to their own and become atheists and be cast forever away from God. (Plug Christians must want babies to be killed article by Emery)


Also, wouldn't being on birth control and losing all of those children be a part of God's plan anyway?

Shameful to be a part of this race sometimes.

[StillSearching]

To date they have been featured on five Discovery Health & TLC documentaries entitled, “14 Children and Pregnant Again!”, “16 Children and Moving In!”, “Raising 16 Children!”,“On The Road With 16 Children!” & "Duggar's Big Family Album". They have appeared on numerous National and International TV shows including The Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Fox & Friends, Italian Public Television, KBS (Korean Broadcasting System), Discovery Home & Health (UK & Australia), Jimmy Kimmel Live, Fox News Network, CNN, MSNBC and others. They have done countless interviews with radio talk show hosts around the world including NPR, AP Radio, CBS Radio, FOX Radio and others. They have appeared in various magazine and newspapers including Parents, New York Times, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Ladies Home Journal, People and many others. From the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Australia, France and Germany. They have recently completed work on their first book, The Duggars: 20 and Counting! The Duggar’s desire is to make Christ known and for others to see that the Bible is the owner’s manual for life.

Here is the problem. This family has been turned into a business. This next bit is priceless:

As a family project the Duggars built a 7000 sq. ft. home debt free!

I'll bet they did, after collecting appearance fees for all the circus side-shows listed above. Jon & Kate + 8 and the OctoMom are some other prime examples. Glorifying this kind of mindless, useless reproduction is disgusting. In my world there will be mandatory sterilization and rigorous training and examination to qualify for the reproductive privileges.

[Brad]

I've long thought that if there was a benevolent and loving designer God, He or She or androgynous It would have made the reproduction process a bit more like a puzzle - requiring a little more ingenuity and intelligence to accomplish.

So in a way, we can "blame" natural selection for the Duggar family, which proves that the evolution of our species has a looooong way to go yet.

[tirtlegrrl]

Besides the horrible things mentioned above, they named one of their daughters "Jinger". Looks like it should rhyme with "ringer", but it's pronounced "Ginger". She also wants to be a photographer instead of a nurse/midwife or missionary. 10 to 1 she ends up an atheist. Jim Bob and Michelle deserve it for the name choice alone. Hey, they probably believe in "once saved, always saved", so it shouldn't be TOO much of a bummer for them.

[Carico]

Hey guys,

Has anyone here seen more than one episode of the TLC/Discovery show "18 kids and counting"? After losing one pregnancy to miscarriage and blaming it on birth control pills, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar decided to "Let God be in charge of the order and timing" of their children and now have 18 of them, all homeschooled.

Back in my own conservative super-Christian homeschool days, I would have near-idolized this family. They're all so smiling and happy (on camera, at least), and they all LOOOOOVE Jesus. And the girls all have long hair and long skirts. And the boys all look like the pictures I've seen of my dad as a kid in the 1950's: slicked-down hair, parted on the side, button-down nicely tucked into khaki pants. The only character flaw I've noticed in the kids is a general condescension toward people who don't believe as they do (big surprise!). Like people who dance (the Duggars are some version of Baptist and their oldest son didn't even have dancing at his wedding), or people who hold any respect for the biological Theory of Evolution.

If you haven't seen the tv show, do a few engine searches.

What do you think? Is this a good way to raise kids? Will the Duggar 18 turn out to be missionaries or atheists? Will they be naive and arrogant adults? Are they a threat to the future of science research (as far as I can tell, not one of them has ever conducted a lab experiment)? Or would more families like this make the world a better place, with less violence, petty meanness and general selfishness?

It sure beats the way "Jon and Kate" raise their kids. The Duggars understand values higher than bodily gratification which most of the world doesn't understand. if that bothers you, then adopt values higher than bodily gratification yourself.

[tirtlegrrl]

carico wrote: The Duggars understand values higher than bodily gratification which most of the world doesn't understand. if that bothers you, then adopt values higher than bodily gratification yourself.

I think Christianity is a form of bodily gratification too, since we experience the divine in a way that registers in our bodies and brain waves. Do you personally usually feel good and peaceful after you pray? I used to. However, I do agree that whatever the Duggars are teaching their kids is leading them to be virtuous; I just think that their doctrinal and cultural extremism may backfire. As I mentioned in a post above, I think their isolation (they mainly socialize with each other and children of similar beliefs) leads some of the kids to act arrogant and overconfident about the rightness of their beliefs and way of life.

[whoosanightowl]

If I'm not mistaken, their oldest son who was only recently married (within the past year) already has a child on the way, so it appears they are following in his parents footsteps.
And Michelle said she hopes to have even more babies after #18 was born (hopefully they haven't run out of "J" names yet!), but I think it's more for the notoriety of having such a large family than anything. Plus the income generated from the show is surely a motivating factor and it's also a way for them to evangelize their audience.

[Huston]

Are they a threat to the future of science research (as far as I can tell, not one of them has ever conducted a lab experiment)?

Weird. You're jumping on Duggar's for being the penultimate example of species propagation? I think this is just about bigotry rather than any honest concern. If they enjoy having kids and can make it work on relatively limited means then I don't see what all the fuss is about?

[stickmangrit]

Are they a threat to the future of science research (as far as I can tell, not one of them has ever conducted a lab experiment)?

Weird. You're jumping on Duggar's for being the penultimate example of species propagation? I think this is just about bigotry rather than any honest concern. If they enjoy having kids and can make it work on relatively limited means then I don't see what all the fuss is about?

firstly, they're not really operating on limited means. as SS pointed out in a previous post, they're milking media notoriety for every penny they can(and with eighteen f&*king kids i can hardly blame them), thus turning the whole enterprise into a strange self-fulfilling loop: they're famous for raising 1-16 on relatively limited means, which then led to profit from having so many kids, which led to having more kids, which led to greater notoriety and profit, which led to *loops indefinitely*.

personally, i don't agree with it. as the oldest of five(with a ten year gap and a new father between me and the oldest), i had to work my ass off around the house, and i can only imagine what it's like for their older kids. basically, when your parents decide to have that many kids, you get to have about half the responsibilities of raising a newborn, only you had no say in the matter and you didn't get the joys of getting laid. best case scenario, they hate you for not keeping it in your pants, worst case is that they start to resent the siblings that you forced into their care.

/why yes, i do resent that my mother chose to cling to the "condoms are evil" portion of catholic dogma, why do you ask?

[Huston]

they're milking media notoriety for every penny they can(and with eighteen f&*king kids i can hardly blame them), thus turning the whole enterprise into a strange self-fulfilling loop

So they’re doing what they love, telling the world about it and the world is paying them after 16 kids…that’s hardly milking it. Have you ever heard of a rock star? How about Richard Dawkins? His love is to preach atheism to the world and he gets paid for it. Is it only different when “the milking” doesn’t offend your sensibilities?

I think the family is little weird too, but being odd or unconventional doesn’t make them immoral. Here you have 18 healthy kids and a mom and dad who love each other. I would think that atheists would be celebrating this robust example of propagation first before attacking their religious views.

personally, i don't agree with it

Eh, okay, but that's just your opinion.

i can only imagine what it's like for their older kids.

But you can't really imagine it. You grew up in a different family, in a different time and in a different place. Or are you saying that your household experience is the quintessential, universal experience of all children?

/why yes, i do resent that my mother chose to cling to the "condoms are evil" portion of catholic dogma, why do you ask?

Bizarre. I didn't. I think you're projecting your personal experiences onto the conversation and injecting your feelings about it into your reasoning.