OH GOOD GRIEF. The Duggars are having ANOTHER one.

They are expecting their NINETEENTH child. These people need to stop. They really need to stop. And no, I don't subscribe to the theory of "As long as they have the resources to care for their kids..." because no human being has mental resources to care for 19 children, no matter how much money they have. Their older children are just being forced into indentured servitude and the younger ones are being raised by children. The mother is too busy being pregnant (i.e. tired, nauseated, crabby) to be an attentive mother (and who could be attentive to 19 kids even in the best of circumstances?).

I am the youngest of 11. My brother married a woman from a family of 14. I know how these families function. And that's not even adding in the fact that they're right-wing fundies. My family was at least raised liberal.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=8461762

other issues that come up in kids with older parents.

I wonder if they have a goal, like 25 or a football team, something like that?

:)

Seriously the population is spreading like a bad virus

than three kids, and indeed several of us have none. But, then again, we weren't raised to be brain-washed fundies.

in 5 generations there would be 3.2 million Duggar sin thsi world.

:scared:

Children are "arrows of God" to be flung
against the enemy.

Good thing I'm shielded by common sense!

:scared:

:banghead:

Whether they do only time will tell. I'd be surprised if any of the older children desire very large families. They're the ones who know best how hard it is on the kids.

the 2 hour special devoted to the subject. Or maybe it will only be a 30 second special. :puke:

They seriously are selfish, narcissistic people

Those who scream 'keep your laws off my body' or 'out of my bedroom' or 'away from my marriage' and consider themselves 'pro-choice' are exposed as hypocritical busybodies every time this family has another pregnancy. Then all we hear is 'they must be stopped'.

Which is it? Reproductive rights include the choice of having babies as well as not having babies, right?

Right?

I'd never back a law dictating bounds on family size but that doesn't mean that I think it's responsible to sit back and say nothing about the Duggars and other families who are working on filling their second quiver.


eta: I am however a bit dismayed at the calls by some to legislate on family size.

I just think it's hypocritical - for those advocating all kinds of personal freedoms as long as they're 'progressive' personal freedoms. I don't see where it's one bit anyone else's business if she had 19 kids or 19 abortions. It's a personal choice (that word again).

that shouldn't be ignored, namely contributing to the burgeoning population of the planet. One can argue about whether the Earth has reached or exceeded a sustainable population but the signs are all around that the sheer number of humans may be stressing the resources. So while it's not my business why the Duggars themselves chose to have a kid a year, or if someone else aborts once a year, the former decision does have an outcome that is hard to ignore. I'm not aware of any place where there are records documenting what happens in a society where voluntary frequent abortions are the norm but there may be undesirable outcomes in that scenario too. Certainly in China under its restrictive one child policy there has been an effect that can't be ignored too -- skewing of the population count by gender because of a cultural preference for at least one male child.

Your 19 kids are affecting the planet I live on, therefore affecting me vs my abortion affects no one.

about this family.

I do have a problem with them continuing to have children just to market their books and TV show (imo.)

"Freedom" in many cases means "freedom to do what *I* think is wise." And that holds for both the right and the left.

The Duggar children don't get to decide whether or not they want to be surrogate parents while they're still children themselves. If the parents were forcing their children to work full-time as nannies outside the home, they would be condemned and even investigated. But because the children are forced into indentured servitude at home, it's a wonderful thing.

Richardo is correct that for many people (not you, mind you - your complaints about the Duggars are plainly stated), bashing the personal choices of people who choose lifestyles they find distasteful is something of a hobby. So many liberals preach about pro-choice freedom, but then turn right around and want to enforce something like China's one child policy to combat overpopulation (and, though they don't say it out loud, to punish right-wing evangelicals with large families for disagreeing with them politically). It is extremely hypocritical and it shows that they're really only in favor of reproductive 'freedom' as long as said freedoms entail choosing abortion, contraception, or voluntary sterilization.

However, what squicks me about the Duggars specifically is the way that they treat their older daughters, who are expected to perform EVERY household chore - they are the primary cooks, cleaners, and childrearers in that house. Meanwhile, the boys get to have something approximating a normal childhood, but it looks like once the daughters are old enough to take care of the younger ones - probably around age 10 or 11 - their childhood effectively ends and they no longer are allowed to have any time for leisure or play or just being a kid. I don't think there's a legislative solution, but it does disgust me on a deeply personal level. I wonder if the girls will be allowed to go to college, or if they'll be set up with a "Christian man" as soon as they turn 18 and married off to start their own quivers?

You're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions based on nothing but your own worldview. Guess what? Not everyone thinks as you do, nor they should not be judged or sanctioned because of that. One person's 'child abuse' (see the hyperbolic YOY) is another family's standard operating procedure, and as much as you don't like it, there's no indication that anyone is suffering because of it.

And forgive me for my geezerness, but allowing children veto power on how they will support the family is just nuts, and a prescription for society being overrun by sullen goths and emos. Sometimes the right answer is: 'Because I said so.'

assigned a baby to care for every time the biological mother pops another one out. That daughter's childhood is effectively over. That's not an assumption, that is a stated fact. Is that fair to that older daughter? Or to the younger child for that matter? Do you honestly think that a pre-teen girl is emotionally mature enough to raise a child? Because I don't think a child raising a child is good for either party involved.

And I am a product of such a family. If you had asked any of us when we were children whether or not we were suffering, we would've been confused by the question because we didn't know any other way. It wasn't until we were older that we realized how fucked up it was that the older kids were forced to be parents before their time and the younger kids were being raised by children. All of us suffered in different ways from that, and it didn't come to light until we were adults. Even if every single child in that family is thrilled to death with the arrangement, it doesn't make it right to force it on them. Before there were child labor laws, I'm sure there were lots of kids who preferred working full-time to going to school and didn't see it as a hardship, but that doesn't make it right. Kids don't always know what's best for them, that's why they should be raised by ADULTS and allowed to be children. There are plenty of ways to raise well adjusted, productive kids without forcing
them into early parenthood and indentured servitude.

"Because I said so" is sometimes the right answer because the assumption is an adult would have to emotional maturity to know what's best for the child, even if the child doesn't always understand.

...it's the role the older girls are assigned in the family (or 'forced into') that's the issue.

Human children need a lot of nurturing, attention, care and discipline by responsible, mature adults to grow into well-adjusted, happy, secure, productive adults themselves. This takes time and energy. There is no way two adults can adequately provide this for 19 children, especially when one of them is constantly pregnant. There are not enough hours in the day, even if they didn't need to sleep. So they force their older children into surrogate parenthood, and shortchange their younger children by having them be raised by children. And they shortchange ALL of the children by giving them a fraction of the attention a child needs. Nothing in the scenario is good in my opinion.

I don't advocate any laws against it, but as someone who lived it I sure as hell will comment on it.

whether or not they want to be surrogate parents? Because the family has said flat out that each new baby gets assigned to one of the older girls. Which is of course the way it would have to be because the biological mother is too busy being pregnant. No single human being (or couple) can properly care for and nurture 19 children and give them the attention they need. There are not enough hours in a day. So why is it okay for the older children (really, the older daughters) to have their parents' reproductive choices forced on them?

As with any freedom, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And, as with any right, your rights end where someone else's begin.

No one is suggesting any laws against this, just expressing valid opinions on the wisdom of bringing more children into the (already overpopulated) world than you can possibly care for on your own (regardless of how much money you have).

So it's kind of a cap-and-trade thing right?

As for the older children having no 'choice' in the matter of helping raise their siblings, I don't know about you, but I was given precious little 'choice' when it came to stuff my parents wanted me to do. Because I was the kid and they were the PARENTS. Jesus.

I'm not sure how babysitting = somehow restricting the older kids' reproductive rights. You'll have to explain that one to me again.

I've read a bit about the Duggars, and the older daughters do EVERYTHING. They do the vast majority of the cooking and household chores (cleaning, laundry, cooking). They do the vast majority of caretaking for the younger ones - watching them all day, feeding them, changing their diapers, bathing them, putting them to bed. They do EVERYTHING, EVERY DAY. Sure, every kid has to do what mom and dad says and has to do chores, but you also get time for *yourself,* which is every bit as important for a child to develop into a well-functioning adult. Time to play, time to hang out with friends, time to read, time to chill out in your room - it wasn't 24/7 chores and childcare. And everything I've read about the Duggars indicates to me that that is exactly what's going on with the older girls. I can't see how those girls are going to be socially or mentally well-adjusted for a normal life - which, I suppose, is irrelevant, since the likelihood that they'll do anything besides marry young and start their own huge families and repeat the cycle is minimal.

I agree with you generally in this thread - there's an awful lot of hypocrisy from the 'pro-choice' front when they're confronted with people making distasteful 'choices' like the Duggars. And while I find the Duggars extremely distasteful, the idea that it should be against the law for them to have 2000 kids is appalling to me. For me though it's not the number of kids the Duggars have that is distasteful, but the way they abdicate their responsibilities and force the older daughters to take up all the parenting slack.

I grew up with a family where the dad was a Lutheran minister. The two older girls did ALL the housework and the three boys got to goof off and didn't have to lift a finger.

My grandmother was an overachieving susie homemaker. She was a county extension agent with an overactive thyroid. She thought everybody else was lazy. :grr:

My grandmother tried to enslave me, my sister and my four girl cousins, my mom and my two aunts all at the same time in a not very big kitchen. We were supposed to scurry in formation three times a day fixing meals for a bunch of non-existent farmhands. Then we were supposed to scurry cleaning up and putting away the leftovers and loading the dishwasher.

The men did NOTHING to help. They went in the den and watched football games. I ran into the den and hid there while my mother SHRIEKED at me. I asked her why the men didn't have to do anything and she said "They're all too old to help". :wtf: My dad was about 55 and the youngest of the men.

The lesson I got was that I was supposed to be a kitchen slave because I was female. I resented the hell out of it. I was told I was a failure for not knowing how to cook and peel veggies. Just because I was a girl I was supposed to know how to do that stuff.

But as a society we can discuss problems and come up with solutions without creating laws. Public opinion and social pressure can be used for good as well as evil.

AND... we can stop giving celebratory tv shows and money to people who make stupid, selfish, narcissistic choices.

You're treading a fine line quite admirably, W-E-L. :patriot:

I still think that barring demonstrable physical or mental abuse, people should take their personal delicate sensibilities and butt the hell out of that family's business.

I don't even like defending them that much, but I dislike meddlesome hypocracy even more.

granted?

:shrug:

Show me even ONE pro-choice organization ANYWHERE that has proposed any legislation limiting family size.

Show me even ONE pro-choice organization ANYWHERE that has done ANYTHING to restrict ANYONE'S ability to have a large family?

This claim of supposed hypocrisy is total bullshit manufactured out of thin air to create some imaginary sense of balance, with equal amounts of supposed outrage on both sides, where there really isn't any. Pro-choice organizations and activists have worked for nothing but expanding the rights and opportunities of women to make their own choices, whatever those choices may be.

When did speaking out against something you think is wrong become a call for legislation?

And apparently Pro-Choice only applies to Mrs. Duggar. Her daughters don't get the same consideration from some.

It should not surprise you that there are a lot of people on DU who say ridiculous things. I've seen plenty of such comments in ANY given thread that deals with overpopulation or the "quiverfull" people.

The point is the hypocrisy of the individuals who say things like "the Duggars shouldn't be allowed to breed like this." What does that mean? "Shouldn't be allowed?" Is that not a tacit call for legislation? It's an opinion, yes, and it's an opinion anyone is free to have, but it's a rather hypocritical opinion for someone who believes in reproductive freedom to hold.

go out to dinner. Every kid in every family has chores, and should. It teaches responsibility and prepares you for adulthood.

What the Duggars force on their older daughters is not simple baby-sitting, or chores. Those girls are FULL-TIME caretakers for their younger siblings, including cooking and cleaning, aside from child-care duties. If a mother forces her daughter to become the full-time parent to a younger sibling, then she is violating her daughter's reproductive rights the same as someone who would force a woman to carry a child to term. Worse, really, because even anti-choice folks believe in letting a woman give her baby up for adoption. It's more like forcing a woman to carry a child to term AND raise it, whether she wants to or not. The only difference is that the daughter didn't even do anything dumb like get pregnant at 13. No, just by an accident of birth, she gets forced into early parenthood because her parents are narcissistic and selfish.

Again - ask the Duggar girls how much they hate it and if they feel exploited and abused and if they do, call CPS. If they don't butt the hell out and let these people live their lives as they see fit.

God save us from busybodies.

about their fabulous "parenting" methods. THEY put themselves in the public eye, and I have every right to be disgusted by and comment on it. I KNOW what it's like to be raised like that. Again, as I said earlier, even if all of those children are fine with the situation, it doesn't make it right to force it on them. There are plenty of children in all kinds of bad circumstances who have no idea they're being exploited and abused because they don't know any other way. That's why adults are supposed to be caring for children, because they are supposed to know better. If someone had asked me if I was neglected or abused when I was young, I wouldn't have said anything was wrong because I didn't know there was any other way to live.

The problem with your high and mighty "let these people live their lives as they see fit" is that is exactly what "these people" are NOT doing for their children. They're not thinking what's best for their children, only what's best for them and their egos. I would've LOVED to have a "busybody" advocating for me when I was a child instead of all the adults around praising my mother and telling me what a saint she was for "putting up with" all of us kids. Like we somehow forced her to give birth eleven times.

pro-choice, seeing that you consider pro-choice people to be "scream(ing)" "busybodies?"

Please, show me which pro-choice organization has done anything to stop this family from having any more kids? What legislation has been proposed, and by whom? Or did you just make this shit up?

Some here are denigrating this woman solely for her reproductive choices. And if the tables were turned they'd be the first to caterwaul to the high heavens. I've seen it.

Choice goes both ways. That's why it's a 'choice'. Labeling oneself 'pro-choice' doesn't mean squat if you only allow one choice. By that criteria the anti-abortion crowd could call themselves 'pro-choice' also.

And I'm not saying legislation has been proposed, and I think you know that. I don't even agree with the Duggars' choices, but I think that they are their own to make, as long as no one is physically or mentally harmed. And there's no indication that's the case.

It's like the ACLU defending Limbaugh - lofty principles like freedom and choice only mean anything when you apply them to those you do NOT agree with.

Who here is trying to stop these people from breeding more fundie spawn? No one.

So please get down from your high horse. We can criticize them, but, unlike the other side, we're not out in front of their house trying to obstruct them or keep Jim Bob from knocking up his brood mare wife.

There's a difference between free speech and actively trying to restrict someone's actions, you know. Or maybe you don't.

How is that in any way comparable to organized legislated efforts to take away womens legal rights to control their own bodies?

Get a grip and a sense of perspective here!

Stated opinions are nowhere near comparable to huge, well funded, well organized campaigns to deny half the population control over their own bodies.

How could you even think these are comparable?

:wtf:

Only explanation.

After 18 babies, a body can only take so much. Pregnancy is not without risks. She has 18 children. Doesn't she want to be around for them?

Being the youngest of eleven with a mother too tired and crabby to do much of anything, I feel much closer to my older sisters.

My understanding (and I know I'm taking in generalities) is that a woman will not be fertile while she is nursing. That usually spaces the kiddos out to every 3 years or so. So if this is all about taking what "the LORD" gives them without artificial preventatives and without Mr. D. tying a knot in his dick, then their use of formula is interfering with their god's plan for them.

Unless there's a medical reason to prevent it they almost invariably practice breastfeeding, though that can vary from scheduled Ezzo type feedings to on-demand nursing into toddlerhood LLL style.

Lactation can only be relied upon to suppress ovulation while it is frequent and exclusive. So once the baby starts sleeping through the night, nursing less frequently or eating any other food, generally the Mother will begin ovulating again if she hasn't previously. At that point the mother has to start looking for indicators of returned fertility if she's using a fertility awareness method or go back on an external contraceptive if that's her preference. Cultures that use breastfeeding to space children farther than that generally have rules or folk wisdom that encourages frequent nursing/ night nursing to prevent ovulation for a longer period or even forbidding or strictly limiting coitus until the child is weaned. Once she started farming the baby out to one of the older girls for more than four hours at a stretch or skipping the middle of the night feed she'd be ready to catch again. Earlier if she uses some scheduled feeding system.

QF? Is that Quaker Fundamentalist maybe?

including natural methods, and that god "opens and closes the womb" according to a preordained plan.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull and http://www.newsweek.com/id/189763

just kidding.

;)

what Kevin Bacon said in Mystic River.

"A goddamn loose cannon factory".

And raised him underground.

Two parents teaching 18 children spread through each grade level.

Lets test these kids and see what Jim Bob is really teaching them.

Just home-making for the girls and who-knows-what for the boys.

visited the creation museum where dinosaurs are depicted cavorting with people. Ma Duggar (her children's teacher) was incredibly impressed by the place, and is totally convinced the Earth is only a couple of thousand years old. These people clearly don't ever expect their children to function in the real world.

They clearly don't expect or want their children to function normally in society. Hopefully at least some of them will escape this insane cycle.

There are only 14 kids in that poster. So they have had 5 more kids since that poster was made.
:wow:

no different then any other cult

just goes along with it. I think the mom is addicted to being pregnant and Jim Bob (can't believe I just typed that name) is an enabler. Luckily mom is 42 and her days are numbered in the motherhood respect. Incidentally, they just became grandparents recently too.

At least they have huge family reunions? :silly: