16 Children

[ste_noni]

I'm watching this TLC show on that family with 16 kids. Apparently, before they became well known (when the most recent baby girl was born) they were working on building a 7000 sq. ft. house.

I don't personally understand the desire to have 16 kids, but if you were going to have that many kids, this is the kind of family you would want to be in. The kids all appear to be loved, well-cared-for, clean, and smart. Even the 8 year old is helping build the house!

Comments

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

I saw that last weekend (while I was enjoying having cable again). I'd previously seen their "15 kids" special. That one focused more on their family, and made them seem a little more creepy and less just pleasantly cheery than the building a house one. But I did enjoy the building a house one--all of them working on it, and seeing the vast quantities in the pantry, and the neat little details they came up with (like the tunnel from the boys' room? So cute!). They're home-schooled and make all their own clothes and are pretty darn religious and Republican, so they kinda freak me out (with the fairly rigid sex roles and the outfits on the girls and so on...). The dad was actually running for Congress (? or possibly just their state government?) last year, I think...

http://www.duggarfamily.com/

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, very little of that came across on the show. I guess I still feel like everyone's choices should be valid, as long as no one is being harmed. Perhaps I feel this way because I grew up with a lot of families like that. NO one had 16 kids, but a lot of them did home schooling and lived sort of "off the grid". I guess they seemed extreme to me, but not harmful, so I don't always get strong reaction. As I said to Bev below, I'd like to see if they family is as loving and accepting if one of the kids some day makes a choice the parents don't like. That would be important, I think, in seeing if they really practice what they preach.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see if they family is as loving and accepting if one of the kids some day makes a choice the parents don't like

That would definitely be interesting!

Like I said, I loved the building the house bit, it's just having seen the other show, it made me kinda wonder if any of the older girls might've wanted to do more of the housebuilding, would they have been allowed?

Being Catholic, the "16 kids" part doesn't freak me out nearly so much as the rest of it! Partly just because if I had that many kids I can't IMAGINE trying to home-school them! I'd be all for saying "I'ma get my taxes worth, send them to public school and get them out of the house for a few hours!!" Not that homeschooling isn't a valid choice, just...eek!

[aimeejmc.livejournal.com]

I loved that show! I think that family has a lot of stuff right.

[fufaraw]

If you follow meara's link to the Duggar family article, it has a link to the Quiverfull website, which is just...scary. Beating babies is God's will, instructions on how to do it, linking breast cancer to abortion, birthing God's warriors. Scary, angry-making stuff.

I don't deny that the Duggar family seems well-adjusted and happy. But I don't think everyone who follows that philosophy is. And I think it harms a lot more people than it helps, to follow that practice.

[aimeejmc.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. There's more I disagree with than agree with, but I liked how they were shown to be, for all their scary beliefs, that they are a normal family. And, most importantly to me, they don't sponge off the system. The parents set financial goals, met them and live virtually debt free. With 16 kids. That astounds me when I can barely do it with one kid.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[fufaraw]

These people give me the shuddering wigs for all of their their philosophic, religious, gender-specific and political beliefs.

I believe that anybody who wants to raise a big family can find as many kids as they want already born and in the foster care system who would benefit from a home.

But then, I'm just a commie-pinko tree-hugging liberal.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I believe that anybody who wants to raise a big family can find as many kids as they want already born and in the foster care system who would benefit from a home.

See, I just don't understand this attitude. Why in the world would reproductive choice only include reducing your family size and not increasing it? I mean, there are all sorts of reasons to have a large family, or no family at all, but why is one choice better than the other? (I'm actualy not trying to talk about abortion here, but the "freedom of choice" phrase just keeps popping in my head.)

I guess part of the reason I react so strongly to this is that I had a lot of beliefs about breast feeding toddlers and cloth diapers and so on, and then I had my own baby to think about and some stuff that had seemed weird now made sense. I'm sure some of my friends think I'm weird for choosing, say, cloth diapers, but it made sense to me. I can't help but apply that reasoning to the Duggars.

The gender stuff does skeeve me a bit. I'd nope that if one of the daughters grew up to be a fighter pilot or the son an interior decorater, that he/she would stll be loved and accepted by the family.

[fufaraw]

You're right, of course. Everyone is free to make their own decisions, and reproductive freedom is just that.

It simply bothers me to see children certainly as deserving as any growing up without the love and security and promise of loving families, while some people seem to feel that their genes deserve to be reproduced many times. I'd like to see every child fed, clothed, educated, and raised in the love of a family, not just the ones I gave birth to.

But as I said above, tree-hugging liberal here. Sorry for spamming your journal. It's a hot-button issue for me and I'll try harder to keep it to my own lj.

[aimeejmc.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see every child fed, clothed, educated, and raised in the love of a family, not just the ones I gave birth to.

I couldn't say this any better than you did. I also want to see that and try to support anything that would make that happen.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

It's not spam! I actually wanted to talk to someone who might disagree with me. You put the issue in an interesting context - that everyone deserves to be loved. The issues of foster/unwanted children - I used to be able to just brush them off as "yeah, that's sad," but having a baby makes me think about all that stuff a lot more. I don't have any answers, but you are right that all children deserve to be loved, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

I have not seen the show but my grandmother had 16 children, right now there are about 110 relatives. As for what my mom had to say all of them were very loved but she always metion that she had to change dipers and take care of the youngest ones so she promised that she would only had one child and so she did.
Edy