20 Kids and Counting

I’m sure many of you are familiar with The Duggar Family and their super-sized family featured on 19 Kids and Counting. Just yesterday, they announced that Mama-Duggar was pregnant with their twentieth child, thus sending television producers scrambling to change the name of the reality series once again.


Go to any website or blog about the Duggar Family, and you’ll see thousands of comments from folks weighing in and expressing their opinion about this family. The bottom line is, we love to hate the Duggars.

I’m no different.

A friend of mine and I often watch the program together over the phone (she lives in Tulsa) and I’m usually there making snide comments. Yes, I’ll admit it.

I would love to see one of the older boys go off to Africa to be a missionary and then return with a same-sex partner named Umbutu. I can’t wait for one of the girls to grow up and write a torrid, tell-all best seller, Growing Up Duggar. I secretly want Daddy-Duggar to be caught having an affair with a stripper in Little Rock, get divorced, and be slapped with a fifteen-thousand-dollars-a-month child support order.

I’m bad.

I couldn’t help but to caption this photo of them:

But in reality, I had to take an honest look at why I love to hate the Duggars. The honest truth is, I’m jealous of them.

Yes, the four older girls are adults now, still living at home with no career and most of the child care duties falls on their shoulders. But they also get to tour the country on book tours, meet lots of adoring fans, and let’s face it: Jana, Jessa, Jinger, and Jill are celebrities. What’s not to like?

I’m jealous.

The older boy, John-David, is 22, still lives at home and putters around with a towing business. He's got it easy. When I was that age, I eked out a living as a keypunch operator and had to supplement that paltry salary with another part-time job.

I’m jealous.

I’m sure we see a very sanitized view of their life each week. I’m sure they have their share of dysfunction we never get to see. For one thing, that bedroom with ten boys in it is bound to smell like a rotting weasel.

Yes, all the Duggar kids seem to live in isolation from the real world, aren’t allowed to date or watch TV, and appear to be brainwashed by their parent’s super-conservative religious views.

And didn’t I join a freaking monastery for seven years back in 1994?

So, yes, whenever I find myself criticizing the Duggars for their lifestyle, I usually just have to say two words to myself:

“Glass houses. . .”