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. . .”

Octuplets

I’ve been fascinated by the woman who recently gave birth to octuplets. It turns out that she had six fertilized embryos implanted, two of which split into twins thus resulting in eight births.

She already had six kids, so now she’s got fourteen -- all under the age of seven. Oh, and she’s a single mother who lives with her parents because she’s been on disability for the past few years.

The door-slamming in that house is going to be mind-boggling.

I also must admit that I’ve Tivo’d 17 Kids and Counting. It’s the weekly series featuring the Duggar family who have 18 kids, ranging from 21 years of age to 2 months. The worst thing I can say about the Duggars is that they home-school their kids and insist on teaching them that the world is only four-thousand years old.

I like kids. I really do. And there’s a part of me that’s always wanted to have a kid of my own. I haven’t done so because:

1. One needs female this-and-thats in order to produce a kid.

2. The kid might mess with my Tivo.

But the main reason I don’t have a kid is because they’re expensive. I make a nice salary but - - - kids are expensive!

I can see it now:

Kid: "Daddy, I want a Wii-Pod for Christmas!"

Me: "People in hell want ice water."

Yes, the Duggar kids all seem to be well-provided for. The family is frugal, they buy second-hand clothes, and, admirably, they don’t buy anything on credit. Moreover, they've raised a bunch of kids who seem to have been instilled with an astounding amount of altruistic values at a very young age.

Such a selfless family value seems to be lacking an awful lot these days. There is a lot that I admire about the Duggars, and yet - - -

They have 16 kids under the age of 18.

What if they got divorced and mom got custody?

If child support is $600 per month per child, Daddy Duggar would have to come up with about ten thousand dollars per month in child support.

If they each got eight kids in the custody battle, each parent would have to pay five thousand dollars per month in child support.

Neither parent went to college and I seriously doubt that either of them would have the potential to earn enough to support a tenth of their brood.

Still, we should wish them only our best.

I shouldn't be judgmental toward parents. After all, I've never been a parent, so I should only be saying to myself . . . . . perhaps. . . hmmmm. . . . . .glass houses?

And, most of all, let's always keep in mind that the little ones of these families will probably be reading our blogs ten years from now.

Eighteen Kids . . . And Counting

Have you guys seen any of the documentaries on Discovery Health Channel about the Duggar family? They’re the family in Arkansas that has 17 kids. That’s right, seventeen kids. The youngest is 9 months old and the oldest is 20.

Well, guess what? The mother, Michelle Duggar, is pregnant with number 18.

I’ve watched the documentaries and I have to admit that the kids seem to be happy, cared for and well-adjusted. I admire their principle of not buying anything on credit, never going into debt. And with all the horribly dysfunctional families out there, it’s difficult to criticize the Duggars for their lifestyle choices.

But how in the world does that mom have time to produce eighteen kids???

The family is fundamentalist Baptist, they home-school all the kids, and even have church services at home. Their favorite family recipe is tater-tot casserole. Obviously, mom and dad have a pretty robust sex life. But how??

With seventeen kids in the house, that’s 34 ears listening in. She’s been pregnant for a total of eleven years of her life. It seems like after 18 kids if hubby got the least bit amorous, he'd be sleeping on the porch. Any fun stuff would be a solo activity from here on out.

What if they got divorced? With sixteen kids under the age of eighteen, that’s about $8,000 a month in child support. It seems to me that a parent shouldn’t have more kids than they can pay child support for.

Yes, I’m sure the documentaries we see are well edited. I’m sure that TV viewers are shielded from the realities of seventeen kids under one roof. Tantrums, exploding diapers, puking, ear-piercing shrieks, fighting and general mayhem all end up on the editing room floor. The slamming of doors, alone, has got to be mind-boggling.

I have two younger brothers. Brothers try their best to kill each other. I remember tying my youngest brother to the side of the house, climbing on the roof and spitting on him when I was about fourteen. He was awfully noisy about it.

Then there was the time I locked my younger brother in a rabbit hutch which was perched on a wagon and sent it careening down the steep driveway.

There are ten boys in this family. Get the picture?

And the smell. My god, the smell! All those diapers and teenagers have got to make the place smell like a dead fruit-bat. Meanwhile, mom is knee-deep in tater-tot casserole.

Frankly, I’ll be more interested to see a documentary titled “The Duggars: Twenty Years Later.” Time will tell how they truly turn out.