This will be number 19 for them. I used to be disgusted by this family, but now it is a little bit like a freak show going on there, and I find the whole thing entertaining in a Jerry Springer kind of way.
Link to news story
This will be number 19 for them. I used to be disgusted by this family, but now it is a little bit like a freak show going on there, and I find the whole thing entertaining in a Jerry Springer kind of way.
Link to news story
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When life gives you lemons, make lemonade... then find someone whose life gave them vodka, and have a party.





I have a cousin that has 13. I personally don't get it but to each their own.
It seems to me her uterus should be falling out lol.
Sorry I missed church. I was too busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.
"If you're good at something, never do it for free." The Dark Knight
"you conjunctively engender an intoxicating combination of wicked, wholesome & insanely intelligent" - a friend describing me
Blessed Be




It's probably really easy for them to raise an extra kid now so they figure... hey... why stop, and it'll get us more free press!
Yes, I'm real.




I wonder what J name they will pick this time.
Maybe Jehosaphat...
how is sex like for them D= i wonder if kegels stop working after that many kids..



I'd be terrified of having sex after having to raise so many kids o_o
I think if they want to have that many kids good for them. They are not getting any government handouts. The Duggars are raising them on their own with their own money. They seem to have the family thing figured out. The Gosselins should have taken some notes from them.
Imogene
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Dude must have to tie a board to her hips to keep from falling in
I feel bad for those kids...the older ones basically have to raise the younger ones and NONE of them after the first 6 have gotten anything approaching a normal parent-child relationship. There is just no way that you can love 19 children as much as you can love, say, 2-3.



To me, it's weird, but eh it's not my family... What ever floats their boat. As long as their not like the octomom searching for a free ride, and they raise their kids to be good human beings and productive members of society, then fuck on I say.




I think they need their own island for that many. That family will be every where. Maybe they could even be their own country.
Ugh, just, omg...........I can't find the words. Fucking sickness. FUCK OFF!!!!!
I just can't accept the "to each their own" thing on this one. I normally can accept that for 95% of shit but not for this.
Dear Duggar fucks:
Could it be possible you are ADDICTED to breeding like one would be addicted to crack?? Well you, like most addicts, can't see that they have a "problem". Therapy won't work for you. You need to have her uterus removed to control the addiction.
Seek some help.
Sincerely, everyone who thinks you are FUCKING SICK IN THE HEAD.




I don't really see why it's anyones business if the family isn't receiving government assistance to pay for their children.
My mother came from a family of 12. I guess they're just a bunch of sick fucking freaks but I actually love my mom's family, it's great having a large family when it's full of loving and supportive people.
I have an issue with strangers demanding a woman bear a certain number of children based on said strangers personal opinion. I have one child and I have had people say to me that I am selfish for only having one because my son will never have siblings. They sound just as stupid and arrogant to me as someone who demands that another woman stop having children that she is able to care for because they personally think it's "weird".




Oh and by the way this isn't as odd as you would think. I spent a good part of my childhood in a rural area and one family near us had 21 kids, and the dad supported them with his logging draft horses. There were a few other families that had close to 20 kids. None of the children seemed to have psychological problems. They had a lot of loving family around them and it seemed to work out really well. Since most of them were expecting to get married and have kids, it prepared them for the responsibility ahead. The girls were great mother figures and the guy knew how to provide as well as be supportive in the child rearing process.
Yes, I'm real.





large families are a net win for humanity and social interaction in the long term. people who come from large families tend to do better interacting with others because they've always had to share/negotiate compromises/cooperate. (this doesn't mean people from small families are unable to do so, just that there are real benefits to coming from a huge family that are no longer recognised because such families are so rare these days instead of a sizable minority portion of all families).
it is super cool that mrs. duggar is apparently menopause-proof.
it is a shame society has come to abhor the normal process of birth and human continuity if it's more than 2 kids.
it is also pretty funny that the duggars are darwinian victors.
I really wish we did have a world of two islands entirely isolated with limited resources available to each. That is to say the land space is finite. The renewable resources finite.
War between the two islands is not allowed. Island A is not allowed to take Island B's resources of vice versa.
On the first island everyone has 10 plus kids, and teaches their kids that they too should each have 10 plus kids, and so on. People on this island believe that having more is ALWAYS the best strategy (with no thought about how that eventually works out against the finite resources, but they hope people can live on less or more efficiently... until people are living in 1 square foot of space? and still won't concede that at some point if everyone keeps having 10 kids there is a problem).
On the second island everyone moderates how many children they have, they are taught that resources are finite, that MORE does not necessarily mean better, they adjust the population growth up or down based on circumstances (e.g., after people die out due to illness, boom due to prosperity), etc.
My money is on the second island but I am curious how it turns out. In the few studies I've seen done with rats in finite resource situations and unlimited breeding, it ended up very ugly for the rats who, with less space, less resources, became increasingly hostile. In other words, there is room in the world for a few families to have 19 kids. But if their kids all do it, and we all do it, my guess is it would become ugly fast. The big families get away with it because others don't, which is essentially just another case of "I want what I want because I feel it is in my best interest". I don't buy that it is being done for the better good though; see island #1 above for the end result if we all did.
I promise not to look down on you if you can laugh at lawyer jokes.- minnow




Families with that many members are very frugal. You can't say they automatically consume more. Not only have I watched their "how we save money" episode, but I've lived amongst similar families. They have all been very eco-friendly. They compost, they are conscious of everything they consume, and they also are active volunteers and charity members.
Most households in the Dallas suburbs, where I live now, consume at least as much as the 23+ member families I used to know.
Yes, I'm real.
I get that, but it was not my point. A few comments:
First, probably yes because they have to be more frugal. But it doesn't need an altruistic spin. I am not a great believer in altruism, but I do believe the cost of raising 2 vs 19 is so great a difference that they are forced to be more frugal. However it is really difficult to add up everything. Like use of air, drinking water, minimum food needed to survive, cost of fuel to transport their bodies in cars, etc.
While I grant you that 5 familes of 4 use more then 1 family of 20, I was saying I'm just as good with 1 family of 4. If a family is telling us they are having 23 to save on resources they are only pulling the wool over their own eyes. If their motivation was to save resources for us all world-wide then they could have had 2 off spring, taught them how to be frugal, and still saved resources. The reason people don't is because when you only have 2 you can afford to spend more on each.*
Second, there is an unspoken assumption that some people have, which is apparently a hold over from the Bible, that we should be fruitful and multiply. People forget that when that was written the human population was at best a few million. It's like me giving a commandment to my kid, "help me dig a pool", but apparently having forgotten to tell him not to keep digging forever, the kid is not smart enough to say "hmm, this made sense to dig when the hole was only so big, but clearly if this never stops this hole is going to be too big!" Now if you believe God is coming back with the commandment to stop then I guess you just keep on digging. But if you don't then you say "hmm, if we keep on multiplying eventually it is going to run up against finite resources." I am of the later group who does not believe any God is coming back to tell us to stop.
Third, I actually don't see any quality of life difference between 4 people living well, and 19 living more frugally. I don't see any prizes being given out for more just because it is more. As far as I'm concerned as long as our species survives, society improves, brilliant individuals are fostered and their ideas passed forward, that is all I care about. Not about numbers. I have one final comment on this below...
Of course when you look at consumption you have to look at everything, need for clean water, bodily waste removal, food consumption, cost to transport, use of medical services, etc., and if you plan to educate kids in our country, cost to send them to school, cost to support their unique hobbies, cost for transportation of their own families that can't fit in one small car, etc. This leads into my final comment/question:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/artic...iguration.html
"One pattern repeatedly observed in the literature is that as the number of siblings increases the intellectual development of subsequent siblings is impaired (operationalized typically by performance on standardized test scores) and, even more important, academic achievement decreases"
This has something I've been wondering about for a long time. I worry that children in large families lose their sense of individualism, or don't receive the degree of parental attention children do in smaller families. I'd love to see more studies done because if it turned out that smaller families result in far more intellectual stars, from the point of view of the evolution of our species, again I'd favor fewer people living richer lives vs larger numbers spreading the resources thinner.
Last edited by xdamage; 09-09-2009 at 02:47 PM.
I promise not to look down on you if you can laugh at lawyer jokes.- minnow
I'm kinda torn on this. I don't want to be too judgmental, but it does make me a little sick. I have a friend who grew up in a mormon family with tons of kids, and he said he felt like he didn't really get the personal attention he needed from his parents growing up, he felt kind of "lost in the group." My best friend grew up in an area with a strong mormon community and said a lot of his friends expressed similar sentiments. I don't see how you could adequately parent your kids when you have 15 of them.
I also don't understand why these people don't adopt some of their kids, if they're really so concerned with the state of the world.
Same sentiments, and agreed about the judgmental part. Putting aside the studies that show kids in larger families statistically do poorer academically (I linked such a study above)...
Really my main concern is that if we all agree to have about 2-3 kids our population is stable. If we all decided to have 10-12 kids (or whatever maximum we could achieve) and all of their kids do the same, and all of their kids, and so on, and you do the math, it cannot go on for long. After only 9 generations you have about billion people. 9 generations is not a long time. In just 3 more generations a Trillion (more then 100x the people on the earth now). If those people also insist there is no limits... why not go for 3 more generations and make it a Quadrillion (nearly 100,000 people for every 1 today)? Cross fingers there is no drought or new illness so we are knee deep in bodies, and why stop at a Quadrillion?
The only reason some people can have huge families is because everyone does not decide to do it. And mostly it doesn't harm us because so few do, but if more did we'd be in trouble. That is fine. Just they are doing it for themselves, also fine, but not for the better good of humanity.
Really if people are concerned about the efficiency of families there are options, communal living, and cities within cities, and that is fine. Efficiency concerns. But having huge numbers and secondarily justifying that such families have to share more resources is a very twisted way to claim one is doing it for efficiency reasons.
I promise not to look down on you if you can laugh at lawyer jokes.- minnow



I read a thread on another board about women that are addicted to being pregnant, considering that this woman has been pregnant almost all of her adult life I would say that she clearly is. When she gives birth this time she will have been pregnant for over 14 years!





'we' all have never historically had a norm of 10+ child families. large families have always been unusual. even the 12 sons of israel came from four different women rather than just one.
so it's a red herring to pretend that anyone anywhere claims that 10+ child families are what 'everyone' should do. that has never been advocated by anyone of any religious or social background.
being fruitful and multiplying means more than just popping out children-- it also means sharing the Good News through one's life and works.
this family is hardly going to spawn 10 million more such families, because history shows that's not what happens.
most women want 2-4 kids, and somewhat fewer want 1 kid or 4-6 kids. but historically most women do not have 10+ kids or even pregnancies.
as for 'addiction' to getting pregnant, i hope you feel the same about the far more numerous women 'addicted' to plastic surgery.




As for Mormons, I really don't wanna touch that one. I've heard plenty of abuse stories in that culture, from personal experiences with families in the LDS church to reading about and watching documentaries about the excommunicated polygamy cults. They're just different. Yes, holding an infant's head under running water to teach them to not cry is going to severely damage them. Yes, beating a child is going to damage them. Yes, telling your child they are dead to you is going to damage them. Is that related to having a large family? No, that's just beyond bad parenting.
I think we both agree that it's not better or worse to have 4 kids v 20+, but that it's just a personal choice for each family.
Yes, they are frugal out of necessity. They are also, in my experience, debt free. We should all consider frugality as necessary!
In my experience, they practice Eco-friendly (organic, composting) gardening. This recycles their "use of air" and provides a lot of that food they need to survive (also they use very few packaged foods and buy in bulk).
Cost of fuel. Yeah. Except for the Amish, more people means more cars. Some people travel a lot for business and use even more fuel. That's just part of being a person in Western society.
I'm happier with four kids, too. I'm definitely not going to be the next Michelle. I have one now and I love giving her all the attention. I just have seen people around me have psychologically sound large families that didn't lack for clothes, toys, education, or extracurricular activities. Which brings up another point - when there are double digit kids, there are a ... LOT... of recycled clothes and toys to go around.
There are religious groups out there (most of your cults) that are trying to multiply to take over the world through numbers. The double digit families (one baby at a time, not your octo-mom types) I have known and seen aren't trying to have more kids as much as they aren't trying not to. Yes, all of them in my experience have been Christian, and they say that each child is a gift from God for them to take care of. Again, I'm with you in that my personal choice is to use birth control between God's gifts, but they have a right to have as many kids as they can care for.
Clean water/waste removal: Rural families use water pumps with septic systems which take the water from their property, cycle it through for use, and let it drain back into the land it came from.
Food consumption: Organic gardening w/composting, buying food in bulk, staying away from packaged foods & fast food with all that wrapping/cardboard/plastic/processing & transportation byproducts...
Cost of Schooling: Homeschooling doesn't cost the taxpayers, and these families are also paying property taxes to educate other people's kids. I haven't met a large family that didn't home school. I'm an advocate of responsible homeschooling, which includes a professional curriculum (not just "let's open the bible and read... today"), yearly standardized testing, participation in extra-curricular academic groups, LOTS of socialization... Also, when a child receives teaching catered to their learning style and on a one-on-one level, they don't have to spend 6 hours a day staring at a blackboard and have more time for hands on learning, socialization activities, and pursuing their own interests.
Unique Hobbies: The families I have known do have shared interests, and I've known sisters to work together on a craft project, brothers to work together on a welding project, etc. They participate in 4H a lot, which is a program mostly practiced in rural areas where kids join a hobby-club like photography, animals, cooking, other crafts... The kids are always working on something. It's impossible to have a double digit family house and nothing to do!
I did a lot of study-searching too. I read the synopsis you linked to. The studies that I did find were mostly scientific neurological studies that explained their negative findings on the assumption that most large families were of a lower socioeconomic level. For instance, http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/People-from-large-families-may-have-greater-risk-of-Alzheimers-9962-1/ which said "families with five or more children were more likely to be from the lower socioeconomic levels, and therefore more likely to have poor growth rates,"
So, the positive view on having a large family seems to only be shared by those with large families or people like me who have been around large families. Such as this mom of a large family: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/hom...-friendly.html
Seeing large families that home school and were devoted to raising their children, I observed that they provided a loving environment where the children had their parents' attention and the attention of their siblings. The families I knew had a self employed father and a stay at home mother. They educated, socialized, and nurtured their children.
It's not something I'm going to do! It is something I've seen people do successfully.
Yes, I'm real.
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