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I saw this in the headlines today: ’18 Kids & Counting’ Mom Michelle Duggar Hospitalized In Arkansas.
Actually, after shooting out that many kids, it’s a wonder 42-year-old Mrs. Duggar hasn’t been hospitalized for other complications before.
“This weekend, Michelle Duggar was admitted to an Arkansas hospital due to gallbladder issues,” a rep for TLC told People. “The pain from a gallstone was generating some contractions. Just to be safe, she was airlifted a Little Rock, Ark., hospital, so that in the unlikely event that she had to be delivered early, she would be close to a NICU center.”
Although Michelle remains hospitalized, the network spokesperson said both mom and baby are doing fine
Many people criticize the Duggars on several fronts, from their “quiverfull” religious beliefs for overprocreating to putting a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint on the increasingly overpopulated, under-resourced world. I’ve made fun of them as well, but I can’t really say much about over-sized families because my late mom is one of 14 children (she’s third from the right in the back row)…
I couldn’t find a photo with all 14, but those three kids in the photo are the children of two of the siblings. The child on the right, Dennis, is about the same age as my grandparent’s youngest child.
As you can tell by the age of the photo, quite a few of my aunts and uncles were born and raised during the Great Depression — no welfare, no food stamps back then — my grandfather, who was born in Barbados, came to the US through Ellis Island like many during that period. He held several jobs, including one as a railroad porter.
My family was just poor like everyone else in their Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, NY neighborhood, which was racially and ethnically diverse at that time (ironically it is becoming diverse again now).
During family get-togethers I hear the stories of the hand-me-down clothes, second- or third-hand broken-down bikes, sacks of potatoes, beans and rice as diet staples, the trolleys, and the milkman’s cart, etc. A German neighbor of theirs was always giving the kids baked goods. It’s rich oral family history; a snapshot in time from those days in Brooklyn.
But they were happy and self-sufficient and neighbors all pitched in with one another during that time, and certainly during the 40s and 50s, did live well since the older kids grew up, moved out and those who were old enough in the household went to work.
As far as I know there was no religious quiverfull reason for having so many kids; we found out many years later my grandfather was Jehovah’s Witness; my grandmother, I believe, was a rarely practicing Episcopalian. But clearly there was no attempt at birth control, either.
So I can’t imagine having 14 kids, but somehow my grandmother did it. In fact, when my mom was born, it was in the house — my grandmother hid her pregnancy because she thought it was embarrassing to be pregnant yet again. But she went on to have more, lol.
By the way, none of my cousins is shooting them out like grandma or Mrs. Duggar.
20 Comments
Money or No MoneyPeople really knew how to dress in that time. What slobs we are now.
it was a far different timeIt was a far different time when your grandparents had 14 children. Notice how you pointed out that the current generation of your family is not proceeding along the same route.
There is no reason for the Duggars to be doing what they are doing. From what I understand one of their children is now married and already starting the whole process over again.
So, the two Duggards have now multiplied their own footprint on the earth by 10 times and counting.
We need fewer people on this earth, not more. But, I guess it would be tragic if the “fewer” came from the slimming down of the ranks of the white evangelicals.
No comparisonWomen of your mother’s generation (and my mother’s)had little choice of if and when to procreate. The menfolk expected sex and the women, who were largely dependent on the men for support, had little choice but to provide it. Aside from condoms there was no birth control, and even after the pill came out, Catholic families like my own wouldn’t use it. My mother went to her family doctor, who was also a member of our parish and he refused to prescribe it for her. She went on to have two more kids, for a total of 8, with my alcoholic, unemployed father.
The Duggars seriously peeve me to no end, as does the cable network that worships her fertile uterus and who provide them with the means to continue shooting out those kids.
Your Mom’s so pretty!I can see the resemblance in you too.
hmmmThere are six kids in my family (ages 28 through 36 which includes one set of twins). We are not Catholic, my parents just loved kids! I always think it’s strange when friends or acquaintances of mine have 4 or more children….then I realize how many siblings I have.
Power to the PeopleWow, what a beautiful family. I can only imagine what their family reunions were like. I am an only child, son of two only children and my biggest regret on earth is not having siblings, aunts, or uncles. Bravo to the Duggar family, may they make it to twenty.
The whole carbon print thing is BS, the world may be overpopulated but it is a problem in the developing world, not the West. Developed nations like Italy, France, Russia, US, South Korea, and Japan are facing dangerous population decline. In places like Russia population decline is a national emergency, social services fail when one taxpayer must support two parents, four grandparents, and a some guy who doesn’t work.
Nothing remotely wrong with the Duggards, they brought eighteen new lives into the world and should be commended for doing so. If you don’t like it, don’t have kids. Those who attack them for somehow hurting the earth, can bathe in their moral superiority while rotting alone and forgotten in a nursing home.
And I used to think it was weirdthat my paternal grandfather was one of nine. All of my grandparents were part of large broods with six as the minimum. Although in the case of my paternal grandparents, not all survived to adulthood. As was pointed out, women back then didn’t have much choice. Then of course there’s my paternal grandmother who had six kids and two miscarriages. They were catholic. As always, none of the current generation is following the same path, although my parents would have come close if not for the two miscarriages.
Nail, hammer, **TWAK**But, I guess it would be tragic if the “fewer” came from the slimming down of the ranks of the white evangelicals.
You win the internetz for truth told.
Back when I was trying to be straight, and married to a man, one of the things we originally agreed upon was, “no kids.” Two years later he was telling me that brown people were outbreeding white people and didn’t I want smart white people like us to have kids to balance it all out and I should go off birth control.
Yeah, that marriage didn’t end very well. He didn’t start out as a racist asshole; I have no idea what happened.
Pam, there is a huge difference between the Duggars today, and those big families in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, when 1) birth control wasn’t readily available as it is now, especially to low income and minority families, 2) infant and childhood mortality rates were higher and 3) the American carbon footprint wasn’t nearly what it is now. I consider people like the Duggars in 2009 to be immoral and a danger to the planet. It’s not simply that they’re having 18+ children, it’s that they’re doing so in a culture and country that consumes 76% more of the world’s resources than developing countries. Overpopulation in developed countries is a major cause of increased carbon emissions; it’s double the global average. Michelle Duggar’s brood of 19 will have the carbon output of almost 972,000 Haitians, and that’s only if none of them reproduce, which sadly, isn’t likely. The fact that they’re doing it specifically to fulfill a racist, misogynist political agenda barely veiled as religion just makes it stink that much worse. Such selfishness. Networks like TLC, which makes heroes out of ejaculatory chance, are not helping humanity or the planet with their glorification of the Cult of Litter Worship.
And by the wayThe World Food Crisis
Americans most wasteful nation with our food.
Global drought levels.
I’m doing my part by conserving resources, and by not having children. That’s not “moral superiority,” that’s common sense at this point.
I am an only child……and neither of my parents, aged 90, is “rotting alone and forgotten in a nursing home”, even though both are in need of assistance.
Please come up with a more logical defense of the Duggars.
My hubby is one of 11 kidsThey were very poor, and his father died at 35 yo, then he has about 5 half siblings with a brutal nasty step father he couldn’t stand.
Both sides of my family had kids by the dozen (hey, I’m half Mormon.) A lot of that was agricultural families had many kids just to do all the work, and with diseases and miscarriages you needed big families to insure you had adult kids to care for you in old age. Lack of any or any reliable birth control is also significant, after the information of the pill was widely available, family sizes decreased dramaticly. I would have been from a bigger family but my mother contracted Mumps (in her ovaries) before my birth, and they didn’t expect she would even have had one more child. She wanted 6 kids and had 3.
Damn, this is funnyMy Mom had 2 kids, Granny had 4, and my great grandmother had 8.
I have some great aunts that had 6-8 kids but most of the family that I grew up with had 2-3 kids, that was it.
Do not know full story of Duggars….but in relating them to CA 'families' where parents have 1-5 kids, not wanted, live in squalor in METH homes… parents in and out of prison….and since way fewer than half of US families have a father in the home, as long as none are in prison, and all were wanted, I call that a good successful family no matter what size it is.
There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing……that, with each baby boy she produces, there’s a higher and higher likelihood that child will be gay.
If one of her kids is gay, perhaps there’s some hope for that child to open the families eyes to the rather hateful religious outlook they practice.
Not bloody likely.More likely the kid gets thrown out on the street or sent to an “ex-gay” camp.
Fascinating and cool, PamThanks for posting about this — I find it fascinating how even one generation removed we can have lost so many details of what our families were like (my family at least), and the times they lived in.
I think of my forebears constantly these days given the economy. My grandmas would have loved it, I think, to see all their wisdom coming home to roost (Wallstreet was a pile of hot air in their opinion going way back, and they warned us about how little we really knew about living in difficult times). (“No molasses sandwiches for you these days”).
I hope you have been able to write down or record some of that oral history. Biggest regret of mine is that we did not. We should have just plunked them down with some photo albums or a history book or pictures from the teens-30s, and let em go to it.
PS — Ellis Island roots for me too! And your mom is so cute in the photo, and yes there is a strong resemblance!
Echo that sentimentWhen you look at say, home movies of the 50s and 60s or even footage of people in general, EVERYONE is amazingly dressed. Even for Sunday strolls. We all look like shit now in comparison.
Wait a secI’ve watched that show and I’ve NEVER seen them espousing anything “hateful” in the least. True, we can be horrified by their seemingly indifferent attitude to overpopulation and sexual irresponsibility, but the husband DOES provide for his own family.
Creation Museum much?I was appalled when TLC, formerly known as “The Learning Channel,” actually followed this brood of breeders when the went to visit the Creation Museum and espoused the ignorant, politically and socially narrow-minded creationist mindset. How any cable channel could claim to have even a partial teaching mission and broadcast that crap was simply shocking.
As for “providing” for his family – the Duggars are landlords, that’s it. They own property, they do not produce anything of value into the society. On top of that, they espouse misogynistic attitudes toward women’s “modesty” and their role in society.
I was raised Catholic, and 5 – 6 kids was the norm, even in the 70s. My family, with only two children, was considered odd, and it was simply assumed my parents had a physical problem conceiving (and they did – it was spelled V-A-S-E-C-T-O-M-Y). As Ma said about the overly aggressive breeder family in our school, who finished with 15 or 16 kids, if you don’t want to use birth control, how about self-control? Roll over, have a headache, say no.
The difference between the Duggars and families of past ages is that they are deliberately producing as many spawn as possible, because they believe they are righteous and moral for doing so. Never mind that when God allegedly said that we should “be fruitful and multiply” there was no specific requirement to keep doing so well after it was no longer necessary.
As stated above, as long as they’re able to support themselvesI grew up in the 70′s in an area where four or five was the norm, and many families had 6 – 9 kids. One family had 16! But, as far as I know, they were all self-sufficient. One family lost their father, so I imagine they received some type of assistance.
The family of 16 was headed by an airline pilot, so he was not making low wages by any means (in those days, they were very well paid). But they lived in a very large house in a working class neighborhood. Tuition at the local Catholic school was charged per family, not per kid. When that changed, they enrolled in public schools.
I do remember that this family took up 2 pews at Sunday mass. The mother always looked really tired.