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[mythbuster]

Here's the latest interview with the 'fam
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20134584/
I just find it sad that the kids need to sign up for time with mom. And they have the kids doing all the cooking!

[zoelouise]

Washing your hair too often is bad for it.

Particularly if it's curly.

[fiona]

Washing your hair too often is bad for it.

Particularly if it's curly.

So having 17 kids could be a good rationale for not washing your hair, thereby saving on shampoo, water, and helping the environment. Ah, now I am coming to understand all things.

The Fiona, about to wash my tresses with herb-flavored shampoo

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

Washing your hair too often is bad for it.

Particularly if it's curly.

So having 17 kids could be a good rationale for not washing your hair, thereby saving on shampoo, water, and helping the environment. Ah, now I am coming to understand all things.

The Fiona, about to wash my tresses with herb-flavored shampoo

Why in dog's name are you tasting your shampoo?

[contemporary_]

Best refrain from speculations about them, including the loathesome suggestion that somehow their views are motivated by racism ('encroaching melanin').

Kay Sixteen, please refrain from responding to writing you haven't understood.  If I didn't need to correct your gross misrepresentation of what I wrote, it would save me time.  Thanks.

While I have yet to completely discount the literacy and intellectual ability of sloppy readers on this forum, I was explicit certain beliefs associated with the Quverfull community cannot be assumed and are not assumed about this family, specifically the race issue.  Jim Bob's politics on the other hand are a matter of public record. 

Noodled, thanks for responding to Francie's comments about reproductive rights.  I didn't have time to review all the postings, but I felt pretty confident no one had suggested reproductive rights be curtailed.  In fact, if anyone is likely to want to curtail rights, wouldn't it be those who hold an anti-choice position?  Can we not assume this of natalists generally, Quiverfull or not?

[anthroid]

...most poor families and many middle class ones are being constantly judged against alleged "clinically proven" standards of behavior for normality, and those families are subject to state intervention if they don't meet the mental health community's incredibly narrow standards for normality...

Oh my.  What an interesting statement!  I think you and I could debate this one for a while. 

No kidding, slac_vap. It runs so contrary to my many experiences of having to "turn over" my former high school students to their drug-addled and violence-prone mothers (not a single father for a single student of mine at that school) that I wondered what experiences Anthroid is mentally referencing.

A number of years as a family therapist in the Chicago area working with the poor.  I guess we have had different experiences with the state.  And I wonder now about your judgments, noodled...criticizing the Duggars AND now criticizing single mothers who you determine to be drug addled and violent?  Hmmm....not much room there for tolerance or understanding.  Pretty narrow views.

They were drug-addled and violent! I make no apology for my wanting to help those students who had every reason not to want to go home.

I had said I wouldn't discuss this on this particular thread, and then I did.  I should not have, and I certainly did not intend to insult anyone in particular or make anyone storm off in a huff....I am sorry for inserting my intellectual views (and that's what they are, based on many years of experience with such families as noodled described as well as completely idiotic policy makers) after I said I wouldn't.  So once again I apologize, particularly to slac_vap and noodled.  Nothing personal at all was intended, but I think maybe I snuck something of a bad tone in there.  I respect slac_vap and noodled tremendously.

[kaysixteen]

What's a 'natalist', friend?

In any case, while I support the Duggars' right to engage in quiverite theology, even while not believing in it myself, I must confess I got quite a chuckle today when a DJ on a Boston station announced the news of the birth of Duggar J-XVII-- complete to the dulcet tones of 'Dueling Banjos' in the background.  Sorrta gives a new deliverance to the whole notion.

[dolljepopp]

Hmmm.

I wonder if that DJ was not making a snarky commentary on the Duggars. That's how I would have taken it, but I didn't hear the show, obviously.

[yellowtractor]

What's a 'natalist', friend?

In any case, while I support the Duggars' right to engage in quiverite theology, even while not believing in it myself, I must confess I got quite a chuckle today when a DJ on a Boston station announced the news of the birth of Duggar J-XVII-- complete to the dulcet tones of 'Dueling Banjos' in the background.  Sorrta gives a new deliverance to the whole notion.

I initially misread your last line as "...a new deliverance to the whole nation."  I like this too.  We are all Duggars, or will be, a few generations on.

[comp_queen]

But apparently, some academics here on the forum endorse the reproductive rights only for prochoice vegan atheists for those whose politics coincide with their own.

That's pretty funny, Francie. I suspect that there are some exceptions. No, I know there are some exceptions.

I feel just fine looking askance at this family, because I would look askance at them anyway. It's not like I'm in a position to restrict their rights to reproduce (and nor would I want to, really), but they certainly are out to get folks like me. Those arrows are pointed right at my little family.

cbl

I have to respond here.  As forumites know, I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian denomination (okay so the Duggars make me look like a liberal atheist, but I'm making a kind and generous point here).  

Yes, all the churches I've attended would say that things like abortion and homosexuality are sins . . . BUT every church I've ever attended also holds roughly 45 things I do on a daily basis to be sins.  That's one of the central tenets of Christianity, that all humans are sinners, none are perfect, and that it's a gigantic waste of time (and a sin besides, interestingly enough) for one human to "point arrows" at any other human.  The relevant Scripture goes something like "Judge not so that you are not judged."  

I'm not proselytizing here by the way, just sharing.

Any church that I would attend, and that is consistent with the Bible's internal logic, would be equally happy to welcome a Duggar-type family, a CBL-type family, a well-dressed white family, a single Hispanic mom who shows up at church still in a work uniform, an interracial family . . . you get the idea.  

CQ gets off soapbox yet hopes people will remember that most Christians do not possess arrows :)

[smart_e_pantz]

I don't have a problem with the 17 kids per se...

I have a problem with the fact that Ma and Pa Duggar have 17 kids that they basically aren't raising.  They wean the tots at 6 months and pass them off to a sibling to raise.  They engage in nothing short of child abuse so that the wee tots don't leave the little square carpet in an attempt to explore their surroundings.  From a feminist perspective, I don't give a crap that Ma Duggar has accepted a more traditional approach to her life and marriage.  I do feel sorry that their daughters--and sons--are essentially being forced into that lifestyle without any knowledge that they can be anything more than incubators.

[kaysixteen]

Smarty has got a point, and that is the big objection I have with families like this, the way the children are circumscribed into the program.  The oldest Duggar quiver is 19 now, I cannot recall whether male or female, but, in any case, what if s/he decides s/he wants to leave home now, go to college (heaven forfend), or even just depart for the sake of pursuing a lifestyle at least somewhat different from mom and dad's?  Mesuspects that mom and dad will not think this is the greatest idea since sliced cheese, and, well... what will the kid have to sacrifice, in terms of his relationship to his family, to do so?   S/he might even be told that it is his/her duty to stay at home and help with the younger kids, and it would be disobedience to God to do differently.

Don't even get me started on the topic of 'arranged marriage', which is making a comeback in certain conservative Christian circles here, though I do not know enough about the Duggars to know whether they advocate it.

[scheherazade]

It's not how I would raise my kids (although it's how all kids were raised up until fairly recently, and it produced self-reliant, responsible adults, but that's besides the point).  However, I thin it's going a bit far to say it's close to child abuse.  It's nowhere near child abuse.  I've seen abused kids far too often, and the Duggars aren't it.  Let's keep some perspective.

[smurfette]

OK, sanctimonious horde.  As Americans, we are already using more natural resources than a family in Bangladesh with 17 kids.  Kids per se aren't the problem.  Carbon, consumerism, etc. are the problem.

Actually, I would have a lot less of a problem with a family in Bangladesh having 17 kids, precisely because of how much westerners consume. 17 kids in America will certainly leave a large ecological footprint.

Am I being judgemental? Hell yes. I think these people are nuts to have that many kids. I think having 17 cats would be sort of nutty too...

[scheherazade]

I propose a compromise.

The Duggars adopt a family of 17 from Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi agree to be evangelicals.  The Duggars agree not to make them get perms.