19 Kids and Counting

Who are the Duggars?

The late 80s were a trippy time for all of us, what with the Cold War and Milli Vanilli and everyone being high on Aqua Net fumes. It was during this time that Jim Bob Duggar, a seventeen-year-old dirt poor Christian school student, met Michelle Roaurk, a fifteen-year-old cheerleader who mowed the lawn wearing a bikini top and cut-offs and caused the neighbor lady to hate her because she attracted the neighbor husband's attention (which, Michelle would later imply, was entirely her fault, and certainly the pervy adult next door had no responsibility to keep his eyes in his own nasty head. It's the same line of reasoning that leads to Michelle agreeing that a female infant's bare legs are sinfully enticing.) They fell in love, they married, they had a baby young and applied a stellar work ethic to making a life for their family.

Then, Michelle had a miscarriage. It's a hard thing, but a fairly common one in the life of a fertile woman. Michelle had the bad luck to then fall into the hands of a quack who told her that the miscarriage was God's punishment for having taken the pill. They were devastated to think that they had killed their child, but once they repented they were rewarded with not just a full-term pregnancy, but a healthy set of twins. Convinced that they had received God's acceptance of their penance, they were pulled into the Quiverfull Movement, and the next thing you know they have (currently) nineteen children and make a living making a t.v. show demonstrating their superiority to the heathens among them.

What is the Quiverfull Movement?

It's a radical right wing Christian movement that takes it's name from a biblical passage that declares a man with many sons as being like a warrior with a quiverful of arrows. They declare their philosophy as one in which they leave God to "open and close" women's wombs as He so chooses, but they also employ methods like limited breast feeding and cycle charting to pin-point the optimal time of conception, and thus ensure that "God opens wombs" very frequently. They are also often affiliated with White Supremesist groups, with the idea being to out breed non-white, non-Christian people. The Duggars currently deny being Quiverfull, but everything they say and do is part of the philosophy, and they haven't always been so demure about it, having identified that way in the past.

Why so mean? They seem like a well-behaved, clean-cut, all-American family; maybe if more families were like that things would be better in this culture.

Because sometimes being mean is fun? But seriously: The Duggars show the world an appealingly wholesome image, and their brood of attractive, obedient, smiling children can be very alluring, but they are deceptively skilled at image craft. Watch the very first special, and compare it to the weekly show. Michelle's hideous permed mullet and dowdy dress has been replaced by a somewhat more modern appearance, and the girls have left behind their Little House on the Prairie look for "modern modest." They may or may not have (technically) eschewed the Quiverfull principles they once had, and they may or may not have stopped following the child training (although it's telling that they still use that particular word) system of the Pearls, who advocate beating children with plumbing lines and dowels, starting from the time they are old enough to start rolling off a blanket on the floor (about four months, in other words) to teach them unquestioning obedience to their father. I could go on (and on), but this is the gist of it: the Duggars are missionaries (check out the episodes in which they go to save the savages in South America) who feel no compunction about misrepresenting themselves if it will serve their God as well as the ego of the Patriarch of the household, Jim Bob. And the fact that the money and free things (like a huge new house) they get out of the deal just makes it that much sweeter. Jim Bob has, in his lifetime, been a salesman and a politician; it would be bad news for people to buy what he's selling with his children's sweet little smiles.

What's the 'Buddy System?'

Michelle Duggar nurses her babies for about six months. What happens then is a bit controversial; back before the early Duggar specials were re-edited to make them seem less fundified and the Duggars were openly identifying as Quiverfull, most people understood that Michelle weaned at six months so as to conceive again; now, the official party line is that six months is when her milk dries up. Either way, at six months the baby is handed off to a 'buddy,' who is responsible for his or her care. This system is allegedly just the big kids lending a hand, but listen to Michelle explain how the big buddy gets the little ones up, dresses them, feeds them their meals, and supervises their homeschooling, baths, and bedtime. Then watch those little details, like Jackson clinging to Jana for comfort after he was lost in the airport (while his parents laugh blithely in the background) or Jennifer crying for Jill whenever she's upset. You can call it being a buddy all you want -- the truth of the matter is that those girls are parenting their little siblings (on top of running the household). Commentators are already dreading what will happen to little Josie once she goes home to the chaos of the Duggar household and is passed off to one of the older girls for rearing. Let's hope it's twenty-year-old Jana who is put in charge, and not twelve-year-old Joy Anna.

More to come . . .