Pendragons Princess

http://www.parentdish.com/2008/12/11/duggar-family-how-they-do-it/

Well, it looks like Michelle will be popping out tiny mouth #18 in January of 2009 and already the media is swarming. After reading a number of comments on the news article posted at ParentDish, it is not surprising to me that some people endorse the craziness of having to live with seventeen children. Then I decided to visit the Duggar’s home website (http://www.duggarfamily.com/) where Jim Bob has a rather nice slide show of his family and the inside of their house. What first struck me was that all of the girls had to share one bedroom, while the boys had to share another bedroom (The first thing that came to my mind was communal living). Those kids do not have much personal or private space of their own, living on top of each other like that. On the positive side, I like the inside layout of the house which the Duggars themselves built, although I would have added a few turrets on the outside. The kids are obviously well behaved, but the older children in their teen years having to take care of the younger children plus the newest baby doesn’t seem right, playing the role of surrogate parents. Jim Bob and Michelle have a very unique system of control over their offspring that make them appear like robots instead of human. Since their children are isolated from the rest of world and differing ideologies and values, it makes me wonder how they will cope with the secular world when they hit their adult years. It probably won’t be so bad for the girls - they will no doubt wind up getting married at the age of 18 or so and squeeze out lots of babies, but the boys will have to get a job of some kind in order to support their wives and children.

The emotional relationship between Jim Bob and Michelle is all fine and well with the leaving of little love notes in unexpected places but his comment of “And she looks really cute when she’s pregnant.” makes my skin crawl. Hey, even I leave little notes and candies and ice cream scoops for my husband but at least I can do so knowing he would not say anything stupid like “You’d look really cute if you were pregnant.” He once mentioned to me even if he did want kids it would have to be only one and that it could not stay in the same room 24/7 making demands of all kinds. Thank goodness we won’t ever have to worry about that.