The Duggars: 18 Kids… And Stop Counting!!!

By Faith Parker

By now most Americans have heard of the television series “19 Kids and Counting.” The show first aired on September 29, 2008 under the title “18 Kids and Counting” and is a reality show on the TLC network that follows the life of a family with nineteen children.And the show changes the its title every time another child is born. All nineteen of these children were conceived by the same parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. The family consists of nine girls and ten boys (including two sets of fraternal twins), all who have names beginning with the letter “J”.

The average American family consists of two or three children, but for the Duggars, two or three was obviously not enough. The endless cycle of child birth began when Jim Bob and Michelle had a miscarriage after their eldest son Josh was born. They believed that the miscarriage occurred because Michelle was on birth control, so they gave up using contraception and decided “to allow God to determine the number of children” they would have.

This Christian based theory that God would not give them more than they can handle is absolutely absurd. At the birth of their nineteenth child, Josie, both the baby’s and the mother’s health was put to the test.

Josie was born three months early via emergency C-section and weighed 1 lb. 6 oz. at birth. The child was so sick she had to spend the first six months of her life in the hospital hooked up to machines while Michelle was bedridden for three of those months. I think this just might have been God’s way of telling the Duggars to stop having babies.

Doctors continue to warn this forty-five year old mother that it is not safe to continue having children at her age, but she just does not want to hear it. Every season Americans hope and pray that this family will stop reproducing, but sure enough on November 8, 2011 Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar announced that they are pregnant with number twenty. That’s right, another “J” name to add to the list.

The children of this family are not getting the proper love, support, and attention that a child deserves. Instead of having a family with two parents running the household, Jim Bob and Michelle assign and older child to a younger sibling and make them take care of that child’s primary needs. Teenagers cannot fully experience all that their teenage years have to offer if they are forced into unwanted parenthood. This shows lack of responsibility by these two parents and I think that it should be seen as a form of child abuse. They are truly taking the beautiful experience of creating a family to the extreme are using it to make money. It is clear to me that they only keep having children so that they will get more publicity and attention.

The new baby is expected to arrive in April of 2012. What this really means is that Michelle Duggar could go into labor during any time come the new year. All that is left for viewers to do now is wait and see what happens to this poor unborn child. Hopefully this will be the last child these two parents conceive and this past child won’t be responsible for parenting another sibling