Meet the Duggars

One day I was folding laundry and came upon a show on TLC about a lady that had like eighteen kids. It sucked me in and I watched the whole thing in amazement. How their house was run, how she corrected her kids, what they were being taught, how they managed a budget and on and on. Having that many children is never a challenge I would personally undertake. I know full well that I have met my max with the soon-to-be three children I have been blessed with. In fact, I have been skeptical of super-sized families in the past. I wondered how the heck one could care for each child's physical, emotional, and spiritual needs in the ways each child needed and deserved. However, I found myself having a lot of respect for this woman. Yes, she has many, many children, which outwardly may seem irresponsible. But she really seemed to be a good mom with pure and loving motives. She was not just having kids because she's irresponsible, but because she believes in her contributions as a mother.

As I was looking around the Internet for a picture of her, I saw a whole bunch of articles ripping her apart. It made me pretty sad. Here is a woman who is so clearly trying her best to do what she believes to be good, just in an unconventional way, and she was being judged so harshly based just on outward appearances. Sure her hair and fashion are a little kooky and her voice a little too syrupy. But there are people out there with one or two kids that are seriously crappy parents. Are crappy parents more acceptable because the number of children they bear are more of the social norm?

Justin showed me a clip from CNN about a seven year old that stole a car and went joy-riding, crashing into several other cars. When interviewed he said it was fun to do bad stuff. He said he didn't feel sorry for endangering people or destroying his grandmother's car. But if he must be punished, he thought maybe he should lose video game privileges for the weekend. Are tons of articles being dedicated to his mothers obvious shortcomings as a parent? No they aren't, because she has one, socially-acceptable, wannabe bad-boy child. Instead we all just shake our heads and say, "Kids these days, what's this world coming to?" and go about our business. Kids these days, oftentimes are indulged and neglected by their parents, left to have society to tell them what's normal and what to believe. If Michelle Duggar, who has dedicated her life to the rearing of healthy, happy, stable children and is proving to be successful at it, wants to keep bringing babies into this world, more power to her. Not many parents can navigate the challenges of having such a large family and do it well. It's definitely not for me, but I hope I can be the type of mother to my three that she is to her eighteen.