What Pushes My Buttons

What ever happened to Eight is Enough???

I was skimming across People magazine the other day and saw this article about the Duggar family. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are 40 year old parents who live in Arkansas. (Jim Bob is a real estate agent). You would think they were the average family, living the average American life.

Your guess would be that they have 3, 4, maybe 5 kids right?

Nah, keep going.

6, 7?

Nope.

9, 10?

You'll need more than 2 hands.

12, 13???

Ha...not there yet.

15???

Close...but no cigar.

Let's try 16 kids...with a 17th on the way!!!!!! (Click for a bigger picture)

The Duggar clan

17 fuckin kids!!! The oldest is 19 years old. Two sets of twins.

According to the family, after the birth of child #1 they "thought we'd leave the decision about how many children to have up to God".

Smart move.

While I'm not one to judge them for populating this world, I can criticize them in the naming of their children. They named all their children with the letter J. I hate when people do that. Its bad enough when you do that with three or four children. But 17??? What the fuck?

Joshua, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, and to be born Jennifer Danielle.

Throw in Jim Bob as the dad and that's 18 people in the family with the letter J. Why doesn't the wife just change her name from Michelle to something with a J? Make it a clean fuckin sweep. Or did they use up all the J names already?

According to the mother she wants even more!! Good move. Why don't you just populate the entire town while you're at it. I mean at this point, once your children start having children you know damn well incest is gonna run rapid.

Scene: county fairgrounds. behind the bleachers. teenage boy and girl about to make out.

Girl: wait...before we do this, are you a Duggar by any chance???

Boy: why yes I am. What bout' you?

Girl: I am Tooo!

Commence making out.

End Scene.

The family even has their own website, Duggar Family.com and are celebrities thanks to numerous appearances on TV. They even have their own show on the Discovery Health Channel.

Listen people...let's not encourage them. Let's not celebrate this as a "glorious gift from God". I happen to think this is child imprisonment at its highest. Don't believe me. Look at this picture:



Every Duggar child "has" to start on violin at age 4. Does anyone else see something fucked up in that? I mean I know you have to teach them to do chores around the house at a young age, like laundry, cook, clean etc, especially when you have a family that big. But forcing them to play an instrument? Why not just let them pick it up and play when they're curious about it?

Look at the faces on some of the children (click the pic for a bigger view). They don't look too thrilled to be playing do they??? I mean, isn't that basically a form of child abuse by forcing them to do things they necessarily don't want to do? No? Am I totally off base here?

Celebrate them if you'd like. Praise them for populating the world with "god's greatest gift". I'm sure they're good, honest people just trying to find joy in their lives. But what concerns me is the mental state of their children. How can you possible give love, affection and attention to 17 children!!! You can't. You know damn well some of those children will grow up to have serious mental problems based on neglect or from constantly being in the media spotlight. You can see it in their faces already. Some of the younger children look scared shitless in that picture. Like if they didn't pick up the violin they'd be beaten with a wire hanger.

I'm not accusing them of abusing their children physically, but mentally how can they not be??? It's bad enough a family of 3 or 4 has to deal with middle child syndrome. What about a family of 17?