1:20 p.m. - 2006-06-22
A Trip Down The Family Planning Aisle Would Not Be a Bad Thing
About a week and a half ago, during a remote control-guided trip across the channels, I became immersed in a documentary on the Discovery Channel called "Fourteen Kids and Pregnant Again!" I ask you, who on earth could resist such a title?
I had a lot to do that day, so I TiVo'd it to be able to watch it again later, in case I missed parts. I have been obsessed with it ever since. It chronicles the everyday life of the Duggar family, the parents of whom cannot be older than 40 -- and indeed, they have 14 kids, and she's pregnant again. (During the course of the doc, she gives birth, and then you learn that she's... yep, pregnant again.)
What posesses people to do this? Well, God, in their case. They're not Mormon, as you might have guessed, but some variety of Christian, holding church services in their very own living room each Sunday.
If you ever get a chance to catch this, I highly recommend that you watch it. I can't even begin to describe the creepiness of it all: the way all the girls wear big plaid dresses with Peter Pan collars; the way one of the kids, when talking about chores, proclaims, "I think it's fun to help!"; the trip to the grocery store in the big conversion van that needed to have seats temporarily removed in order to transport the $850 worth of groceries they'd be buying; their secret recipe for Dad's favorite, Tater Tot Casserole; the shiny, happy, beatific smiles on all the kids; the obvious and sad lack of television in the house... these images, and more, continue to haunt me.
And the questions I have!! How does a family afford this? Aren't you afraid one of these kids is going to have enough and murder you all in your beds one night? How do you ever get time to continue to procreate? And, is a condom really such a bad thing?
http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/duggarfamily.html
