Isn't it #17?

They creep me out. They all look like clones of the mom and dad.

Yeah, those folks live a little bit north of me. I saw the news about the arrival of their 17th last week.

I graduated from a small Catholic school in 1986 and I new families with 16, 15, and 11 kids (those are just the biggest ones I can think of offhand). Since I was an only child, it was pretty odd to me at the time, but those families had farms (cattle and dairy), they all worked hard, made great grades, went to college, and are generally good, nice people.

They didn't give all the kids names that began with the same letter as their dad. (I tend to wonder why the Duggars didn't at least give the girls 'M' names to match their mom.)

And they never, ever would have thought it was worth being on the national news.

For a minute there I thought "Shit, 18!? They just had a kid last week! Buncha freaks."

It' not a womb. It's a clown car.

Good thing we in America don't believe in telling people how to run their womb. Abort or have 20 of the damn things, just do it for the right reasons.

Tonight there was a profile on TV about the Arndt family, with 14 children, also quite religious but not in the same way as the Duggars.

They have multiple family businesses, including a freelance court reporting service, and they run a church out of their home. It is called, coincidentally, "Safe At Home Church."

Oh, also like the Duggars, they homeschool all their kids.

I dunno, though. Without the Little House on the Prairie clothes and all the quivering, it seems kind of blah to me.

If I had to homeschool 17 kids, they'd all be dumb as rocks.

Well, with that many kids, homeschooling is no doubt cheaper.

Seriously, three kids is the hardest number to have. Every one I know with a large family tells me this.

I stopped at three.

I watched the thing about the Arndt family. The dad said that there's no prohibition against the children going to college, but it's not someting they really think about. Great.

16 siblings kinda sounds like fun, in the abstract. Having to rock those dresses and that hair, however- not cool. I cry fashion tears on their behalf.

I'm from a family of 7 and that can be the loneliest number of them all.

I want to scream at these parents but giving them the benefit of a doubt seems fair because I don't know them. Although allowing their family story to become a "story" says a lot about the kind of people they are. IMHO.

I can only hope they are able to cope with growing up together, and that they have at least marginally healthy parents.

16 siblings kinda sounds like fun, in the abstract.

I briefly dated a woman recently who was the 3rd of 5 children. She said it was really tough because they all felt anonymous and like they had to compete with each other for their parents' time and attention. They were Mormon at the time, which may or may not have had something to do with it, but I bet that the middle Dugger children feel like their parents barely know their name beyond the convenient first letter.

Also, I don't know what the hell is wrong with these people mentally, or why a woman would want to be pregnant for half of her adult life, but I really wish they'd stop churning out creepy Republicans.

1994 must have been a tough year on the J-name inspiration front with poor Jinger Duggar.

Jinger's 13, and probably glad to be homeschooled with a name like that. You know s/he's got to be thinking, "if I were an only child, would they have named me 'Jinger'? Fuck, no. Assholes."

on preview, yes.

I bet that the middle Dugger children feel like their parents barely know their name beyond the convenient first letter.

Probably not, actually, since they're all with each other all. the. time.

Everyone knows that having exactly two female children is the only correct way to exist. Didn't everyone get Jesus' email on this? He was quite specific.

There's no way in hell these kids are getting the attention they need, even if they're with their parents 24/7. *sigh*

You think Jinger is pronounced "Ginger"?

There's no way in hell these kids are getting the attention they need, even if they're with their parents 24/7.

I said basically the same thing in the last thread. I feel sorry for the kids.

I'm torn over the Duggars. I've seen the Discovery documentaries about them and one part of me is thinking "How irresponsible. How weird." But the other part of me thinks, well, in a free country what are they doing that's so bad?

They're entitled to live the way they choose and who am I to say it's wrong? The Duggars are, they say, debt free (and being so public, I'm sure if they weren't, somebody would have found out by now and dished the dirt), they're bringing up their children in a way they believe is right, according to their own religious beliefs, which they are freely entitled to hold.

It's just their version of the American Dream.

My grandmother was one of 12 children. My grandfather was one of 9. What happened in both their cases is that the family kind of split into mini-families. For example, my grandmother's younger sister and brother were a regular part of family gatherings, but I couldn't even name all of the other 9. I barely knew them. My extended family is so large I literally don't know who I'm related to.

I'm the oldest of five and overall really like that. There's a tribal mentality that comes with being a Rossi Girl. It's a huge part of my identity and I wouldn't have it any other way. On the other hand, it's exhausting to be the oldest of a family that big. I was only 8 or 9 when my parents would leave me alone to babysit the younger ones. That's just too much damn responsibility for a little kid. And to this day, if I complain about feeling overwhelmed by motherhood, my mom pulls the "Well I did it with FIVE of you" without realizing just how much she leaned on me to do it.

Anywhooo....here's Gallery of the Absurd's take on the Duggars.

More's the pity for Jinger, when it took the Duggars 17 kids before they realized that the name "Jennifer" was still available. I'll bet Jinger's the first one off the reservation and onto the pole dance circuit.

I dunno...I'm very conflicted about anybody having this many kids, nutty religious leanings or otherwise. I guess the one thing to say in their favor is they claim they didn't set out with this in mind, it just kind of happened (and from there, I suppose, they adopted the religious stance to justify it all). However in one of the earlier TLC shows about them, one of the two parents mentions that Michelle Duggar initially went off birth control because "it causes abortions." What a load o' hooey.