So I watched the Duggars for half an hour or so last night. I hadn’t seen them before apart from a few minutes once, before I knew they were Quiverfull. The whole thing is, not surprisingly, blood-curdling. Especially Jim Bob. God he’s awful – genial and ignorant and intrusive. They all went to Edinburgh (apparently because Jim-Bob is under the delusion that “King James” translated the bible), their first time ever out of the country, and perhaps even Arkansas – and on their very first afternoon there, Jim Bob got in a friendly chat with a street performer and damn if he didn’t come right out and say “what’s your faith background?” No really, he did – 90 seconds into a chat and he asks a total stranger what his religion is. When the guy said none, Jim Bob said hey look Jupiter is too cold and Venus is too hot but here it’s just right, God keeps it all working. His first day in a foreign country and he’s out there lecturing people!
And all the children have names that begin with J. Like Jim Bob; geddit? How stinking conceited is that? One is called Jinger.
But that’s just by the way. The really creepy part is where they tell the kids – all 19 of them – that Mom is pregnant again. Then there’s a flashback to the last birth – when her blood pressure skyrocketed and the baby had to be taken out 3 1/2 months early. The kid is now 2 and she looks very damn fragile. But they were all beaming about the exciting prospect of doing all that again or perhaps just plain seeing Michelle Duggar die. She told the camera that would be fine.
It’s disgusting.
Another fine example of Rabbit Math.
. . . She told the camera it would be fine if she died? In what sense? She thinks it would be fine to leave 19 or 20 kids (if the upcoming one survives) motherless? How does that compute?
Because it would be God’s Will, natch.
Jim bob never complained that the money didn’t say “in gawd we trust”? I expected him to write a letter to his congress critter or the president of Scotland!
Ugh, that irresponsible cow needs to shut down the baby-factory and focus on the kids she’s ALREADY given birth to.
But, hey, I guess she’s more concerned with Breedin’ fer Jeebus than she is with, you know, her health, her kids’ health, SANITY…
Well, if she did die, it would be an excellent commercial for the evils of the Quiverful movement.
Leaving aside the stupidity and recklessness of continuing to have children, in terms of mommy’s and baby’s physical welfare, there are so many other reasons this is stupid and reckless. 20 children and very possibly more? In a world already suffering overpopulation and resource depletion? If they must have such a “brood”, why don’t they adopt some of the children already born, who are suffering the consequences of being born into unfortunate circumstances in an increasingly overpopulated world?
Apologies for the weird half-post. Damn touchscreens!
It’s funny how God put the planets in just the right places for their temperatures to vary as if the solar radiation intensity varied inversely with the square of distance. That way it looks like he’s not doing anything at all to “keep it all working.”
God is such a sneaky bastard. Wicked, tricksy, false! We ought to wring his filthy little neck.
Jim Bob’s worldview sounds familiar …
My daughter used to watch the programmes about this dysfunctional family, but, at the grand old age of 13, she’s realised the inanity of it all. And Jim Bob? He should be spayed, IMHO.
@Querent #11 – with two bricks!!!
I wonder if he picked up a ten pound note in his change?
Querent — Last I checked, men didn’t have ovaries.
on their very first afternoon there, Jim Bob got in a friendly chat with a street performer and damn if he didn’t come right out and say “what’s your faith background?” No really, he did – 90 seconds into a chat and he asks a total stranger what his religion is.
Slacker. He’d be called an atheist in East Texas, where every introduction to all but maybe ten people would go like this:
“Hi. My name is Asshole Christard. What church do you go to?”
I gave up being ashamed of being from there, and instead wear my surviving the shit hole with my brain intact as a badge of honor.
Almost anywhere but the southern US, a virtual stranger asking someone about their religion is considered insulting and none of their business.
Is it some sort of test… if you say the right thing, you are “in”, is it nosiness, I just don’t understand… maybe because in Canada we’d never even think to ask that.
AJS – thank you very much for pointing out my terminological inexactitude. Neutered, gelded, whatever.
Someone needs to kick Jim Bob in the balls on general principles.
Joking aside, I’m really worried for the Duggers women. They do not need to be growing up with this sort of woman as an example of what a woman should be.
sigh
Since we’re screwed either way, I hope Mrs. Duggers pregancy goes off without incident. And that the show’s creators and producers die a slow painful death.
Though I am entirely supportive of peoples right to criticize- I feel obliged to defend the Duggers on a few counts.
It is my understanding that Michelle had gallstones during the last pregnancy which caused the complications leading to Josie being born premature. That I know of, there is no correlation between being a broodmare and the likelihood of gall bladder issues. Though the odds of having gallstones while pregnant dramatically increases the more frequently you happen to be pregnant, it is no more common an issue for 19th time mothers as it is for 1st time mothers.
The suggestion that a past complication will increase the risk of future complications is less likely true if the past complication is caused by an unrelated temporary medical issue. It may be worthwhile to mention that complications tend to increase with the age of the mother, as well as the statistical likelihood of a Down Syndrome child- but to use her 19th pregnancy as an indicator of future complications seems uninformed.
Secondly, the Duggers are more than financially equipped to raise 20 children. Anyone who watches the show should be aware of this fact. Jim-Bob is not merely a “used car salesman” as was mentioned in a previous thread here- he owns a building business, has a real estate license, and has commercial and residential income properties as well. I also assume that they are financially compensated for the show, have at least one book, and make appearances at Christian homeschooling conventions. Jim-Bob is also a previous Republican Representative of the Arkansas State Legislature (1999-2002). The idea that it is irresponsible for them to have as many kids as they do is certainly untrue from an economic argument.
I dislike that the Duggers home school their children. I dislike their preachy brand of Christianity. I don’t like the way that they raise their children, but you won’t hear me say they ought not be having more kids- or feigning disgust because they have different values than mine. They are good parents with kids as well adjusted as you can expect given their religious beliefs and convictions.
Everyone seems so concerned with the quantity of children without really taking the time to question the quality of life for the family. I may not agree with much of what the Duggers stand for, but I disagree with the focus of those people who are their detractors as well.
The only way that episode could be redeemed is if Sylvester McCoy was the street performer.
Looking forward to the inevitable 20 tell-all books about what a nightmare it was to grow up as a Dugger.
Yeah, totally feigning disgust here cuz I gots different values from ’em.
Nathan @ 2 –
Yes. And exactly.
In what sense: it’s in God’s hands, God will make it ok (just like last time, when she nearly died and #19 was a preemie who is probably seriously damaged), and if she does die well then – she did a garbled version of John 15:12, which had to be garbled since it says “a man” and she was talking about giving birth, so that wouldn’t quite work, so she kind of babbled at that part so that we wouldn’t notice, and the takeaway was that laying down her life was no greater love, even, she added ecstatically, for someone that’s not here yet – meaning the future baby that will be born very premature and probably seriously damaged. At that point I was shouting about her existing children, but she ignored me.
Seriously. It was that bad. That smug, that pleased with herself, that blind. There will be a large number of young children left without a mother you fucking fool.
Ugggggggh.
That’s for sure! I consider it just unfathomably rude.
Huh? That can’t be what you meant to say. The second clause flatly contradicts the first.
I don’t know that the health of any of the Duggars is a primary concern for those particular parents. Sharon Astyk read the Diggar’s book a while back and given what she said about the food they feed those kids (and the few shows of thiers I’ve seen) the primary concern seems to be religion, religion, religion, pairing off thier children with the children of a Quiverfull family that are friends of thiers, religion, religion, trying to convert thier few non Quiverfull relatives, and religion.
Julian @21
Great knockdown argument you got there. I especially like the depth of your argument. Keep up the good wurkz!
Ophelia @24
I don’t see the contradiction so long as we treat each pregnancy individually. You are just as likely to have gallstones during your first pregnancy as you are during pregnancy 2,3,4…27,28…
I admit IANAD, but unless someone’s got some science correlating gallstones to uterine overuse, I think my point stands.
Kate @25,
I agree.
That should have been my point, but I couldn’t help addressing some of the misinformation.
George – I think you’re confusing chance with causation. A flip of the coin is no more likely to be heads after 20 tails than after 1. The same is not true of a 20th pregnancy if you’re right that “the odds of having gallstones while pregnant dramatically increases the more frequently you happen to be pregnant.”
Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant by “the odds” there – but in that case you’re wrong about the odds.
At what point does a reasonable person insist that Discovery’s TV show enables this circus act?
And why does Discovery soft-peddle the stupidity/lunacy/religious-extremist part of having 20 fucking kids?
Psst Marta – you mean TLC!
Probably my fault; I confused the two last week.
TLC also has a cutesy show about a Mormon guy with four wives.
George W….
I respectfully disagree. There are multiple reasons why we,discussing in a public forum and not engaged in demanding “the law” take care of things (in an serious way) can “judge” them.
Large families in a society (American) which consumes resources at a disproportionate rate (I assume the Duggars and their children do not live at subsistence peasant levels) does seem undesirable in a world facing multiple ecological disasters…many of which are associated with population growth. Just like it is appropriate, if preachy, to judge a two person household who owns a 10,000 square foot mansion.
The quality of life for one particular household may be fine, sure. But this is an atheist-oriented discussion board and you really expect us to refrain from commenting on a particularly virulent subspecies of Christianity that by definition demands subservience, patriarchy, etc.? Much of the discussion here and elsewhere does touch on, at least, the toxic elements of this theology.
The correct insult is:
Hey Lady, your uterus is not a clown car.
Anyway, the real problem with George W’s comment –
The real problem is the idea that there’s something admirable about not saying the Duggars ought not to have more children. I don’t think that’s admirable at all. Quiverfull people are evangelists: they work hard to persuade other people to be like them. The Duggars are on tv, urging everyone to be like them. There are many reasons to think the whole thing is a very bad idea, and I see no reason at all not to state them.
And as for being good parents and the children being well-adjusted – how do you know that? And well-adjusted to what?
I don’t.
Setting aside how Mr. and Mrs. Duggers are having children for the almost sole reason of indoctrinating them in one of the worst strains of fundamentalism, there’s the very real example Mrs. Duggers is now setting for her daughters and sons.
And not just that a woman should be a baby facotry. She’s also telling them good Christian women don’t care about pregnancy fears and concerns. That they go through with it because it is part of God’s plan, a plan we are not allowed to interfere with.
And I’m feigning disgust because I don’t share their values? Fuck that.
Ophelia @28,
You and I are saying the same thing, I think. I’m saying in the first part of the sentence that having a complication unrelated to a pregnancy is higher the more often you find yourself pregnant- in the second half I am saying that any given non-related complication in a single given pregnancy is no more or less likely based solely on the total amount of times a woman has been pregnant.
Clear as mud?
Brian M @31,
I felt I broached this subject in my first sentence. I am not interested in arguing that people have no right to criticize the Duggers. Hell, I criticize the Duggers, and my wife gives me an earful about it often. What bothers me- and affords me (I hope) the reciprocal right to criticize some of the things that have been said on Ophelia’s blog- is the observation that much of the criticism of the Duggers is centered around the healthiness of having another baby, the economic irresponsibility of it all, and their fitness as parents. I firmly believe that there are valid grounds to criticize the choice to have a 20th child, and valid grounds to criticize the Duggers religious beliefs. I also believe that not much of that is being done here because ZOMFG!!! THEY’RE HAVING 20 BABIES!!!
There are, as you say, philosophical and practical reasons why having a comically large family in a western society is a debatable practice. Environmental responsibility is certainly among those issues, yet it seems to be the thrust of <10% of the comments on the issue. I also agree that the culture those children are raised in is especially damaging to the girls. To me, though, this seems entirely unrelated to the number of children they choose to have.
As Kate said earlier, the main issues of concern is religion, religion, and religion.
George – well then what you’re saying is wrong. If the complication is unrelated to pregnancy then the odds don’t go up with more pregnancies; they’re the same each time therefore they can’t go up. As with tossing a coin.
Again Ophelia,
I’m not at any point trying to infringe on your right to criticize the Duggars. I guess my first sentence in my opening comment didn’t make that clear. Maybe if I say it again…
I’m not here to tell you to MYOB or STFU, I’m telling you that there are a number of comments about the Duggars that assume things that just ain’t so.
*She is not ignoring medical advice and wantonly getting pregnant.
*She is at no more increased risk than any other prospective mother over 40- that any of us are aware of.
*The family is at no loss to support more children.
I am as much a critic of their religious convictions as the next person. I abhor the way Fundamentalism treats women as engendered male property. I’m happy to have that conversation here. Heck, I’d love to have that conversation here. I’m no religious apologist.
I knew my first comment was an invitation to an argument, but I stand by it. You are more than within your rights to have a conversation about what is wrong with the Duggars- I just want the conversation to be about facts as opposed to allegations. What I want doesn’t have to mean shit to you- but honesty should.
So let’s talk about how bad it is to homeschool your kids with a curriculum that denies basic facts.
Let’s talk about how fundamentalism devalues women.
Let’s talk about how the mating rituals and chastity balls of the Southern Christian fundie culture set children up for failure and disappointment.
I feel as though people here are to concerned about whether someone ought to be allowed to breed when the real issue is whether their faith can make good, well intentioned parents into a vehicle for harming their children.
Fixed that for you.
The correct insult is:
Hey Jim Bob, HER uterus is not a clown car.
NOW, I fixed that for you.
Ophelia,
I hate discussing probability. It never goes well. I’m either a horrible student or a horrible teacher- and likely both.
This is flying off topic, so I’ll be brief.
Using your coin toss analogy, let’s suppose that there is a 50% probability (big supposition, but unrelated to the greater point) of a complication in a pregnancy. So heads is a worry free pregnancy and tails is a complicated one.
Both you and I are saying the same thing- that the more times you flip the coin (get pregnant) the more likely you are to have a complication. The likelihood that you will have a complication in any one pregnancy is still 50%, regardless of whether you flipped heads 18 times previously.
So to my example, if you get pregnant 19 times, you have been pregnant for 14.25 years. If any medical issue that might complicate a pregnancy (flu, gallstones, food poisoning, etc.) occurs in an average woman’s life once every 5.72 years, there is a much higher probability that someone who has been pregnant for 14.25 years will have a pregnancy complicated by some unrelated illness than someone who has been pregnant for only .75 years. Though it is still, all things equal, no more likely that the person who has been pregnant 14.25 years will have experienced a complication in any single pregnancy of .75 years duration than any other persons single pregnancy of .75 years.
Flip a coin 20 times, really unlikely that you got heads 20 times. Flip a coin once, it’s 50-50. Take any single data point out of the 20 flips, it’s always 50-50.
Just like you said…just like I said. I just wish I knew how to say it better.
If this Duggar creature actually told someone that “Jupiter is too cold” for human life, well, he’s pretty much an idiot. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no one is entitled to make shit up and present it as fact. I hope he has nothing to do with teaching the mob of kids science.
Are you sure? That she hasn’t been advised not to get pregnant again? If she’s seeing a proper medical professional, she’s been getting that advise for the last ten years.
@ 41 – Actually I don’t remember which planets he said and I picked them at random. Most unfair. He may have gotten that part exactly right.
George,
Do you know that? If so, how?
I looked into it a little bit yesterday, being curious, and from what I saw you’re wrong. It is risky to have 20 children. The uterus loses elasticity, so there’s a risk of hemmorhage.
How do you know she’s not ignoring medical advice? She certainly talks as if she is.
Anyway – your point is, you want everyone to talk about different aspects. At present I’m interested in the most obvious aspect, which is the sheer recklessness.
PS, George, I re-read the comments up to your first, and actually I’m the one who made the discussion about the riskiness of the pregnancy, so I’m the one you’re urging to talk about something else, not the commenters or all of us.
I made it about that because the tv show did, to some extent, and because it’s important. It’s important that all of them were just thrilled when in fact what they’re doing is revolting. They’re risking a second very premature birth with all the attendant complications, and they’re risking the woman’s life. This is not a reasonable or sensible way to carry on. They do it for religious reasons. All the children will probably do the same thing. Yes there are other things to say about it, but the risks are right at the top, I think.
An interesting, and largely unadvertised, background on the Duggars: they didn’t start out as a Quiverfull family. Michelle was on birth control pills at the start of their marriage. She went off of them and had Josh, then restarted again. She became pregnant a second time while on the Pill (she stopped taking them when she realized it). Several months later, she miscarried. Her obviously incompetent doctor told her that the reason she miscarried was because she was on birth control when conception occurred; he told her that she had caused an abortion. Jim Bob and Michelle were so distraught that they pledged not to use any birth control from that point forward.
So, because a doctor told them something that wasn’t true, they decided to forgo all birth control and give reproduction “up to God”.
delurking:
Hi all – first comment, but a regular reader. I just want to say ‘hi’ before I dive into my comment (which is a long one – sorry >.< ).
I'm going to hone in on the problem of them homeschooling, because that's where a lot of the issues start. George W brought up that they (the Duggars) homeschool; that's what sparked this for me. Homeschooling is the default mode for a lot of the folks on the religious right, like the Duggars; if you can find a way to deal with that, you can decimate that hermetically sealed world that they live in. They created this world in little under 3 decades, starting in the early 60s. We can undo it even less. Here's one solution that I came up with:
You don't deal with it by banning homeschooling. That'd never go through. Restating common knowledge, they home-school so they can keep their kids away from outside sources of learning. So the problem isn't necessarily the homeschooling – it's the fact that they're doing it with negligent intent. Hence, the intent is the issue, and must be dealt with. And the intent (again restating the obvious) is to separate the kids from the outside world so they're easier to indoctrinate.
So here's what we do: We drive for highly qualified parents-teachers. If we want highly qualified teachers in our public schools, we need highly qualified parents in our homeschools; otherwise we're just undermining our own education from inside. The first step to homeschooling your kid is getting a 2-year associates degree; an Associates in Science of Education. It's not a full-fledged diploma that actual teachers get, but it'd be enough for you to have to jump through all the battery of hoops that teachers have to jump trough to get their cert. A 2 year associates would also give you the credits to substitute teach, would open the door to a four-to-five year Bachelor's and full certification. Hell, you could even make the position "Teacher's Assistant," where you help a real classroom teacher at half the pay but with the union benefits.
You can't home school your kid until you have a 2 year certification. An associates is not that hard to come by (there's a lot of other problems that need redressing – college tuition, for instance). If you try to home school your kid without the two-year cert, then it's considered truancy and you get fined or whatever the penalty is for truancy is in the state you live in. A two-year cert would cover everything from basic science to basic English and back again. Nothing really in depth, but enough to give you a command of all subject areas – a dummied version of what Elementary school teachers get, where you have to go all the way to advanced geometry rather than calculus or trig (yes, Elementary teachers learn trig and calc. Or, they did/do at the private university I went to/work for).
Then your kids take the same battery of tests that they take in HS. So even if you are resistant to evolution and the like, you still have to teach your kids about it because if they *fail* repeatedly, then you can loose your certification and we're right back to you committing truancy by keeping them out of school.
I know some things about how homeschooling works, but I know that parents do not need any qualifications at all in order to home school, and given the qualifications that public, private, and parochial school teachers have to get, it's about time they have to jump through some of the same hoops.
In doing this, you remove the isolation factor of homeschooling, and the ability to teach the kid whatever you want without at least exposing them to different ideas. Homeschooling doesn't go away – I know some atheists who homeschool their kid because they don't like the public school system, and they probably wouldn't mind jumping through the hoops of getting a 2/3-year associates degree in science of education.
There's a lot of problems to work through, but fuck, with women like Michelle Duggar, she's homeschooling a damn classroom anyway. She should be as qualified as any other teacher.
/delurking
@George W. (#18)
I was a preemie. I got lucky, with only a moderate case of cerebral palsy and a normal intellect (yes, I’m mentally ill, as well, but neither that, nor the CP, affects my intelligence.)
Now, knowing what we know now about fetal development and saving preemies, and all the lovely things that can go horribly, horribly wrong during pregnancy and childbirth, there’s no excuse for her to take that risk.
I think it’s highly irresponsible of that selfish old cow to put her own life in danger, put her kids at risk of losing their mum, and risking a severely disabled child just for Teh Glory of GHAWD.
And having read your further comments, I see you don’t give a shit about the health of the kids, either. Nice.
Enigma:
I can’t agree with your ideas about homeschooling. I’ve lived in rural environments all my life, and in many cases virtually no option exists but to homeschool your kids. In one place, my neighbors opted to drive their kids 45 minutes each way, sometimes through blizzard conditions, to Canada and pay $2000/kid; but others opted to homeschool for obvious reasons. With today’s internet support it’s much easier to do; my neighbor’s kids right now, who are homeschooled, have online teachers for various subjects (math) their mom isn’t good at.
I realize that a lot of homeschooling is for religious reasons, but putting restrictions on it that are intended to cause it to be untenable does a disservice to rural parents whose options are very limited. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater…to get back on-topic.
I’ve been wondering about Michelle Duggar’s health as well – wouldn’t having that many children deplete calcium and other nutrients, vitamins, etc.? I realize supplements could help, but it seems like the strain on the body would tend to build up over time…
Well, I think I realize what George W. is trying to say, the chances of rolling a 6 is always 1/6, but if you’re rolling the die for long enough, you’re bound to get one eventually.
But it’s of course utter bullshit that Michelle Duggar isn’t more at risk for complications than other women her age.
Bodies aren’t rubber balls that spring back into shape. Each pregnancy wears out the parts involved. It does so more for some women and less for others and I think that she definetly has an amazing costitution, but that doesn’t mean she’s not at a much higher risk for serious complications than a woman her age who has only 1 or 2 children.
Apart from that, their decission is iresponsible and they are not good parents.
They would not be good parents if they were atheist geniuses who grew the baby on one tree and the money on another one.
Because no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy time. It is not possible to care for the emotional needs of 20 children (or 18, 16, 15), The day only has 24 hours and even if you spent 0 hrs on normal housework or a job you wouldn’t have enough time to give each kid what they need, the love, the care, the atttention, the “this is our thing, just you and me”.
I’m wondering how much those Duggar kids even know their parents
Bingo! That’s why George W’s analogy doesn’t work in this case. The coin flipping analogy only works for events that are completely unrelated in any way to each other AND are exactly the same each time. Pregnancy doesn’t fit either of those criteria.
First, as Giliell stated, “pregnancy wears out the parts involved” (great way to put it!).
Second, the circumstances surrounding each pregnancy are different. I assume she had her first pregnancy in her late teens or early 20s. Now she’s 40. The first pregnancy she didn’t have any kids to take care of, now she has 19 (if she’s even taking care of them at all).
Also, it’s disgusting that parents have kids, then expect their own children to do all the dirty work. WTF. I’m all for giving kids responsibilities, but getting up in the middle of the night to give a bottle to a baby is NOT one of them.
My fault, Ophelia. Thanks for the correx.
It’s my understanding that her HELLP syndrome was initially diagnosed as gallstones – a common error – and that her early delivery was for HELLP, likely accompanied by the symptoms referred to as severe preeclampsia. In other words, the placenta and her immune system picked a fight with each other. Could have been because of underlying genetic variations that also predisposed her daughter to medical complications. Some forms of trisomy dramatically raise risk of these issues, for example.
Gallbladder issues can generally be treated and the pregnancy continued to term, as I understand matters.
Women who develop any of the variants of placentally mediated complication (abbreviated in the lit as PMC these days since the symptoms are so unrelated to the cause) are more likely to develop them in a subsequent pregnancy than women who do not develop them. Women who develop them for the first time in a pregnancy which is not the first pregnancy are likely to have some sort of underlying condition which predisposes to PMC, especially as aging unmasks hypertension, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions.
That said, it’s always a crapshoot. This pregnancy could be easy. I suppose we’ll all know in a few months.
Hertta@42 & Ophelia @44
Both of you are totally correct. I’m sorry. If I expect you to try and stick to the facts we know as opposed to speculation, I ought not be using language that seems to assume the opposite.
Point taken, and I’m sorry.
Giliell,
I entirely agree with your point about a woman’s body not recovering completely from child to child. Perhaps I have been speaking in too many generalizations. My comments thus far have been more centered around the allegation that a complication due to an unrelated illness is a good reason to assume future complications- and I continue to stand by the argument that it is not. That said, certainly when we expand the scope to the wider issue of 17 (now 18, I also stand corrected-there are two sets of twins says my wife) pregnancies, there are other medical issues that come into play.
I agree that any woman who wants to get pregnant with a child should do so with the consultation of their physician. This becomes all the more important with the number of previous pregnancies, a history of health issues, and age.
I’m unsure, as I’m sure everyone here is, whether Mrs. Duggar consulted her doctor about getting pregnant for the 18th time at the age of 46. I agree that it would not be a stretch to think she did not. We don’t know, and it is more likely that I am wrong in assuming she did as it is that you are wrong in assuming she did not.
WMDKitty @48
You are right. You don’t need to back up that kind of claim whatsoever. In fact, I personally find that kids taste just as good whether they are premature, ill, or healthy. A little extra seasoning and you can’t hardly tell the difference!
Listen, my heart isn’t really in this argument. I was trying to relay certain things that I thought were being ignored in favor of sensationalism about what for me is not a non issue, but is an issue with more nuance than some have given due. In retrospect, I realize that my comments have been a twisted form of “concern trolling”- telling people that we ought to be arguing X if we want to make any argument at all.
I should have used my better judgement.
George W
???
I never said anything about her having /not having consulted her GP or OB/Gyn.
I think it entirely possible that she has a Quiverfull physician who fully supports her in this (I have no idea as to whether that’s true or not, I don’t follow them).
Let’s face it, doctors can be immoral assholes, too. Octomom made a shitty decision, and she did so with the help of an unscrupulous doctor who cared less about any of his nine patients than he cared for the fame of having caused the world’s biggest pregnancy.
That is another statement where I don’t know with whom you agree, but it’s not me. Because women without known health-problems and risk factors are totally able of making that decision alone.
Giliell,
Apologies, I’m reading too far into your statements. People shouldn’t take someones comments and deduce from them that they hold opinions they haven’t overtly expressed. Mea culpa.
I wrongly misinterpreted this part of your comment as a tacit admission that women of a certain age or birthing history ought to have consulted a physician.
The second statement of mine you highlight should have been: I believe that any woman who wants to get pregnant should do so with the consultation of their physician.
Again, introducing that statement as though we both agreed to it was wrong on my part. Sorry.
In the end, you, Ophelia and others are far more right on this issue than I have been over the breadth of the thread. What little I have said worth standing by would make for a tenuous perch indeed.
I owe all of you an apology.
I won’t get into the issue of whether these fanatics are right or wrong in the way they conduct their personal lives or their reproduction, but I personally believe it is exploitation to have children so you will have more no-cost bit part players on your show, to take the money that pays in part for their appearances and put it all in your own pocket, and to get pregnant as a ploy to make sure your ratings stay up.
Don’t know if anyone else here remembers the broadcast back in 1973 of the 12-part documentary, “An American Family”, in which the Loud family disintegrated in front of the camera, and the children’s privacy was violated, but surely people still remember the Truman Show. If adults want to expose all their warts and reveal what fools they are on reality TV, okay for them, but children should be protected from parents willing to ruin their lives for money.
I wonder if microchimerism is involved in this in any way; she’s got an awful lot of other people’s cells floating around in her body by this point. Such as:
Autoimmune disease during pregnancy and the microchimerism legacy of pregnancy.
Instead of banning homeschooling, why not make being uneducated as awkward as possible?
Make legal maturity conditional on passing examinations in math, English, one other language, history, geography, science and life skills. You’re legally a child until you pass them — but as soon as you do pass, you’re legally entitled to sue the educators who failed you the first time around.
I would guess that probably microchimerism is critical. See also the discussion and article linked here.