ComicalGnomes wrote:
They must have some support, the guy would have to be some kind of millionaire to support so many kids. Although I suppose the TV and book deal were profitable, thus funding more kids and making it evermoreso of interest. I see a plan forming.
Well, I have been looking around t'internet and yes, they are in receipt of benefits, quite a bit of charity money and TLC (which is a television station that has been running some kind of cutesy documentary on this family since child 14) built their home.
They seem to make a lot of money out of being on television a lot, too, so they are also an all-American TV freakshow. They seem to be billed as some kind of clean-living Walton-esque set-up of a family - all good Christian values.
Apparrently the mother was on the pill for four years after she got married. She went back on the pill after having her first baby, but a year later came off, tried again and miscarried. They blamed this on the fact that she had been on the pill for a year.
So, she was on the pill for 4+1 years. At 39 she had given birth to 16 children.
I hope I am not being unfair. My half-sisters' half-sister (basically her dad was once married to my mother) is 27 and has 9 children, and it makes me angry, because she has a two bedroom house and I find it irresponsible and unfair to the childen. Her partner also has four children from a previous marriage (I thought it was two until last week, but no, it is four). At weekends there are 13 children and two adults in a two bedroom house.
I must say that the woman in question 'E' has some degree of learning difficulties - I find it difficult to blame her entirely. He, on the other hand, does not. E's dad the other day was pleading with her to get implants, a coil, anything, but D refuses to get a vasectomy and she said defiantly 'if I want more children I'll have them'
What can you say to that?
It makes me feel sad, maybe a little sickened. Her kitchen, for cooking for 11 people (15 at weekends) is about 8 foot by four foot. two people can't stand comfortably in there. They are on an urgent waiting list for a new house, but then they have been for about 6 years.
So yes, with a TV deal and a Christian Fundie attitude the Duggan's are at least doing Ok for themselves. It is worse when you have no money and a shack of a house, but I think it s wrong of the media to refer to the Duggans as some kind of 'miracle family' (and that often seems to be the exact term used by a lot of the media if you look around the net.)