My mom's family was a bit like that with the 10 kids. The older ones did a lot of the raising of the younger ones. VERY strict, conservative family situation.
There were problems, and some resentment, but it wasn't a horror story like it seems a lot of folks are assuming big families HAVE to be, and I'm hoping that this bigger family isn't one either.
They grew up to be pretty wonderful and fine adults, and most of them wound up with much smaller families when they started getting married. Though admittedly half of the 'smaller family' thing may have been luck/genetics scaling down, and not actual planning for smaller ones.
I guess I just wish some of these shouty people would put some of the energy they're putting into condemning this family's setup into coming up with more clear and level thoughts on family size issues, or into doing more/speaking out for the families where the kids ARE starving, beaten, or totally neglected.
It's a personal bias with me, really I guess, since most of my friends growing up who were in abusive homes were really from small families, while the larger families I knew with 3-6 kids seemed to have.. a little more of a support situation going.
I know this isn't always the case, and when there's real bad stuff happening.. gods yes, then those parents need to be smacked upside the head.. just really, the Duggans in and of themselves didn't/don't seem to warrant the flames and outrage.
While I understand why someone who came from a family where there were more kids than the parents could feed might be upset, this family can't necessarily be compared automatically to that, and lumped into the same category.
And I have a nagging urge to tell the people who only are harping on the fact that the human race is overpopulated, and people 'shouldn't be allowed to breed like rabbits' or what have you, that if they really hate the human race so badly that they want to make snap calls about neutering, sterilizing, and enforcing breeding rules, they can just resign from it. (Or maybe move to China, do they still have the rules about breeding numbers there?)
My mom's family was a bit like that with the 10 kids. The older ones did a lot of the raising of the younger ones. VERY strict, conservative family situation.
There were problems, and some resentment, but it wasn't a horror story like it seems a lot of folks are assuming big families HAVE to be, and I'm hoping that this bigger family isn't one either.
They grew up to be pretty wonderful and fine adults, and most of them wound up with much smaller families when they started getting married. Though admittedly half of the 'smaller family' thing may have been luck/genetics scaling down, and not actual planning for smaller ones.
I guess I just wish some of these shouty people would put some of the energy they're putting into condemning this family's setup into coming up with more clear and level thoughts on family size issues, or into doing more/speaking out for the families where the kids ARE starving, beaten, or totally neglected.
It's a personal bias with me, really I guess, since most of my friends growing up who were in abusive homes were really from small families, while the larger families I knew with 3-6 kids seemed to have.. a little more of a support situation going.
I know this isn't always the case, and when there's real bad stuff happening.. gods yes, then those parents need to be smacked upside the head.. just really, the Duggans in and of themselves didn't/don't seem to warrant the flames and outrage.
While I understand why someone who came from a family where there were more kids than the parents could feed might be upset, this family can't necessarily be compared automatically to that, and lumped into the same category.
And I have a nagging urge to tell the people who only are harping on the fact that the human race is overpopulated, and people 'shouldn't be allowed to breed like rabbits' or what have you, that if they really hate the human race so badly that they want to make snap calls about neutering, sterilizing, and enforcing breeding rules, they can just resign from it. (Or maybe move to China, do they still have the rules about breeding numbers there?)
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