The Duggars announce Baby #20...Are we Supposed to Be Surprised??
The Duggars have reported that yet again they are having another baby. Are we supposed to be surprised by this? I actually heard about this via Facebook, which shows that this couple really is in the spotlight. This leads to the question: Isn't this exactly where they want to be? Is this couple still pumping out kids at age 45 because they really want to? Or is it because they love the media attention they get?
During the last pregnancy, Michelle Duggar was very sick with such high blood pressure that the baby was born incredibly early and ended up in the NICU for months. Her children all suffered from this, on both an emotional and a practical level. Their parents weren't home much because they spent so much time at the hospital with their sick child so the older children had to be caretakers for their own brothers and sisters. Now Duggars are willingly going to put their family through this again??? In the article announcing the 20th baby, the Duggars say they are surprised by this pregnancy. Um, my question is why are they surprised? They are clearly very fertile and fertility has no bearing at all on pregnancy complications from high blood pressure. Having a tendency toward high blood pressure will not prevent pregnancy. It's too bad that no one explained to them how a baby is made.
This obsession with having so many children is really starting to worry me. TLC keeps coming out with shows about huge families and it seems to me that these days if you only want two babies you are seen as a slacker. However, I did some research and according to the most recent statistics, big families are not actually on the rise. According to an article on Baby Center, the percentage is actually lower than it was 10 years ago for families to have three or more children.
Families with three children are one thing. Families with twenty children are something different all together. Although I don't agree with their decision to have another baby, I will say that at least they aren't afraid of a little hard work. After all, I think taking care of two kids is hard. I cannot even begin to imagine life with twenty children. And counting.
