From a "mommyblogger" who evidently considers herself an expert authorized to condemn others:
I mean, 19 kids? 19?! . . . Is your uterus a baseball dugout? . . .
There's simply no way you can give each of those kids the personal attention he needs. . . . And using your older children as surrogate parents is a recipe for immature behavior down the road. You're robbing them of their childhoods by making them mini mommies and daddies.
Of course, some people hold you up like a goddess simply because you can procreate. You know, Michelle, earthworms can procreate. . . .
Please, Michelle, I beg of you; stop having babies. I know it's tempting to go to 20, but maybe you should just focus on the kids you already have. Mmmmkay?
One could spend a week unpacking all the malicious misconceptions in that one blog post, which bears the charming title, "
A Letter to Michelle Duggar from Her Vagina," and whose author is -- what else? -- concealed by a pseudonym, "Christine."
Parents of large families have to put up with this attitude all the time in the Anti-Family Age, when the upper-middle-class suburban career woman with 1.6 children is celebrated as the
belle ideal of "responsible" parenting.
Especially wrong-headed is the assertion by "Christine" that having the older children assist in caring for their younger siblings is "a recipe for immature behavior down the road." No only is there zero evidence in social science to support such a claim, it contradicts both common sense and mountains of anecdotal evidence.
Common sense tells us that children learn to act responsibly by being given responsibilities. Caring for younger siblings -- changing an infant's diaper, bathing and dressing a toddler, helping at mealtime -- is exactly the sort of responsibility that helps children develop confidence and maturity. A major reason that first-born children so often excel in leadership is precisely because they have the maximum opportunity to exercise in such supervisory duties from an early age.
Many parents today seem to believe that children are incapable of exercising any responsibility beyond "clean your room" and "make good grades." Yet anyone who has studied human society on a historic and global perspective understands that this "modern" attitude sets an absurdly low standard for children.
The idiot "Christine," in accusing Michelle Duggar of "robbing [her children] of their childhoods," shows how absurdly thoughtless the allegiance to "modern" parenthood has become. Like too many others, "Christine" evidently believes that an appropriate "childhood" should consist entirely of school and play -- a leisurely existence dominated by TV and videogames, the boredom alleviated by soccer practice and music lessons.
This is not a formula for maturity. Rather it is
infantilizing, conditioning the child to expect a life of fun without meanignful responsibility. One strongly suspects that "Christine" herself had that kind of over-indulged childhood, which explains her haughty and insulting better-than-you attitude toward Michelle Duggar.
Granted, 19 children is a very large family, but the eldest of Duggars' children are now in their 20s and so far I haven't seen any evidence of the immature behavior" that "Christine" warns about. Until the reality-TV special "Duggars Gone Wild: Spring Break in Cancun" shows up on VH-1, my advice to "Christine" is:
Shut your stupid mouth.Visit the Duggar Family official site here.
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