On MSN today,  is a story of a family of 19, soon to be 20, and there seems to be no word of an end in sight.

Think about that for a moment. 18 children, and nary a one adopted.

I usually feel that what people do is their business, and the government, and other people should stay clear of it. When the problem is one such as this, however, I think at least a little peer pressure should be used. Everyone is talking about going green, saving energy, and conserving the Earth’s resources, yet people like this refuse to take a reasonable view (yes, my view, but if you are sane, it should be yours, too – I will explain) and curtail the number of children they have, all that will become consumers of every resource on the planet.

This is my basic problem with a few religions, and yes, these people are members of a sect I have never heard of (perhaps they invented it!) called Quiverful.  Now, I’m guessing that this has something to do with arrows in a quiver, and having plenty – but it just as easily could be what they are when they realize how much those many children will cost, not simply in dollars, but in time ( it certainly causes me to quiver! ).

from MSN

The Duggar kids planned a big Mother’s Day surprise for their mom this year. But the surprise was on them when Michelle Duggar announced on the TODAY Show that they were soon to welcome an 18th sibling.

“We’re expecting!” the happy mother told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira and the entire Arkansas clan. “Number 18!

“They didn’t know. My girls watch the calendar like a hawk. We just found out on Monday night.”

“On Monday night she brought one of the [pregnancy] testers in,” Michelle’s husband Jim Bob added. “I wanted to bring it with me, but she wouldn’t let me.”

And baby, due around New Year’s Day, would make 20.

Joshua, the Duggars’ eldest son, said the news, two days before Mother’s Day was “a shock” — if only to a point.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” the 20-year-old said. “But it’s been nine months [since the birth of the last baby], so yeah.”

Family forest
To date, the Duggars’ 17 natural children range in age from 20 years to 9 months. Included in the mix are 10 boys and seven girls — Joshua, twins Jana and John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, twins Jedidiah and Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah and baby Jennifer, who arrived last Aug. 2.

With two sets of twins, Michelle, 41, has gone through 15 pregnancies that ended in 13 natural deliveries and two Caesarean sections.

Both Michelle and Jim Bob — a former state legislator who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives — are real estate agents. They claim their family is debt-free, with the entire bunch helping to build their 7,000-square-foot home in Tontitown. And they are enriched by a devout faith in their religion.

The Duggars are followers of the evangelical Christian movement called Quiverful, which teaches that children are God’s blessing and that husbands and wives should happily welcome every child they are given. In fact, the Duggars’ Web site, duggarfamily.com, quotes “Children are a heritage of the Lord” from verse 3 of the 123rd Psalm.

“We just let the Lord decide,” Jim Bob, 42, told Vieira.

“They are such a gift and we’re enjoying them so much,” Michelle added. “We would love more, and the power of the Lord took our faith to give us another one.”

The Duggars married in 1984, when Michelle was 17 and Jim Bob was 19. They held off on having kids for four years before Michelle ceased taking birth control pills to have their first child. After Joshua was born in 1988, Michelle returned to birth control but wound up getting pregnant anyway. Unfortunately, she suffered a miscarriage, which the couple attributed to use of the pill.

Michelle and Jim Bob decided to pray for as many children as God would give them. Within a year, Michelle was pregnant with the first of their two sets of twins.

Their large number of offspring has meant other large numbers for the Duggars. Michelle has been pregnant for 135 months of her life, with an average of 18 months between births. The family estimates it has used 90,000 diapers and launders 200 loads of clothes each month in a row of industrial-size washers and dryers.

Even though they go through three loaves of bread per day, they claim to feed their family for less than $2,000 a month. Transportation is facilitated by nine vehicles, led by a 21-passenger bus. They estimate that all members of the family have combined to work approximately 39,000 hours on their home.

Each child learns to play both violin and piano. And for what it’s worth, when child No. 18 arrives, they’ll have enough kids to field two baseball teams.

Most importantly, there is a unique dedication to serve the greater good of the home and family. An older child will take on the responsibility of a younger sibling throughout the day. The children help prepare meals and keep to a steady home-schooling schedule. Group studies include materials from Advanced Training Institute International, a Bible-based education program for families.

The Duggars’ daily adventures are currently being chronicled in a television series on the Discovery Health channel. They previously participated in another Discovery Health series, “On the Road with 16 Kids.”

While some would say this is a remarkable thing, and laud the family that manages to stay together, I wonder just how happy each child is. From purely a non-monetary standpoint, how much quality time can be spent by each parent with a child, alone, before the time runs out? Rearing children in group session may yield healthy children physically, but how can the children ever believe they are somehow ‘special’ when all else points to being just another body in a production line? 

What about those 9 vehicles? Allowing for the use of bio-diesel in all nine, that’s still a massive amount of resources being consumed.

I’ve been aware of many of those families that talk about feeding children on unreasonable amounts of cash each month – each time I have been a witness to such a thing it seems that tons of filler items, and not much nutrition was what was being served.

How prepared are these children to be, as schooling for them all will, without exaggeration, come to total in the millions of dollars? This does not allow for the the time it takes with each child for homework during the formative years.

Some would also question the toll taken on the mother’s body, with so many pregnancies, in such a short time. That is, I believe, her choice, but it wouldn’t speak well for the concept if she died at 45, with so many children yet to be raised.

How can the individual child be that important to a parent, when the greatest concern has to be for all the rest of the family?

Now multiply this by all the various other religious people who believe that having children is the world’s greatest pastime? So much for conservation.

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[tags] conservation, energy crisis, natural resources, group responsibility, religious fervor [/tags]