I don’t think many of the kids will end up trying to sire a “mega-family” and a few of the older daughters are probally going to end up not wanting to have any children of their own. It’s really morbid and I certainly don’t wish them harm, but what happens if Jim-Bob or Michelle die? The oldest siblings will be middle-aged before they’re done raising their younger siblings. Granted every this is an issue for every family, but not on the scale it is with the Duggars.
Keep in mind that despite never watching TV themselves (except the Andy Griffith Show DVDs) the Duggers are very media savvy. All “reality” shows are heavily edited; 18 Kids is no exception. The Duggars aren’t going to let negative material air. Sure the TLC could to an “expose” if they really wanted to, but then the Duggars aren’t going to do any more specials (at least for them).
I read an interview with the husband who says something like: We did try birth control but then we had a miscarriage, so we decided to let God decide how many children we have.
Two things. First-- birth control? You’re doing it wrong. Second-- Didn’t God give you free will? I don’t think he’s paying any attention to how many kids you have.
Yeah, I think it was something like the wife was on the pill and she got pregnant anyway and miscarried and they thought that because of that being on the BCP was a selfish choice.
One Dawn Brooke holds the record for oldest natural conception at the age of 59… so perhaps another 17 years, potentially. That’s what, another 7 or 8 kids, unless she has twins or other multiples?
And most children born to older mothers do NOT have babies with Down’s. There is an increased risk, it’s not a certainty.
Per this site, Michelle’s chances are about 1 in 35 (since she’ll actually be in her 44th year when the child is born). In two years it’ll increase to 1 in 25 and by age 49 it increases to 1 in 12. (On average DS babies are about 1 in 750 births.)
[hijack]1 in 60 is less than a 2% chance the kid will be born with Down Syndrome. Still high odds that the kid won’t have it.
Not to mention, per the link that I provided, that the vast majority of kids born with DS are from women under 35. Because, frankly, a whole lot more younger women are having kids than older women like Michelle.[/hijack]
I haven’t been able to google anything, but something I’ve wondered is what other factors will reduce the odds of a mother having a DS baby. When Sarah Palin’s DS son was a big news item I started a thread asking about DS in history.
There was a time not very long ago (a century if that), before reliable pharmaceutical birth control and when large families and farms were the norm, when a huge percentage of women were still producing children in their late thirties and forties.
In fact it’s almost a who’s who of famous wives: Anne Hutchinson for example- the Puritan dissident- was 47 and pregnant when she was exiled to Rhode Island, Queen Victoria was 40 when her youngest was born (and may have had more had Albert not died), Elizabeth Barret Browning was 43 when her child was born, Elizabeth I was still being actively courted in her 40s by suitors who believed she could possibly have a child (her maids were bribed to report whether she was still menstruating), and these aren’t anomalies but just “off the top of my head” women. It wasn’t at all uncommon for women to have a grandchild the same age as or older than her youngest child, yet there aren’t a lot of reports of women from that time having an indordinate number of retarded children.
So I’ve wondered if perhaps things like diet, exercise (which even queens and the upper class would have gotten more exercise before modern technology), the fact that they had several children after the age of 35, etc…
My mom was 43, 8 days shy of her 44th birthday when I was born in 1968. Several doctors told her that having me at such a “late age” was a risk, but she told 'em to take a flying one.
No, it’s probably just because the risk is still fairly low, it’s just way higher than it is at younger ages. And in the case of royalty, I wouldn’t put it past them to spirit away or even kill a DS baby. And I seriously doubt queens and the upper crust women of yore got more exercise than modern women. Wasn’t Victoria carried everywhere in a palanquin-- like, even to the bathroom and such?
Perhaps you are forgetting that children with DS are also likely to have other problems such as heart malformations and other problems that, without modern medicine, make them far more likely to die? Before the mid-20th Century a lot of DS babies likely died in infancy due to physical problems beyond mental retardation. Thus, they did not make it into the history books or historical record beyond the infant mortality rate.
Down Syndrome babies also tend to have lots of difficulties nursing - so before modern times that would have contributed greatly to mortality.
Speaking of breastfeeding, I’ve read that they limit nursing to artificially induce returned fertility - just how is that “leaving things in God’s hands”? Personally, I think they really are quite nutty (but carefully edited and/or presented), and have an obsession with having babies, regardless of their given reason for it.
I hope for the sake of her current and possible future children she becomes infertile quickly and without trauma. Though I think it’s more likely that her uterus will rupture during a pregnancy, due to all the c-sections, which could easily be fatal. Though perhaps most of her children won’t much notice her absence, as she hasn’t been mothering them herself.
Though I don’t like them, I have to be fair and mention that several of the older girls have said they want to be nurses, teachers, midwives, and such. So speculation that they’ll be immediately married and bred is a little off-base.
That will only happen within the tiny scope of their fundie groups purview. They will get married off then sent to school so they can learn how to keep it all in the little church community. If you think they will be allowed out of the little community unmarried and unbred, you are sadly mistaken. As soon as it is legal, they will get married and start to pop out sprogs. Any schooling will be ancilliary to that.
She lived in 19th century England, not ancient Egypt or something. When Queen Victoria wanted to get somewhere, she traveled like pretty much any other upper class Briton…she hoofed it or took a carriage or train.
