Well, as someone who has had 2 miscarriages (one late 1st trimester, one very early called a “chemical” pregnancy), I can say I have a lot sympathy for her. A loss is a loss, and I was not prepared for how painful it would be. The emotional and physical pain was something I will never ever forget. I wouldn’t wish it on her or anyone else for any reason. Unless you’ve been there yourself, don’t think you can understand it. I was lucky to have 2 beautiful, healthy boys (and know it was time to quit after that) but some are not so lucky.
No, she will never use birth control nor would they prevent pregnancy in any way. It’s not in “God’ Plan”. Unfortunately, she as much right to have 20 kids as someone does to have 20 abortions.
I always wonder, though, what would happen if a trusted doctor gave her the stunning news that another pregnancy would be a bad, bad idea and might even kill her? Hmmmm.
I had a 2nd trimester miscarriage and it was far, far more painful than either of my full term birthgivings. It took two days. Why it took that long for an 8-ounce fetus when it took only a few hours for a six pound baby is mysterious to me. My sympathies are with Mrs. Duggar for the pain and sorrow endured.
That said, IMHO it would be immoral for her to intentionally become pregnant again.
I know, that would/will be interesting if one of them totally breaks away and writes a tell-all book or something, and odds are that at least one will. Although they do seem like really good creepy robots so far.
I know he’s nuts but I don’t know all the details. Give us the details!
As for the Duggars, I hear that the kids only learn WHAT SEX IS a few days before they get married, so they won’t be tempted to do it. Well, only one is married so far so I guess the other ones who are like 20 years old still don’t know. I just…can’t imagine.
I’ve miscarried too, but it was early. I know a miscarriage can be traumatic and especially if it’s later on in the pregnancy, and for normal situations of course I have sympathy for people going through that. But when you seek out trouble as hard as the Duggars have, well then you just have to expect to find it eventually.
She would trust that God wouldn’t allow her to get pregnant again, if she wasn’t meant to be.
What I don’t understand about the Quiver Full movement is how in the hell they arrive at their conclusion even given the source material and the twisted logic they employ. And even then they disregard the parts they apparently don’t like.
The Quiver Full movements gets its name from Psalms 127:3-5
Incidentally, other translations that are probably more accurate say “sons”, not “children”, not that I think this would bother the anti-feminist Duggers.
Even so, I understand how you read that as “you should have kids, a big family is good” but how in the hell do you twist it into “and keep having them til you die or your ovaries dry up or your uterus just drops out”? It doesn’t set a minimum number, it just says “Kids are good, they’re a comfort, they make a dad happy.”
It also says right there in the source material “children of the youth”.
The Duggers aren’t in their youth. They’re in their 40s. That’s not youthful. (I say this as an insider: I turned 45 this week; just the other day I spent an hour discussing preferences in Fiber One products, suppositories, and the diminished bladder capacity of middle age with my sister, both of us wondering how they hell we morphed into our “let’s start the dinner by talking about bodily functions” mother and aunt.)
Abraham is considered one of the most righteous men of all times. Did he have a tent filled to the walls with kids? NO! He was childless until middle age, and then when he did have one with the undocumented cleaning lady God sort of shook his head and said “I told you to wait”. When he finally did have a child with his wife he became a deadbeat dad to the oldest son. Later on, when he was neither youthful nor middle aged but flat out ancient he had six more with his third partner and, once again, tossed them all out of the house (or tents) so he could leave everything to Number 2 Son. Eight kids by three women isn’t that great an average to begin with, and only one of them really counted for the purposes of Christianity.
Abraham’s grandsons Jacob and Esau were also a lesson in family planning: they fought constantly and even end up with Isaac being deceived on (what he thought was) his death bed. Then Jacob goes away, marries two of his first cousins and shags their maids and has his own enormous family, and how much joy do they bring him? Well, aside from them disobeying his direct orders and killing a small village to avenge their sister’s rape, and aside from the one who shagged his concubine, and aside from getting pissed off at his favoritism and faking the death of the son they sold into slavery, and the ones he cursed on his deathbed, it was one big happy family. And this was the man for whom Israel was named.
But, here’s the kicker, Psalms was, by tradition, written by King David. David really did have lots of kids in his youth, and afterwards- he had numerous wives and concubines going in full production, so he was happy as a fox in a chicken coop, right? Well… perhaps, until his daughter Tamar was raped by his son Amnon. Then his son Absalom took revenge by killing Amnon and immediately going into exile. Then Absalom came back a few years later with an army, drove Dad out of Jerusalem, shagged Dad’s harem while yelling out “Whose the king?! I said, Who the King???” to basically take the Oedipal thing to new heights, and then ends up getting killed (the right move in my opinion) by David’s nephew.
Next up, David’s throne passes NOT to one of the sons of his youth but to Solomon, the son of David’s mid-life crisis, whose older brother had died when God killed him to punish David and Bathsheba for their sins. And what is Solomon’s very first act as king? He kills David’s oldest surviving son, Adonijah, who like a more moderate (or likely just middle aged and Fiber swilling) Absalom asks for dad’s ‘like new’ last concubine. And Solomon’s last act? Turning to pagan gods whose followers his father had spent a lifetime fighting against due to the influence of his own ginormous harem, after which the kingdom David built is split in two by a rebellion against Solomon’s own son.
This is not exactly a great lesson in how lots of kids bring peace to a man or perpetuate his wonderful legacy or anything like, and in fact King David’s would be about the last advice I’d ever take on parenting or how to have a great family. (I have actually wondered if the fact that Absalom translates as “my father’s peace” was an early scriptural editor’s notion of irony.)
In fact I can’t think of a large family in the Bible that did work out. Gideon had 70 sons, 69 of whom were killed by their brother. Ahab followed his ancestor Solomon in listening to pagan wives, and his own 70 sons were put to death, then his daughter was the worst of the lot. If anything most of the families in the Bible are huge arguments for small manageable families.
And these are not obscure stories to anybody who’s been to Sunday school. If I can see these discrepancies, why can’t they? And if they do see them, how do they reconcile them?
That’s gotta be one well-worn highway by now. My wife and I may not have been blessed by the LORD with the bountiful gift of children, but at least her cervix isn’t a baseball pitchback.
This is one of those YMMV. I’ve had two miscarriages. While they were physically painful, both of them were a tremendous relief to me. The first one was when I got pregnant on the Pill, and the second one was conceived when I had an IUD in place. I didn’t care for the physical pain, but I was HAPPY to be miscarrying both times.
Is there any research out there to show what actually happens to a woman’s reproductive system toward the end of such a life? Will she reach the point where every pregnancy miscarries so quickly that she just won’t know how many there were?
Does Quiverful allow for simple abstinence? Or are they required to continue . .er . … conjugating . . . in case God wants to create another child?
There’s no evidence to support the belief that cancer is linked with fertility treatment.
I don’t they’ll pursue fertility treaments. I think they’ll just keep trying for another baby until she goes into menopause. She need counseling not more kids.
This is what I have wondered. She may be low on the self-identity meter but wtf is HIS problem? This is bordering on spousal abuse. Keep it in your damned pants, Dad!
Why should he? He’s not the one going through miscarriages. He’s not the one marked for an early grave. He would just get to marry a new, not-thoroughly-worn-out pretty young thing and start a-fuckin’ again.
But first he’d make an endorsement deal with the sponge company.
It’s such a shame that Chang and Eng Bunker weren’t born 150 years later. The money to be made on reality shows is way more than it ever was for freak shows and it’s easier work.
No, fertility treatments are probably not DIRECTLY related to the cancer that eventually killed Elizabeth Edwards. But she had to FLOOD her body with hormones to achieve her last two pregnancies, and then she neglected to have yearly mammograms. Breast cancer is often very sensitive to hormones, and it is quite likely the hormones accelerated something her body had been cultivating for quite some time.
~VOW
Wait, Cabbage Patch Dolls??? Of course, maybe he’s remembering back when they first came out and people got into fist fights over the last one in the store?
And women in the past may have had eighteen or so pregnancies, but they would have expected to have a miscarriage and/or a stillbirth. Infant mortality was high, and that’s one reason why people tended to have more kids.
You saw it even in more prosperous families – Queen Victoria was lucky in that all nine of her children survived to adulthood (even her youngest son, who was a hemophiliac)
My grandfather was one of eleven, for example, and my great-grandmother had several miscarriages.
And if you think they don’t know what sex is, that’s ridiculous. Considering how many kids they have, I’m sure at least ONE of them has walked in on Mom and Dad. They may not be TOLD, but I’m sure they found out.
I don’t think this is really a fair complaint. I’d bet that her family and close friends know her as a complete person with a personal identity. That the majority of society who knows about her only knows this one thing doesn’t define her character. It’s tautological that people only know one thing about someone who attains notoriety for one thing. Some people are famous for one thing. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t real people with rich and complete personal identities. It just means that you and I don’t know what they are.
It’s a good thing we’re not defined by what strangers know of us. I’m not even a little bit famous; I wouldn’t have an identity at all.
Even if she does have no other personal identity, there are plenty of people with fewer children whose primary personal identity is being a wife and mother. They often have very happy and fulfilling lives.
