I seem to have developed an unhealthy addiction to TV shows about families with lots of kids. Tina has her obesity shows, I have my big ol’ families shows. There definitely seems to be some parallels between the two – the display of excess, the fascination with how things got to such a point, the shocking details, the unanswered questions! I think coming from a big family myself may be part of the interest, but mostly it’s just interesting to watch how people deal with that many kids. Even simple things are forced to become tactical and planned out.

 

Last night, I watched Jon & Kate + 8, The Quints: First Year, Kids by the Dozen, and looked for a show I saw half of once (Raising 16 Children). The latter is not scheduled to be shown again any time soon, but during my other shows, they did mention that family in a lower screen banner. Apparently they are expecting their 17^th child! I went to the Discovery Health web site to read all about them.

 

The thing with these shows is that I’m always left with a lot of unanswered questions that I really wish the producers had touched on. For example:

 

Jon & Kate Plus 8 – So this couple has a pair of twins, and then had sextuplets. My question is – did they do IVF? If so, I know they put in more eggs than they hope get fertilized, but I also know that they don’t usually put in 6!! WTF? Or was it a case like The Quints where they took a fertility medication that just worked gangbusters? Inquiring minds want to know. J&K+8 is a solid show. The parents are relatively normal people who ended up in this bizarre situation and they’re making the best of it. It’s also nice that none of the sextuplets appear to have health issues and all of the kids are cute as all get out. 

 

The families that choose to have 16 children one at a time blow my mind. First of all, is that even good for a woman’s health? It can’t be! I wish they would touch on any health implications this has had for the mother, but they never do. And secondly, why? The Raising 16 Children family is religious and opts to let god decide how many children they have instead of using birth control. Ok. But the Kids by the Dozen family I found a bit more perplexing. They have 16 kids. But they say, very frankly, that they were not TRYING to do that, they just kept getting pregnant despite using two types of birth control. I want to know which two types, producers! Also, it’s clear that they are religious, but not so much to the point that they don’t use birth control. So given that you don’t have an issue with birth control, and you didn’t want more kids, why not consider the vasectomy? I’m not making a judgement as to whether or not they should have, it just seems obvious that the question would have come up at some point and I want to know why they decided not to go that route. This is what I mean by unanswered questions.

 

The Kids by the Dozen family is awesome, though. All of the kids seem so kind and respectful. Could be editing, but I never saw either the mom or dad have to yell to get the kids to help with the younger ones or do their chores. I guess where there are so many of you, you can’t really get spoiled. They seem to truly enjoy each other’s company and have a good time together. And even though they’re home schooled and you can tell they’re religious (they don’t focus on it much, but it’s there), they all seem like people I wouldn’t mind hanging out with once or twice. I was just really impressed by the children and how well mannered they are and how loving the whole family seemed. My big family is nothing like that – my sisters certainly do not dutifully and happily work together to help my Mom. Ha!

 

Some fun facts, from the web site about Raising 16 Children family that really struck me. Their mother had been pregnant for 126 months of her life. That is almost 12 years!! It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around that. I’m also informed that they do not have any debt. That is amazing and it all goes back to one of my beliefs about recreational spending on kids. There are so many 2 kid families in America completely in debt and it’s because of dumb things like trips to Disneyworld. Seriously, no 7 year old gets nearly the same value in fun out of Disneyworld as it costs to go there. Most children, I wager, will have more fun camping at a lake for a weekend than going to Disneyworld. But there’s this idea that you need to spend a ton of money or buy elaborate toys or do expensive activities for your kids. Seriously, we’re talking about kids. Kids will easily spend hours immersed in play with a large cardboard box. I’m not saying people shouldn’t spend money on their kids’ recreation, I’m just saying that I think it is profoundly misguided to go into debt to do so. Finally, I was struck by the fact that they gave all of their children a name starting with J. In my family of 6 children, we don’t have common initials and it’s already hard enough to get the right name out. I’m always like, “Arrr,bree, Rebecca.” I cannot imagine how on earth they ever call the right child by the right name. Probably like a 1 in 3 chance that they get the right name out, the kids probably just know they’re being called by context and eye contact. Oh, the Mom is the only one without a J name. Seriously, if I’m pregnant for 12 years and an initial is to be chosen for the kids to share, it’s gonna be mine!! Seems only fair.

 

I added the serial shows to my queue. Luckily, Discovery Health also has a variety of other one off shows about this sort of thing that I’ll be adding to the queue.  

I think it's hotter inside my office than outside. The air conditioning is broken. When our office manager called to report this to the building supervisor, the other floors were working fine (still are), so he did not believe her and hence did not call the repair person.

 

Now it's 3:30 and the office has slowly heated up to roughly the temperature of a pizza oven. It's making me soooo sleepy. I don't think I can hack it much longer. Oh, and the phones broke twice this week and the power was out for most of Tuesday (again, only on our floor!). It's like the Section 8 of office buildings. I'm glad we're moving in December.