Family Values

Aparently there is a family in Arkansas (gasp!) that recently gave birth to it's 16th baby since 1984. That's right, sixteen kids, all under age 17. The family even has a webpage, and if you look around a bit, you'll notice that husband Jim Bob was a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, and actually ran for US Senate. The Duggars are, of course, extremely religious and believe that they are doing God's bidding by having craploads of kids. Hmmm. Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about this in October. It's located somewhere on this website. Morford's article is extremely opinionated and far from my own style of writing, but I do agree with some of what he says. Here is an excerpt which I found particularly interesting:

Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?

Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.

It's an interesting thing to think about. I have for years thought to myself that I would like to have one child of my own, but would adopt after that, if I felt the need to have more kiddos milling around. I think it was only this year that I was struck by the realization that the reason that stupid people (don't misread this as a slam against Christianity, that's not what I'm about) abound in these United States is that, most of the time, they are the ones breeding. I mentioned this to my mom and she told me that was the reason my grandparents had so many kids. My Dad was one of 6 (doesn't compare to 16, I know), and both of his parents were doctors. They purportedly decided to have a large family to help maintain a certain level of intellegence in modern day America (my words, not theirs). Interestingly enough, 3 out of the 6 are doctors. One is a physical therapist, one is a presbyterian minister, and one runs his own non-profit business.