Fundie Fascination: The Duggars Dissected

My honest to goodness, first view of the Duggar family.

I have been interested in religions all of my life. Growing up, I read every fiction and non fiction religious book I could find. I was fascinated with religious people and their convictions. Perhaps it was because my family was so lax about religion and really only paid lip service to faith. Maybe it is because I am just naturally curious about how people live their lives, but I have gone through long periods where I studied various faiths and the people who live them.

I suppose it should come as no surprise then, that I have a somewhat secret fascination with the Duggars of Nineteen Kids and Counting fame. I have to admit, every since I first saw a picture of the Duggar family in those awful homemade dresses welcoming baby fourteen or so, I have been hooked. I watch every episode with this sort of amused fascination, perhaps I am just a skeptic but from day one, I felt that the family was far too good to be true. I've been waiting for the Duggar bomb to drop, teenage pregnant daughter, their two gay children (because I mean, come on, statistically if they have around twenty kids, aren't two of them bound to be gay?), the child who drops out of the family to become a Hare Krishna. Something has to give, with them.
But alas, the sugar sweet voice of Michelle tells us that all is well and we believe, right? The children are all decent looking, they appear mostly intelligent, and well behaved (at least in the early episodes) so what they are selling definitely has to be legitimate.

What fascinates me about the Duggars, is what we aren't seeing. Just like every other reality show on TLC, there are plenty of staged syrupy douche commercials mixed and severe meltdowns. Wait...what? No Duggar meltdowns? This is against the TLC formula. Brand Duggar doesn't rely on the same dramatics as other popular shows, you won't see Jim Bob and Michelle sniping at each other, but you will see plenty of wholesome kissing and hear a lot of Jesus loving. In order to find the Duggar grit, you have to look a bit closer.

One of the first things that enraged me about the Duggars was their buddy system. You will see plenty of their older daughters (the sons have better things to do, like pretending to go to work) tending to the young children, doing all of the nurturing, disciplining, homeschooling, while Queen Mommy gestates or nurses the newest spawn. I spent the entire second decade of my life caring for my younger siblings and cousins. When I saw the Duggar parental units gushing about how the older siblings just loooooved caring for their younger 'buddies,' I had to call bullshit. Yes, I loved every child in my care and still do to this day but there were many days and moments where I absolutely resented the role I had. Perhaps if my parents had home-schooled and sheltered me to the point where I could barely look upon strangers on the street without fearing for my spiritual well being, I would have been more joyful in the raising of my younger family members?

A second agitation that surfaced rather early with the Duggars was the babbling nonsense about discipline, self control, putting others first, and virtues of that nature being family goals. There is plenty of martyrdom in the Duggar camp to be sure and the phrase JOY--Thinking about Jesus, Others, then yourself, is bandied about with zeal. But look how Duggars as a whole treat others. Did I miss the part of the Bible where they talked about Jesus' constant tardiness and how he made large groups of people wait for him? Did Jesus go into other people's homes and insult their food, as we saw in the pub in England? (Real food, really? Were you fiending for some Ro-Tel and Tator Tots?) And I am sure I missed the portion of the definition of discipline where it mentioned letting your children quite literally climb up the walls while you blushed and giggled about the prospect of adding another to the horde.

And blanket training...it just makes me shudder. I worked as an infant teacher for a couple of years, we had a family bring their son to us who wished us to use blanket training and other methods of that ilk with their son. They were mystified as to why we couldn't smack their child while he was in our care or ignore his cries to teach him to be less self centered. The poor thing was six weeks old when we got him and thirteen weeks old when they hired a private nanny who better fit with their ideals for training their poor infant.

"Buy used, save the difference." It sounds like a wonderful mantra and when you have twenty plus members of your family buying new is really not practical in a lot of cases. But why does frugal living stop at thrift store shopping sprees? I must say, I would really love to find the thrift stores they are frequenting of late, Frumpy Consignments must have gone out of business.( I made that up, stop googling it.) Where is the Duggar garden on that massive expanse of barely used land? There are enough pieces of equipment about, no one bought a tractor at any point? Gardening is not only frugal but it is good for teaching as well. It is certainly greener than an endless supply of Styrofoam dishes and disposable diapers. Where does one buy used Styrofoam dishes?

So you are probably wondering why I am still fascinated with the Duggars and still DVR their episodes to watch when no one is looking? It's a strange slice of life that I will never see outside of my television. It gives me insight into a group of people I am not likely to be in contact with ever and a tad of understanding for the fundie-light life someone very close to me experienced. But most of all, I watch so that when the tell all book or movie comes out in ten years, I'll have a reference point.