The Duggars are having their 19th child. I told two people at work about this, and both independently responded, “ew.”
I grew up in Arkansas, where the Duggars live, and have had my share of encounters with, shall we say, non-mainstream Christians. The Quiverfull movement is its own special brand of weird, but I’m not sure it’s really all that different from the reasons other people have children, even normal amounts of them.
I do disagree with the notion by Double X’s Lauren Bans that Michelle Duggar had no choice in becoming a breeder. She introduces it at the end of her piece, almost as an afterthought, and I’m not sure where it comes from. As her co-blogger, Noreen Malone, pointed out, Mrs. Duggar chose to join the movement. There are all sorts of ways cultural forces work on oppressed groups, and just about every non-white and non-male in the South can count themselves among them, but I don’t see any hegemonic forces working on Mrs. Duggar to have dozens of children.
I know plenty of women who don’t believe the things about women that I believe about women, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re deluded. At some point, women are allowed to choose that their role in life is producing babies, right?