Vaysh

I think it depends very much on the person being sent. I think Joseph probably enjoyed it and he wasn't there a whole year if I remember correctly. With Josiah I think the dynamics can have been different; he doesn't come across as a person who would enjoy what is basically an army boot camp with added religious brainwashing. Every single picture I saw of him in that place had him looking miserable and shattered. From what I've read about ALERT it sounds like a real break-'em-down, build-'em-up kind of place and IMO sending underage kids there is akin to child abuse.

Yeah, I don't get the fame whore comments either. We have seen one (1) clip of a girl who appears articulate, cheerful, outgoing and secure enough in herself to not stutter and cower before the camera. Considering how much flack these boards have given the Duggar kids and their spouses for being dull, stilted, inarticulate and boring it seems both strange and unfair that this girl is getting harsh comments about being a fame whore of all things for being the opposite. Like, seriously?

Wasn't that clip rather resoundingly debunked? The people in it were interviewed a while after and they said they were basically offered free food and drink and told to look happy and dance. They were quite horrified about how they'd been used in propaganda. It was in a lot of news outlets, kind of like how it turned out that the iconic picture of Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam was choreographed to the nth degree (note to propagandists, don't stage your movie sets next to a tower filled with journalists and photographers). One thing learned from 9/11 and the following wars - don't trust anything you see or hear. ;)

OMG the one with the scrunched up forehead is all Boob. I didn't really see the likeness before but there it is.

Wow. I just really hope that this will be a loooooong courtship because 18 years old and working for daddy is not what I'd call an ideal husband. Since Josiah is over 18 now is it ok to speculate enough to feel a little paranoid about this early courtship? Because combined with his extremely long stay at ALERT and his flip-phone of shame (to avoid "temptation") it feels like they might be trying to de-gay him. Or at least steer him into the heterosexual fold before anything happens.

I'm a little confused by the terms used here. Is the Rapture used as a synonym for Judgement Day and the Second Coming? Because I thought that the Rapture was a specific event where all the proper, righteous Christians get lifted up to the heavens above to (in the words of Pratchett's Aziraphale) "sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them. If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time". Pratchett aside I'd never heard of the Rapture before I started reading up on the American Fundamentalist Christians when they became loud and weird enough to make an impression across the pond. Now, I'm an atheist myself but I've spent plenty of time in Lutheran church choirs, partaking in Pentacostal youth activities and discussing religion with friends and relatives of various Christian denominations ranging from Baptist to Coptic and including ministers and vicars. The Rapture (as in certain people literally being lifted up to heaven during the apocalypse) is just not a thing. I don't think I've ever heard anyone not American mention it. It does sound like something the Duggars would be keen on.

As Wellfleet said, they are all politically charged names. And if someone named their child Adolf or Benito one would at least look for the political agenda or ideology behind it. With Jill and Derick you don't have to look for it very hard, they are proudly displaying it on social media and no one here is saying that they can't, but IMO it's a bit weird to use your first-born to further a political or religious agenda. It's not like the poor kid gets to have a say in it. ETA: Sorry mods! I posted before I read your notice (that'll teach me to read from the top instead of starting at the bottom), I'll see you Tuesday. ;)

Huh. Interesting. I never thought about how having an insurance based health care system could have an effect on your family planning. So, basically if her insurance company says so, she can't have as many children as she wants? (Which in Jill's case is probably a good thing, but still). And if she decides to have them anyway, the hospital will send her the whole bill? What about lay midwives, are they covered by insurance or are they payed directly by their clients?

I'm curious, everyone keeps saying that because Jill had a c-section (assuming she did) she won't be having more than 4-5 kids maximum as opposed to 19, but why is that such a certainty? Do women who have had c-sections become less fertile than women who hasn't had any? A quick google suggests that newer research says they don't, at least not due to the procedure, though the underlying causes may be an issue. I was under the impression that Michelle had several (4?) c-sections in a row but that she just kept going anyway until her body simply refused due to age. If Jill is as drunk on the kool-aid as she appears to be, would she stop at four or five pregnancies, c-section or no? I'm assuming that a doctor or midwife would heavily discourage a woman who'd gone through a c-section or several to have a huge number of children, but if they were confronted with a pregnant woman who refused to abort for any reason and who wouldn't listen to sense about using birth control of any kind in the future, what would they do? Wash their hands of her and refuse care?

I don't really see the Boob likeness myself. I think he looks more like Derick's mother, especially the lower part of his face. He's got her chin and her thinner mouth. Boob has a kind of rectangular face, Baby Israel's is round with a pointy chin.

Jackson was close with Hannie for a good long while and judging from recent episodes and social media he still spends most of his time with his younger sisters rather than with his brothers. I don't know if that's because he feels particularly close to them or because they match his maturity level better. The older brothers don't seem to care much for Jackson, we never see them together.

I almost didn't recognise Michelle's voice at all in the clip above. Someone started talking and I was all 'Hmm that sounds familiar, is it one of the girls? Grandma?' What in the world happened to make Michelle go from talking like a normal person to sounding like a chipmunk on drugs? Anna looks really sickly in this episode. Drawn and pinched with a pallor that would make a vampire proud. I haven't watched enough early episodes to know if she always looked that way back then or if childbirth and subsequent weeks of night-feedings was the cause.

I was born in the late 1970's and yes my dad did all those things (well not the crafts thing; he's a hobby painter so he showed me how to paint with oil colours instead. I think he regretted that somewhat after having to launder X amount of paint stained t-shirts ;) ). He worked full-time as well so as you say it's probably a generational thing. I'd say the dads of today are even more hands on because the younger generation of parents are more likely to share their parental leave equally after birth.

When do American kids start first grade? At six? Five? I read the post above and thought, well that's not too bad, but then I realised that while we start school the year we turn seven the American system is a bit different. Could it be that he started school a year later because he wasn't mature enough? He always hangs out with his younger sisters rather than his older brothers which may have, not exactly stunted him, but kept him a little immature for his age, especially since he never had access to pre-school.

Well, that's not exactly hard now is it? ;) But all those things you mention are... play stuff. Not actually taking care of his kids. I guess I'm just used to dads being more involved in their children's daily lives. As in making them breakfast, dressing them, fixing their hair, helping with homework et cetera AS WELL AS playing with them and doing crafts projects. With JB we only ever see the fun things and occasional outings and whenever he tries to "babysit" as they so appallingly put it, he flounders with simple things like making a ponytail or cooking a simple meal, which tells me that these are not things he's used to doing. Like many, I think the younger Duggar kids view Jim Bob and Michelle more like grandparents and their sisters like their true parents.

Most people don't put up big collages of themselves on their wall with enormous ugly letters to go with it. Or maybe I'm just hanging out with the wrong kind of people.

For someone who supposedly loves his kids, Boob is fantastically inept at actually taking care of them. He doesn't teach them, he doesn't feed them and after almost three decades of being a parent, he can't even brush their hair effectively. Compared to every dad I know, Jim Boob appears incredibly detached from his kids' daily lives. What exactly is it that Jim Bob does for a living beyond TLC? I've never managed to figure that one out. Like, what does he do all day that stops him from learning how to brush his kids' hair or cook them a few meals once in a while? I've read that he makes money off of some rents and this mystical cell phone tower I keep hearing about, but does he actually work in any way?

Sorry, but the second one is just tacky.

We saw Hannie and Jackson out riding bikes in that episode where Hannie fell off and cut her face open and had to go see a plastic surgeon instead of a regular one because girls need a pretty face. I think I've seen pictures of them playing in some sort of jungle gym behind the house as well and they do have that basketball court. We mostly see them playing indoors but that could be for filming purposes, as you said JenCarroll; there's not much point in filming 19 kids and counting if half those kids are off running around outdoors. However, judging by their social media, a lot of their daily lives seem to be spent inside the house even when they're not filming. Wasn't it Michelle that blamed the weather/heat/cold for that? I guess it's understandable in a way, it's not as if there's is an awful lot to do on that flat piece of land they've got, especially if the kids are not allowed to play imagination games.

I remember watching that episode where they visited a public school and one of the kids there asked Jill what her favourite books were. She could only come up with some Christian detective story (which, of course, was really written for boys) and then that horrid Before You Meet Prince Charming as her personal favourite. I do remember seeing several other books on a table in their house in the same episode, and I remember Jessa reading to the little girls in another (Life on the Pond I believe, another fundie book-series) so I don't think their home is entirely devoid of reading material. That said, I do think that any book they own has been very carefully vetted and that novels are mainly seen as yet another way to indoctrinate the children into their parents' beliefs, not as a source of enjoyment and adventure. And while I haven't read the particular novels mentioned above I have read others with a "Christian message" and, like most literature where ideology is put before plot and characterisation, they were well and truly terrible. Bland, twee and without a shred of trust in their readers' ability to understand the message without being repeatedly hit over the head with it. If Jessa mentioned Little House on the Prairie one can hope that they at least get to read that one. But I really don't think they are encouraged to read much (or at least nothing truly interesting) because we never hear them make any references to any book ever. No mentions of favourite novels, no name-dropping of beloved characters, no play-acting, no quoting. And that's quite sad to me because I remember how massively important reading was to me in childhood, not only for the reading experience itself but because so much of my playing was influenced by the stories and worlds I found in books.

Yeah, I don't see that happening either. Boob is a creep who is far too invested in his children's sexuality but I really really don't think he would take advantage in that way. His relationship with his daughters do come across as very controlling and somewhat emotionally incestious (having their hearts, purity rings and so on) but I don't believe there has ever been any physical abuse going on there. Jana might have been subjected to some unwanted quality time with that evil little troll Bill Gothard (god do I hope not!), but Jim Bob? No.

Someone giving up an interest they appeared really invested in as well as as their education and future career doesn't sound superior to me and wouldn't to anyone I know; it would sound sad and a bit tragic with a good pinch of odd thrown in. Then again, there aren't a lot of stay-at-home mums or dads around here past the 18 month parental leave-period so the mindset is probably a bit different.

DO all of the grown kids have GED's? I have a vague memory of a couple of them celebrating passing their exams, but I can't remember which ones. I assume Jill and Josh have them and John David if he's taking pilot lessons. I don't think Jessa would be "teacher" if she hadn't passed; Josiah seems clever enough and was studying accounting for a while, but does anyone know about the rest of them?

Why are imagination games a no-no? I suppose I'd understand it if they involved playing Harry Potter or something (there was a ruckus regarding a private fundie Christian school over here who banned Harry Potter because... I don't know, magic = evil and they were incapable of separating fiction from reality? so I'm aware of that mindset) but does this thinking extend to imagination games of all kinds, even those not involving anything supernatural? I remember playing Robin Hood, Indians, Narnia, Ivanhoe and all sorts of imaginary adventure games and having a wonderful time when I was little and it's such a shame if the Duggar kids aren't allowed to do that.

Jessa yes, but Jinger? Past eye-rolling aside she comes across as a scared little mouse these days. I can't get a handle on her personality-wise but it seems like she's been "convicted" a lot lately. Convicted to be less snarky, convicted to be more "content" and not want to live in a city, convicted to have a constant fake smile on her lips... Jana actually comes across as a stronger personality to me, maybe because she's older and obviously the main substitute mother in that family. Jana has a quiet authority (the younger kids clearly mind her without her having to bully them like Jessa), Jinger doesn't.