Churchhoney

Would make more sense than the Texas school I scared up on the internet. Since this one mentions Jesus in every paragraph, and that one mentioned Texas licensure instead. I doubt Jill'd be happy with one that didn't have a lot of bible verses.

Maybe he can make the whole compound a long-term rehab facility with mansions, for celebrity offenders. ... although I suppose the landfill might be a slight problem ... I wonder what all the people think now who've paid to listen to the many speeches JB and M have given on how they've prepared their kids carefully for going out and living lives on their own as highly responsible Christians. Because it seems to me when one scans the Duggar family these days, one sees a failure-to-launch situation of epic proportions.

I would expect to see these in their grocery lists, actually. 3 can baked beans Woe unto you, Oh Israel.

So there's a sucker born every minute. Probably true. If not, who would fill up all these "ministries," I suppose.

Maybe she'd get a better house if she started soliciting extramarital affairs online.

LIke Jim Bob and Michelle, leghumpers pretty much oppose logic, I think.

They have however officially worked together in a consortium with the CNM groups on finding common ground to develop a more comprehensive system of midwife training and practice in the United States (and there's similar stuff internationally). So they're not just hanging out there in the air with no recognition by other groups... Here: http://mana.org/us-midwifery-era-us-mera An historic joint meeting of seven organizations directly responsible for education, regulation and professional associations for the three U.S. midwifery credentials—CPM, CNM and CM—was held April 19-21, 2013 at the Airlie Conference Center in Warrington, Virginia. Named the United States Midwifery Education, Regulation and Association (US MERA) work group, the objectives were to: 1) strengthen the foundation for organizations responsible for midwifery education, regulation and associations to work collaboratively to advance the midwifery profession in the U.S., and 2) grow together as leaders creating the future of midwifery in the U.S. The following identified meeting goals were met Describe a history that reflects the ongoing efforts to move professional midwifery forward in the U.S., including identification of challenges and accomplishments Engage in a dialog that creates a deeper understanding of current strengths and challenges for U.S. midwifery Develop knowledge and trust to support successful ongoing communication Identify opportunities for future collaboration Conduct a collaborative analysis of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) three pillars—Education, Regulation, and Association (ERA)—as they apply to U.S. midwifery US MERA member organizations Member organizations included, American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), Accreditation Council for Midwifery Education (ACME), American Midwifery Certification Board (AMCB), Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), Midwifery Education Accreditation Council (MEAC), North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), and National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM.) Statement of Purpose By consensus US MERA participants recommended establishment of the US MERA Work Group as an ongoing entity with the following purpose: “The purpose of US MERA is to create a shared vision for U.S. midwifery within a global context, generate an action plan for collaboration to strengthen and promote the profession of midwifery in the United States, thereby engendering a positive impact on U.S. maternity care that will improve the health of women and infants.” She needed the cash?

Plus, banned Venessa is still involved. Nice. She did all the actual observation and participation with Venessa, who seems to be kind of a hanger-on and has not looked to be very ethical of dripping with good judgment, health-related or otherwise, either. ... And virtually all her observation and hands-on experience happened before she got married. ... So it's old experience and potentially experience that was fudged and gussied up to look better than it was by Venessa who is a somewhat shifty leghumper type. That's what I was afraid had happened, and there it is. The only thing I see on the bright side is that she still mentions that, early on, she was afraid of the responsibility. So I guess I'll hope that, since virtually all her hands-on experience is now years behind her and she must feel rusty, the fear of responsibility will bother her now, too, and she'll steer clear of situations where she'd be driving the bus. ... Wonder if this could be the program.... https://texasmidwiferyschool.com/index.html

I wonder about this, too. Like, for example, is she confident that he could make some kind of televangelism thing work, so right now she's just content enough with the likelihood that he'll be supporting them in a career like that? Or what? Jessa and Ben both seem so completely unformed at this point and so much just elder-Duggar appendages that I wonder where they will get self-respect and respect for each other as time goes on. Especially as Jim Bob's own kids age into professional toilet-cleaning age and he possibly gets antsy to see Ben move off the Duggar teat and on to something else.

Sad and ironic to the max. I agree. I've always believed that faith doesn't have the least thing to do with the Duggar regime. Everything stems from Jim Bob's and Michelle's neuroses and venality that conveniently take faith as a cover and then twist that faith into something virtually unrecognizable. Among the many many things that I find despicable about them is their doing that. If you're doing what you do because you're a power-hungry sick jerk, own it. Don't blame a religion for your bad behavior. (Like that's gonna happen. ha. But still.) Horrible people. I will never understand why their big fans seem to believe that their behaviors are faith based.

Yeah. That's the "Lite" part. It would be just Warren Jeffs the egomaniac who is utterly determined to control as many other people as possible in every possible way, like puppets, from here to eternity, whatever the cost.

So does that mean that, since the kids have learned through Josh of the inevitable evil that comes from moving away from Jim Bob, JB and M are now excitedly building the inescapable Duggar compound of their dreams? To keep the whole gang trapped in perpetuity? .... And Jim Bob's finally going to get to be Warren Jeffs Lite?

I get what you're saying, and I sort of wish I believed it! The difference between your reading and mine is that you go with the Bible and the archetypal stories, and I go with science. I think, even under a scientific interpretation, that the archetypal stories will be the case for many or even most people -- that's what make them archetypes, after all. But unfortunately I expect that someday we'll find out that science doesn't guarantee that absolutely everyone will be able to make free choices. (it might even tell us that no one actually can, although that's a different story ...) Anyway, I've just seen too many people utterly squashed -- while others aren't utterly squashed, by essentially the same circumstances -- to believe that it's even possible for some people to overcome a very early, severe warping of the way their minds work. I expect it takes a very particular combination of traits to be able to -- and our DNA is complex enough so that not everybody is going to have those traits.

If only this weren't such a real possibility!

I think I'm going with the full equipage -- tow chain, anchor and noose. JB and M are sloppy in a lot of ways but when it comes to being control freaks I think they are determined to cover all their bases. Those poor kids. And they've spent over a decade on tv being held up as parental role models. I don't have words for how horrible I think that is.

He may. Or he may be the kind of person who squelches the hell out of that dialogue before it utters more than one syllable. Could go either way. If it's the first, I think he might eventually walk away, having realized some truths about himself and its incompatibility with his life. If it's the second, he may go nuts eventually from all the crap that's churning but nevertheless buried and squelched deep down in his mind.

I think you've just nailed the essence of "Growing Up Duggar."

I basically agree with all this. ... I do think, though -- from the perspective of somebody with a similarly warped background -- that changing in the ways we'd like to see her change would be much much harder for Jill and take much much more time for her to accomplish than anyone with a more normal background can possibly imagine. I think it's kind of like what happens with spoken-language capabilities in babies' brains. We're born capable of making the sounds of all the human languages, the clicks and the tonal variations and the rolled rs and all of it. But as we learn one language most of those capabilities fall away and are damnably hard to recapture later in life. Similarly, when you're raised in an extremely limited and limiting environment, as the Duggars were, I expect that other brain capabilities you were born with -- including the actual impetus to do certain things -- actually wither away. You're not using them. They never get reinforced. In fact, they may be negatively reinforced so that they wither up even faster. So trying to get them back later becomes really problematic -- even the desire to do certain things other think of as normal has withered. For me, for example, socialization went this way. It never even occurs to me to make friends, respond to people, enjoy myself with people or reach out to people the way other people find it normal to do. I'm pretty sure it's because I so unconsciously squelched these desires in myself as a kid -- to prevent pain, I suppose -- that I find it next to impossible to get those desires and capabilities back. When you've squelched even the desire to behave in a certain way, it puts a real crimp in your behaving that way. And you have lost the skills right along with the desire, of course. I comment a lot on the dead-and-dullness of the Duggars. But, to be fair to them, I expect that a lot of what looks like their boringness and stupidity was well and truly baked into them by their upbringing. And i think it'd just be very very hard for them to recover buried impulses and abilities. Not made any easier, of course, by their being unaware that they could be doing different stuff with their lives and, in Jill's case, being married to someone who doesn't really get it either and so ends up trying to address it in the wrong ways. I was saved from being a Duggar by having gone to regular school and being pushed to take on paying jobs from an early age, I think. I learned to interact with people just fine in worklike situations and to find my mental stimulation in work activities. But when I think of what an unmitigated disaster I am socially to this day, I hate to think what I'd be like altogether if I'd not only been deprived of socialization but also been forced into the hideous and stultifying SOTDRT, banned from"working for others outside the home, and trapped every day in the mental wasteland of the TTH the way the Duggar kids are. ... It's a long road back for them, I think, and made longer by the fact that they've been told that there isn't even a road... or a place to go back to.

The fact that we can even entertain this as a possibility is tragic and horrifying, isn't it? And yet I'm sure most of us can pretty easily envision him being this kind of a jerk.

Signs of both the infantilization and the poor and inadequate socialization the Duggar kids have experienced. Very sad, really. From my own experience, I don't think you can ever fully recover from this, even if you realize it's happened to you and you really really try. And in their case, they don't seem even to know it, so I expect this is going to be a feature of Jill's pretty much for life.

Hard to tell where they are, I think. Jim Bob was recently in Florida. And there are Lowe's pretty much everywhere, aren't there?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. It is very very very very easy to brainwash a baby. Luckily, it doesn't cross most people's minds to do so. But sick, narcissistic, wildly fearful, arrogant, control-freaky people? To them it just comes naturally. And baby brainwashing is especially insidious since it comes before the kid even has language in its brain -- so it utterly lacks tools to fend it off, counteract it or understand it in any way. Baby brainwashing is easy -- and can easily last life long. Right now this minute I'm dealing with an elderly brainwashed baby. Frustrating as all hell because there's so little hope for counteracting at a later date the ways in which that brain was rewired by lunatics before the child was out of its cradle.

No kidding. There are tow chains attached!

I'd love to see this, too. But I think we may be a bit misled because these people are on television. I'm pretty sure that, in real life, there are some people whose lives actually are way more boring and development-free than we'd ever find acceptable in a fiction. Truth is sometimes stranger and deeper than fiction, but not always. .... Some people are pretty damn limited. Some people just barely ever get off of square one. And unfortunately these may be some of those people. ... They've certainly been groomed for that.

Sort of the way Jessa's and Ben's good intentions aren't going to, you know, support their family down the line. I'm afraid they've been told that their purity of heart, rightness with the Lord and all-around slavish devotion to the wise principles of JIm Bob-ism will always lead the righteous Duggars into good outcomes. That's why they don't bother to find out any information, consult with anybody or, heaven forbid, try to use common sense. At some point it's going to get some of them into big trouble.