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    Maybe the Duggars Are The World's Largest Rorschach Blob

    Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 3:37 PM | By Noreen Malone
    Jessica, I think you're right that the fascination with the Duggars and their cohort is more than simple freak show, can't-look-away compulsion. People are always oddly obsessed with/judgmental of big families, even if they're not extreme cases. I'm one of six kids. Often when I mention that fact, people seem to think that means they can freely inquire about my parents' finances, their views on birth control, and whether any of us are deeply screwed up or were ignored. They even want to know stuff like the number of gallons of milk we drank a week (eight, for those of you keeping track at home, all lined up in our restaurant-style refrigerator) and conjure images of KrazyKop station wagons and hellish family vacations, or ask if my life was like Cheaper By The Dozen. We're a far cry from the Duggars or this crazy octuplet story, but I think even slightly outsize familes provide sort of a larger-than-life yardstick against which people get to judge their own life choices. If someone else manages to have a greater-than-normal-number of kids who don't end up deeply screwed up, I think in a weird way that makes some people feel like maybe they're not giving everything they could as parents (even though that's nutty logic). Or watching the Duggars makes people feel a lot better about the life they're giving their kids. It's sort of a bombastic example that throws your own family into relief, and since we're all endlessly fascinated with ourselves and our own families, bam, ratings gold.
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