The older kids have experience in growing up in a very large family. So I can see them going one of two ways. Some will probably embrace the idea and try for large families of their own. (But will they be able to support large families?) And some will have children only over their dead bodies.

My Dad is one of eight. They all opted for two or three.

Everyone gets along and they spend a lot of time with their siblings, but my Grandparents sacrificed a lot to have that brood and I don't think that appealed to any of their children (one it might have, but he and his wife (one of 7 herself) started too late to get out more than the two that they did).

That the whole value of a woman is how many little Christian soldiers she can produce.

And I ask this with genuine curiosity: What's the value of the men in the movement?

I have business friends that are both doctors and they have 8 children. They seem totally sane and the children that I have met were delightful humans. They have no money issues. Pretty sure she had them all considering their looks and spacing. The mom is tiny too, damn it.

Oh, the tater-tot casserole or whatever makes me want to heave, though.

Happy Birthday, Deena!

Bev, yay for nothingness!

My folks were both one of 12 kids. They were poor, ignorant hillbillies without access to birth control. My maternal grandmother was 15 when my grandfather (aged 25) married her. That sort of skeeves me but they were married for over 59 years and they apparently loved each other very much.

Happy Birthday, Deena!

That's all I got right now.

And I ask this with genuine curiosity: What's the value of the men in the movement?

With the same caveat of not knowing to what degree the Duggars fit into this theological scheme, in general the idea is that a married man as head of the household is sort of the face of the family to the outside world, with the wife and children supporting his "mission"--be that a business, a ministry, or whatever.

ETA some of the family-oriented dominionist websites I like to look at when I need to feel amazed:

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UPS just arrived. The notes that they left said they couldn't leave my package because it required a signature, but the UPS guy just ran off after giving me my package and said he didn't need a signature. Oh, well at least the gift I bought is here now and I can shower and do errands before dinner.

My mom is one of 11 (including two sets of twins) and my dad one of eight or so. Both grew up on dairy farms. As has been said, huge farming families was the norm back then.

My dad was the youngest of his siblings. Apparently he got a fair amount of pressure from his dad to take over the family farm, as no one else wanted to.

THanks, Susan. I guess I was more curious about the not-married men/boys (because of the comment about the older girls taking care of the younger children). I am curious also to be a fly on the wall at homeschooling to see if there's a difference between genders.

But not so curious that I'm going to look it up, myself. I may go donate to another woman at Kiva, though.

It's funny, there doesn't seem to be half so much focus on the unmarried men, possibly because the expectations for them aren't so far out of the cultural mainstream. There seems to be a general sense that men should marry and establish families as soon as they're in a position to support them, so they can provided some nice Christian girl with the fulfillment of marriage and start siring the next generation of culture warriors, but that's about it.