The Duggars are ready to welcome another baby if 'that is what the Lord wills'

Despite the painful and much-publicized miscarriage Michelle Duggar suffered late last year, the parents to “19 Kids And Counting” say they are prepared to welcome another child if Michelle can conceive one.

Michelle Duggar sat down in a green-room interview with msnbc’s TODAY Moms and unequivocally said: "I would do it again… We would be open to more if God saw fit to bless us with more."

Despite some seeing the family as a phenomenon akin to a sideshow, most felt sadness when Michelle disclosed she had miscarried their 20th child halfway through the pregnancy. Crazy or not, no family deserves a miscarriage, no matter how far-flung their family size choices.

The Duggars made further waves when they infamously published a photo of the miscarried baby holding Michelle’s hand. They named her Jubilee Shalom.

The couple sat down with Ann Curry of the Today show – their first public appearance since the miscarriage last December. Michelle talked about the desolation of the miscarriage. "It's devastating, and many others have experienced very similar situations," Michelle said. "Probably the hardest part is that when a loss like this occurs people really don't know what to say.... We realize our sweet little Jubilee is with the Lord, and we will see her again someday."

Viewers of “19 Kids and Counting” will see how the Duggars coped with the news in real time in this season’s airing of the show. A preview clip shown on Today displayed the parents’ grief as they learned that their baby’s heart stopped beating on a routine ultrasound. Michelle cries and cradles her belly while Jim Bob sits nearby with a look of shock on his face.

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," Michelle prays between sobs. "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Jim Bob prays with her, then says to her, "Michelle, I'm so sorry."

This was the second time Michelle suffered a miscarriage. The first time was during Michelle’s second pregnancy, and the grief over that loss prompted the couple’s change in outlook regarding contraception: apparently the couple had on birth control when they conceived the baby, and were therefore convinced that the contraceptive caused the miscarriage. Thereafter, Michelle and Jim Bob made the resolution to allow God to plan their family size.

Over the following twenty years, the Duggar family grew into a veritable clan, with Michelle’s birthing average at around once every 18 months.

Those who debate the Duggars’ family planning practices usually miss the point that theirs is a deeply religious – and political – decision. It is no secret that the Duggars are conservative Christians; what this entails is a commitment to a certain lifestyle whose tenets are carefully outlined by Christian organizations on the far right.

The lifestyle the Duggars practice is therefore not only personal but political, in so far as evangelical Christians see themselves as the besieged minority in a largely hostile (to their ideology) secular majority. It is an evangelical Christian woman’s duty to submit to the “head” of the household (her husband) and to bear as many children as “the Lord” allows. The movement towards large families among fundamentalist Christians is known as Quiverfull, and derives from a passage in Psalm 127: “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are the children of youth.” The same Psalm affirms that "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord."

Quiverfull adherents are known as "quiver full", "full quiver", "quiverfull-minded", or simply "QF" Christians and their overt purpose is to produce and educate future “warriors” for God. The militant overtones of the rhetoric are hardly disguised, and parents seek to largely shelter their children from aspects of the dominant culture they deem adversarial to their religious beliefs. To that end, they constitute a large proportion of the homeschooling community.

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Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

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