Nate (post: 1226065) wrote:How do we know they have a disciplined household? I certainly don't see their daily lives. Yeah, they were on TV, but so what? I bet I could fake having a disciplined household if I knew millions of people were going to be watching me, especially if I belonged to a ridiculous cult that could have its reputation harmed by seeing a household of multiple children misbehaving.
Just as you have the right to assume they're all well-behaved and each receive decent amounts of attention from their parents, I have the right to assume that they're ill-behaved and that some of them are neglected. If we were talking about a family with only six, seven, heck, even eight kids, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. But eighteen? No way.
I think the point is that if they children are well looked after, the number of them is less relevant. Who is the better parent - the one with 20 healthy well adjusted children or the one with two dirty, malnourished, social misfits? There are, of course, a whole lot of other factors involved that any parents may or may not be able to control.
Since the family did spend some of their lives on TV, we at least have some evidence to go on. Simply ignoring it so it fits some predetermined pattern of what one thinks a family would be like is not very fair. Just as one may doubt any parents could handle 18 kids (some of which are adults now), I would also say I strongly doubt that you could get a bunch kinds to act a certain way in front of cameras that is completely different from how they act normally.
I could also suppose they actually own a herd of pink elephants that they use to terrorize the community into helping them finance their enormous family and no one in the community including the TV show producers want to talk about for fear of reprisal. However, I've seen the TV show and I think I'll choose to take that as evidence as to how the family really operates.