Michelle and Jim-Bob Duggar have more kids in their household than my son has in his public school classroom, but they’re ready to welcome more. Michelle suffered a tragic miscarriage in December of 2011 with what would have been her 20th child. The family has been open about the fact that the loss was devastating to them and that they’re actively trying for more. After a recent trip to an orphanage in China, they admitted that they’re considering adoption and that their children are the ones pushing for it! They want to make sure it’s God’s plan for them, though, and it say that they’re praying on it.
They have 19 children, two grandchildren and one more on the way, but Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar say that doesn’t necessarily mean their family is complete.
“We are open to the idea of adoption,” Michelle, 45, tells PEOPLE. “We are praying about it, and we will see what God has in store. Love for children has been placed on our hearts.”
The ever-expanding crew – eldest son Josh, 25, and his wife, Anna, 24, just recently announced they are expecting their third child in June – were moved by a visit to an orphanage in China on their recent trip there.
The visit to Beijing was filmed for TLC’s special 19 Kids & Counting: Duggars Do Asia, which airs Tuesday (9 p.m. ET) on TLC.
“The kids are definitely pushing towards wanting us to open our home up to another child or more,” says Michelle. “They see how much we have been blessed with and how little so many children have and they want to share. We tell our children that would have to be something that is God’s will for our family, and we will see if it is. Our children love children, and we all do.”
Though Michelle and Jim Bob, 45, lost their last pregnancy – a girl they named Jubilee – to miscarriage in 2011, Michelle says, “We are open to whatever is in store. It doesn’t really matter whether I would have another child or we would adopt, but we want to approach it with an open heart.”
She adds, “We have friends that have adopted children who are a great influence in our lives, and we have talked about their experiences. So it’s something we’ve considered. We have to know for sure that is what God wants for us to do.”
“When he gives us a child [through pregnancy], there is no doubt in our minds that is what He wants, but when it comes to adoption, we would have to know for sure that was His will.”
I don’t get that last statement, about how they somehow know that God wanted them to have a specific child because they conceived when they were actively trying to have another baby. It doesn’t make sense to me at all as it doesn’t account for free will.
I just checked, and they currently have eight children under 12, seven teenagers, and three daughters 20 and older. (Their oldest son has moved out, is married, and is expecting his third child.) So if they adopt at all, their kids are going to be the ones raising the adopted children. That’s how it works in their family, and they have good system worked out, one that may not be fair to their daughters, but they run a tight household. They’re also a very loving family, and while I can’t imagine living like that, I’ve been impressed with how chill and orderly they are. So I don’t hate this idea, is what I’m saying. It sounds insane to those of us who struggle to raise less than a handful of children, but if they adopt kids that would otherwise not find homes they might be doing them a service. I hope that God tells them to take a break, though. Put a fork in it, Duggars!
photo credit: FameFlynet and TLC
People like this think the act of getting pregnant at all is God’s will. So if you can’t get pregnant, God doesn’t want you to. You can keep ‘trying’ and if you don’t get pregnant, God doesn’t want it.
It’s psychotic.
These people aren’t logical. You could drive yourself mad trying to understand their thought process.
There are too many children that need to be adopted into good families, but not families that have kids raising kids.. I hope they don’t adopt. It would be a selfish act on their part and possibly for ratings.
These people need therapy; there is something mentally wrong with them.
You will drive your self mad. My Gel’s (Genetic Link’s, aka parents) are this religious, which is why I have nothing much to do with them and are trying to cut them out.
When I got kicked in the ribs by our horse, they spent an hour praying to God and the Holy Spirit to “heal me” before taking me into the hospital, cause the pain wouldn’t go away and I was still distressed. Found out I had two broken ribs!!!!!!
They should just move onto the next chapter in their life, which doesn’t involve babies any more and instead focus on raising the children that they have.
They probably think if God wants them to adopt, then one will land in the garden after a tornado?
I kind of remember the first time I heard about them. They just seemed like this family far removed from it all. Not I think they like or enjoy all the attention they get regarding the expansion of their family. It has even carried over to their children now.
I’m tuning out on them from now on. bye
Since it will be up to the older girls to raise the child they should have more say in it. They will probably marry young and start having their own kids soon anyway. Adoption can take years to go through and they seem to like expanding their family sooner rather then later. It does make for a great storyline for their show though.
I’d imagine it’d have to be a private adoption, as I can’t see an agency thinking that’s an ideal situation to add more babies too.
I never really understood the whole giving everything up to God’s will. I get praying for guidance or the wisdom to make the best decision, but you still have to actually make the decision.
That’s what I was wondering as well. How could a 20th child possibly get the love and attention it needs from parents that are already stretched so thin?
NOW they want to adopt??? NOW?
Well, I guess since they have the oldest girls really well trained to take care of kids and not leaving home anytime soon (not allowed to), they can do this and get all the positive PR for doing it.
Essentially they’d just be creating another orphanage here.
I don’t watch this show. You mean the daughters aren’t allowed to move away from home until they’re married?
They will adopt as soon as they find a way to profit from it.
I really dislike these people but if they are willing to adopt a group of minority siblings over the age of five I will reach out my arms to embrace them.
Something tells me they will only take a white baby, though.
Then they’ll justify that decision by explaining that it was GOD’s Will.
I don’t understand this comment. Are you saying the family is racist?
I love about thirty minutes from them. Here in NWA, adoption are easy. There is a group of islanders who have moved here (long story – basically they get automatic
Benefits and fast track citizenship bc we tested the A-bomb on their island) – anyway, these islanders pretty much always give up their first born for adoption. The girls have a baby while very young to prove their fertility and ability to give birth to a healthy baby. so they may be considering that.
what’s nwa?
NWA- North West Arkansas. not the most progressive or educated area. the “islanders” that are referred to up post are from the MArshall islands (which we took as territory) where the US military detonated 50+ atomic bombs and preformed nuclear experiments after WW2, rendering most of their available land unfit for habitation-vegetation, animals are gone and the fresh water sources are completely contaminated. quite frankly, i think they deserve more than some out post in arkansas for that deal.
Arock- what is wrong with where they live in Arkansas? It is a beautiful area. The cost of living is cheap, there are decent public schools, and there are plenty of places to work. NWA is really coming along. While there are still backwards closed minded people,it is a pretty nice place to live. The Marshallese are also in SW Missouri.
@mskittykay- I’m sure it fine. The duggars are part of a larger community that falls in those parameters in that area. (They’re also around the country) the Marshallese have suffered as well and would have benefited from being in a more economically developed area that had an existing pacific islander pipularion, like LA. They were moved to the area to supplement need workers for Tyson chicken processing and other processing plants. Given what the circumstances were behind the Marshalleses need to move, they should have been more consideration.
arock- I think you would be surprised at how much the area has grown and progressed in just the last few years. I would say it is pretty economically developed. The world’s largest retailer is there, one of the nation’s largest transport services (JB Hunt), and one of the world’s largest food production companies (Tyson Food) are within 10 miles of each other. While working at Tyson Food isn’t a glamorous job, it provides for many families. I honestly think that the Marshallese have a higher quality of life in Bentonville/Rogers/Springdale/Fayetteville than they would in LA. You don’t have to live in an upscale area to go to a good public school, crime rate is very low, and there are plenty of jobs. NWA has thrived through the recession. I really hate that people think the way they do about Arkansas.
@ mskittykay – please excuse the typos and awkward wording, my iPhone is possessed. You get the idea.
@MissKittyKay – there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with NWA. You’re right, it’s gorgeous! Unlike the stereotype of Arkansas, it is not uneducated hillbillies. There are several fortune 500 companies based there and an excellent university (Go Hogs!). In my opinion, it is the best part of Arkansas and preferable to other regional areas (SWMo, NEO, or SoKS).
Let’s not forget, the awesome Bill Clinton came from Arkansas.
The Chinese government does not allow anyone over the age of 42 to adopt. How are they getting around this?
My co-worker adopted a baby from China at the age of 47-48.
You know…I think this is a MUCH better idea than them trying for more bio-kids. Say what you will about them, and I’ve said plenty, the family does seem able to handle a huge number of kids. Not ideal, certainly, but a far cry better than growing up in an orphanage. D*mn you, Duggars! Don’t make me like you!
Well since Michelle is ONLY into having small babies around-good luck to her trying to adopt one of those.
Seriously, they are more into the idea of having kids to rack up their number for god then they are being actual parents. (Hence why the daughters end up being the real parents in that household)
God wants them to adopt children from America that are older and have a difficult time finding families to adopt them. I know, God just told me.
They took their eleventy hundred kids to China? Holy hell, that’s so tone deaf. I got the shank eye when I told somebody I had two kids, both boys. I can’t imagine what was going through the heads of the people who live in Beijing, seeing that poorly-dressed circus wandering around.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks it’s incredibly insensitive (idiotic) to take a family of two dozen to a country where the familial unit is capped at three.
I’m more concerned about Joy-Anna in this situation, because she’s the next upcoming young lady in the household–this baby will be her “buddy” and she’ll end up raising it.
OMG! These people are so nutty. Why didn’t they think about adopting about 17 children ago…instead of adding more carbon to the footprint.
What adoption agency would give these idiots a baby? They don’t even raise the children they have – the older daughters raise them!
Shhh, do you hear that? That’s the sound of Michelle’s uterus crying in gratitude for finally getting a friggin break.
Oh my, I am dying at your comment, LOL.
Babies are like puppies to them…
I wonder how they will react when they find out one or a couple of their kids are gay. Cause at 19 kids… the chances are high.
I bet the kid(s) would never come out. They would be shunned & summarily erased from the family & community. I know a girl who was raised like this & her father disowned her & forbid the family from talking to her ever again because she married a man they didn’t find for her.
You can bet the farm they’d be sent to conversion therapy if they even had the balls to come out in the first place. More likely, the poor kid would have to fake it his/her whole life.
But you’re right. Chances are quite high.
The only problem I have with these people is Michelle. She seems so far removed from her kids. It’s like she is the manager of this corporation and the older girls are like the assistant managers. It is just weird. Like if you asked her what kid 14’s favorite color is she would have to refer it to his direct supervisor.
She’d respond: “Which one was that, again?” Can’t help wonder if she ever calls them by the wrong names…
The sad thing is that many of the orphanages and children up for adoption are girls, due to their gender, in many countries. If the Duggars adopt a girl, how much further along is that child going to excel in life? They’re just going into a different form of abuse where she won’t be allowed to get any education, has to raise her siblings, then go on to be subservient to a man while she pops out 15+ babies. Sounds like a dream….
As much as I disagree with the Duggar’s lifestyle I cannot deny that living in their home would be far better for a child than being abandoned in an orphanage.
Nope, nope, nope. This should not happen. I watched one or two of this family’s early specials and was appalled. All these babies Michelle keeps popping out are assigned a “buddy” aka an older sibling (sister) to clothe, feed, teach, and play with them once they are weaned. Furthermore, the chore charts for the kids include things like cleaning Jim Bob and Michelle’s bedroom and making their parents’ bed, in addition to normal chores you would expect for a child. You do NOT have kids that you are unable to take care of yourself. You do NOT have kids so that you have a ready supply of free housekeepers. These people disgust me.
@Georgina – …”to clothe, feed, teach, and play with them”.
The only thing these poor girls aren’t doing is giving birth to them & breastfeeding. Otherwise, they’re new parents after every birth.
The chores thing I didn’t know. That’s just going TOO far, when the chores aren’t reasonable, & allow you to just sit on your ass all day watching one daughter cleaning up spit up, while the other chases a screaming toddler down the hall.
Christ on sale. Really? Children are not chickens you can collect, and invisible men in the sky do not communicate with people, ordering them around.
I find their beliefs and their lifestyle repugnant. Moreso than nearly any other person who gets blogged about on this site. They disgust me.
I don’t mind them. They do not rely on welfare and have gone crazy like Octomom, apart from their show they rent out a lot of properties with which I think they could survive if the show was somehow cancelled. They also raise their children with great values and morals. Before modern times, having a huge family was actually normal. Their children are well educated and they seem happy, just because it is not your ideal lifestyle does not mean they are wrong.
Do you think TLC is going to show the crazy part of their beliefs? Their children are not allowed to show any other emotion than happiness. Their disciplinary methods are pretty questionable too. Do you think it is okay to punish a teenager for feeling sad? Or to spank a baby for moving off a blanket? Look up the quiverfull movement. Also look up “no longer quivering”. I know one of their quiverfull buddies. These people aren’t really that nice.
+1
The “No Longer Quivering” blog is a must-read if you think these people are okay.
Those children are NOT well-educated. They home school one another using curriculum from the late 1800’s.
This, squared. Not only would I not wish either of them on an adopted child, I wouldn’t even inflict them on the children they already have. It’s worse than palming off their babies on the older kids to bring up. The children’s so-called
“edumacashun” has not prepared them to enroll in college or a trade school, nor do they have the skills to get a job. They have 7 legal adults in the house besides themselves, plus 4 more that are either teenaged already or approaching adolescence. Their tin god, Gothard, insists that young men should run their own business, even if they lack a head for business. If none of these kids ever hold a job, I have to wonder what will happen to them when they reach their 60s. Without 10 years or 40 quarters of paid social security and Medicare taxes, they will be eligible for neither.
Oh, and none of the young adults can leave Stalag Duggar, even for the most mundane errands, without taking a sibling along as their
“accountability partner”. Nice going, Boob and JUterus-you have created a snitchocracy!
They get cheap health insurance for the whole family for life on the taxpayers’ dime because dad was in the state legislature. They get big tax breaks because they established themselves as a church. They lucked out because they had some land useful for cell phone towers and they got a tv show. None of these things are available to the average large family, and most of those in the Quiverfull movement (google it, along with the NLQ site mentioned by someone else) are struggling and poor as they keep adding to their families for the glory of God and the patriarchy. I don’t consider the Duggars self-sufficient at all. They seem nice enough, but they are not truly self-sufficient. Just very very lucky. Add one or two seriously disabled children to the mix, and see how well they do. They may already have one- their premature child is still on oxygen at night, I think. Hope their luck holds with her, though. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to adopt a seriously disabled child, though – they need healthy and fertile youngsters to keep trying to outbreed us heathens. Really, that’s what Quiverfull is about. They’re rather open about it.
What these two need to adopt is a hairdresser and a life.
Their family seem very happy and loving to me too. Now Octomom…her kids (esp the littlest ones) look like orphans, sad eyes and bedraggled.
They looked okay before the octuplets hit. She was in grad school preparing for a job that actually would have let her support her original six plus one more (which is what she was expecting from her final treatment, despite the Internet mythology). She had gone to college after working for a while once she realized she would be limited without a college degree and a master’s. That takes some self-discipline. She was getting less government support than most grad students I knew because she had some assets, but it was perfectly appropriate for her to get such aid. she was using student grant money appropriately also, it’s intended to cover living expenses so you can focus on your studies. She struck me as a very focused and methodical person – if anybody could pull off the single mother of 7 maneuver, she could. If things had gone as expected, she would have put more into the system as a worker and taxpayer than she ever took out.. Things went bonkers after the plus eight arrived and Internet-inspired venom came her way instead of the more typical community help for the overwhelmed parents of multiples. One mother of multiples (sextuplets? septuplets?) said about 10% of their mail was hate mail in the olden days. I figure the dynamics of the Internet changed that percentage quickly – I saw so many stupid things that were baseless speculation repeated endlessly as gospel truth. People wanted her to fail so they could grab her kids. All she wanted was a large family, just as her father always wanted himself. She went about it in an unusual way, but her life would have been very different if mass insanity hadn’t broken out over the octuplets (who are at risk for developmental problems, adding to the stress and need for support rather than hate). Didn’t help that she had a cold fish of a mother who had never wanted kids herself and probably let her daughter know it every day. In addition to tossing her daughter under the bus in the media, Grandma was scaring the kids while their mom was in the hospital for two months giving the babies a chance, telling them their mom wouldn’t love them as much with the new babies and related trash, which the kids repeated to reporters callous enough to ask such questions of young children.
Wow. She always looks put together pretty well for having all those kids (although she’s stuck in the ’80’s with that hairstyle. Never see her in sweats, yelling at the kids, frickin’ going nuts. I’m a teacher and I know I couldn’t handle having that many kids of my own. I stopped at one. And how annoying that his name is Jim Bob? All he needs now is a overalls and a plaid flannel shirt.
What I don’t get about the Duggars is this: Why do the boys get to dress in “regular” clothes, yet the girls have to wear “special” clothes?
Because Daddy said so, it’s GOD’S WILL. Pants are for those with penises, skirts for the mobile child manufacturing plants. The man is in charge, & the women are subservient. A woman’s place is either in the kitchen, bedroom, or maternity ward, screaming in agony for the 10th time in her life (so far…). I guess it’s easier to pop out a baby if you’re in a skirt… Quicker access?
The girls aren’t trusted. They actually won’t let them leave the house unless one of their siblings are taken, just to make sure they don’t misbehave. So you better be a good little future-baby-making-machine, or sis will tattle on you.
Idiots.
These people are nuts. But hey, better adopting kids than trying to have more.
maybe they should work on getting the kids they have their own beds
WHY?????
I must be one of the lone few who admire them and applaud their choices. I think God does give life, and if God has blessed them with this large multitude of children, so be it. I’ve got four, and would love one or two more a bit later down the road.
I’m not attacking your opinion, I was just curious. I do believe God creates life. I can understand the argument that if you get pregnant, God wants you to have the baby, so it’s consider a sign of God’s will.
But in cases like having miscarriages or birth defects/child passes away right after birth, is it still God’s will those things happened? & if it is, what does that mean, that he blessed you with a pregnancy but changed his mind? Or intended for a child to enter this world, only to suffer & die? Are these things God’s doing as well?
I swear, I’m not asking this to be a disrespectful smart-ass, or jump on your opinion. I just genuinely wonder about this.
They’ll be hard pressed to persuade a reputable domestic agency to let them adopt, given the size of their family.
International adoptions would also be sketchy, even if they accept an older and/or special needs child. They can’t promise the child a room of his/her own, or even guarantee a bed of their own. I’m thinking they’ll find some naive, pregnant out of wedlock fundamentalist girl who still thinks they’re THE BOMB and browbeat her into letting them adopt her child.
The men want these litters of children so badly, let *them* give birth to them. See how many of those families would have 20 children then.
So, if it’s “god’s will” that they have 19 children that raise themselves, why wouldn’t the miscarriage be “god’s way” of telling them Enough? Just weird how they can make god’s will say whatever they want that also gets them attention in the media. Is god a PR agent?