Interview with Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar

The Family's Response to Critics

Do you come across a lot of negative reactions being such a large family?

Michelle Duggar: Typically when we're out as a group, there's probably more positive response, just the children seem to get along well and move about easily. For the most part, people are like, "Wow, your kids are really well behaved!" That's quite amazing for today's day and time. But, there's always those other ideas and thinking, of overpopulation or whatever.

Everybody's entitled to their opinion. But, some may get very offended by the whole idea of having a large family. There's just different concepts and views on how life really is.

What do you say to those critics?

Jim Bob Duggar: As far as like overpopulation, I mean, there's really a myth of overpopulation. The whole world's population could fit into the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida.

Michelle Duggar: Shoulder to shoulder.

Jim Bob Duggar: Yeah, and have room to spare.

Michelle Duggar: So, it's not like that's a real issue. The issues of food being available in certain places or seeing poverty and different things like that, there's different issues that maybe are spurring that on. But, in reality, every family has to do what they feel they're called to do. We're not out there telling people this is the way everybody else needs to live, because by all means, this is not for everyone. God wouldn't give everybody 19 children. That's just not the way it's gonna happen, and maybe one or two is the number for someone else, or maybe God doesn't allow any children in a family.

And then, others may choose, to adopt or have ministry with children in other ways. That's what makes the world go around. We're willing to realize that and be open that there's a different calling for different people. We're not about to judge anybody and tell them what they ought to do. That same kindness can be extended both directions.

Back when Discovery wanted to do a documentary with our family, we were the first ones to say we are not a perfect family. We feel so inadequate. We're still learning every day. We're not finished raising our family. And yet, as we prayed about it, we really felt like there have been many people, many families, many others that have shared things with us that have encouraged us along the way. And if we can share anything like that with somebody else that will help them to look at life from a brighter side and realize these children really are a blessing and a gift from God and I'm really thankful for them, then we'd be willing to let the cameras come and film our imperfect family, as long as they didn't edit out our faith because the faith was the core of our life. The Bible is the owner's manual for life and in it are contained all the answers to life's questions.

Jim Bob Duggar: All the time, we're running into families or different individuals that come up and say, "I was one of 10 children" or 12 children or 15 children. And of course, they're from the older generation. It's just amazing how many people are from large families. But, a lot of it's the older generation. Up until 50 years ago, almost all the families were six to 12 children.

This is a new thing the last 50 years with birth control and other ways to stop conception and abortion and everything taking place that family sizes have shrank. For a lot of countries, this is really causing a problem with their economic situation. Matter of fact, we've had like reporters from all these different countries come over and saying they're having a crisis in their country because their people are not reproducing.

Michelle Duggar: They don't have people who are marrying age for people, and so they're having to go to other countries to find spouses. And typically, it's mostly females. They don't have enough females. We were shocked because we had television crews coming from other places asking to show with our family in hopes that they could encourage the birth rate to go up. They've already done incentives like giving them $4,000 per birth, giving them a refrigerator.