<\/p>\n
My young daughter is a dedicated fan of the TLC program Jon and Kate Plus Eight<\/i>, a reality show Rather unbelievably, the fourth season ended with parents The scandal is exacerbated by the fact that Jon and Kate are The new season’s opening episode recorded a familial train As I watched, I recalled another show–An American Family–<\/i>the original family reality show that PBS aired Which, of course, brings us back to Jon and Kate.\u00a0 <\/span>If the Loud saga depicted the crisis of In Jon and Kate’s case, evangelical gender expectations seem Kate kept saying, “it is so complex; it is so difficult,” How dreary it is to watch a relationship implode on national You are right, Kate.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My young daughter is a dedicated fan of the TLC program Jon and Kate Plus Eight, a reality show of a wholesome family with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets.\u00a0 Over the weekend, TLC ran a marathon of four seasons of the show leading up to the beginning of its fifth season…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,13,390,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-evangelicals","category-gender","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nof a wholesome family with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets.\u00a0 <\/span>Over the weekend, TLC ran a marathon of
\nfour seasons of the show leading up to the beginning of its fifth season on
\nMonday night.\u00a0 <\/span>I confess–I spent a
\ngood number of hours watching the reruns with her.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nJon and Kate Gosselin renewing their wedding vows and–within just a few weeks–a
\ntabloid explosion of scandalous rumors of the couple’s marriage failing apart
\namid allegations of affairs.\u00a0 <\/span>In
\nthe world of reality TV, news doesn’t get much bigger than this.\u00a0 <\/span>For months, fans, bloggers, and the
\ntabloid press have been speculating:\u00a0
\n<\/span>How would season five open?\u00a0
\n<\/span>Would Jon and Kate stay together?\u00a0
\n<\/span>Would they get divorced?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nevangelical Christians.\u00a0 <\/span>The
\nGosselins are folk heroes in the evangelical community–their sextuplets were
\nthe result of infertility treatments during which they refused selective
\nabortion and carried all six babies to term.\u00a0 <\/span>TLC downplays the religious aspects of the show, but legions
\nof conservative church-going fans delighted in Kate’s stern discipline, cheered
\nJon wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Bible verses, and devoured the couple’s
\nChristian parenting books.\u00a0 <\/span>The
\nshow is something strangely compelling–the cute little kids and the endlessly
\ncranky parents trying hard to make a good Christian family.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nwreck.\u00a0 <\/span>Indeed, Jon barely
\nparticipated in his sextuplet’s fifth birthday while an emotionally drained
\nKate struggled alone to pull of the party.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In individual interviews, the couple talked about how
\nhard their relationship is–how they’ve become “different” people–and how
\ndivorce was a distinct possibility.<\/p>\n
\nin 1973.\u00a0 <\/span>Conceived as a video
\ndiary of a liberal middle-class American family, the Louds of Santa Barbara,
\nthe program quickly devolved into the chronicle of crisis–complete with
\nboundary-pushing teens and the wife confronting her philandering husband and
\ndemanding a divorce.\u00a0 <\/span>The Louds
\nmade big news–including the cover of Newsweek<\/i>
\non the breakdown of the American family.<\/p>\n
\nthe liberal 1970s family, what does Jon and Kate’s tale reveal about the state
\nof the evangelical family?\u00a0\u00a0Is this where their politics of “family values” have taken conservative evangelicals? \u00a0Are the Gosselins the Louds of the Christian right? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles.\u00a0 <\/span>After a couple of seasons, Jon decided
\nto stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their
\nbooks.\u00a0 <\/span>The choice made Jon increasingly
\nsullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>For evangelicals, this is an
\nunusual arrangement that leaves the husband open to charges of “feminization”
\nand the wife of being difficult.\u00a0
\n<\/span>The Gosselin’s tensions demonstrate how un<\/i>successfully conservative religious groups have been dealing with
\ngender–and how when a woman like Kate Gosselin breaks with tradition in order
\nto pursue what she loves–even when her business is family and motherhood–she
\ngets both blamed and punished for problems in her relationships.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nunable to stop her tears.\u00a0 <\/span>In a way,
\nshe embodies many evangelical women who struggle between the role of homemaker
\nthat their churches assign them and of finding interesting and creative work in
\nthe world.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Kate, despite all
\nher pretentions to tradition, is actually a very contemporary woman with
\nfeminist inclinations–one who is figuring out that her theology is at odds with
\nthe way life works out.\u00a0 <\/span>She often
\nviolates the mores of a nice evangelical mom (which I think is part of the
\nappeal; she is, in many ways, an evangelical fantasy mother).\u00a0 <\/span>She clearly likes travel, Oprah
\ninterviews, and book signings.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Staying at home with eight kids can be a drag, so she left her husband
\nwith them only to find out that there may have been a girlfriend, too.\u00a0 <\/span>Success, good children, happy marriage–are
\nthey all possible within her theological framework?\u00a0 <\/span>“I have a lot of anger,” she said on Monday’s program.\u00a0 <\/span>I bet.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\ntelevision.\u00a0 <\/span>In some measure, the
\nfailure is theirs.\u00a0 <\/span>But the
\nconservative evangelical community shares some of that failure, too.\u00a0 <\/span>The religious world to which Jon and
\nKate belong never successfully navigated the gender changes of the last three
\ndecades, insisting that happiness can still be found in hierarchical roles of
\nmale superiority and female submission.\u00a0\u00a0Having rejected feminist theology, evangelicals can’t really navigate contemporary marriage issues like those facing Jon and Kate. \u00a0<\/span>They made celebrities of the Gosselins for being traditionalists, yet
\nthat success eroded the very basis of the traditionalism on which their family
\nwas based.\u00a0 <\/span>Now, the woman is
\ncriticized for that same success by an increasingly cruel media and tabloid
\npress.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I just wonder if all
\nthose church people will turn on you next.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>It is complex and difficult.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It makes me
\nangry for you.<\/p>\n