Normal families don’t do reality shows
You have a wonderful family life. A wonderful spouse. An amazing marriage. Beautiful children. And so you choose to do what anyone else with such a blessed existence would do: You fill your house with cameras and broadcast your lives for all the world to see.
No.
You don’t.
Normal, happy, functional families don’t yearn to have their homes filled with television producers, their children’s faces plastered on billboards and across the Internet.
Families that opt to showcase their seemingly perfect, normal lives on television are not perfect. And they’re definitely not normal.
This week came the news that America’s favorite fertile, home-schooling, God-fearing Arkansas family —the stars of TLC’s hit show 19 Kids and Counting – had a dark, dark secret.
Josh, the eldest of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar’s 750 (actually 19) children had a history of child molestation, which included multiple victims.
Josh Duggar
Josh resigned on Thursday from his position as Executive Director of the Family Research Council, a Washington DC-based organization that describes itself as striving to build a “culture in which human life is valued, families flourish and religious liberty thrives.’’
The Duggars were portrayed as devoutly religious. Their daughters courted before marriage, and dressed modestly, always opting for long skirts instead of pants.
They eschewed things like birth control, alcohol and drugs, opting instead for things like church, posting inspirational religious Instagram quotes, and lots and lots of children.
The Duggars wanted you to believe they were a model family. They wanted you to like them. They wanted you to want to be like them.
No family is perfect, and every family is faced with struggles and failures.
When faced with the shocking news that their eldest son molested multiple victims when he was a teen, most parents wouldn’t react by signing new television contracts to commit their children to season after season of appearing on television.
A normal, healthy, functional family would hunker down and work to maintain the privacy of their other children, and ensure their son wouldn’t victimize anyone else.
According to In Touch, Jim Bob Duggar was made aware of accusations about alleged molestation by his son in 2002. But he didn’t first alert authorities until nine months later, when another victim alleged she had also been molested by Josh, who was 14 at the time. The first police report wasn’t filed until 2006, and wasn’t released until a freedom of information request by the magazine. (You can read the full police report here.)
Meanwhile, Jim Bob and Michelle signed on to launch 17 Kids and Counting (later 18 Kids and Counting, and then 19 Kids and Counting). The show is in its 10th season.
Josh never faced charges for the alleged crime, which had a three-year statute of limitations.
The 18 Duggar children who aren’t accused of molestation are now at the center of a media frenzy, made bigger by their parents’ choice to force them to live their lives in the spotlight.
The news of Josh Duggar’s troubled past came as a shock to the many fans of the family’s reality show. And on some level it should come as a shock. You never want to learn of someone being accused of—and admitting to—child molestation, and shrug and say, “Yeah, that figures.’’
But guess what. It figures that something was terribly wrong in this seemingly perfect household.
The Duggars weren’t normal. And they were never role models.
They talk a lot about God. But what they really worship is themselves.
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