19 Kids Too Many?

Michelle Duggar was given her own reality show on TLC, “19 Kids and Counting”, since she has given birth to 19 children to this date. A Yahoo News article covers an interview with her where “the idea of overpopulation” is touched. Although Duggar believes that the concept of overpopulation is a bit exaggerated, experts believe the contrary. “James Hopkins' site on the human population crisis states, Overpopulation applies much more so to the number of people in an area exceeding the resources and the carrying capacity of the environment necessary to sustain human activities." How does Michelle Duggar respond to this? She believes that her family, although consisting of many, are very resourceful when it comes to spending and “discarding” things.  She ends the interview by quoting Mother Teresa, “To say that there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers. Our world needs more joy”.

According to our Sociology book the total fertility rate for the U.S. is about 2.1; Michelle Duggar and her husband have exceeded this rate by about 9.05 times. It is not clear whether they had any sort of family planning or whether having a family that big was just something that happened by chance. This can happen both by everyone’s own personal choice and by the fact that there is no actual population control in the U.S. to stop people from having so many kids. Whether this is acceptable or not lies in the opinions of each individual.

By: Vanessa Torres

Article can be found at: http://tv.yahoo.com/news/michelle-duggar-doesn-t-believe-in-overpopulation.html