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I haven't read any of the other responses to your question yet, so I don't know whether or not I'm repeating anything. But I think the reason that people are fascinated by the Duggars is that there is a part of a lot of people who would like to do what the Duggars have done. Say to heck with it with birth control, to heck with manipulating our bodies so we don't do what nature intended us to do, have as many children as nature dictates, name them all, love them all, have a lot of grown children when they're old, and many, many descendants. It's what people used to commonly, routinely do.

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And it's what few do any longer, and few feel that they can do. There are reasons for this, but I'm convinced that concern about overpopulation is a reason for very few. It's the fact that children cost more money than they used to, it's the overemphasis on education, which brings all kinds of headaches, it's the helicopter parenting and the fact that parents who don't helicopter their children are likely to become targets of a CPS investigation, it's the lack of domestic help. I know there's a part of me that would have liked to say "The heck with it" and I will always wonder what the children that I didn't have because I had to limit myself to two for the above reasons would have been like. A part of me that will always envy my mother because she had five children and not just two.

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A family who does this in this day and age in spite of all the reasons there are not to, and seems to make it work, and seems to be happy, I can understand why they are a source of interest.