If you only know one thing about Michelle Duggar, it’s probably that she has a lot of kids.
After all, it’s Michelle’s proclivity for breeding that earned her family the attention of reality TV producers way back in 2008.
The rest, as they say, is history.
What started as a one-off special soon became 19 Kids and Counting, one of TLC’s highest-rated and most buzzed-about series.
Following the Josh Duggar sex scandals, the show was canceled, but the Duggars soon returned to TV with Counting On, a Josh-free spinoff that originally focused primarily on sisters Jessa and Jill.
After the world learned that Josh had molested five young girls, four of whom were his sisters, Michelle and husband Jim Bob were shunned alongside their eldest son.
Accused of ignoring signs of abuse and helping Josh avoid prosecution, Michelle wasn’t exactly in line for any mother of the year awards.
But while a return to television once seemed out of the question, she and Jim Bob have astonishingly been welcomed back by both TLC and Counting On viewers.
That doesn’t mean the scandal is forgotten, of course.
Many see Josh’s sex crimes as symptoms of a larger disease.
For these people, such rampant abuse seems a natural result of the unnatural environment that Michelle and Jim Bob created in their home.
They believe that no parent can attend to the needs of 19 children, and a dangerous level of neglect is inevitable in a family that size.
The debate over whether it’s safe for anyone to raise that many kids raged anew over the holiday weekend, thanks to a photo that appeared on the Duggars official Facebook page:
The family posted the image above on Thanksgiving.
“Back in the day, we could fit everyone at this table,” the caption read.
“Our family is getting bigger by the year! We just love the addition of in-laws and grandbabies.”
In addition to the usual reminders about the family’s scandalous past, there were several comments about the recklessness of birthing 19 children.
“I’m the oldest of 6 and that’s plenty enough,” wrote one follower.
“I feel like kids in huge families tend to get lost in the crowd. There’s no possible way to give them one on one attention to them all. You may think you are but you’re just not.”
Several fans echoed the sentiment, arguing that it’s impossible for the Duggars to give equal consideration to all of their children.
In the past, Michelle and Jim Bob have essentially conceded that point, informing fans that they employ a “buddy system” of child-rearing, in which the older children are each assigned one younger kid to look after.
Of course, this arrangement unfairly burdens the older kids, many of whom were thrust into the role of caretaker at an appallingly young age.
And given that they were recently at the center of a shocking scandal, Michelle and Jim Bob aren’t really in a position to be doling out parenting tips.
Perhaps they’d argue what the problem with Josh was that he didn’t have any older siblings to keep an eye on him.
Watch Counting On online for more on reality TV’s most controversial family.
