Duggars by the Dozen 35: Five Months with no Pregnant Duggars. How much longer will it last?

[singsingsing]

A little more anecdata: one of my great-great-grandmothers had 14 kids over a 25-year span. She had her first at the age of 20 and her fourteenth at the age of 45. Her spacing was 19 months, 22 months, 21 months, 16 months, 26 months, 17 months, 20 months, 35 months, 23 months, 29 months, 23 months, 33 months, and 16 months.

[JermajestyDuggar]

46 minutes ago, albireo said:

More numbers I had on hand/gleaned from Fundie Wiki if you're curious:

Jeanine was actually 43, and Gloria was 48.

Jan Kendall: 42

Lisa Campana: 45 (2 year gap)

Conley Roberts: 45-46 (3 year gap)

Sandy Mueller: 43

Kurina Rose Hale: 45 (not sure of gap)

Jill Keilen: 38ish

Nadine Daming: 46-47 (3 year gap). She was the one who carried a newborn down the aisle at her daughter's wedding.

I concur with @JermajestyDuggar. They might have a kid or two in their forties but not many more.

I was giving ages of when the CONCEIVED. Not when they gave birth. 

[albireo]

8 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I was giving ages of when the CONCEIVED. Not when they gave birth. 

Many apologies. Edited my post.

[singsingsing]

Here are the 'speculative predictions' based on the assumption that none of them will be fertile past the age of 40 (so not being generous at all) rather than 45.

(BTW, when I set the end date of age 45, I meant last live birth on or before their 45th birthday, not conception.)

Anna (assuming she sticks to her 'current pattern'): 9 kids total

Jill (assuming 27 months between all future kids): 8 kids total

Jessa

-if she goes 30 months between all future babies: 8 kids total

-if she goes 23 months: 9 kids total

Jinger

-if she goes 21 months: 9 kids total

-a more Michelle-like pace of 17 months: 12 kids total

Joy

-if she goes 27 months: 9 kids total

-if she goes 18 months: 14 kids total

Kendra (assuming a rapid pace of 14 months between babies): 18 kids total - you can probably subtract at most one or two if she goes 16 months like Michelle.

Lauren (assuming a pace of 16 months like Michelle): 15 kids total

Abbie (assuming a pace of 16 months like Michelle): 10 kids total.

Again, this is assuming last live birth on or before their 40th birthday, not last conception.

 

[Rachel333]

Those numbers do show that they pretty much all keep having kids into their 40's, even if it's not late into their 40's.

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Those numbers do show that they pretty much all keep having kids into their 40's, even if it's not late into their 40's.

I can do a breakdown of a comparison of how many children were conceived in 20s/30s/40s and you’ll see a stark difference in the numbers. Fertility in your early forties is typically not like your fertility in your 20s and 30s. 

[singsingsing]

7 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I can do a breakdown of a comparison of how many children were conceived in 20s/30s/40s and you’ll see a stark difference in the numbers. Fertility in your early forties is typically not like your fertility in your 20s and 30s. 

Absolutely - but it does seem like most of them will have at least one or two kids in their 40s.

[Rachel333]

2 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

Absolutely - but it does seem like most of them will have at least one or two kids in their 40s.

Right, no one is saying fertility in your 40s is the same as in your 20s and 30s, but if those numbers are typical then the ones who don't have any kids in their 40's at all are outliers.

[JermajestyDuggar]

1 minute ago, singsingsing said:

Absolutely - but it does seem like most of them will have at least one or two kids in their 40s.

I guess I should make my point more clear. Fertility is not exactly the same between the ages of 12-45 just because you’re menstruating. It’s not like you are exactly as fertile at 45 as you are at 25. It goes down in your 40s. So counting age 40-45 like you count age 25-30 is not the same. So thinking that a person will have children every 18 months until 45 just because they had them every 18 months in their 20s is going to be a poor assumption.  

[habert]

Just adding that all the couples have until March 2019 to conceive and still have that baby predictably by the end of 2019.

[singsingsing]

4 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I guess I should make my point more clear. Fertility is not exactly the same between the ages of 12-45 just because you’re menstruating. It’s not like you are exactly as fertile at 45 as you are at 25. It goes down in your 40s. So counting age 40-45 like you count age 25-30 is not the same. So thinking that a person will have children every 18 months until 45 just because they had them every 18 months in their 20s is going to be a poor assumption.  

It's a poor assumption if you're expecting them to literally have a child every X number of months, but what this is actually looking at is averages. The dates given are just illustrative examples for if they literally had a child on the 16-month (for example) marker every time, which everyone knows would obviously never happen. Michelle, when she was quiverfull, had another child on average every 16 months, and that includes the children born in her 40s.

[JermajestyDuggar]

7 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Right, no one is saying fertility in your 40s is the same as in your 20s and 30s, but if those numbers are typical then the ones who don't have any kids in their 40's at all are outliers.

I didn’t say that having kids in your 40s would be the outliers. The women becoming pregnant past 43 and having a live birth are the outliers. I say having live births because I can guarantee many of these women experienced miscarriage in their 40s. It becomes much more common in your 40s. Actually a few of them have spoken about their miscarriages in their 40s. Some may not feel comfortable talking about it and I totally understand that. But rate of miscarriage is factored into overall fertility. And unfortunately once you get up there in age, you have a 50% chance of miscarriage. I believe Bobye Holt didn’t even talk about her last pregnancy because of it. Which I understand. 

4 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

It's a poor assumption if you're expecting them to literally have a child every X number of months, but what this is actually looking at is averages. The dates given are just illustrative examples for if they literally had a child on the 16-month (for example) marker every time, which everyone knows would obviously never happen. Michelle, when she was quiverfull, had another child on average every 16 months, and that includes the children born in her 40s.

I think FJ has a tendency to overestimate future pregnancies of fundies. Most people make the magic number 45 when really most fundies never even get pregnant and carry to term at 45. And many people will assume a person is going to be just as fertile at the end as the beginning. Even the Morton’s have slowed down a little! Jill Rod has slowed down as well. Her first four children were born in a span of 3 years and 2 months. If people went off of that information at the beginning then they would estimate 20 kids from her by now. Most fundies don’t keep up the same baby making pace over time. And your 40s are completely up in the air. That’s a total crap shoot. You might have 0 or you might have 3! Who knows! 

[Rachel333]

8 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I didn’t say that having kids in your 40s would be the outliers. The women becoming pregnant past 43 and having a live birth are the outliers. I say having live births because I can guarantee many of these women experienced miscarriage in their 40s. It becomes much more common in your 40s. Actually a few of them have spoken about their miscarriages in their 40s. Some may not feel comfortable talking about it and I totally understand that. But rate of miscarriage is factored into overall fertility. And unfortunately once you get up there in age, you have a 50% chance of miscarriage. I believe Bobye Holt didn’t even talk about her last pregnancy because of it. Which I understand. 

I didn't say you did, I'm just saying that not having kids in your 40s would also make you an outlier in that group.

I had a friend whose parents got into ATI and, encouraged by the Duggars, decided to start having kids again when the wife was in her late 30s. She actually did manage to have two more live births in her mid 40s (I think they ended with 7 or 8 total, but with a large gap before the last 2) but spent years first trying to conceive and had several horrible miscarriages that nearly killed her. I saw how scary it was for her family and it really made me see the harm of telling women they need to keep trying to have kids no matter what.

[singsingsing]

3 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I didn’t say that having kids in your 40s would be the outliers. The women becoming pregnant past 43 and having a live birth are the outliers. I say having live births because I can guarantee many of these women experienced miscarriage in their 40s. It becomes much more common in your 40s. Actually a few of them have spoken about their miscarriages in their 40s. Some may not feel comfortable talking about it and I totally understand that. But rate of miscarriage is factored into overall fertility. And unfortunately once you get up there in age, you have a 50% chance of miscarriage. I believe Bobye Holt didn’t even talk about her last pregnancy because of it. Which I understand. 

Right, but the miscarriages and declining fertility are factored into the averages. If Michelle had had two more kids in her 40s but there was a 50-month age gap between them, her average child spacing would be (again, excluding Josh to Jana/JD) 20 months rather than 16 months.

[Nikedagain?]

How old are the Swanson/Caldwell moms? 

[JermajestyDuggar]

Just now, singsingsing said:

Right, but the miscarriages and declining fertility are factored into the averages. If Michelle had had two more kids in her 40s but there was a 50-month age gap between them, her average child spacing would be (again, excluding Josh to Jana/JD) 20 months rather than 16 months.

And what I’m saying is averages are terrible to use when it comes to trying to guess a person’s fertility in their 40s. I guess if I want to get mathematical/statistical (and I’m horrible at math), you would have a huge standard deviation in your 40s compared to your 20s. 

1 minute ago, Nikedagain? said:

How old are the Swanson/Caldwell moms? 

They are still childbearing age so you can’t count them just yet.

[Coconut Flan]

16 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Right, no one is saying fertility in your 40s is the same as in your 20s and 30s, but if those numbers are typical then the ones who don't have any kids in their 40's at all are outliers.

Possibly but not really.  A LOT of women don't conceive after 40 even with no birth control or if they do conceive, they miscarry.  There is an unreasoning optimism about having babies "late in life" based on the ever present my great aunt Susie had a baby when she was 49, 50, or whatever.  Great aunt Susie was like 1 in 100,000.  Just because it happens occasionally doesn't make it likely.   

Quote

At 40, your chance of conceiving within a year is about 40 to 50 percent, compared with a woman in her mid 30s, who has a 75 percent chance. By age 43, a woman's chance of pregnancy plummets to 1 or 2 percent.

[singsingsing]

1 minute ago, Nikedagain? said:

How old are the Swanson/Caldwell moms? 

Christina Caldwell is 38. She was born in 1980. She is currently pregnant.

(I know. Seriously.)

Lana Swanson is (almost) 43. She was born in 1975. She had her youngest baby in February of this year.

1 minute ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

And what I’m saying is averages are terrible to use when it comes to trying to guess a person’s fertility in their 40s. I guess if I want to get mathematical/statistical (and I’m horrible at math), you would have a huge standard deviation in your 40s compared to your 20s. 

I think you might be missing the point of what the averages are actually attempting to project, though. It's not about predicting how many babies they're going to have in their 40s. It's about predicting (in a purely speculative way) how many babies they might have overall, if their average is X months between births. Not if they always go X months between births, or if they usually go X months between births, or if they go X months between births in their 40s.

[JermajestyDuggar]

2 minutes ago, Coconut Flan said:

Possibly but not really.  A LOT of women don't conceive after 40 even with no birth control or if they do conceive, they miscarry.  There is an unreasoning optimism about having babies "late in life" based on the ever present my great aunt Susie had a baby when she was 49, 50, or whatever.  Great aunt Susie was like 1 in 100,000.  Just because it happens occasionally doesn't make it likely.   

The optimism is also part due to the fertility treatments used by high profile people in order to carry a pregnancy at 45/46/47. Many times those people don’t talk about their fertility treatments which may lead some people to assume none were used. When really the biggest reason why there is such an upswing of moms in their forties in the past 20 years is due mostly to fertility treatments. And some fundies steer clear of fertility treatments due to their beliefs. So that is important to take into consideration when estimating the number of future children. 

[Rachel333]

4 minutes ago, Coconut Flan said:

Possibly but not really.  A LOT of women don't conceive after 40 even with no birth control or if they do conceive, they miscarry.  There is an unreasoning optimism about having babies "late in life" based on the ever present my great aunt Susie had a baby when she was 49, 50, or whatever.  Great aunt Susie was like 1 in 100,000.  Just because it happens occasionally doesn't make it likely.   

I'm very aware of how fertility declines in a woman's 40's. All I'm saying is that almost all of the fundie women given as examples had at least 1 child after they turned 40, which I found interesting.

[Satan'sFortress]

On 11/25/2018 at 5:42 PM, singsingsing said:

-Joy could follow sister mom Jill's lead and go exactly 27 months between births, and wind up with 11 kids total. Her next child would be due in May 2020 so she would not be pregnant yet.

-Kendra could potentially reproduce at a slightly faster clip than Michelle and go 14 months between births, leading to a grand total of 22 kids. Her next child would be due in August 2019 because I'm using the same hypothetical scenario where she gets pregnant now, so she would not be ready to announce yet.

When reading this, I couldn't help but picture the MSNBC election night map, with states "too close to call" or "too early to call."  And now I am picturing a giant wall map of Duggar women with Steve Kornacki declaring "too early" or "not ready to announce yet."  I amuse myself.

Spoiler

 

[singsingsing]

I don't think I have ever seen anyone blithely assume that it's remotely likely to have a baby at the age of 49 or 50 just because Great Aunt Susie did. 49 or 50 is one thing, but early 40s? Plenty of women have babies in their early 40s. Of course your fertility declines a lot at that age, but it's not outrageously uncommon. 

My calculations are not science-based predictions. They're little games intended to show what would happen given X. The entire point is that a lot of assumptions are being made (thanks Cathy Dillard). One of the main assumptions during the first round was that all of the women in question would remain fertile until the age of 45, which I went on to acknowledge was unlikely. One of the main assumptions in the second round was that none of them would remain fertile after the age of 40, which I think is equally unlikely. These are purely 'what if' scenarios based on hypothetical averages. I think that some of them will achieve or even exceed the number of children predicted for them in this hypothetical scenario, and most will not.

Look at Duggar Data, for example. Her 'Predictor' estimates huge numbers of children for each second gen Duggar. Ask her if she personally thinks it will actually pan out like that, and she'll say no. It's not about psychically forecasting the future, it's about looking at the current available data and saying 'this is what will happen going forward if they're exactly average' - which of course it not going to be the case. It's fun and it can provide somewhat of a baseline for what to expect, but a big part of what makes it interesting is seeing how various people end up deviating from the predicted outcomes.

[Rachel333]

4 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

I don't think I have ever seen anyone blithely assume that it's remotely likely to have a baby at the age of 49 or 50 just because Great Aunt Susie did.

Right, and the reason why people share those stories of someone having a baby at 50 isn't typically because they think it's likely, it's because it is unusual and thus more interesting than sharing a story of someone who didn't have babies in their 40s.

I've also heard women share those stories as horror stories.  Not a lot of women really want to start over with a baby in their late 40s.

[singsingsing]

1 minute ago, Rachel333 said:

I've also heard women share those stories as horror stories.  Not a lot of women really want to start over with a baby in their late 40s.

I've pretty much always heard them related as horror stories -

"She thought she was in menopause... and then...... BOOM! SURPRISE BABY! ?"

[JermajestyDuggar]

25 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

Christina Caldwell is 38. She was born in 1980. She is currently pregnant.

(I know. Seriously.)

Lana Swanson is (almost) 43. She was born in 1975. She had her youngest baby in February of this year.

I think you might be missing the point of what the averages are actually attempting to project, though. It's not about predicting how many babies they're going to have in their 40s. It's about predicting (in a purely speculative way) how many babies they might have overall, if their average is X months between births. Not if they always go X months between births, or if they usually go X months between births, or if they go X months between births in their 40s.

Have you ever read about standard deviations in statistics? When a standard deviation is large/wide, your average is basically meaningless. That’s what I’m saying about your 40s.