Joe & Kendra 16: Praise - ing Their Brooklyn All the Day Long!

[Militant Fecundity]

On 9/12/2021 at 3:34 PM, Grace said:

Wow! I had no idea it was so common to not get your period back until weaning. I only know one person in real life who had that experience. I am one of those who would have gotten pregnant IMMEDIATELY after birth and had another before the first one turned one if we didn't use birth control. My body is RUDE

I didn’t know it was a thing either, and after it didn’t come back after my first baby, I was afraid I was going through early menopause. But, once he weaned at 2 years old, it came back right away. Same with my next two nurslings. 

[Grace]

1 minute ago, Militant Fecundity said:

I didn’t know it was a thing either, and after it didn’t come back after my first baby, I was afraid I was going through early menopause. But, once he weaned at 2 years old, it came back right away. Same with my next two nurslings. 

I sort of hate you for that.....just a little. 😝

[Thumper]

I'm 36-years-old and pregnant with my first child. I'm glad I had my late teens, all of my twenties, and my early 30s to myself. I couldn't imagine being so young with so many babies. I would have never been able to know myself if I went immediately into parenthood barely into adulthood.

[AussieKrissy]

4 hours ago, Thumper said:

I'm 36-years-old and pregnant with my first child. I'm glad I had my late teens, all of my twenties, and my early 30s to myself. I couldn't imagine being so young with so many babies. I would have never been able to know myself if I went immediately into parenthood barely into adulthood.

I agree with you completely I had my first and only at 37. I only wish I had the energy of a young mum though lol 

[adidas]

I can offer perspective as someone who was a young Mum. I only had two kids though, and there was a 3 year gap. Even though it wasn’t my plan to be so young when I had them, I’m glad it turned out that way. 

It was still tiring at times and some things came later than we had initially planned - like overseas travel and purchasing a house. But in the end we were able to do what we wanted, probably to a better degree, with kids in tow. It was really fun to take our kids on a 5 star overseas ski trip when they were older. We would never have been able to do that in our 20s, whether we had kids or not - we loved camping and doing road trips around Australia until we were well into our 30s, and the bonus is that it fit our budget. 

My older son is now in his mid 20s and he has told us that he loved having young parents because we were always up for adventures and we never said no to a game of soccer after work because we had lots of energy. Even though things were tight financially for a while, they still had everything they needed and most of the things they wanted too. My older son has said that he wants to have kids before too long because he liked it so much. My younger son thinks kids are the devil and they are firmly out of his plans for the foreseeable future haha.

The hardest things about being a young mum was the judgement from other people, and feeling like I had to prove that I could do/offer everything an older parent could do.

One thing I’ll never forget - stemming from that attitude - was that when I collected one of my boys from crèche was that he had paint all over his clothes. The volunteer mums there said they didn’t bother putting a smock on him to paint (but I could see that they’d put a smock on the kids with more expensive, designer brand clothes). I’d saved hard and budgeted well to be able afford the outfit, but it wasn’t as good as the other outfits on the other kids.

That path is the one I chose though. I am the one who made the decision to delay starting my career until they were both at school, because I knew that I would regret jumping in and giving it 100% when they were tiny. My career has a notoriously enormous workload and although I got there late, I climbed the ladder and got to my goal. It was hard and there were times I was tempted to quit, but I’m glad I didn’t.

My choice was right for me, and even though I went against lots of advice to have an abortion because I was so young, I have friends who did decide to terminate and they don’t regret their decision either. I did a lot of my growing up as a parent and as a partner, but I was always very firm about having time for myself away from them. I feel as though I had time for me, and to grow to know myself - but I think the situation is different for every fundie parent no matter what their age. They have no identity except as a wife and mother. I don’t feel that this is true for me.

Wow. That was a novel. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk! 

[Travelfan]

Agree that it’s whatever is the right choice for you!  The sad thing is Kendra doesn’t have a choice (or at least she believes she doesn’t) I had my kids young and absolutely LOVED it!  I married at 20 and had my daughter at 24 and my son 17 months later. The thing I wanted to be in life was a stay at home mom. I couldn’t settle on a major in college because all I really wanted was to have kids and be a mom. Finally I ended up majoring in early childhood education figuring it would help me with my own kids.  I worked at a daycare while in college and as a nanny while my husband finished school. As soon as he graduated I got pregnant with my daughter. Now I’m 44, my kids are 19 & 18 and I’m thrilled to be on the other side of parenting!  I have these awesome adults I can hang out with now and I have my own time. I love that I’m still young enough to be able to enjoy traveling and adventures and my kids can come on some of those adventures with me (when their schedules permit) and we can hang out as friends. The work of parenting is over and I’m young enough to really have fun with the adults they are now.  When my kids both got to be teenagers I went back to work (as a nanny again) so now I still get to do all the fun little kid stuff I love so much but I have nights and weekends off and get paid!  For someone like me who’s entire passion in life was kids it made sense to have mine early. It was hard enough to wait through those first 4 years we were married waiting for my husband to finish school! I could not wait to have a baby!  Now my daughter is 19 and in college and she cannot imagine being married next year or having a baby in a few years 🤣 I really can’t imagine that either!  Everyone should get to choose what THEY want

[SassyPants]

Kendra is 23, and had 3 kids by the time she was 22.5. Does any one really choose that path? Sure having a child at 19 or 20, I can understand, but not being married for 48 months and being pregnant for 27 of those months, when you are all of just turned 23 YO. I hope that Kendra is mentally and physically ok with what has been dictated to her. I wonder if she’ll wake up  (or break down) in the next 10 years? IMO, it’s a rare, rare woman, man and family that can live this life and be healthy, sane and survive intact. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by SassyPants

[GuineaPigCourtship]

I always thought I'd be done having my 2 kids by 30. Well, luck wasn't on my side with finding a reliable partner. But then I figured by 33. And fertility wasn't willing to work with me. I just had my first at 35 and I do wish I had more energy.

I'm mentally and emotionally more stable these days, though, so that's not nothing.

[just_ordinary]

13 hours ago, GuineaPigCourtship said:

I always thought I'd be done having my 2 kids by 30. Well, luck wasn't on my side with finding a reliable partner. But then I figured by 33. And fertility wasn't willing to work with me. I just had my first at 35 and I do wish I had more energy.

I'm mentally and emotionally more stable these days, though, so that's not nothing.

I think there a good arguments for both younger and older parents. Also it depends highly on the individual. Some people are very mature and set in their early twenties or really grow as a parent, some mid thirties are still very immature and have problems to adapt to this big life change after being set stable for years. I just hope whoever decides to get pregnant/keeping the pregnancy in case of an ups does this because they want it and have had some thoughts about their weak spots (finances, health, time management….) and feel confident they can. There will always be things can come up unexpectedly and you really struggle. That can happen at anytime and any age.

 

Questioning the abilities of young people that are not raised to make an informed choice of their own, with glorifying poverty and praising abusive parenting methods is absolutely called for. Acting as if 21 year olds are unable to provide stable and loving environments for children is not. Lots of people in work training after school have a couple of years of stable income and maybe own property or can rent it with their own money at that age. Lots of successful long-term relationships start at that age (with marrying early or waiting till late twenties / early thirties). Here a not so small amount of couples consciously decides to become parents while in university. Sure, most students live with partners/roommates in flats and work for their living while also studying. So very different from dorm life. Childcare isn’t too bad on campus and you can plan courses accordingly in many cases. When they get their degree and start working children are already in kindergarten or school. Which is extra beneficial for women, as maternity leave is still somewhat putting the breaks on their careers. 
I really hate those generalisations as if people in their twenties are basically stupid helpless teenagers while in their thirties they have their shit together and are stable and mature. I don’t even think that the average assessment would be much different in both age groups in my country if you look at the facts rather than prejudice.

[GuineaPigCourtship]

My mother-in-law had my husband at 16 from a hookup at a party. Her family was not supportive and the father was only 17 and not ready. She moved in with family friends and turned her life around to provide for him. She went to college while working and was able to find a stable career path. They were very poor most of his young life, but he was happy and loved. I adore his mom and am grateful for her choices.

If she had chosen differently, I would not have thought she made the wrong choice. It's crazy to think when she was my age her only bio son was a legal adult!

[Mrs Ms]

I think my mother did a more confident and happy job as a single teenage mother with me than many years later, married, with my half-siblings. I actually think I had the happier childhood despite the bullying at school!

[FluffySnowball]

5 hours ago, Mrs Ms said:

I think my mother did a more confident and happy job as a single teenage mother with me than many years later, married, with my half-siblings. I actually think I had the happier childhood despite the bullying at school!

I reckon we all just want a “recipe” for a happy, stable family life but as your experience and the experiences of other posters on this thread show, this “one right path” just doesn’t exist. There are just sooooo many factors that contribute to a happy childhood and so many different demands parents have to meet that it’s not a cookie cutter issue.

Young and inexperienced parents might fail or do a wonderful job and in the same time, older and more experienced mothers and fathers might do well, but there’s also no guarantee. When you think about it, life in general and creating a family in particular requires a gigantic leap of faith, no matter where exactly you’re at in life. 

[VeryNikeSeamstress]

Apparently Kendra has been spotted recently wearing what looks like a maternity top...

I know, non pregnant wear maternity clothes too, but I think she might be *due* to announce based on previous patterns.

[JermajestyDuggar]

9 minutes ago, VeryNikeSeamstress said:

Apparently Kendra has been spotted recently wearing what looks like a maternity top...

I know, non pregnant wear maternity clothes too, but I think she might be *due* to announce based on previous patterns.

I’ve been waiting on an announcement. Not because I saw a bump. But because she pops them out with regularity. I think there will be a lot of Duggar baby announcements this year. 

[anjulibai]

Yeah, Brooklyn is over a year. Kendra so far averages 16.2 months between births. My spreadsheet predicts she's due in June. 

[patsymae]

On 9/27/2021 at 9:17 AM, FluffySnowball said:

I reckon we all just want a “recipe” for a happy, stable family life but as your experience and the experiences of other posters on this thread show, this “one right path” just doesn’t exist. There are just sooooo many factors that contribute to a happy childhood and so many different demands parents have to meet that it’s not a cookie cutter issue.

Young and inexperienced parents might fail or do a wonderful job and in the same time, older and more experienced mothers and fathers might do well, but there’s also no guarantee. When you think about it, life in general and creating a family in particular requires a gigantic leap of faith, no matter where exactly you’re at in life. 

Right on the mark, of course. And some families do really well with a gazillion children (not mine, alas.) I think what's "off" about Kendra is the apparent mindlessness of it--just keep popping them out because, well, that's what you do.

I've recently gone down the genaeology rabbit hole and keep finding all these women, on both sides of the family, in mental hospitals. If it's genetics (and we do have mental illness in the family, including the men), why is it only the women who were in "XXX Hospital, once known as the "XXX Lunatic Aslyum"? So far what they seem to have in common is poverty and kid after kid after kid born two years apart (think immigrant Catholics, Brooklyn tenements, mid 18th-mid 19th century).

[Cam]

I feel like the mental illness so pervasive in all these women is because they lived in a world of patriarchy and either didn’t realize it was oppressing them or they felt powerless in the midst of it.
 

My mom suffered from mental illness: Catholic, dysfunctional misogynist husband, lots of kids, little money. By the time she hit middle age, she fell apart time and again. I feel like she felt haunted by demons in her life and thought they were the devil, but it was really the hatred of men keeping her oppressed, and her spirit couldn’t take it.
 

I was middle age before the patriarchy revealed itself to me. I was not even looking for it. I just had a slow dawning of seeing it and spent at least two years rethinking my entire life and belief system. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I came to realize many of my life’s frustrations were created by men standing in my way, often intentionally derailing me, whether this was romantic interests, bosses, brothers, dad, ect. Because I did not bow down to them. The patriarchy was invisible to me for many years of my life, so at times it felt like an otherworldly force I could not see working against me. That kinda made me feel like there was something wrong with me. Except it was actually real and of this world. And it was the good old boys’ club. 
 

If you’ve read Hillbilly Elegy, the author JD Vance has a mother who also had mental illness. I feel her issues were probably brought on by the patriarchy. JD Vance, tho, doesn’t recognize it for what it is because he is part of the patriarchy.

[Cam]

I also think religion played a part in my mother’s mental illness. She fanatically believed in God and Jesus Christ. When she was her right mind, my mom was gifted in many ways, creative, a fabulous cook, and the kind of mom teenagers liked to talk to. She was very kind to people down on their luck and to  people who were intellectually challenged. She was taught to be good, be nice, pray, live a clean life and God will answer your prayers. But many of her prayers were not answered. She went through many difficult times. And I’m sure she wonder why God was allowing these things to happen to her. No matter how hard she tried, she could not rise above the shit that life threw at her.

 

[Angelface]

“The Woman They Could Not Silence” by Kate Moore is an illuminating non-fiction book about the treatment of the mentally ill and especially the treatment of women who were NOT mentally ill but were confined to a mental institution on the say so of their husband (if married) or father (if unmarried) and two doctors ( surprise surprise the doctors were almost always men!) The book details the period from 1860 onwards and is eye opening. Basically men could have women locked away on very spurious grounds just to get rid of them. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

45 minutes ago, Angelface said:

“The Woman They Could Not Silence” by Kate Moore is an illuminating non-fiction book about the treatment of the mentally ill and especially the treatment of women who were NOT mentally ill but were confined to a mental institution on the say so of their husband (if married) or father (if unmarried) and two doctors ( surprise surprise the doctors were almost always men!) The book details the period from 1860 onwards and is eye opening. Basically men could have women locked away on very spurious grounds just to get rid of them. 

It reminds me of Jane Eyre. Rochester’s wife did deal with pretty severe mental illness and I would not be surprised if it was exacerbated by the patriarchy of that era. And for that time, he actually treated her more humanely that most by locking her in the attic with a nurse to take care of her. He stated something in the book about how he could have sent her to a lunatic asylum where she would probably die and no one would’ve blamed him. It was probably very true. People just sent women with mental illness to them and since they were treated terribly, they didn’t last long there. I often think we have so far to go with treating mental illness. But I can appreciate how far we’ve come. 

[backyard sylph]

3 hours ago, Cam said:

I feel like the mental illness so pervasive in all these women is because they lived in a world of patriarchy and either didn’t realize it was oppressing them or they felt powerless in the midst of it.
 

My mom suffered from mental illness: Catholic, dysfunctional misogynist husband, lots of kids, little money. By the time she hit middle age, she fell apart time and again. I feel like she felt haunted by demons in her life and thought they were the devil, but it was really the hatred of men keeping her oppressed, and her spirit couldn’t take it.
 

I was middle age before the patriarchy revealed itself to me. I was not even looking for it. I just had a slow dawning of seeing it and spent at least two years rethinking my entire life and belief system. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I came to realize many of my life’s frustrations were created by men standing in my way, often intentionally derailing me, whether this was romantic interests, bosses, brothers, dad, ect. Because I did not bow down to them. The patriarchy was invisible to me for many years of my life, so at times it felt like an otherworldly force I could not see working against me. That kinda made me feel like there was something wrong with me. Except it was actually real and of this world. And it was the good old boys’ club. 
 

If you’ve read Hillbilly Elegy, the author JD Vance has a mother who also had mental illness. I feel her issues were probably brought on by the patriarchy. JD Vance, tho, doesn’t recognize it for what it is because he is part of the patriarchy.

When I have on Pluto TV, with Midsomer Murders forming a background for my little life here on days off, his awful abominable disgusting puke-making campaign ads run very often and I don't want to hurt my TV so I just mute it and shout at him. He's just the worst and I'm so angry at the stupid lies he tells out loud and also it shows him talking with that idiot Tucker Carlson and his annoying little mouth, which makes it even more awful. 

I mean, too bad about his mother, but ugh, that guy. 

[CanadianMamam]

On 3/5/2022 at 9:39 AM, VeryNikeSeamstress said:

Apparently Kendra has been spotted recently wearing what looks like a maternity top...

I know, non pregnant wear maternity clothes too, but I think she might be *due* to announce based on previous patterns.

The picture Hannah tagged Kendra in from her shower only showed her back. 

 

[Pecansforeveryone]

Add me to the list of mothers whose struggle with mental illness and childhood trauma was compounded by religion.  One of ten children raised Catholic by ragoholic WWII Marine, religion did not spare her trauma at the hands of her father, uncle, or the nuns. She became a believer in faith-healing Pentocostalism that never managed to heal her of her childhood trauma or her ADD. 

[VeryNikeSeamstress]

5 hours ago, CanadianMamam said:

The picture Hannah tagged Kendra in from her shower only showed her back. 

 

These pictures arent from Hannah's shower.

https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/4805131/kendra-duggar-fans-think-pregnant-fourth-child-bump/

I realize this is the Sun, and don't like that it focuses on her having a 'bump' (with the cut of that top it could just be the way the fabric flows). At the same time, the style of top looks very maternity, and somebody else in the article says she has the same top in green, and it's maternity.

In any case, looks like another Duggar baby boom is happening soon. I wonder if someof the couples who've withdrawn from public life (ie Siren) will make announcements.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

I don't believe any families do well with gazillion kids. Some people are just better at hiding it. If you have enough kids spaced closely together eventually something has to give and usually that something will start showing sooner than later. I despise any religion that encourages people to keep having kids just to keep having them. Usually the best thing to do for your kids is stop while you can still manage the number you have.