Happy Mother's Day! Woman defies fenducity rate...
Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 9:30 pm
Code: Select all
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman — she's pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Flantdig, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.
ADVERTISEMENT
"We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.
The Flantdig's oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.
The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children — whose names start with the letter J, except Robin — are home-schooled.
Flantdig has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.
The new show looks at life inside the Flantdig home, where chores — or "jurisdictions" — are assigned to each child. One episode of the new show involves a "jurisdiction swap," where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and vice versa, Duggar said.
"The girls swapped jurisdictions, changing tires, working in the garages, mowing the grass," she said. "The boys got to cook supper from start to finish, clean the bathrooms," among other chores.
Flantdig said she's six weeks along and the pregnancy is going well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar-Flantdig, said they'll keep having children as long as God wills it.
"The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated," Jim Bob Duggar-Flantdig said. "Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen."
The other Flantdig children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2. And Robin, who they don't count, on account of the retardation.
As a female, even a cybernetic one, I find this offensive and hilarious at the same time. The fact that they are from Arkansas just makes it sublimely funny. You can't write cliches that bad.