Dear Duggars: Love the ones you're with.

I've blogged about the Duggars -- the Arkansas family with 19 kids -- a few times, so when the announcement came that mom Michelle had miscarried baby No. 20, some people asked how I felt about the news. I decided not to write about my opinions on this latest turn of events, figuring that commenting would be in pretty bad form.

I still think it's pretty bad form, but I'm going to comment anyway, as I don't seem to be disciplined enough to hold my tongue when it comes to the Duggars.

First, let me say this: I send the Duggars my most heartfelt condolences on their loss. Michelle miscarried in the second trimester; she had heard a heartbeat, she had felt movement, and she had no doubt bonded with the child. I would feel for anyone who had delivered a stillborn baby, and, as a mother, I sympathize with what must have been a horrible, wrenching experience.

That said, though -- what were they thinking?

On their television show on the cable channel TLC, the Duggars often have explained that they made a commitment long ago to leave the size of their family up to God. The result: They have 19 kids who range in age from 2 to 23, plus two grandchildren.

Here are some positives about the Duggars: They're debt-free, they support themselves, and they seem like nice, pleasant people. Here, also, are some negatives, in my opinion: They proselytize, they really seem to enjoy the fame that goes along with TV, and the parents don't do their own work.

Anyone who's read my feelings on this topic knows my basic gripe, and that's that Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar push the raising of the children onto the family's older girls -- "buddies," they're called -- as soon as each baby is 6 months old. The girls don't have many options; they're not allowed to leave home to attend college or to work. The older boys don't attend college, either, but they're set up with businesses that will allow them to make a living, and they sure don't have to take care of any babies. Stereotypical gender roles are alive and well in the Duggar house.

Another gripe is that Michelle seems entirely checked out when it comes to interacting with her kids. While the "sister-moms" do the heavy lifting, Michelle seems to attend a lot of conferences and take a lot of naps. The girls, then, are charged with cooking and cleaning for and chauffeuring enough children to make up more than two baseball teams. And when Michelle does interact with her small children, those interactions seem less than maternal. When something is wrong with one of the toddlers, for example, he or she runs not to Mom or Dad, but to one of the sisters.

My point is this: I don't care if you have 19 kids or 20 kids or 40 kids. But please, please -- if you're going to enjoy all the notoriety gleaned from having a super-size family, don't count on your older kids to raise your younger ones. It's simply not fair.

Also, don't turn the whole thing into a numbers game. Again, I don't know the Duggars and don't intend to judge them, but when you invite TV cameras into your room every week, you open yourselves up to criticism. And what I've seen in the last few episodes tells me that hitting magic No. 20 was a big deal indeed to the Duggars.

Why? Because I daresay that to most people, 20 kids sounds like a bigger deal than 19. Another potential reason: The Gil and Kelly Bates family -- another super-size bunch and frequent guests on the Duggars' show -- are expecting baby No. 19, and I wonder if the Duggars aren't maybe just a tad bit nervous about sharing the limelight.

This is all idle speculation on my part, obviously. But this is not: The Duggars clearly want poor little Jubilee, the deceased baby, to "count" as No. 20. They held a memorial service for her this week during which they passed out photos of the miscarried baby's appendages, and I'm not kidding; I won't link to them, but if you have a sense of the macabre and want to take a look, google them. There's a photo of the 4-ounce baby's discolored feet with a verse about the impact even the smallest baby can have on the world, and there's another shot of the poor little baby's hand, less than fully formed, being held by the hand of her mother. Sad, sad stuff.

I'm sorry, but ... wow. Just wow. I don't see a thing wrong with taking and keeping such photos to view privately, but in my opinion, publicizing them landed way, way outside the bounds of good taste. And to me, it speaks to the fact that something is perhaps a little bit more wrong than I thought it was in Duggarland.

I'm not qualified to offer advice, but that's never stopped me in the past: Please, Michelle and Jim-Bob, pay attention to the children you have. You're over 45, and the odds are pretty darned slim that any baby you have from this point on is going to be born healthy. How about this: Be real parents to the kids you already have. Take your little ones to the park. Shop with your teenagers. Let your kids participate in team sports, and attend their games. Talk -- really talk -- to your children, one on one. In short, do what many, many other parents do; be parents.

You have 19 kids, 18 of whom are healthy as can be and one of whom still needs a great deal of attention from you. Give thanks, Duggars. Accept that the baby-making phase of your life is over, and love the ones you're with.

Dogging the Duggars, Part Deux

So here we go again with the Duggars. The blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago -- the one in which I urged these parents of 19 kids to raise their own children, not hand the little ones off to their older teens -- generated quite a few responses, and not all of them were positive. One in particular asked the valid question, after speculating that I’m jealous of Michelle Duggar and her prolific womb: “If you hate the show so much, why do you watch?”

First, I don’t hate the show. And second, even if I did, I'd still watch; I don’t expose myself only to things I like. I enjoy watching shows that make me think, and this one does.

In this age of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, I bristle mightily at the “family values” contingent -- but I also want to understand it. In some ways, I get what motivates the Duggars; they're doing what they feel their own particular brand of Christianity is compelling them to do. I'm all about spirituality, and I’m all about values -- personal values, ethical values, values I’ve passed on to my own two kids over the years. We’re big on treating others with respect, even if those others possess values that are far different from our own.

So I respect the Duggars and their right to live their lives the way they see fit. I respect their commitment to their religion, even if I happen to believe it's pretty darned extremist, and the fact that they're supporting their kids on their own. But I can also express my opinion about the way they do things, as the family has chosen, by being on television, to give me a forum to do so.

I sat through a Duggar mini-marathon after publishing the post that drew the ire of some readers. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being a little too hard on the family -- that an in effort to write an entertaining post, I hadn’t resorted to being too flippant and dismissive of Jim Bob, Michelle and their 19 kids.

My conclusion: Nope, I wasn’t too hard on them. Others have every right to admire and emulate the Duggars; I also, then, have the right to believe that while I don’t think the psyches of any of the younger children -- or any of the male children -- are being harmed in any horrific way, the family’s five oldest daughters are the casualties of what seems to be a competition to produce the country’s largest brood.

To recap: Michelle has a baby roughly every 18 months to two years. Once she has the child, she’s -- by her own admission -- the baby’s “buddy” for only about the first six months of its life. After those six months, she turns the child over to one of his or her older sisters, who completes the hands-on raising of the child.

Of course, Mom and Dad are on hand to provide financially, to offer an occasional kiss or side-hug or comment, and to somewhat oversee the whole circus. But the young women are in the trenches, and – here’s the thing. They don’t have any other options; their family's religious and societal beliefs preclude the possibility of any professions for them beyond wife and mother.

One of my high-school friends, a woman I respect a great deal, disagreed vehemently with my last post. The woman, A., pointed out that in some cultures, older children are heavily involved in raising younger ones, and that the societal values that I hold dear -- the right of a young person, for instance, to go to college and make his or her way in the world -- may not be all they’re cracked up to be.

I gave A.’s opinions a great deal of thought, and I respect them. I won’t give on my point, though, that because Jim Bob and Michelle were able to choose, as young adults, the paths that would be before them, their daughters deserve that same option.

And here’s what solidifies my opinion most. You can’t possibly make me believe those young women are enjoying what they’re doing. Here are a few illustrations to support that belief:

• With few exceptions, the girls look miserable each time they’re on camera.
• They’re often short with the little kids -- through no fault of their own. Folks, there are a lot of little kids in this family, and their behavior is typical of a horde of little kids. It’s loud in that house, and things are sometimes sort of dirty, and the kids sometimes do things that aren’t terribly safe. Nerves have to be a little jangled from time to time -- and besides, these young women are raising kids that don’t belong to them. No doubt they love their siblings, but the parent-child bond that can help see a mother or father through tough times just isn’t there.
• Some of the little ones seem to have attachment issues. Not long ago, one of the little girls was crying; her mother advised her to “go find (big sister) Jana.” When my own favorite Duggar, a rambunctious, smart 5-year-old named Johannah, had the flu, she sought comfort from, again, poor Jana. When older sister Jill was boarding a plane to travel with her mom to the delivery of her older brother’s baby, one of the other little girls, Jennifer, panicked about Jill's departure and screamed for her until she was almost sick. (Dad Jim Bob, mind you, was within reach the entire time.)
• Michelle talks about child-raising in the past tense. “(Daughter) Jessa runs a much tighter ship than I ever did,’” Michelle says of her 19-year-old daughter’s “parenting” skills. (Hmmm, sorry, Michelle -- your youngest is 18 months. You still have a big ol' ship to run.)

What a ton of pressure to place on the back of young girls who, in my opinion, should be living in dorm rooms, working part-time jobs, downloading music on iTunes and making regular visits to the mall.

Here’s what I’d like to see happen, in all seriousness. Jim Bob and Michelle, give the young women some options. Allow them to apply for jobs, take college classes, learn a trade, whatever. If they decide, on their own, to remain at home and care for their siblings, then so be it ... but give them the choice. Being moms-in-training is valid and honorable – if it’s what your daughters want.

We purport, as a society, to be incensed with the government of Saudi Arabia for not allowing women to drive and requiring them to be "guarded" by males when they’re in public. But when a family in northwest Arkansas doesn’t allow its women the rights we’ve all rightly come to expect, we condone the situation in the name of “family values.”

Just because it’s happening right here -- and the young women are camera-ready -- doesn’t make it less wrong.

(Note: For those of you who want to check this out for yourselves, “19 Kids and Counting,” the Duggars’ series, is on TLC at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Central Standard Time. Episodes also are available for free on YouTube and Hulu.)