I saw it in dozens of families growing up. In the years since, my siblings and i have reached out to others with similar experiences, and we’ve been shocked by just how common our experience was. The Duggars are a classic and very visible example, but this is an archetype for thousands of families across the US.

alright. Lets look at the neglect angle, for example. lets use a typical “traditional” family where one parent earns enough money to allow the other parent to stay home and care for the kids. Lets say that the working parent works fifty hours a week on average. (this is probably being very generous here. More likely 60-80 in todays realities.)

So, for the working parent: There’s 168 hours in a seven day week. so just working fifty hours comes down to to 118. lets say they have a half hour commute. That’s another five hours. down to 113. Now lets say, they like to sleep for six hours a night- 42 hours a week-. we’re now down to 72 hours available. Five hours a week to up keep (paying bills, maintenance on houses/cars/yardwork.) throw in social obligations (lets say three hours to go to church on Sundays, and an hour on Wednesday nights.) 68 hours of available time.

Assuming all this time is spent on the children, because, you know, they’re responsible adults who really love their kids, and absolutely none of it is spent drinking beer in a boat because their kids are little monsters, the available hours per kid starts going down dramatically:

now for the stay-at-home parent:

We start again with 168 hours per week. Six hours of sleep a night takes us down to 126. Ten hours a day spent cleaning, cooking, laundry, and similar such things: we’re down to 56. lets say another

I can already hear you screaming “BUT THEY"RE AROUND”. no. they’re not. They’re busy doing shit. they might (might) be engaged enough to keep the kids from killing each other, but I’m not holding my breath given the general intelligence of the average kid and how quickly things can go from bad to dead.

but this isn’t about if they’re just around, or not, this is about the parent’s time as a resource that’s finite; and so the question isn’t ‘are the around’ but how many hours in a day can each parent contribute to a single kid in a dedicated, intentional manner. and with that, the hours each kid gets, from the stay-at-home parent:

are you really going to sit here and tell me that kids who receive 10 hours a week of invested parent-time are going to come out to be as capable and successful and well-adjusted as someone whose receiving over a hundred hours a week? And this goes with every other resource kids require growing up, including financing (for education, healthcare, and activities.) Or even better yet, also sees their parents having healthy social relationships and making healthy life choices (like self-care)

Now for some simple, cold, hard facts: kids didn’t choose to come into this world, neither did they choose which families. They gain no benefits from being in a large family over being a in a small family. The parents are choosing to impose hardship and probably life-long poverty on their children simply because they couldn’t’ figure out a condom; or decided that their wanting a small pet that looks like them happens to outweigh any responsibility those parents owe them.

oh. and by the way… why do you care what we think? you could just not be in this community. it’s okay. (Pot. meet. kettle.)

Do you need a hug?