quote:Originally posted by rivka: The judgy-judging in this thread is absolutely sickening.
I really don't think so. It's too bad that you can't bear to hear how other people feel about big families, or the concept of big families, but since we all come from a family, we all have complex feelings about what is best for other families. Nobody here has suggested any action to limit these people's rights, but we as social animals also have a right to dislike and even scorn such behavior if we feel it is not appropriate. If we were ever to remain silent, society wouldn't have much of a compass to let the younger people watching this show know that some of us feel this large of a family is undesirable. Scott is evidently inclined only to heap praise on this show and these people, but I remind that he and you know them no better than we do, so your positivity towards them is just as false, or just as valid.
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I have a friend who has Irish triplets (3 daughters under three, 3 separate pregnancies). Sometimes, I envy her daughters having siblings so close in age to each other. They always have someone to play with, wheras my daughter will have atleast 3.5 years difference between her and a hypothetical sibling(since I am still on the pill, that short a difference is unlikely). But there are times when I am so glad I get all the one on one time with my little girl. And by the time I have another one, bin will be in school (well, she is already in preschool) and so the next one will get a lot of one on one time too. I don't know which way is the best, but I can see arguments either way. Of course, at 19 kids...
Another point- the Duggers are not trying to have kids. They just don't prevent. One of the tenants of the Quiverful movement is that you take what God gives you, so fertility treatments are frowned upon, as are birth control methods.
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They aren't trying for a record, they just aren't stopping it. Holy moly, the mother must be uber-fertile.
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Or are you specifically condemning something (aside from Xtreme baby-making) that you've seen the Duggars do?
I don't really buy the idea that having lots of kids is inherently selfish or harmful to modern society, or to children. The economics of the situation are heck of a lot more complex than what has been hinted here by those critical of them. A family with ten kids whose parents emphasize hard work and education is likely to be of more benefit to society than a family with one child that lets him veg on Nintendo all day.
(I like what I've seen of the Duggars' work ethic. I am skeptical of what I've seen of their educational habits.)
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Another point- the Duggers are not trying to have kids. They just don't prevent. One of the tenants of the Quiverful movement is that you take what God gives you, so fertility treatments are frowned upon, as are birth control methods.
I don't find that particularly compelling. They are clearly aware of their fertility, and they are clearly making a choice to have more children. If this has to do with their religious beliefs, more's the pity.
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I wouldn't assess anyone as such based on ability to procreate that many times alone.
You did, actually.
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: It may be that there are families that could raise very large numbers of children and have them all become sound, whole people. I would never presume that outcome as a baseline.
Good. Neither would I.
I also wouldn't make that assumption about a family with 1, 2, 3, 7, or any other number of offspring.
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: And, again: what other major life event could you voluntarily undergo nineteen times and not expect, at best, to be thought a little odd?
I have no idea why you think this is remotely relevant.
Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
My main objection to the Duggars isn't their lifestyle or the number kids they choose to have. What concerns me is, what is the point of the show? It seems like nothing other than exhibitionism on their part and voyeurism on the part of the viewers. This can also be said for "Jon and Kate", with the added element of watching a train wreck.
On the other end, I see the show "Little People, Big World" as being a potentially enlightening and educational show on the challenges faced by those with varying forms of dwarfism. At least it started that way. Lately, it seems to me to be an almost perpetual advertisement for the Roloff's family farm.
The Duggar's TV show could arguably demonstrate the challenges (and joys, I suppose) inherent in adhering to the Quiverful philosophy.... It just doesn't seem likely that that was how the show was marketed.
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I don't really care one way or another about the Duggars, but I'd like to point out that they aren't raising 18 children. The oldest four are all adults.
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I have no problem with families who have large numbers of children as long as the children are fed, clothed, educated, and happy, and the family is self sufficient.
That's more than can be said for a whole lot of families, even in this country.
I do have a problem with the television show, but that has nothing to do with the number of children. I think putting your children on TV at all is selling out your family life, and I think it's tacky, trashy, and short-sighted no matter who the family is or how many people compose it.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
Being the offspring of mathematicians comes out in the oddest ways sometimes. I didn't even realize I had done that!
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I do have a problem with the television show, but that has nothing to do with the number of children. I think putting your children on TV at all is selling out your family life, and I think it's tacky, trashy, and short-sighted no matter who the family is or how many people compose it.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Nobody here has suggested any action to limit these people's rights.
I think this is important. I may think that a particular family is less than ideal or even creepy. I certainly would not (baring demonstrable harm to the children*) vote that those people could not be a family.
I think this is a good rule when it comes to other kinds of families as well.
*harm serious enough that the state should take custody.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
Being the offspring of mathematicians comes out in the oddest ways sometimes. I didn't even realize I had done that!
In truth, you skipped 5. Besides, when picking numbers between 1 and 10, there is a statistically greater likelihood of selecting a prime number than in any other 10-number range. (Is that provable?). Anyway, it's 50/50 in that range, so take it or leave it.
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One concern I read about is that a lot of the participants in the Quiverful movement are not able to actually take care of all the kids they have. While the Duggsrs are able to, they do not represent the majority of families. The positive publicity given to the Duggars (who are the exception) minimizes the actual problems facing most people who choose this life and encourages people to choose the lifestyle, without actual awareness of the real challenges. I don't know how realistic this concern actually is, since I cannot imagine watching a show about 19 kids and going, hey, that looks fun! I'll do that. But I also can't imagine doing a lot of things my fellow Americans do.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
Being the offspring of mathematicians comes out in the oddest ways sometimes. I didn't even realize I had done that!
In truth, you skipped 5. Besides, when picking numbers between 1 and 10, there is a statistically greater likelihood of selecting a prime number than in any other 10-number range. (Is that provable?). Anyway, it's 50/50 in that range, so take it or leave it.
Ah, but I did deliberately not choose 4. I didn't really think about why, but I do recall skipping it deliberately.
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I have a visceral reaction to hearing about a family having nineteen children, and I distrust visceral reactions. I think they tie into ancient fight-or-flight, prey/danger/mate/family/alien reactions. I think on some levels racism and homophobia are visceral reactions; they're made without taking a second look, and they're often wrong.
So I thought about this. And... I came to pretty much the same feeling. I realize that my opinion doesn't change what people will do. And I realize what I'm about to say may not make me very popular.
It's not just the Duggars. No one should have nineteen children. No one should have nineteen children.
In another thread, the fact that world seafood stocks are expected to utterly crash in the next forty years is the topic. The briefest of searches will also quickly paint a very grim picture for you: all over the world, we have an agricultural system that is based on a limited number of plant strains (and thus increasingly susceptible to blight), chemical fertilizers (which poison the water systems and are becoming increasingly expensive and untenable in their own right), and an excess of available water (as ancient springs and aquifers are sucked dry and annual rainfall/snowmelt is steadily decreasing in many formerly fertile areas.) And then there's petroleum, the diminishment of which I don't think even dedicated think-tanks have fully grasped the full ramifications of.
Into this mess come... My daughter (six). My middle-sister's daughter (now a year old); my eldest sister's adopted son (twelve).
And the Duggars' nineteen, soon-to-be-twenty children.
Not because they're terrific people. Not because they're clever, or generous, or the leaders of the future. Because they breed like rabbits. That is the only reason they're bringing this enormous genetic footprint onto the world, to compete with all the other people who decided to circle their wagons around one or two or five or eight, intentionally or not both giving the best chance to their children- and giving the best chance to everyone else's.
I've always found Kant's categorical imperative useful as a fallback when all else fails. For the unfamiliar, it amounts to: "Can you consider it right for anyone to do the same, in the same situation?"
So, yes, what does happen if everyone who can has nineteen children?
I also think of a much blunter argument that rang in my mind back in my college days talking with a friend who argued for polyamory: Just what makes you so damn special that you need to be spread around?
Now just to stick my foot a little further into my mouth, I will note and sympathize that I can certainly see how groups that in the recent past had suffered widespread persecution- or even genocide- might feel a need, or even a duty, to make sure that their heritage didn't vanish.
But generally speaking... Are the Duggars so special that they need to be spread around? Are they, say, twenty times better than a typical Chinese family?
When the fish stocks have run out, modern agriculture has collapsed, gasoline based transport is a memory, am I to say it's just fine that my grandchildren are competing with a few hundred Duggars, just because they were able to breed and decided that three or five or seven was just some kind of arbitrary cut off, not for the likes of them?
My condemnation doesn't make a tinker's damn worth of difference. I'm not about go off to forcibly sterilize anyone, or demand that my Senator start at Chinese-style one-child system. But I'm not going to pretend that having nineteen children is okay with me. It's not. It's selfish and self-centered to have that many children, even if "you" can care for them.
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quote:It's not. It's selfish and self-centered to have that many children, even if "you" can care for them.
Your criticism is based on the ability of your descendants to compete with them.
Who's selfish?
I didn't entirely interpret the criticism this way. I think the visceral reaction may have had to do with this -- competing grandchildren or great-grandchildren -- but the overall argument was more a stance based on the idea that the Earth is tapped for resources due to our greed and overpopulation as it is. By this logic, adding to the population with 19 children lacks foresight and puts undue strain on future Earth for the sake of your genetic heritage.
I would agree with this idea if it were not for one important thing: The Earth will make us pay. Sooner or later, when we've stretched ourselves to the limits, forces will set to work reducing the number of humans on this planet. It may be disease or famine or war, but it will happen.
When that happens, the Duggers have given themselves a lot better shot at having descendants among the survivors. This brings us right back to the visceral response -- the competition. So from a certain point of view, they're smart.
Not that intelligence and selfishness are mutually exclusive.
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: When that happens, the Duggers have given themselves a lot better shot at having descendants among the survivors. This brings us right back to the visceral response -- the competition. So from a certain point of view, they're smart.
Not that intelligence and selfishness are mutually exclusive.
Does anyone actually care about having their descendants surviving in two hundred (or whatever) years? I can understand caring about children and grandchildren - and any other descendants you have a personal connection to - but great-great-great-great grandchildren? Why would you care?
I think I missed out on the tribalism gene.
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: When that happens, the Duggers have given themselves a lot better shot at having descendants among the survivors. This brings us right back to the visceral response -- the competition. So from a certain point of view, they're smart.
Not that intelligence and selfishness are mutually exclusive.
Does anyone actually care about having their descendants surviving in two hundred (or whatever) years? I can understand caring about children and grandchildren - and any other descendants you have a personal connection to - but great-great-great-great grandchildren? Why would you care?
Genetic heritage. It's embedded in my DNA to care.
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Does anyone actually care about having their descendants surviving in two hundred (or whatever) years? I can understand caring about children and grandchildren - and any other descendants you have a personal connection to - but great-great-great-great grandchildren? Why would you care?
I think I missed out on the tribalism gene.
You didn't, this just isn't an issue that you get tribal about. There are others, I'm sure.
It's the same reason that despite knowing and liking several (though not that many) Mormons, I would not want the world to be populated with a majority of Mormons in the future. Nor Muslims, nor Jews, nor Japanese, nor Americans. I want my tiny slice of the gene pool that is half a distant descendant of the noble families of Western Europe from a thousand years ago, mixed with 4 centuries of white-bred American stock, and half poor German immigrant, to continue on its merry way in such a fashion as I, my father, my grandfather, and as many of those distant ancestors as possible could be proud of. We don't want our families to fall into decline, and we don't want them to change all that much. But when one group seeks that destiny by simply outbreeding the others? Yeah, I think that's selfish, and I think it will lead to a bad end.
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: When that happens, the Duggers have given themselves a lot better shot at having descendants among the survivors. This brings us right back to the visceral response -- the competition. So from a certain point of view, they're smart.
Not that intelligence and selfishness are mutually exclusive.
Does anyone actually care about having their descendants surviving in two hundred (or whatever) years? I can understand caring about children and grandchildren - and any other descendants you have a personal connection to - but great-great-great-great grandchildren? Why would you care?
I think I missed out on the tribalism gene.
You know, I don't care either, but I think that's largely due to my identity not being tied to family history. My only known blood relatives are my dad and sister (my dad was adopted), and culture as a concept just doesn't make much sense to me. If I have kids, of course I'll be concerned with their well-being and the well-being of their children - up to, I suppose, the children of the last generation I know personally. But beyond that, I don't think I would or should care. I don't really see the point.
Of course, when cyborg technology comes around I'm tot'ly jumping on that, so I may end up caring more about my lineage than I expect to.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
Being the offspring of mathematicians comes out in the oddest ways sometimes. I didn't even realize I had done that!
In truth, you skipped 5. Besides, when picking numbers between 1 and 10, there is a statistically greater likelihood of selecting a prime number than in any other 10-number range. (Is that provable?). Anyway, it's 50/50 in that range, so take it or leave it.
Hmm. Depends. First, 1 is not usually considered a prime, so your odds may be 50% or 40% depending on how you feel about that. Then, in any 10-number range which excludes 2, at most five numbers (the odd ones) will be prime; but we can find a better bound. We seek prime n such that as many as possible of (n+2, n+4, n+6 and n+8) are all prime. By construction n is not divisible by 3; it follows that either n+2 or n+4 is divisible by three. (Because n mod 3 is either 1 or 2; if 1, then (n+2) mod 3 = 0, if 2, then (n+3+1) mod 3 = 0.) Therefore, we can have at most 4 primes in a ten-number range.
It is clear that this is the best possible bound, because I can give an example of a ten-number range with four primes in it, namely 11 through 20 (or 10 through 19, take your pick). Or 5 through 14. So, there exist ten-number ranges with a 40% chance of picking primes, but no higher percentages. Whether you consider this strictly less than the chance in the 1-10 range depends on whether you consider one to be a prime.
[ September 16, 2009, 07:08 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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I have a problem with the "they don't have to raise all the kids, the older ones help out with the youngers" defense. It's not my daughter's job to raise her younger siblings. If I bring children into the world it is MY job to raise them.
If you have so many kids you have to dole out the raising of them to other kids - then you have too many kids, IMO. Yes, I respect they support their children themselves and have the resources to care for them, but raising children requires more than just feeding them, clothing them and providing them with shelter. It means giving them the emotional support they need and spending time with them. Not only is it better, IMO, for kids to receive that kind of caretaking from actual parents, but also assigning a child of yours to be a caretaker of a younger sibling is not fair. That is putting way too much responsibility on someone who is not an adult and isn't responsible for bringing that child into the world.
I also agree completely with everything that has been said about the exploitive nature of the tv show, as well. That applies to all the families, Jon and Kate being IMO the worst offenders.
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Are you really going to advocate children having zero responsibility to help their parents with younger siblings? That seems strange to me. Surely you would not balk at children being required to do chores; if the chores include "babysit your younger brother while I go for groceries", what's the problem? If it's at the level of "Take this paper route so you can pay for your room and board, freeing up money for your other siblings", that's a bit different. Although I do note that my mother and her brother were required to pay a share of rent and groceries from age 15 or 16, out of whatever jobs they could find. This was in sixties Britain and a working-class home - in other words, conditions of grinding poverty now foreign to Western nations - but still, such a requirement doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. Housing and food is not free, and it does seem to me that many things could be improved if a larger fraction of young adults realised this at an earlier stage; parents could do a lot worse for their children than teach responsibility this way.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Rivka, do you have an objection to having children in the prime numbers or something?
Being the offspring of mathematicians comes out in the oddest ways sometimes. I didn't even realize I had done that!
In truth, you skipped 5. Besides, when picking numbers between 1 and 10, there is a statistically greater likelihood of selecting a prime number than in any other 10-number range. (Is that provable?). Anyway, it's 50/50 in that range, so take it or leave it.
Hmm. Depends. First, 1 is not usually considered a prime, so your odds may be 50% or 40% depending on how you feel about that. Then, in any 10-number range which excludes 2, at most five numbers (the odd ones) will be prime; but we can find a better bound. We seek prime n such that as many as possible of (n+2, n+4, n+6 and n+8) are all prime. By construction n is not divisible by 3; it follows that either n+2 or n+4 is divisible by three. (Because n mod 3 is either 1 or 2; if 1, then (n+2) mod 3 = 0, if 2, then (n+3+1) mod 3 = 0.) Therefore, we can have at most 4 primes in a ten-number range.
It is clear that this is the best possible bound, because I can give an example of a ten-number range with four primes in it, namely 11 through 20 (or 10 through 19, take your pick). Or 5 through 14. So, there exist ten-number ranges with a 40% chance of picking primes, but no higher percentages. Whether you consider this strictly less than the chance in the 1-10 range depends on whether you consider one to be a prime.
Hm. I haven't taken a math class or pursued mathematics seriously since junior-year calculus in high school, so I'm impressed that I understood that. (Or at least, I think I did.)
I hadn't realized that 1 was not considered a prime number, and it apparently has been considered non-prime and non-composite by mathematicians for nearly a century. Is this just one more example of how backwards the US education system is? Then again, I learned about primes in my parochial elementary school, so that's another story entirely...
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: One concern I read about is that a lot of the participants in the Quiverful movement are not able to actually take care of all the kids they have. While the Duggsrs are able to, they do not represent the majority of families. The positive publicity given to the Duggars (who are the exception) minimizes the actual problems facing most people who choose this life and encourages people to choose the lifestyle, without actual awareness of the real challenges. I don't know how realistic this concern actually is, since I cannot imagine watching a show about 19 kids and going, hey, that looks fun! I'll do that. But I also can't imagine doing a lot of things my fellow Americans do.
Interestingly, I noticed this during an episode or two of the show in which the Duggars were helping another Quiverful family by adding on to their house. The other family had something like 15 members living in a one-bathroom house. Several of the children lived in a non-insulated, non-ventilated attic space. It speaks to the Duggars character (and relative wealth) that they were willing to work so hard and give so much for another family, but the episode also highlighted the many difficulties and potential criticism of the Quiverful way of life.
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There is nothing wrong with kids having chores. There is nothing wrong with older siblings helping out. My sixteen year old sometimes takes my 9 year old to gymnastics for me. All my kids, even the youngest do chores.
What I see in the Duggars is far beyond chores or simply helping out occasionally. I have heard that when a baby is born it is "assigned" to an older sibling who then becomes responsible for a large part of the care. That is what I object to.
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The "1 is not a prime" thing isn't, to the best of my knowledge, for any particularly deep reason, so if your school didn't teach it, that's no slam on them. As far as I can tell, it's just a question of taste, like calling truth quarks 'top'. But perhaps some mathematician will be along to correct me?
Edit: Actually, when I think about it, perhaps it's for consistency in the Sieve of Eratosthenes. It would be awkward to do "For each prime, strike out all higher numbers divisible by it" if 1 were considered prime. Mathematicians like to have consistency in that kind of thing.
[ September 16, 2009, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: What I see in the Duggars is far beyond chores or simply helping out occasionally. I have heard that when a baby is born it is "assigned" to an older sibling who then becomes responsible for a large part of the care. That is what I object to.
Well, it's not as though I watch the show, so I'll have to take your word for it. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: The "1 is not a prime" thing isn't, to the best of my knowledge, for any particularly deep reason, so if your school didn't teach it, that's no slam on them. As far as I can tell, it's just a question of taste, like calling truth quarks 'top'. But perhaps some mathematician will be along to correct me?
When I asked Google, I got a reasonable explanation for why 1 isn't prime. It comes down to the definition of prime numbers being that they can only be divided by two integers: 1 and itself. If you define prime numbers that way, then 1 isn't prime because it can technically only be divided by one integer: 1.
You're right though. It's how you define it. "If A, then A"
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Eh. Still a matter of taste, in my opinion, as is the Sieve of Eratosthenes explanation I gave in my edit of the post you quoted. But, you know, whatever. Mathematicians are the next best thing to physicists, and are entitled to one or two just-plain-conventions. How else are we going to tell the second-class citizens from the fourth-class ones like biologists, if we don't allow them some extra privileges?
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My mother came from a family of 11, but there was a loooooot of abuse in her family and some of it sadly passed to me...
But when I have kids, I'm not passing it to them. I'll do all I can to avoid that.
I think the Quiverfull movement seems unhealthy; the insistence of a strict role for men and women, having many kids for what I consider the wrong reasons. I want to have and adopt kids because I want kids, not to outbreed Muslims or for religious reasons. I just want to raise a child, teach them about love and trust and hope they grow up healthy. Babysitting siblings is one thing, but kids should be allowed to have a childhood and that's difficult when you're helping to raise siblings. I imagine it must be hard on just 2 parents having that many kids and that means strict discipline. A lot of quiverful people believe in discipline practices that border abuse (some which are actually abusive, many of them are acolytes of Pearl who recommends switching babies at the age of 4 months!!!) So, I don't know... a lot of quiverful people according to a book I read called quiverfull have a lot of problems taking care of all of those children and having enough resources for all of them. The Duggars at least are financially independent.
Mostly they are eerily respectable... Respectful, wholesome people kind of squick me. Maybe if they had a few tattoos and piercings.
quote:Originally posted by Belle: There is nothing wrong with kids having chores. There is nothing wrong with older siblings helping out. My sixteen year old sometimes takes my 9 year old to gymnastics for me. All my kids, even the youngest do chores.
What I see in the Duggars is far beyond chores or simply helping out occasionally. I have heard that when a baby is born it is "assigned" to an older sibling who then becomes responsible for a large part of the care. That is what I object to.
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KoM - it's not as if I watch the show either, I'm going on interviews of them I've seen and stuff I've heard.
I don't consider watching how another family lives their lives a good use of my time...I'd rather live life with my own family, thank you.
You know, spending good quality time doing stuff like killing Nazi zombies with my son playing Call of Duty on the XBox. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: You know, spending good quality time doing stuff like killing Nazi zombies with my son playing Call of Duty on the XBox.
I can't wait until my kids are old enough to play video games! That will be so much fun.
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It's a real shame the Beta season of 1 vs 100 is over on XBox live - the whole family loved that game...we would take turns "helping" the person holding the controller answer the questions, and making the avatar dance on the screen.
There's not many games the whole family can be involved in and enjoy, but that was one of them. My 9 year old daughter was crushed that we never made it into the mob or became the one. She was convinced we would win money if we did. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:I have a visceral reaction to hearing about a family having nineteen children, and I distrust visceral reactions.
I at first thought they were kinda cute. Then I started to observe their blatant monomania. Then somebody showed me their website, which kind of looks like this:
quote:Welcome to the duggar family website! babies babies babies babies babies. baaaabies. have some babies. have all of the babies. babies are so wonderful. lets bible quote about babies! Proverbs 9:14: and lo, babies and more babies. we like babies, do you like babies? have some babies. never stop making babies.
quote: But the naming thing becomes a habit that prevents its own breaking. You might give two or three kids names that start with J, and with each subsequent child it becomes harder to stop because you don't want the new child to feel like they're different somehow.
Yeah, compared to the Reuss family who name every male Heinrich and number them all by birth order, the J names are pretty tame.
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quote:Welcome to the duggar family website! babies babies babies babies babies. baaaabies. have some babies. have all of the babies. babies are so wonderful. lets bible quote about babies! Proverbs 9:14: and lo, babies and more babies. we like babies, do you like babies? have some babies. never stop making babies.
The most startling part is how big the house actually is. These are obviously wealthy people- the kitchen is practically a school cafeteria, with an 8 burner stove and two huge sinks. The living room and kitchen are the size of a decently large hotel lobby, with an actual bona fide cafeteria in it, and a soda fountain to boot. The rumpus room appears to have lockers in it, and the most disturbing part of the whole thing is that the house appears to have two very large dormitories for the girls and boys. No individual bedrooms other than the parents' are shown.
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They gave the kids the option when they were building the house. The kids chose to have dorm style rooms.
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Oh, well, as long as they claimed "the kids" made that decision, then it's all cut an dried and absolutely fine since apparently several of them are barely old enough to talk. Yeah, "the kids" were obviously in the best position to make that decision. :nod:
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I really don't see anything especially wrong with dorm-style rooms, especially in a large house affording lots of space when someone wants time more alone. Sharing a room is a perfectly normal sort of family life.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Well, the kids who have been placed in surrogate parent mode might find it easier to sleep in the same room as their "charge".
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
You know, I recall being a kid. And I would probably have chosen dorm-style rooms before the age of 12, myself. After 14, I would have wanted a separate room all the way on the other side of the compound, surrounded by barbed wire and armored jellyfish.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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