People who watched 19 Kids and Counting before the allegations emerged: What was the appeal?

Point-and-gawk television was big in the 2000s. TLC's bread and butter at the time was "Look at this weird person/family, aren't they strange?" It was the same deal as Jon and Kate Plus 8. You watched just to see what crazy nonsense they'd get up to. That's just my perspective, though. A lot of people watched because they thought it was genuinely inspiring to see a "good Christian family" raising an army for the lord. Jim Bob Duggar managed to swing that minuscule fame into a genuine political career for a hot second, which should tell you everything.

I didn’t watch it, but my mom did, she was intrigued to see what it was like taking care of so many kids 

I watched 19 Kids and Counting and Sister Wives back in the day. It was purely anthropological curiosity. The attraction was seeing a *wildly* different culture in action. While I don't doubt the subjects of the show *intended* it to be aspirational and to promote their lifestyles, this isn't how the shows were consumed by audiences. Audiences tuned in out of curiosity or in order to judge the lifestyles and then some people stuck around, because they grew attached to the "characters." With 19 Kids and Counting, they were portrayed by producers as being very religious and perhaps more towards the wholesome side, but it was still clear that the girls were exploited by the system the lifestyle put in place: The girls were cooking, cleaning and raising all the children, basically.

I remember watching an episode where the mom is having one on one time with one of her kids playing checkers or something and it was clear she didn’t know anything about this kid or his interests.

It was like watching a train wreck. They admitted right off the bat that they parentified all their older children (when Michelle got pregnant again they assigned an older child to be the "buddy" of the infant.) Look, it appears they were self sufficient with Jim's jobs/businesses, so if she wanted to get pregnant over and over again that's their business. But now we know the rest of the story...

I grew up homeschooled and conservative enough that I have met some of them. We watched out of morbid curiosity as they were more extreme than we were, though we were far from normal.

My mom watched regularly in real time when it aired on TLC back in the day. She was so impressed at how big and tidy their house was, and how well behaved the children were. I remember being so uncomfortable the first time I watched with her when she kept pointing out how if any of the kids were about to have a fit or misbehave, Michelle would ask them sternly if they wanted to go into another room to talk and to go over scripture. My mom thought it was amazing she could snap the kids out of meltdowns like that without having to put them in time out or spank them. It was painfully obvious to 16 year old me that those kids were getting beat off camera that I could close myself in my room when my mom would watch the show. I don’t know how anyone found it entertaining because all I ever saw was some whacked out religious cult family.

I never really liked it but my mom would watch it, and was in awe at how well behaved the kids were. Turns out these freaks put their baby on a blanket, with something it wants just within reach, and slaps it every time it reaches for the thing, because they find the baby grows up to he more obedient when you hurt them like this. They also spank their kids until they STOP crying. So they were really beating the shit out of their children, and they openly admitted all of this. Their cult put out videos explaining how to abuse your kid. That’s why they were so “well behaved”. They were broken and scared.

It was a mildly more wholesome brand of the trash TV that was becoming popularized in that era. Was anyone else not surprised what ended up coming to light? Those poor kids had the deadest eyes I've even seen.

Grew up in a home church because the Presbyterian and Methodist churches 3 minutes walking distance from my front porch weren't "Christian." We had to watch them and things like 7th Heaven because they were happy wholesome families fighting the devil and the antidote to the evils that President Clinton and Harry Potter had unleashed on the world or something like that.

A car crash freak show. Literally the only reason

My ex gf watched it when we were together and I watched a few with her. The appeal is just seeing what it’s like taking care of an absurd amount of children and what possible train wrecks may occur.

It was partially train wreck and partially inspirational. You were always tuning in to see if she was gonna pop out another one. But you were also amazed that she could handle being pregnant for 20 years straight. The way they presented the older kids chipping in to help the family didn’t feel exploitive as a young adult. It felt like a wholesome, if a bit weird, family.

I imagine for parents it's like 600lb life for those of us who struggle with weight. It's essentially p********** of people who don't have their life together hence making you feel better about your own situation.

I was fascinated that weird vocal affectation that Michelle practiced. At the time I worked for a software company that had a customer service hotline and each time I spoke to the Salt Lake City office all the women spoke like the FLDS members . Slow and quiet cadence like they were hypnotized and they never raised their voices.

I kind of get the vibe this show was always a hate watch for a lot of its audience. The crimes just confirmed the creepiness everyone was picking up on.

I liked watching their house being built.

It was definitely a bit of both. The sheer size of the family was the initial trainwreck draw, but they worked hard to frame it as a wholesome, godly operation. You'd watch to see how they managed a household of 21 people, but it always had that underlying layer of cultish strangeness.

Back in the day there was the Free Jinger forum for discussing the spectacle! Basically the same reason as now, just morbid curiosity.

They were so weird

The same appeal as a freak show, I suppose.

I don’t even like IRL kids, I can’t imagine watching this many of them on TV in my free time 😂 but also a show about religious whackjobs, no thanks.

It was on the free cable package at the beach house and the logistics of feeding that many people was compelling. The beliefs were terrifying. Kind of like an organized train wreck you can’t look away from. The scandals didn’t remotely surprise me.

I watched it all. I watched because I hated it.

I watched it with my mom as a kid. We were not quiverfull like the Duggars but I did grow up an evangelical. Evangelicals were also influence by Bill Gothard and we had a lot of the same Christian media. Quiverfull followers like the Duggars were kind of aspirational for evangelicals like us. Like if only we could give up everything worldly and be like them. If only we had the time and money to homeschool our kids like them. If only we could have such well behaved god fearing children like them. That sort of thing

My mom watched both since their inception, and I did ask her the other day how many seasons are they going to keep doing, but she seems to enjoy it enough. Sister wives I understand because when it first started, she watched it with my stepdad, then both him and the dude (Cory?) had a midlife crisis at the same time, so I think she sticks with it out of catharsis because for the last like 3-4 seasons it's been all the wives dunking on how much better their lives get without him. She felt the same way about both my dad and stepdad. Seriously at the end of their marriage, he was washing rocks in the backyard all weekend just to keep busy because he was so miserable for whatever reason. Whatever, my mom is awesome.

Didn’t always watch it, but briefly got sucked in maybe a year or so before shit really hit the fan. Honestly, what got me into it was the calm and gentle way the mother spoke to the kids. My mother (who loves me fiercely - we’re super close) is impatient, easily frustrated, quick to anger, and really relies on us to regulate her emotionally. Her father was incredibly abusive and she *mostly* broke the cycle but things were not calm and quiet in my family and I wanted that (I STILL want that). But thennnnn I found out that those fundie monsters were aiding and abetting an abuser at the expense of their own daughters and the veil was lifted for me. It’s embarrassing in retrospect to think I ever gave them a moment of my time.

A friend of mine is married to a woman who was one of 23 children. This was in rural northern Wisconsin. The family was Catholic. The woman became a nun. My friend was a priest. They obviously both quit their religious orders. She has said her childhood was pretty horrible. The 2 of them had 2 children. Nobody can do a decent job of raising that many kids. By the way they are in their 80s now and still married.

It’s like a freak show at the circus. It was totally bizarre

I loved watching anything about the Duggars back in the day!! It was fascinating to see a family so large and so different from mine. My friend and I would pick out which daughters we thought would rebel eventually.

Train wreck tv for sure. I didn’t watch their show but when I was a kid sick at home they had a couple specials on TLC before their show that I watched. There was nothing aspirational about them to me and I couldn’t believe their lifestyle. Pretty much any reality show that was on TLC was train wreck tv.

They called tlc in the industry the feel better network you watched to make yourself feel better about your own lives

It's like going to a circus to see the freak show

People like watching train wrecks

Same reason many slow down to look at a bad accident.

I just wanted to know how someone could afford it. Especially since they didn't seem especially gifting in anything in particular. Also, it's kind of like a train wreck on fire, you know it's not what you want to spend time on, but for some reason it's hard to look away. But then it got repetitive and I got bored long before the allegations came out....but whoever thought they could raise each child to do everything right all the time with that many children, foolishness. Looking at 1 Kindergarten class could show that no one is in complete control when there are 20 kids in a room together

I knew something was way off, I don't even see how someone could do a good job raising more than 5 children max, but I remember my mom being particularly impressed by how "wholesome" it was that they each learned to play a musical instrument so I guess they had that going for them.

I watched. The appeal was like with any docu-style reality television - it was interesting. It’s different from my life, I was curious to why people lived this way. There was an element of wholesomeness but I did always have the impression that under the rosiness was a creepiness and an absolute oppression of knowledge and freedom. It sort of made me grateful to grow up where I could watch TV and use the internet within my parents thinking I would burn in hell.

I watched in middle school. I always wanted to be a parent, so I enjoyed family type shows. Table for 12 was another one I liked and seems much less problematic 

I grew up lower middle class and my family has always been awful with money. I just wondered where the heck the dad worked at to afford everything they had.

I’m almost 10 years older than my only sibling, so I was essentially raised as an only child. None of my friends had more than three siblings, so big families like the Duggars were completely outside of my lived experience. I still find large families interesting but really only follow one on tiktok (Raising Cades. They seem like such a nice, genuine family. The kids are in their videos but they aren’t the focus.)

My grandma watched that and Sisterwives religiously, she was fascinated by the dynamics with the families. Even before all of the Duggar bombshells, the Browns were the lesser of two evils. They’ve always been more outspoken and open minded, albeit still brainwashed to some degree. When you watch them interact with each other they actually converse like regular people, they’re not vacant like The Duggars. I think if a situation like Josh and Joseph’s happened with the Brown family that they would have handled it differently.

schadenfreude

It was wtf tv without partying and cursing.

My TV guilty pleasure was train wreck reality television.

I watched an episode or two and got Vives like they're inbred or slow, the mom especially was kinda a moron, dad looked like the guy taking pictures at a school.

I was a teenager when it came to TLC, and that was the show I finally understood what hate-watching meant. I was just morbidly curious but never left an episode not feeling upset in some form or another, mostly over the whole brainwashing their kids in a cult thing.

I’ve always been intrigued by people on the fringes of society. I love learning how people who are very different from me function. I’m an atheist only child, so the Duggars were about as different from myself as they could be.

Same reason I watched the Brady Bunch, cute kids, weird adults, living a life I could never imagine. I never thought they were role models, but I enjoyed seeing into their world.

I never watched anything with The Duggars, but I did watch Jon & Kate plus 8. I was young and childless, but I liked watching the kids grow up, but the tension between Jon and Kate was super obvious. It didn’t seem like they even liked each other.

I ask this question about almost all reality TV shows.

My wife at the time watched it, and I was always creeped out by the entire thing. I'm a guy, and the men in that show made my creep alarm scream. The mom was deranged. Her eyes reminded me of a caged wild animal. When the allegations came out, I was stunned that I hadn't thought that was the real underlying issue. It was so painfully obvious that I missed it completely. I am now just absolutely shocked by how arrogant they were in committing to doing a television show about their lives, knowing what insidious abuses the "star" of the show was committing. It only seems to get worse and worse.

I started watching for the wtf factor. I kept with it for way too long because I was hoping the girls would grow up and escape. I quit watching before the first Josh scandal, but then watched the spin off of a sorts. I regret it all now. At least Jill isn’t propping up her father any more. So, that’s sort of what I was hoping for for them all.

I’m an only child, and seeing a large family was wish fulfillment (although in reality I would have hated that lifestyle, abuse aside).

Modern day Freakshow. I'm an only child in an atheist family and this show was wild to me. My best friend and I would get stoned and hate watch it.

It felt akin to watching a completely different culture. Like the Amish or something.

My mom thought it was wholesome. I felt it was cult like.

Morbid curiosity.

This was before modern day reality tv.

I remember streaming this on Netflix (?) around the 2010 range and it was just ...brainless c*** to watch. Unlike others here I wasn't under the idea that they were a train wreck...I was kinda taken with the idea of such a large family and how they worked. I think my view was "okay that's different from the way I live" and watched it. I think it's similar to me just putting up youtube videos of "how so and so is made" or "here's 20 people answering general questions". It's was just something to occupy the time.

They were f****** weirdos. It was a freak show.

Everyone has given such thoughtful very accurate answers. But I'd like to add, there wasn't a whole lot else on. These shows were on like mid-week in the afternoons & evenings or Sunday afternoons, basically opposite of the good sitcoms or reality TV. We often watched Jon&Kate+8, Sister Wives or 19 Kids and Counting as background noise while we waited for something good to come on or for commericals to pass. It was very much as casual viewing experience in my house.

Or as I always referred to it when my wife would watch: The Clown Car Cooch Show.

I caught a few episodes. The dad creeped me out because he seemed so dry and boring. I couldn’t understand how those two could spend so much f****** in order to have all the children that they have. It bothered me that all the children had to have names with the same first letter and how strict they were with the children. Those two parents absolutely failed their kids. I don’t understand how pedophilia could run in the family and these two did nothing to protect their girls. It’s sad how common it is for people to be abused by their own blood and relatives prefer to just sweep it up the rug instead of confront it. How can anyone heal when the kids are just warned to stay away from the creepy uncle and no one does a thing to prevent this from happening again and again?

My mom and I watched it because we could not fathom what that kind of family life was like, and that the trainwreck was fun to gossip about. We both agreed it was some kind of slavery, and that there had to be at least a few gay or trans kids incredibly closeted within the lot. We really didn't clock any of the pedo stuff from any of the boys, though. That threw us for a loop.

Fascinating

I'm anti-religious but I still enjoyed the show. It was very interesting how everything was organized. And there were always different projects going on.

I used to really love that show! I watched their show 17 kids and counting when it came out and was the same age as 3rd girl. It was just a stark contrast to my life. They had such weird clothes and mannerisms. So calm and quiet. I realise now how weird it all was, the older kids raising the younger kids. But at the time it felt like wholesome fun, bread making, they made their own laundry detergent, how to be frugal. I now know Jim Bob never paid any of his kids and kept all the money and some of them are peadophiles. Dunno… kinda wish I never was so engrossed with it cause it was all lies.

All of these types of shows are just modern Victorian Freak Shows but you don’t even have to leave the house

So when the first few specials before there was an actual show i watched it. Keep in mind that i was a teenager at the time and to say i was living in a dysfunctional household would be the understatement of the century. I bought into the lie that their family was happy and stable and that was appealing to me considering the chaotic abusive mess i was living in at the time.

My parents (espically my mom) just watched a lot of tlc shows so I grew up on that channel so naturally I liked some of the stuff they made. I guess they were diff enough to be entertaining cause my family wasn’t like them but not weird enough to be off putting. I also like seeing how other families lived. Now days I wouldn’t watch a show where kids are being filmed 24/7 for every video or ep cause as adult I now understand how that not good way for kids to grow up.

I always assumed it was like a live action Where's Wally/Waldo, trying to count where the 19 kids were in any given frame.

I remember watching them and Jon and Kate and all the weird TLC families when they first came out. As an only child with divorced parents the whole dynamic under one roof was fascinating. Weirdly my other only child friends were also glued to TLC for a bit. Eventually they scrambled digital cable so I stopped getting free channels and I moved on.

Never watched. I found the whole thing creepy

My wife was a fan of that show for a bit, same with Kate + 8 or however many. Another one too, can’t remember the name. Love her, but she liked some *dumb* shows. I would always be like ‘half this show is just screaming kids (about Kate*)….how is this appealing?’ Never got a good answer.

I grew up in a similar family so my mom thought it was nice, wholesome tv for the family.

There was no appeal.  Jim Bob was/is a control freak nutcase and the mom was a vapid airhead.

Like most reality television it’s the train wreck effect. A fly on the wall of a life you couldn’t imagine living. Trying to find the appeal or justification for living in such a way, etc. There have been so many, like Mama June, The Chrisley’s, The Osbournes. That evolved into Sister Wives and Little People Big World and then My 600 lb life and the Slayton Sisters. The list goes on. Anyone with a different lifestyle is fascinating at first. Unfortunately we become obsessed and they just keep making them. There is no shortage of trainwrecks in the US.

My wife and I were both separately fascinated by this family of a bajillion children and how cultish their behavior was before we met. Then we met each other and we got to binge this weird family together! They always tried to give off the air of wholesomeness, but it always felt so inauthentic and the cracks were obviously starting to crumble once the girls started getting married off to men who pretended they were like Jim Bob but were actually not that religious and just happened to become that girl’s rescuer from an abusive family. This was also around the time my wife and I lost interest because the girls were being married off to relatively normal guys rather than Jim Bob Jr. Then the news about their oldest brother broke. I’m 100% sure that Jim Bob has molested every one of his children.

I was more conservative at the time. I found it wholesome but I still questioned why someone would have so many kids that all the kids’ jobs were to take care of the other kids. And the courtship thing was not my style. But mostly it was wholesome and just interesting to see what life was like for such a big family. 

Now, I’d stopped at watching it LONG before the allegations occurred, but I just liked seeing how others lived and challenging my own bias and expectations of how things should be (this was a more innocent time when social media was as barely a thing, I hadn’t heard the term “influencer” used to site a person’s “profession” and/or who they  are or strive to be online, and years before I’d even have internet on my phone. Now, I’m aware enough to realize that while I was consuming such content in earnest what I was consuming was just complete propaganda. I know better now! 

A friend of mine would have me watch it with her while she made fun of it, I always found the family to be rather creepy and was not at all shocked when the allegations came out.

It was a hate watch for me. Morbid curiosity I was the same age as the older kids and went to public school lol.

They enjoyed watching scripted fake reality trash TV programming. The show was targeted towards the female demographic which is why it was produced for The Lousy Channel to begin with and was also intended to attract those who are members of the right-wing quiverfull movement.

I often wonder what the appeal is of any of these "reality" shows. Especially "my 600lb life", like you're really interested in watching disgustingly fat people get around in life? Why?