The Brady Bunch

Move over Oprah & Dr. Phil. I've had it with your anx. You no longer have priority status on my Tivo. I need peace, love, and happiness and I've found them. There's some new kids on the block..25 of them with one on the way...and I'm hooked.

TLC, the cable channel makes the fictitious Brady Bunch of the 1960's look like no big deal. Remember when six kids was a lot? Forget about it! Now we have real life families, like the Duggar's "17 Kids & Counting" and the Gosslin's "John & Kate Plus Eight" . Not since our adoration of the nine Osmond kids in the 1970's have us Baby Boomers had a feel good show to watch where we can relax, smile, and believe for an hour that there is hope in the world.

The fascination is not that the families have a lot of children per se. After having beautiful twin girls, Kate Gosslin beat astronomical odds by giving birth to 6 healthy sextuplets who are now 3 years old. During the show introduction, she shows a clip from her pregnancy...including a belly that is so fascinatingly huge, it defies belief. Except that it's real. Fast forward a few years, and now Kate and Jon are livin' the dream in suburban Pennsylvania. I don't know what's more fun to watch, the kids or Jon and Kate's end of day ("we made it through another day!") banter. On the latest episode, they're packing up the whole family for a trip to Hawaii to have their fantacy wedding which they didn't get the first time around.

On the other hand, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar live in rural Arkansas in an enormous, gorgeous home that the whole family built themselves. They pay cash for everything and have no debt. Mom home-schools and buys in the thrift store. They have seventeen gorgeous, healthy, happy kids whose names all start with the letter "J" - Joshua, John-David, Jana, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah and Jennifer with a girl due in January (Baby Jan for January?). I don't know how the parents keep their sanity.... let alone keep the kids' names straight...but they are deeply religious and obviously their faith plays a great part. Dad is a gentle leader. Mom has a voice that is so sweet and tender that that just the sound of it can make a misbehaving toddler turn her head in shame. The eldest boy, Josh, 20, was recently married to 20 year old Anna, whom he met at a home schooling conference. Viewers (that's me!) have been watching the courtship on the 10 week series. The newlyweds are going to live in a small house near the big house. In a few years, they may have a big house of their own.

If you've every watched ABC's Supernanny and seen the sad, suffering parents with the 2, 3 or 4 angry, fighting, and disrespectful children that Nanny Jo Frost is confronted with, you have to wonder. What the heck happened that allowed these much smaller families to become so frightenly dysfunctional and out-of-control? The juxtaposition between them and the Duggar's and Gosslin's is worth thinking about...and learning from. (Did someone say "old-fashioned family values?")

In the mean time, I can't wait for the upcoming episodes of Josh Duggar's wedding and the Gosslin's renewing their vows.

I wish they were on right now.