Jon and Kate + The Whole Damn World

Okay, I admit it.  I’ve watched.  I mean, I haven’t sat through an entire boring episode of someone else’s kids getting free stuff, but I’ve channel surfed and have admittedly paused.  It was facinating to see the way Kate spoke to Jon even before their troubles hit the tabloids.  

After all, I would never get away with talking to my husband the way she does, and wouldn’t want to in the first place.  Funny, but I actually don’t like the idea of making him feel like an idiot man-child in front of the entire world.  But to be a doormat, you really have to volunteer to throw yourself down and quietly allow everyone to wipe their feet.  To each his own.

It is with increasing discomfort that I watch their personal disaster snowball into a more and more loathsome scenario.  The family is imploding, while cute but oblivious children run around collecting their freebies, living in their freebie house, getting their freebie haircuts, all while the parents get their freebie divorce.  They seem to have forgotten one of the most basic principles of economics.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Or a free Crooked House. 

My husband and I have had our children one at a time, with fourth child pending.  That doesn’t qualify us for any free stuff.  We pay for our own haircuts, clothes, and vacations (or lack thereof).  We also have to be careful to treat each other with respect and dignity because we are entirely relying on each other to raise these kids.  Our family nurtures a mutual fondness that’s based on a mutual need.  It’s not romantic, even though it’s the fondness that brought us together in the first place, but it’s real and it’s the truth.  When you take away the mutual need, whether it be financial or something less tangible, the work of nurturing mutual fondness starts to feel too  much like, well, work.

The price has been high for the Gosselins, and perhaps this is how they would’ve ended regardless of their money and fame.  But I would bet, if Kate were a stay at home mom relying on her husband to put food on the table (as she was after the six were born), she might have thought twice about treating him like a moron.  And if Jon knew his children were relying on his responsibility and his income for their security, he probably wouldn’t have been running out to bars and staying out all night with other women.  Those eight children might have forced them to learn something about being descent to each other, and insisting on descent behavior from themselves.  You know, discipline and maturity, that sort of thing.  The sort of things that make happily staying together possible.

So there it is, my take on something that ought not to be any of my business.  Only one of millions.  But I sure would like one (just one) of those Crooked Houses in my back yard.