I blame my mother for introducing me to the Gosselin family.
During one of her visits last year, TLC was running a
marathon of Jon
& Kate Plus 8, and Mom was glued to the screen. I watched
several episodes with her and was surprised to find that she knew each
child's history and personality. Watching the show for the first time
gave me more than a few schadenfreude moments. I saw one episode
where Jon and Kate take the kids to Disney World. I couldn't
imagine the stress of keeping track of them all, or scheduling their
naps, or dealing with Mouse-induced meltdowns times eight. Those
parents deserve a medal, I thought.
And yet the family has come under intense media scrutiny for, well, allowing the media to intensely scrutinize their lives. Americans just can't get enough of the Gosselins. As our own families get smaller, we're endlessly fascinated by ones that are supersized. We watch the Gosselins' show in part because we know that although our lives might seem crazy, we'll never be potty-training six toddlers simultaneously, on tiny toilets all lined up in a row. We'll never have to hold back some of our trash from one week to the next just because our allotted bins are already full of diapers. We'll never have half a dozen kids with fevers all at once. Thanks, benevolent universe!
If we haven't gotten enough of the Gosselins yet (even with Jon's well-publicized adultery and Kate's disastrous recent turn on Dancing with the Stars), the Zondervan book I Just Want You to Know promises the dish on Kate's kids, religious beliefs, and supersized life. I was prepared to cynically hate this book. And you know what? It's actually not bad, and there's a surprising amount of material on religion
Read more of this review on my Flunking Sainthood blog at Beliefnet.
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