Happy Mother’s Day: Woman pregnant with 18th child

Associated Press Eighteen of the 19 members of the Duggar family pose for a photo at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport Friday in Highfil, Ark., after returning from a trip to New York where they announced that they are expecting their 18th child. Over the weekend, Duggar joined her husband and their 17 children to celebrate Mother’s Day with brunch at a hotel in downtown Little Rock. Their youngest child, Jennifer, is 9 months old. Their oldest, Josh, is 20. The Duggar children include 10 boys and seven girls. Within the group are two sets of twins.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Mother’s Day draws a crowd in the home of an Arkansas woman—she is pregnant with her 18th child.

Michelle Duggar, 41, said she is six weeks along in her pregnancy and that everything is going well.

This weekend, Duggar will join her husband and their 17 children to celebrate Mother’s Day with brunch at a hotel in downtown Little Rock. Their youngest child, Jennifer, is 9 months old. Their oldest, Josh, is 20.

The Duggar children include 10 boys and seven girls. Within the group are two sets of twins.

“We’ve had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us,” Michelle Duggar said, laughing.

The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children—whose names start with the letter J—are home-schooled.

Jim Bob Duggar, a former member of the Arkansas Legislature and an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate, has not been specific when asked how he supports such a big family. But he said he was guided by a seminar about 20 years ago—a system he still advocates—that blends finance and religion.

The family has become well known through news coverage of new births and with programs about them on Discovery Health, which is filming the family again.

The new show looks at life inside the Duggar home, where chores—or “jurisdictions”—are assigned to each child. One episode of the new show involves a “jurisdiction swap,” where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and vice versa, Duggar said.

“The girls swapped jurisdictions, changing tires, working in the garages, mowing the grass,” she said. “The boys got to cook supper from start to finish, clean the bathrooms,” among other chores.

Michelle Duggar, who has been pregnant for 11 years of her life, said she and her husband will continue to have children as long as God wills it.

“The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated,” Jim Bob Duggar said. “Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen.”

The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.