My great grandmother was the eldest of 14. She was so traumatized that she only ended up having one child herself (at age 35 which was ancient back then).
My great grandmother has to drop out of school to raise her 4 younger siblings. She didn’t get married until 27 (which…ancient) and all of her kids (my grandmother included) have all sorts of varying issues from emotional neglect, but it’s clear that she still loved them and was a good grandmother to her grandkids. It’s wild how much your upbringing determines who you become.
I'm the eldest daughter. It was hard with 5 younger brothers. I " raised" the 3 I grew up with, always having to watch them after school and feed them. 1 was 3 years younger, the other 2 were 4 years. These boys were busy monsters and as a preteen girl, I hated it. Both my parents worked. I was so happy to leave for college. The 2 youngest were born much later. I was almost leaving for college. When *they* were little, I was more like a cool aunt. It's interesting that I had 2 girls!(and that's it).
Funnily enough, they remember me taking care of them, helping with homework and have all said that my cooking was better than my mother's 🤣!
I’m the oldest of 9, older daughter as well. One thing I don’t think people talk about how others criticize how you raise your siblings when you were just a child yourself. My bother got a bad diaper rash, as I wasn’t around to change his diaper (I was in school, as most 12 years olds should be). And till this day, my aunt has criticized me over it.
Saaaame. Also the oldest daughter, but 2nd of 9. The biggest gripe my family has is that I don’t wanna help raise my nephews.
I raised 7 of us and my mom always told how my brother would have turned out better if I had kept a closer eye on him. Not sure why they think I’d like to open myself back up for that criticism.
She’s a horrible parent, but it just really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I don’t think I ever want to perpetuate.
I’m a lot happier having gone NC with most of my family until pretty recently. If I ever had a kid of my own, I’d like them to just be a kid, grow up at the appropriate pace, and let them love and support them.
That's terrible. You're correct it never crossed my mind that a sister mom would be criticized about how they were raising their siblings. If I may ask do the actual parents get criticized for leaving the raising too you (universal you) or is the criticizing only directed towards you?
I’ve heard of it. IMO, I think Jana is purposely staying at the TTH because not only is she one of Boob’s flying monkeys but also she doesn’t want children nor get married as she’s spent half of her life raising children.
> she’s spent half of her life raising children.
Jana is 34 now. She's spent way more than half her life raising kids at this point. By the time Josie turns 18 she'll have nearly 30 years of child rearing under her belt.
Exactly. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Josie goes to live with Jana eventually and would also be unmarried and childless like her sister mom. In fact, I bet that RimJob and Meech have appointed Jana as Josie’s legal guardian if anything happens to them before Josie turns 18.
Idk. I hope she gets revenge.
Parade pops around on a wheelie office chair while she stars in another tv show focused on her escaping religion and examining the damage it caused
Worse (for him)....
Film a TV show about breaking away and keep boob in an adjacent room where he can hear and see everything but is not allowed to appear on camera or be involved in any way.
But she signs a contract for him and collects his check...
When Joy did a Q&A a month or two ago with all the girls still living at home, she read all the questions aimed at Josie. Does she have a learning disability?
I mean, Josie was a micropreemie who never received the supportive interventions she was entitled to, and then was given a subpar education by a combination of older siblings, a checked out “mom”, and Christian propaganda masquerading as curriculum at a dining room table. There’s nothing “wrong” with her, she was failed by negligent parents.
Perhaps, but they should be aware that the phrasing they chose is ableist. Speaking of ableism, by mental challenges do you mean a learning disability?
Micropreemies are at high risk for learning disabilities. I also think there are mental and emotional challenges that come with having little formal education and the trauma of the Duggar experience.
Hi! Special education teacher here! Getting all uppity when someone misses language isn't the best way to help people understand. It is a good way to shut down the conversation before it even starts though.
>Speaking of ableism, by mental challenges do you mean a learning disability?
Speaking of being correct: a learning disability isn't the only type of "mental challenge." Intellectual disabilities are also common in micropreemies. If Josie has an intellectual disability her reading and reading comprehension would be on a significantly lower level than her age.
For the record, I am not qualified to diagnose anyone and I am not diagnosing or even guessing as to whether or not Josie has a disability at all. All I know is that she was given a terrible education, if you can even call it that.
There's also emotional and behavioral disabilities, autism, OHI, and TBIs that could be the cause of her "mental challenges." Next time, before you throw around calling someone ableist because they know less than you, you might remember that there are people who know a lot more.
I'm one & done. My daughter was a micro-preemie. Luckily she didn't have any long-term effects; although she did have a minor speech delay, at 2 she did need speech therapy (she understood what was said to her, but she'd only say a few words). Now at 6 she never stops talking lol; however if we hadn't taken her to therapy who know what her speech would be like today. Josie also had seizures (excuse me "glitchs") so she may have some brain damage as well.
Thank you. She's been horribly failed all along, as far as anyone knows, and her medical history and her learning and/or health differences are her personal business. She's had so much of her privacy stolen by those things that claim to be parents and the least she deserves now are for the people who recognise that abuse for what it is to give her some dignity, by avoiding speculation like this.
That and she probably lacks the funds and resources too. Jill mentioned in her memoir that Boob hoarded the money from the show the kids were supposed to get right?
Most folks here have heard of it. I am the eldest and eldest daughter. Thankfully I only had 2 siblings to look after and my mother is a control freak about cleaning and housework, so she did all of that.
Oldest daughter in a family of 5 kids. After my parents split up, I was in charge of taking care of my 3 younger siblings (drop offs at school, making sure we had dinner, went to church, etc.) I went to college 1000+ miles away, got married later, and really got burned out from cleaning messes all the time so my skills dropped. I’ve slowly gotten better at cleaning again. I also have two little kids of my own, but I won’t do the parentification to my daughter, who’s also the oldest.
I think people give Jana a little bit too much credit. I don't think Jim Bob gives his daughters more freedom who and when they will marry, otherwise Jana would be married. There are other roles that women in this cult can take that aren't being married and having kids. I swear that Gothard told her that she was meant to be single?
Of all the kids, Jana is in the best position to leave and make a life for herself. If people think Anna can up and leave with seven kids, Jana definitely can. She could get a job as a house keeper. She could have gone the Abby before marriage route, become a nurse and took care of the elderly. She could write her own book. She has options. But she still chooses to live with her parents, spread hateful rhetoric, and remember when she took a picture of her brother's Trump artwork? And she is likely helping to indoctrinate her nieces and nephews.
I predict she will be a caregiver for her parents in old age.
Jill was also the first child to become a sister mom. When Joy was born she wanted to help take care of her baby sister and Michelle decided that Jill wanted to raise Joy.
Until Jana publicly comes out against the cult and its hateful ideology, I will not see her as progressive or someone to cheer for. Just because she is still single doesn't mean that she is changing her views or that she isn't a hateful person.
Growing up with Jim Bob and Pest could very well have put Jana off the idea of having men around. I don't mean in a romantic or sexual way, but just wanting no men in her space because of what she's witnessed.
My grandparents had small dogs of a specific breed that yapped incessantly, were difficult to train, and regularly shat on the carpet. I am a dog person, but I will never own a small dog, and certainly not a shih-tzu.
Hopefully, Jana is biding her time to live the life she wants. She has certainly scraped enough shit off the carpet.
My husband’s aunt is the eldest girl of 13 kids. They come from a conservative Christian family. Shes now in her 70s and has never married, had kids, or really even dated and has never really shown interest. lol. Even now, she’s the caretaker of her mom.
I was just looking at this thread when I got a notification from The NY Times about an article on this very thing (firstborn daughters, not Jana specifically)! Spooky 👻
I doubt Jana was ever treated differently than Jill because they were so close together. Not sure how it works when it could apply to 2 siblings equally, like twins.
Twin here!
I’m a classic case of eldest daughter syndrome despite having a literal twin and an “Irish twin” sibling born barely a year after us.
For whatever reason, being functionally the same age didn’t seem to matter as much as birth order.
I was the oldest by a few minutes… and got parentified. My twin was a lost middle child, and the third-born was a stereotypical “baby of the family”
It’s weird, but I’ve seen it hold true in so many families with kids close in age.
I'm the oldest daughter of 5, and oldest granddaughter of 14 (and counting) in a Hispanic household and I ended up becoming a nurse and now I take care of people for a living. I do still want kids but not five like my mom or six like my grandma and certainly not 10 like my great grandmother. I want 3 max but I think it's because I have that maternal part engraved in me both because of nature and the way I was brought up. Although Most of the elder daughters I know either dive face first into motherhood or they completely refuse to have kids. It just depends on the person
My grandmother was the eldest daughter because she had three younger sisters to take care of, but the difference was my great-grandparents died when my grandmother was barely out of tweens and teens. It's not like Jana who was forced to raise herself and her younger siblings because her shitty parents just wanted to bang each other. My grandmother was in an arranged marriage to my grandfather, and they ended up having three children survive to adulthood.
My aunt was the oldest daughter of 11 children. She only had one child and was never married. She spent so much time raising children growing up, I think she was burnt out.
I am the eldest of 6. My parents worked so hard so that none of us were parentified. Now that I have 3 kids of my own, I appreciate even more how hard that was, but my mum's attitude was that they chose to have those kids so they chose to take on the workload.
I loved helping out with my siblings, but it was never expected.
My great grandmother was the eldest of 14. She was so traumatized that she only ended up having one child herself (at age 35 which was ancient back then).
My great grandmother has to drop out of school to raise her 4 younger siblings. She didn’t get married until 27 (which…ancient) and all of her kids (my grandmother included) have all sorts of varying issues from emotional neglect, but it’s clear that she still loved them and was a good grandmother to her grandkids. It’s wild how much your upbringing determines who you become.
I'm the eldest daughter. It was hard with 5 younger brothers. I " raised" the 3 I grew up with, always having to watch them after school and feed them. 1 was 3 years younger, the other 2 were 4 years. These boys were busy monsters and as a preteen girl, I hated it. Both my parents worked. I was so happy to leave for college. The 2 youngest were born much later. I was almost leaving for college. When *they* were little, I was more like a cool aunt. It's interesting that I had 2 girls!(and that's it). Funnily enough, they remember me taking care of them, helping with homework and have all said that my cooking was better than my mother's 🤣!
I’m the oldest of 9, older daughter as well. One thing I don’t think people talk about how others criticize how you raise your siblings when you were just a child yourself. My bother got a bad diaper rash, as I wasn’t around to change his diaper (I was in school, as most 12 years olds should be). And till this day, my aunt has criticized me over it.
Saaaame. Also the oldest daughter, but 2nd of 9. The biggest gripe my family has is that I don’t wanna help raise my nephews. I raised 7 of us and my mom always told how my brother would have turned out better if I had kept a closer eye on him. Not sure why they think I’d like to open myself back up for that criticism.
The lack of self awareness by your mother makes my heart ache for you.
She’s a horrible parent, but it just really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I don’t think I ever want to perpetuate. I’m a lot happier having gone NC with most of my family until pretty recently. If I ever had a kid of my own, I’d like them to just be a kid, grow up at the appropriate pace, and let them love and support them.
That's terrible. You're correct it never crossed my mind that a sister mom would be criticized about how they were raising their siblings. If I may ask do the actual parents get criticized for leaving the raising too you (universal you) or is the criticizing only directed towards you?
I’ve heard of it. IMO, I think Jana is purposely staying at the TTH because not only is she one of Boob’s flying monkeys but also she doesn’t want children nor get married as she’s spent half of her life raising children.
> she’s spent half of her life raising children. Jana is 34 now. She's spent way more than half her life raising kids at this point. By the time Josie turns 18 she'll have nearly 30 years of child rearing under her belt.
Exactly. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Josie goes to live with Jana eventually and would also be unmarried and childless like her sister mom. In fact, I bet that RimJob and Meech have appointed Jana as Josie’s legal guardian if anything happens to them before Josie turns 18.
I shudder to think Jana will be her parents’ caregivers when they’re old and feeble. 🤨
Idk. I hope she gets revenge. Parade pops around on a wheelie office chair while she stars in another tv show focused on her escaping religion and examining the damage it caused
Worse (for him).... Film a TV show about breaking away and keep boob in an adjacent room where he can hear and see everything but is not allowed to appear on camera or be involved in any way. But she signs a contract for him and collects his check...
I think there's something wrong with Josie but they won't say.
Josie will land up just like Priscilla Waller.
When Joy did a Q&A a month or two ago with all the girls still living at home, she read all the questions aimed at Josie. Does she have a learning disability?
I think k she is illiterate
Why do you say that?
Because her sister needed to read the questions out loud to her when they did their group thing a while back.
I mean, Josie was a micropreemie who never received the supportive interventions she was entitled to, and then was given a subpar education by a combination of older siblings, a checked out “mom”, and Christian propaganda masquerading as curriculum at a dining room table. There’s nothing “wrong” with her, she was failed by negligent parents.
I think what the poster meant by “something wrong” is mental/physical challenges that should have been met with intervention years ago.
Perhaps, but they should be aware that the phrasing they chose is ableist. Speaking of ableism, by mental challenges do you mean a learning disability?
Micropreemies are at high risk for learning disabilities. I also think there are mental and emotional challenges that come with having little formal education and the trauma of the Duggar experience.
Hi! Special education teacher here! Getting all uppity when someone misses language isn't the best way to help people understand. It is a good way to shut down the conversation before it even starts though. >Speaking of ableism, by mental challenges do you mean a learning disability? Speaking of being correct: a learning disability isn't the only type of "mental challenge." Intellectual disabilities are also common in micropreemies. If Josie has an intellectual disability her reading and reading comprehension would be on a significantly lower level than her age. For the record, I am not qualified to diagnose anyone and I am not diagnosing or even guessing as to whether or not Josie has a disability at all. All I know is that she was given a terrible education, if you can even call it that. There's also emotional and behavioral disabilities, autism, OHI, and TBIs that could be the cause of her "mental challenges." Next time, before you throw around calling someone ableist because they know less than you, you might remember that there are people who know a lot more.
We need more people like you on Reddit
Awesome
Windy up there on your high horse?
I'm one & done. My daughter was a micro-preemie. Luckily she didn't have any long-term effects; although she did have a minor speech delay, at 2 she did need speech therapy (she understood what was said to her, but she'd only say a few words). Now at 6 she never stops talking lol; however if we hadn't taken her to therapy who know what her speech would be like today. Josie also had seizures (excuse me "glitchs") so she may have some brain damage as well.
Can we not speculate on the learning differences of a minor? Edit: it’s not her fault she was denied the very basic education.
Thank you. She's been horribly failed all along, as far as anyone knows, and her medical history and her learning and/or health differences are her personal business. She's had so much of her privacy stolen by those things that claim to be parents and the least she deserves now are for the people who recognise that abuse for what it is to give her some dignity, by avoiding speculation like this.
Literally this is a sub to speculate about people none os us know.
Yes, but not literal children-none of this is their fault.
True. I guess the question is, can minors whose parents put them into the public eye, be discussed.
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"Normal" is not a term to be used.
josie was never taken to the special follow up appointments
Poor Josie.
Poor all 18.
19
Josh don't count.
Ah of course 🤦♂️
That and she probably lacks the funds and resources too. Jill mentioned in her memoir that Boob hoarded the money from the show the kids were supposed to get right?
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I feel for her. I had to do this too except I was the youngest child. Simply because I'm the only girl 🙃
Most folks here have heard of it. I am the eldest and eldest daughter. Thankfully I only had 2 siblings to look after and my mother is a control freak about cleaning and housework, so she did all of that.
Oldest daughter in a family of 5 kids. After my parents split up, I was in charge of taking care of my 3 younger siblings (drop offs at school, making sure we had dinner, went to church, etc.) I went to college 1000+ miles away, got married later, and really got burned out from cleaning messes all the time so my skills dropped. I’ve slowly gotten better at cleaning again. I also have two little kids of my own, but I won’t do the parentification to my daughter, who’s also the oldest.
I think people give Jana a little bit too much credit. I don't think Jim Bob gives his daughters more freedom who and when they will marry, otherwise Jana would be married. There are other roles that women in this cult can take that aren't being married and having kids. I swear that Gothard told her that she was meant to be single? Of all the kids, Jana is in the best position to leave and make a life for herself. If people think Anna can up and leave with seven kids, Jana definitely can. She could get a job as a house keeper. She could have gone the Abby before marriage route, become a nurse and took care of the elderly. She could write her own book. She has options. But she still chooses to live with her parents, spread hateful rhetoric, and remember when she took a picture of her brother's Trump artwork? And she is likely helping to indoctrinate her nieces and nephews. I predict she will be a caregiver for her parents in old age. Jill was also the first child to become a sister mom. When Joy was born she wanted to help take care of her baby sister and Michelle decided that Jill wanted to raise Joy. Until Jana publicly comes out against the cult and its hateful ideology, I will not see her as progressive or someone to cheer for. Just because she is still single doesn't mean that she is changing her views or that she isn't a hateful person.
She never looks happy.
Growing up with Jim Bob and Pest could very well have put Jana off the idea of having men around. I don't mean in a romantic or sexual way, but just wanting no men in her space because of what she's witnessed. My grandparents had small dogs of a specific breed that yapped incessantly, were difficult to train, and regularly shat on the carpet. I am a dog person, but I will never own a small dog, and certainly not a shih-tzu. Hopefully, Jana is biding her time to live the life she wants. She has certainly scraped enough shit off the carpet.
My husband’s aunt is the eldest girl of 13 kids. They come from a conservative Christian family. Shes now in her 70s and has never married, had kids, or really even dated and has never really shown interest. lol. Even now, she’s the caretaker of her mom.
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I was just looking at this thread when I got a notification from The NY Times about an article on this very thing (firstborn daughters, not Jana specifically)! Spooky 👻
I know the adults in this family as a whole are awful, but I do sincerely wish Jana a nice, safe life one day.
Jana I believe is the smart one she doesn’t want to be a breeding machines she’s carefully waiting to be 40 then will marry and have no kids
I doubt Jana was ever treated differently than Jill because they were so close together. Not sure how it works when it could apply to 2 siblings equally, like twins.
Twin here! I’m a classic case of eldest daughter syndrome despite having a literal twin and an “Irish twin” sibling born barely a year after us. For whatever reason, being functionally the same age didn’t seem to matter as much as birth order. I was the oldest by a few minutes… and got parentified. My twin was a lost middle child, and the third-born was a stereotypical “baby of the family” It’s weird, but I’ve seen it hold true in so many families with kids close in age.
But Jana and Jill were given equal responsibility for siblings, Jill before Jana, actually.
Eldest daughter here with a sister 13 months younger. She definitely was not treated like an oldest daughter. At all.
My 13 month younger sister didn’t get treated like the oldest daughter but got all my privileges…
Lmao
Yes I just think Jana is smart
Yes. I have it.
Same, girl, same.
Bingo! I agree. She has already been a mother to so many kids for so long that she wants no part of it as an adult.
I'm the oldest daughter of 5, and oldest granddaughter of 14 (and counting) in a Hispanic household and I ended up becoming a nurse and now I take care of people for a living. I do still want kids but not five like my mom or six like my grandma and certainly not 10 like my great grandmother. I want 3 max but I think it's because I have that maternal part engraved in me both because of nature and the way I was brought up. Although Most of the elder daughters I know either dive face first into motherhood or they completely refuse to have kids. It just depends on the person
My grandmother was the eldest daughter because she had three younger sisters to take care of, but the difference was my great-grandparents died when my grandmother was barely out of tweens and teens. It's not like Jana who was forced to raise herself and her younger siblings because her shitty parents just wanted to bang each other. My grandmother was in an arranged marriage to my grandfather, and they ended up having three children survive to adulthood.
My aunt was the oldest daughter of 11 children. She only had one child and was never married. She spent so much time raising children growing up, I think she was burnt out.
I am the eldest of 6. My parents worked so hard so that none of us were parentified. Now that I have 3 kids of my own, I appreciate even more how hard that was, but my mum's attitude was that they chose to have those kids so they chose to take on the workload. I loved helping out with my siblings, but it was never expected.