"What's the last thing people want in a recession? More kids, apparently."

Asked and answered in a Time magazine article earlier this year, "What Sells in a Recession: Canned Goods and Condoms." Of course, this doesn't apply to the Duggars.

They had their 19th child, Josie Brooklyn, a few days ago. With 18 children and one grandchild, you would think they would have stopped. On the birth of their 18th child, Jordyn-Grace, papa Jim Bob Duggar, said, "We both would love to have more." Now he says that they will keep having children as long as Michelle can.

The circumstances surrounding Josie Brooklyn's entry into the world might make most other parents hesitant. The baby was born almost three months early after Michelle was airlifted from one hospital where she was being treated for gall bladder issues to be near a neonatal intensive care unit in case the baby had to be delivered early.

Delivered by C-section and weighing 1.6 pounds, a dangerously low birth weight, Josie Brooklyn has a long fight ahead of her as most premature babies do. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, babies born at 25 weeks have an eighty-two percent chance of survival when given aggressive medical treatment. Mothers who have given birth to many children face their own medical risks. Isn't it time for Michelle Duggar to stop having children?

I wondered when the Duggar's 18th' child was born, if they were family or an industry. Now I seriously wonder if the Duggars are thinking about the children. As one TV anchor jokingly said, they must be running out of names that begin with the letter "J." And, they must be running out of what much of the research indicates are essential parental resources.

In an American Psychologist article, "Number of Siblings and Intellectual Development," Douglas Downey, professor at Ohio State University, writes, "Siblings are competitors for parents' time, energy, and financial resources and so the fewer the better. Even one sibling is too many." He looks at resource dilution to explain "why children with few siblings score higher on tests of cognitive skills than children with many siblings." Looking at the Duggar family and other large families, in terms of intellectual skills and educational achievement, those with few siblings consistently and across many studies do best.

The problem of paying for college may not affect the Duggars, but in other large families, money divided among many siblings is a huge issue. As more children arrive, the educational dollars per child are reduced. Money for education aside, what are the developmental results for children when parental time and nurturing are spread so thin...diluted? Siblings fill some of the gaps, and large families have their own set of pluses, but is there any substitute for what a parent with a few children can offer a child?