Extreme Parenting on TLC

One of the saddest things about the saga of Nadya Suleman, or Octomom, was her seeming belief that having octuplets via in vitro fertilization would make her beloved like Angelina Jolie. Fat chance. To be a parent is less to be loved than to be judged--even if you haven't fired your charity nannies and disappointed Dr. Phil. You are feeding your kids wrong, teaching them wrong, putting them to bed wrong. Having had 14 kids, Suleman is judged fourteenfold.

With Jolie-dom off the menu, Suleman has reportedly sought a reality-TV deal. But cracking today's field of giant-family reality shows could prove tougher than giving birth to octuplets. TLC, once the Learning Channel, is now so devoted to breeding, it could be called the Labor Channel. It airs Jon & Kate Plus 8 (a family with eight kids), Table for 12 (10 kids) and 18 Kids and Counting (you guessed it), about the Duggar family, which evidently plans to exhaust the J chapter in the baby-name book (Josh, Jana, John David, Jill ...).

The audiences, like the families, are teeming: Jon & Kate scored 4.6 million viewers for its season finale. Why? These shows offer drama, cute kids and sweet, sweet judgment. They take parenting, the oldest human activity--O.K., the second oldest--and turn it into something exotic, thrilling, even countercultural.

Big families used to be a staple of TV: Eight Is Enough, The Brady Bunch, The Waltons, The Partridge Family. When American families with three or more children were common, these clans weren't outlandish. They were like you, just more so. Lately, TV families have gotten smaller, just like viewers' families. (An exception, the HBO polygamist drama Big Love, is, tellingly, a niche show set in a niche culture.)

The downsizing of fictional TV families left a gap that cable has happily filled. But where the Bradys et al. stressed the families' normality, the TLC shows are all about extreme parenting. Things as simple as family movie night, a dentist visit and a beach trip become quasi-military operations. Just watching Table for 12's Hayes family disable the antitheft packaging on 70 Christmas presents makes this father-of-two's hands hurt.

In a bad economy, the shows have a hot-button appeal. Today TLC's shows make literal a cold truth: that deciding how many kids to have is about not just love but also money. (One side effect of the recession: vasectomies have skyrocketed.) No-nonsense Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate--who had twins, then sextuplets, through fertility treatments--puts it plainly: "The cost of everything times eight is ridiculous." The Gosselins have defrayed those costs through corporate freebies--bikes, toys, personal services--and, of course, the show, which, Kate told Ladies' Home Journal, is "our family job." When hubby Jon got in hot water in the tabloids recently for being seen out with female "friends," it was, among other things, bad business.

So megafamilies invite admiration and condemnation at the same time. On the one hand, there's no greater act of faith than filling up a house with kids and trusting that ends will somehow meet. On the other hand: Just how do they plan to make ends meet? Aren't these just more overconsuming Americans in over their heads? What about the carbon footprint of all those diapers? (Hence TLC hooked up the Gosselins with solar panels in the special Jon & Kate Plus 8 Go Green!)