"I feel like they're just in this place where they're recognizing so many new things.”
Jessa Duggar doesn’t care what you think about her growing brood.
The 32-year-old “Counting On” star shares five children — Spurgeon, 9, Henry, 8, Ivy, 5, Fern, 3, and George, 1 — with her husband Ben Seewald, whom she has been married to since 2014.
The couple announced on March 7 that their sixth child is on the way.
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In a new YouTube video, uploaded May 8, Duggar opened up about the negativity she experiences online for growing up in a large family with 18 siblings, and raising a large family of her own.
“I know this is not the case for everyone, but for me, personally, I’ve never had anyone walk up to my face and be nasty or rude,” she said, adding that most of the negativity comes in the form of comments online.
“People will be like, ‘Oh, you’re breeding like rabbits’ or ‘You’re crazy’ or ‘Are you trying to follow in your mom’s footsteps? Are you going to have 19?'” she explains.
“Generally, those rude comments or the jabbing remarks, it’s pretty much just in social media comments on YouTube or Instagram,” she adds.
As for how she handles that negativity, she chooses “confidence” over “approval.”
“It really comes down to being confident in the decisions that we’ve made as a family, as a couple and before God,” Jessa says. “We don’t live for the opinions or the approval of other people.”
“There will always be people who will be on one end of the spectrum or the other. Whether it’s ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have that many kids’ or ‘You should have a maximum number of kids possible,’” she adds.
To that noise, Duggar says she and her husband don’t fit “into either one of those categories.”
Duggar says she doesn’t want to follow in her mom’s footsteps
With her sixth child on the way, Duggar says she and her husband are taking it “one at a time.”
“I think we had thrown out the number seven,” she said of her and Seewald’s initial thoughts upon marrying more than a decade ago.
The couple entered into a courtship in 2013 and Seewald proposed the following year. They tied the knot on Nov. 1, 2014 at First Baptist Church in Bentonville, Arkansas.
“Our ultimate goal is to see each one come to know and love the Lord,” she says of their children.
“So I don’t necessarily think that it’s a quantity thing like, ‘Oh you can’t do that well if you have a bunch’ or ‘You can only do it well if you have a few,’” she continues, “I do think God’s grace is sufficient.”
The “19 and Counting” alum goes on to admit that she doesn’t want to have 19 kids like her mother, Michelle Duggar, but will ultimately leave that decision up to God.
She then described her mom as her “hero” and the “golden example of a mother.”
“I love her. I adore her. She is my role model in so many ways,” Duggar says while praising her mom for her patience, love, gentleness and kind speech.
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“So, when people say, ‘Do you want to be like your mother?’” she continues, “I’m like, ‘Yes, please. Lord, help me.’”
