Has Jon & Kate Plus 8 Spawned a New Breed of Reality TV?

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes TLC pushing a baby carriage? If this cable channel's programming history is any indication of what's to come, where will it end? When it came to kids, it used to be "eight is enough." But with the success of their reality TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8, TLC has jumped on the "more is better" bandwagon with a passion.

In addition to Jon & Kate Plus 8, TLC has aired Quint-essential which featured the Ferrill quints, and Kids By the Dozen featuring different families with 13 to 16 children each. Next came the Duggar family in 17 Kids and Counting -- whoops, the fertile Michelle Duggar recently had another baby, and now this reality TV show should probably be renamed 18 Kids and Counting. But considering that the Duggars show no signs of stopping at 18 children, TLC might want to wait on that new name.

Hot on the heels of Jon & Kate Plus 8 and 17 Kids and Counting is TLC's newest show, Twins, Twins and Sextuplets which chronicles the lives of Eric and Betty Hayes and their ten children. TLC seems slightly fixated on the multiple-birth reality TV show, don't they? Now, the question is probably not if Nadya Suleman & the Octuplets Plus 6 will make their debut on TLC, but when.

American families seem obsessed with seeing who can have the most children, sort of a modern day take on the age-old "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. And the TLC channel is right there, ready to offer the next super-sized family a contract for fame and fortune via a new reality TV show. To be sure, Jon & Kate Plus 8, now in its 4^th season, has been one of TLC's most watched and most talked about reality TV shows. But is all this fertile excess really necessary? Have we nothing better to do than watch someone else raise their children? And could the popularity of Jon & Kate Plus 8 give women who watch the show bad ideas? It's not farfetched to speculate that Jon & Kate Plus 8 might well have inspired Nadya Suleman to give birth to octuplets as a way to achieve instant celebrity status.

Watching Jon & Kate Plus 8, one has to wonder what the fascination is with this reality TV show. Jon & Kate Gosselin have eight kids, and six of them happen to be the same age. Yes, the kids on Jon & Kate Plus 8 are cute. Yes, it must be challenging to feed and dress them all, and Jon & Kate must have an enormous food bill. For sure, it takes patience to deal with the mountain of tantrums that erupts every day. And yes, Jon & Kate Gosselin have to learn how to be experts at herding their large brood around an amusement park or other public venue. So what? Who finds this interesting?

Judging by the ratings and longevity of Jon & Kate Plus 8, apparently a lot of people do. But if any of those people watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 have families of their own, wouldn't their time be better spent doing something fun with their own children rather than sitting on the couch watching someone else's kids grow up? Are we as a society so deprived of entertainment that we're captivated by a reality TV show that goes into every last gory detail about potty training three year olds? Indeed we must be, as nearly an entire episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8 was dedicated to that very subject.

If you're the wagering kind, how long do you think it will be before TLC features Nadya Suleman & the Octuplets Plus 6 in a brand new reality TV show?

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