When beautiful Kendra Caldwell married Joseph Duggar back in 2017, she was only 19 years old.
Now obviously, people in the Duggars’ fundamentalist community tend to get married quite young,
Most of them are at least out of their teens, however.
Among a number of fans, there were fears that Kendra had been forced into an arranged marriage.
We wouldn’t put anything past Jim Bob. That’s for sure.
There were several signs that he had played a role in strongly encouraging this courtship, if not arraging it.
Because of all this, Kendra has unwittingly become a Jinger-like character in the community of online Duggar critics.
She’s come to embody all of the ways in which Duggar women are oppressed and exploited under the patriarchal system they were born into.
And now, as another birthday approaches for Kendra, critics are once again encouraging her to re-examine her life choices.
To what end?
It’s not that they’re expecting her to file for divorce from Joseph.
For one, such an action would probably lead to Kendra being disowned by her family and kicked out of the community.
And to be fair, whether they were forced into marriage or not, Kendra and Joe seem to be one of the happiest Duggar couples.
But Kendra has her entire future mapped out for her, which must be a frightening thing for a young woman who’s just past college age.
For starters, she’ll never be permitted to work, which is the case for all Duggar women.
On top of that, Kendra will be expected to continue making babies.
Like, a lot of babies. As many as she’s physically able to birth.
Like, Michelle style.
Not every Duggar woman has as many kids as possible. In fact, several couples have broken the tradition by having only one or two children.
But Joe and Kendra have made it quite clear that they intend to give Joe and Kendra a run for their money in the breeding department.
Kendra welcomed her third child and since the girl is now over six months old, fans have predicted that it’s that time again.
Caldwell will be making another birth announcement sometime in the very near future.
“I wonder how many kids she’ll have by the time she’s 30…” one critic recently wrote on a Duggar-focused Reddit page.
“Is this the longest she’s not been pregnant since her wedding?” another asked.
“Brooklyn is close to 6 months old. Kendra will probably be pregnant again soon," a third observed.
A brood of three kids is nothing by Duggar standards, but it’s the timing of these pregnancies that has fans concerned.
It seems that Kendra barely has time to recover physically from one pregnancy before she starts another.
That cannot be good for her body. Even at this age.
On top of that, she may soon be raising four young children at an age when she’s still not able to legally rent a car in many states.
Joseph, of course, will offer little in the way of assistance.
We’re not making a dig at him personally, but from everything we understand, that’s just the way things work in the Duggar family.
He’ll be permitted to continue working, and he may have to do plenty of it.
Now that TLC has canceled Counting On, well, that changes a lot.
He’ll need to put in a lot of overtime in order to maintain the standard of living that he and his family are accustomed to.
In other words, there might be many difficult, lonely years ahead for Kendra, with more and more children depending on her.
Happy birthday?