By Madison Ford

TLC recently announced its unveiling of another show featuring a large family with multiples. The show is called ‘Sextuplets Take New York’ and features the Carpio family, which consists of father, Victor, mother, Digna, a 10-year-old son, and sextuplet 23 month olds. This show is reminiscent of the highly publicized TLC show ‘Jon & Kate Plus Eight’, which not so ironically, has the same producers.

In the past few years, many shows about families with a large number of children or families with multiples (sextuplets, quintuplets, twins, etc.) have received air time. Among these are ’19 Kids & Counting’, ‘Quints by Surprise’, and ‘Table for 12′. While these shows are intriguing, the concept has become repetitive.

Although ’Sextuplets Take New York’ does bring a new element, the fact that the sextuplets are the  first Latino sextuplets born in America, the show itself is similar to many of its “big-family show” predecessors. Focusing in on the everyday of raising a large family with multiples, it is almost like watching ‘Jon & Kate Plus Eight’ all over again. And we all know how that turned out.

The unfortunate turn the Gosselin (‘Jon & Kate Plus Eight’) family took does not imply that all large families have inevitable dysfunction in their future, but it does beg the question: are these television shows about their lives doing more harm than good?

One thought-provoking concept that these shows do address is that of a large family. Having 8 or 9, or in the Duggar family’s case, 19, children is almost inconceivable in modern day America. However, not even 100 years ago, having a large family was common. It is interesting how we glamourize these cases today, when years ago, they were common place.