It seems like they are cutting as much symbolism as they can out of the shots they decide to keep in the show but every other episode feels like " We’re a family with 9 kids and everyone is homeschooled. Oh yeah and we just happen to be active in our church too."
Like, no shit you’re active in the church… Normal people do not have a quiver full of isolated kids like that. It’s not normal or healthy.
Edit: I just realized that the context OP is talking about is a quite a bit different than what I am talking about.
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It can work, but it literally has to be a community effort to raise that many kids. I come from a small family, but my wife didn’t. She is Asian and she has 7 siblings. However, she grew up in a very strong, multifamily community that have all been close since they escaped Laos at the tail end of the Vietnam war.
Everyone tries to help for the most part and generally everyone has the same values between the different families. Kids just kinda grew up in several different houses at once around a ton of family and that is just how it was.
I can’t really say that I know all the nuances of being raised in a large family, but when I started dating my wife 20+ years ago, I can say they just pulled me right into fold. It has been an interesting journey so far.
Other cultures definitely do it better. Right wing American families tend to be isolationist and distrustful of outsiders, and so they don’t have close knit communities like this. There’s also a lot of turmoil and bickering about the fine print of religion that makes them not get along with each other, at least that’s how my childhood was.