The more information that comes to light about the Duggar family, the more it demonstrates how not to be a parent.

They’re the worst of role-models, demonstrating such terrible parental traits as denial, repression, abandonment and hypocrisy, but it’s their failure to deal with serious abuse issues involving their children that leads them to be candidates for “worst parents of the year,” if not the decade.

The spate of recent revelations and allegations about Josh Duggar is evidence, in my mind, of how loving your children, although a necessity, simply is inadequate for their normal emotional and psychological development.

When children grow up, they need explanations for everything. They ask, “Why is the sky blue?” “Why is that bird able to fly?” “Why do boys have different body parts than girls?” and “Why do I feel this way?”

A child needs to make sense of all the urges that they’re beginning to experience, and learn how to manage these, so that they can behave appropriately as children, and grow up to be functional members of their family and community.

When children are forbidden to talk about anything having to do with their sexuality; when parents refuse to address any of their needs, feelings or questions, they’re left confused, frustrated, embarrassed, and more curious than ever.

Trying to put a lid on things only puts pressure on expanding sensations and urges; trying to shut it all down results in turning up the pressure and causes the child to feel everything that much more intensely.

When parents, like the Duggars, give their children no opportunity to find answers for the many questions they’d want to ask, it’s typical for their children to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with fantasies, made-up answers and distorted ideas of how things are supposed to work.

When desperate to understand these unspoken, forbidden sensations and yearnings within them, children will look anywhere they can for information.

They’ll try to sort things out in their own minds through inappropriate sexual experimentation, often with those in close proximity, like their siblings or a family friend.

Strongly suppressing normal drives in children will often cause these drives to become  distorted. Perversions are most likely to develop when a child’s normal sexuality is so powerfully repressed.

When children are told that sexuality is “bad,” “dirty” or “sinful,” it becomes that much more fascinating and tempting.

Making sex a forbidden topic also has the effect of filling children with deep shame and self-loathing, since they feel guilty for having normal feelings and urges.

Depriving children of appropriate sex education can lead to sexual dissatisfaction when they’re adults, or worse, it can encourage them to engage in inappropriate or destructive sexual behaviours driven by their shame, confusion and persistent, intense curiosity.

Josh Duggar’s actions through the years are evidence of how a child’s psyche can be damaged by inadequate parenting.

Denying him information about his sexual development; repressing his normal needs to explore things; telling him that the only outlet for his drives is through procreating with his equally repressed, sexually unaware wife — are any of us surprised that his sexual behaviours, both as a young person and as an adult, have been so inappropriate and destructive?

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Josh Duggar himself had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse. I’m not accusing anyone; nor do I have any knowledge of such an occurrence.

What I do know is that it’s not uncommon for victims of childhood sexual abuse to reenact these experiences with their siblings or with other children in their community, in an unconscious psychological attempt to work through their trauma.

Victims of childhood sexual abuse often go on to act out sexually as adults, as well. That could explain his more recent behaviour. With all the silence, repression and secrecy around sex in the Duggar family, it’s conceivable that Josh Duggar could have experienced such a trauma and no-one would have been the wiser.

I believe that the Duggar parents have failed their children. Look at how they dropped the ball in dealing with the sexual abuse of their daughters (and a young baby-sitter) by their teen-aged son Josh.

By not talking about or dealing with anything connected to sex and sexuality, the Duggar parents failed to acknowledge how the abuse might have traumatized their daughters.

They certainly discouraged the girls from exploring the possible impact of their brother’s actions on their psychological and emotional well-being.

This was neglectful toward their girls, and a missed opportunity to help resolve Josh’s problem before it got any worse.

It’s my opinion that because of the way their trauma was framed by their parents, Josh Duggar’s sisters could have grown up believing that it’s acceptable for girls to experience molestation and incest; that girls don’t need their parents to protect or defend them from sexual abuse, and that their own needs and feelings don’t matter. Of course, those beliefs are very far from the truth.

The Duggar parents have deprived their children of education, protection, role-modeling, and even the appropriate consequences for bad behaviour.

Whether their actions were driven by religious principles, their own ignorance or simply a total lack of common sense, the Duggars have shown to the world how not to parent.

I hope that by hearing about this family, we can all benefit by learning from their mistakes and by doing the exact opposite of what they have done.