They live an ordinary life in a small town in Iowa, and they don’t mind not being famous anymore.
The McCaughey siblings were featured on covers of magazines and TV programmes when they were born in 1997. The world has then learned the names of Kenny, Kelsey, Natalie, Brandon, Alexis, Nathan and Joel very quickly. The three girls and four boys told to The Des Moines Register local newspaper on their 16th birthday that they are very glad they can live an everyday life now. In the family, which includes the septuplets’ 18 year old sister Mikayla as well, band rehearsals and sport competitions are more important matters, as well as deciding whose turn it is to drive the family car.
The 7 bedroom house and the family bus were donated to the family when the septuplets were born to Kenny, the iron worker husband, and his wife Bobbi. Nowadays, the eldest girl’s university tuition and the teenager’s teeth braces represent the largest expenditure in the family’s budget. Also, they need to cover Alexis’ and Nathan’s medical expenses, who suffered minor brain strokes at birth; fortunately, they have recovered by now.
According to the father, the greatest challenge is that the children don’t lag behind their peers, without being able to afford every trendy thing on the market. He said three of the septuplets have cell phones, two of them have tablets, but Kenny himself has a phone with a card. The mother, an educational assistant by profession, says the “because I have said so” works less and less as an argument, but the children start understanding more and more why they can’t afford some things.
The septuplets were born as a result of infertility treatment. The parents told that their religious belief helped them decide to keep all seven embryos.