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A nyone walking past a magazine rack recently is probably familiar with Jon and Kate Gosselin's marital problems. After a media-frenzied couple of months, the parental stars of TLC's ratings powerhouse Jon & Kate Plus 8 have finally made the announcement, via a highly publicized special episode, that they are divorcing.

My wife and I had been watching the show since it first popped up a couple of years ago. We were nervously awaiting the arrival of our son, and we took to the show in much the same way that we overdosed on Holmes on Homes when we first bought our house. When in doubt, television will teach you everything you need to know.

Jon & Kate Plus 8 originated as a pair of hour-long specials that focused on the difficulties of multiple births and the extreme measures needed to survive. The sheer volume of diapers, groceries and laundry was staggering, but it made our single forthcoming child a much more managable prospect. The Gosselins came across as very likeable and fairly down to earth, if not a little bit burned out and frazzled. Jon seemed to be pretty laid back, while Kate was practical and to the point, and while they sometimes bickered and snipped at each other, it always seemed to be good natured and not all that different from the husband and wife dynamic portrayed on the average sitcom.

Once the regular show really started to take off, however, we started to lose interest. The first two seasons each ran only eight episodes, and featured the family's day to day experiences as well as the occasional field trip to pick out pumpkins or Christmas trees. By the third season, TLC expanded the production quota to an incredible 40 episodes, and it quickly became apparent that the show and the family were being spread it a little thin.

To fill that many hours of screen time, the Gosselins were sent on a new trip every week. At first they trooped off to local playgrounds and amusement parks, but soon they were flying off to visit Oprah and attending play-off baseball games. Kate received a tummy tuck and a complete makeover and in an especially embarrassing episode, Jon was treated to hairplugs.

The Gosselins initially seemed very grateful and slightly embarrassed by all of the VIP attention that they were getting, and sheepishly admitted to the free promotional endorsements, but they never appeared to turn anything down, and became pretty blasé about it.

In the last season alone, they jetted off to a luxury resort in Hawaii, where they got married for the second time (in an hour-long special episode that is now rich with irony), met the Harlem Globetrotters, and enjoyed a little television cross-promotion by visiting Charm City Cakes, the specialty bakery featured on Ace of Cakes, and the American Chopper grease-monkeys from Orange County Choppers, who gifted the Gosselins with two unique bikes.

B y the time that Jon's alleged affair hit the headlines, my wife and I had grown bored with the endless product endorsement episodes and had stopped watching regularly. It must have been a quiet news-cycle for the tabloids -- the Octomom had fallen off the radar, Brangelina had cut back on scooping up Third World orphans and Madonna felt the rare sting of rejection when she tried to purchase a Malawian child. There was a void in celeb child gossip, and Jon was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and evidently forgot that every person on the earth has a camera phone these days.

When the story first broke, Jon was painted as the adulterous villain, but the blurry digital photos that captured him and the other woman getting into her car didn't show a lecherous Lothario as much as an exhausted father of eight looking to catch some sleep and let someone else drive. Public opinion quickly shifted, however, and it became less about what he allegedly did and more about why he allegedly did it. After all, he has to live with her.

Kate was suddenly depicted as a domineering and controlling harpy, ruthlessly profiting from her children and practically driving him to do it. I don't have a degree in women's studies, but even I can see something culturally problematic happening here. I'm not sure how to account for why the tabloids, whose target demographic is suburban mothers, would make the beleagured mother of eight into the antagonist. Is it simply another case of the old “build them up and then tear them down” approach to  journalism or is it perhaps just a skirmish of those “Mommy Wars” that we've been hearing about?

Regardless of the responsibility the Gosselins must bear, TLC must accept the most blame.

I'm sure that there is an element of truth to all of the various stories and rumours, and while I'd like to think that they're both essentially decent people who have found themselves in a very unusual position, it's pretty clear that they've both changed for the worse as a result. But regardless of the responsibility that each of the Gosselins must bear for their actions, I think that TLC must accept the most blame.

When the Gosselins agreed to let a camera crew into their home, I'm sure they had some idea of the privacy that they would be giving up, but I doubt that they expected TLC to build their entire prime-time schedule around their show and air hours of repeats seven days a week. And when the controversy erupted in the tabloids, TLC must have been overjoyed by the surge in ratings, because they starting leaking carefully managed teasers in all their promotional material, alluding to new shocking revelations that were to be revealed in upcoming special episodes devoted to the crumbling of the Gosselin family. Why wait for the tabloids to break the story when the network will do it for you?

I think it's a shame that TLC should have didn't take the high road and pull the cameras out of the house for six months or a year, to let the family try to work things out. Then if they stayed together, they could have had a big reunion special, complete with happy kids, high ratings and warm and fuzzy feelings all around. But this is prime time television, and I guess that TLC couldn't figure out how to fill that giant Jon & Kate Plus 8-sized hole in their schedule.

Of course what makes this whole situation so heartbreaking is that the lives of those eight cute little kids have been shattered forever. As difficult as divorce is on normal children, imagine what it will be like in the harsh eye of the camera lens. Watching the early episodes of the show, I used to think about what the kids would be like when they grew up. Once I got a good sense of the various kids' personalities, I started to get a bad feeling that a couple of the boys would definitely have great difficulties later in life dealing with the exposure. Having one's childhood televised has serious psychological and emotional repercussions, long after the show is off the air.

Dealing with divorce at that age is hard, but with the recent turn of events, magnified to such a dramatic extent through the tabloid media and TLC's heavy promotion, I can hardly imagine what the long-term effects will be. Growing up with a camera crew in the house for most of their lives has already created a skewed sense of what normal family life is, and I don't think that they will have any context in which to put the concept of divorce. Then there's the fact that every tabloid story ever written about their parents will be archived online for all eternity, and that for the rest of their lives, they will never again meet a person who doesn't have access to footage of the exact moment that their family was broken apart.

I've made the decision not to watch any more episodes of Jon & Kate Plus 8 because I know that the producers of the show will start collecting footage of the emotionally distraught children trying to cope with their parents' break-up and that they will not be able to resist airing it. I'm sure that the contract the Gosselins signed with TLC gives the network all the legal rights in the world to put together a special episode consisting of two hours of the emotionally devastated children crying their eyes out, and that if I watched that, I would never be able to pay off that karmic debt.

That's why I wish that TLC would do the right thing and gracefully retire the show. Put the needs of the children ahead of the enormous profits that the show generates, and just walk away. Let Jon and Kate  deal with their seperation as best suits their family, not the show, and let the kids grow up with some semblance of privacy. I know that I'm being terrible naive and unrealistic.

TLC has put Jon & Kate Plus 8 on hiatus. The show returns with new episodes on August 3rd.