When Alicia Dougherty goes shopping, many people get dizzy at the screen. Every second, the American heaves pasta packets, canned beans and frozen chicken fillets into the shopping cart. As soon as a trolley is filled, she parks it near the cash register before letting the next one overflow with food and drinks, often by the crate.
"Sometimes I attach a note to the parked carts so that the sales staff doesn't mistake the contents for returns and put the purchases back again," Dougherty lets her more than six million followers on Tiktok know. The "transport of goods", as the forty-two-year-old calls her shopping trips, has long been part of the rituals of her channel "Dougherty Dozen".
Dougherty is the mother of a dozen children – some natural, some adopted, some in her care. She lives with "The Dozen" and her husband Josh in the small town of Pittsford, about 500 kilometers northwest of New York, and reports almost daily on the life of the extended family.
"A lot of people have turned their backs on these children"
The idea came to her during the Corona pandemic. During the lockdown, she began to entertain more and more people day by day with videos from family life: Alicia Dougherty presented Alex, James, Jordan, Jason, Patrick, Bree, Zoey, Dash, Bodhi and Harlee in front of the computer, pediatrician visits and dance experiments.
For entertainment, she also shared with her ever-growing following on social media how to prepare meals and their "hauls", the shopping trips. Meanwhile, before the eyes of the audience, the children's troupe continued to grow between the ages of four and 17. Since last spring, Nevaeh, twelve years old, and Dayshawn, 13 years old, have also been real doughertys.
In addition to their willingness to spare their offspring the home, Dougherty and her husband Josh were also praised for hosting "special kids." "At least nine of the children suffer from attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, the three oldest suffer from manic and depressive mood swings, two children have been diagnosed as autistic," she summarized.
Six of the adopted children also have fetal alcohol syndrome, a consequence of drinking during pregnancy. It manifests itself, for example, in disorders of physical development and behavioral problems. Once, Dougherty told followers, her eldest Alex rolled up a carpet and threw it at her from the landing. "A lot of people have turned their backs on these kids," Dougherty said. "But the Youth Welfare Office knew that we were different."
Children as if in a circus act?
Meanwhile, the digital applause for Dougherty is waning. Former fans, bloggers such as Rachel Ulatowski and the podcast "Dad Challenge", accuse her of showing off the dozen children, mostly in identical T-shirts or at least color-coordinated outfits, like a circus act. There is hardly any affectionate approach and warmth, but there is a lot of actionism in front of the camera.
The Easter egg hunt? A farce with bought, already filled plastic eggs, which Dougherty dumped pound by pound on the lawn in front of her house, criticized Joshua Barbour of "Dad Challenge". Dougherty's pancakes, a ready-made product baked on a tray and provided with powdered sugar, sprinkles and spray cream for breakfast? For Barbour, Alicia Dougherty's pupils, some of whom are severely overweight, border on child abuse. The shopping sprees, where she usually goes all out on branded products? For many Tiktok users, this is an attempt to recruit new sponsors. "At first, I thought Alicia's videos of grocery shopping were bad. Then I watched the videos about shopping before birthdays. 2000 dollars per child! Awesome!" one user railed.
Already raised more than a million dollars
Despite four-figure sums for the weekly shopping, the fortune of Alicia and Josh Dougherty, teachers for children with behavioral problems in their previous lives, is said to have grown to more than a million dollars since the first videos three years ago. Many compare "Dougherty Dozen" with the strictly religious, large Duggar family, who drew an average of more than two million Americans in front of the television with their reality series "19 Kids and Counting" per episode until 2015. Fees and real estate deals earned parents Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar an estimated $3.5 million at the time. While the Duggars presented their fans with the life of an extended Baptist family from the South, Alicia Dougherty seems to have discovered illness as a market niche.
A video in which she held up a list of supposed diagnoses of her 14-year-old adopted son Patrick to the camera sparked outrage even among staunch supporters. When Dougherty spoke about his short stature, low intelligence, and attachment disorders, she was reminded by hundreds of the boy's privacy. "She doesn't really love her kids," one follower accused her. "I could provide a few diagnoses for Alicia: Munchausen syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, crèche." The criticism apparently bounces off Dougherty. The negative comments, she says, came from "unhappy, insecure people."