Did she once feature on Ben Fogle's programme about lives in the world or maybe someone else's about something similar years ago? I definitely saw a programme about the family a while back, and was vaguely aware of her books etc.
I don't have any strong feelings either way -- apart from being the eldest of a large family in which both parents were similarly primarily concerned with making ends meet, meaning I spent my childhood caring for the younger ones and never getting any individual attention at all, and it really not being a happy set of memories.
But it does seem to me that her hands-off parenting is a necessity because she has so many children and an absorbing 24/7 job -- she and her husband simply doesn't have time to give their children much attention, so it seems a bit much to preach it as something other people should aspire to.
'In order to make a big family work they all need to tow the line. It's not about child labour - it's about pulling together,' Owen told the Daily Mail in an article in 2018.
It may not be about children helping out on the farm, which is entirely normal, but the children are 'towing the line', because their parents' decision to keep having children means they have to. Amanda said that after a week of homeschooling, she stopped logging in and 'threw it back to them.'
'Children have to be independent. I can't be a helicopter parent. We read the papers and they show me some of their projects, but I have yet to be at a single parents' evening. I did pretty poorly at my exams, but look at what I have achieved since then.'
It's hardly 'helicopter parenting' to keep up with your child's school work and yes, it was hard for all of us who were working FT and homeschooling during lockdown and attend the odd parent-teacher meeting.
'The snowflake generation, they can't do anything,' Owen told the Radio Times.
'They don't know anything about how to look after themselves, or a work ethic, all of that has gone out of the window. It's our fault as parents.
'If you put your child on a pedestal, with no sense of independence, and think you have got to entertain them the whole time, what can you expect?
'I rebuff swaddling children, because I want to see them go on and do well and be themselves, whatever that is. I feel like it is their life and all I do is prepare them.
Surely she 'rebuffs swaddling children' because that stops being an option when you have that many, and when any kind of individual attention or adaptation is impossible? It's easier to claim it's a philosophy, when in fact it's a throwback to past times when contraception was unavailable, family size was uncontrolled, and children weren't viewed as needing more than food and clothes.
'What we do on the farm, hopefully, is preparation for the big world. The lessons they get here will stand them in good stead.'
I think that one of the lessons her children will have learned is that their parents simply don't literally have time for them, but have kept having children nonetheless. And her elder children, based on my own experience, will have learned not to bother their parents with their problems and get on with looking after the younger ones.
And her husband had two children from his first marriage before he met her. That is a lot of children.