Photo: Youtube
They have 9 living children. Another child died tragically.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Jul 08, 2020
Fans of TLC's Welcome to Plathville have been excitedly re-watching the series since it dropped on Hulu and hoping the rumors of a second season are true. The short reality series about a fundamentalist Christian family living in Georgia was a hit with viewers in 2019.
Kim Plath and Barry Plath are parents of nine living children and the show detailed their lives as homeschooling, religiously devout clan living on a farm miles from the nearest town. They hoped to raise their kids outside of the influence of popular culture, though they did travel as a family band for several years before their reality show.
Since the show originally aired, the family has had a lot of changes. Not all the kids live at home anymore and others are adding to their own families.
How many kids are in the Plath family?
There are nine surviving Plath children.
When the show premiered in 2019, the Plath parents introduced their large brood of kids. Ethan, 22, Hosanna, 21, Micah, 19, Moriah, 18, Lydia, 16, Isaac, 14, Amber, 11, Cassia, 9, and Mercy, 7. All of the kids were homeschooled and they all took part in the family band. Before their reality show fame, they toured as a southern gospel act called The Plath Family.
They had another child who died in 2008.
On the now-defunct family website, The Plath Family, Kim shared the tragic details of the death of their young son, Joshua in 2008. Km recounted how she was driving the family's Suburban around their property to plant new trees with her 17-month-old child in tow. She lost sight of him for a few moments and the unthinkable happened.
"I looked for our 17-month old Joshua, saw that he was away from the vehicle, then pulled forward to get the next tree. In a panic, I realized what had happened. I ran over our Joshua. I lived the next hour non-stop in my brain for the next 8 months." Joshua passed away in the hospital before Barry could even make it to his side.
Joshua's death was devastating for Kim. She spent almost a year struggling with her grief and a crisis of faith. "I woke up every morning and functioned. But just barely. I wanted to die," she writes. "I read in my Bible, 'Abel’s blood crieth to me from the ground.' The next day I read 'hands that shed innocent blood.' I stopped reading my Bible. 'Oh, God, Help me!' was all I could pray and I prayed it without ceasing. My husband was dealing with losing his son and his wife. I was gone. Checked out. Unavailable for conversations or reality. If someone said Joshua’s name I had to leave the room."
After eight months of living the worst of her grief, Kim says she found her way back to a sense of normalcy.
Two of the Plath children have gotten married.
Large families get larger as the kids grow up and get married. That is happening right on schedule for the Plaths. Daughter Hosanna married Timothy Noble in 2019 and moved to Ohio to live with him. The couple works as professional musicians performing together. They are expecting their first child later this year.
While the Nobles weren't featured in the first season of the show, the oldest child Ethan and his wife Olivia were prominent figures. They met through religious activities and dated long-distance for several years before deciding to get married. Ethan works as a mechanic and Olivia is a wedding photographer who frequently travels for her job. They live near the Plath family and appeared on the show regularly. They have drifted away from the fundamentalist Christian faith of the Plath parents, which caused conflict between them.
Ethan and Olivia Plath in 2019.
Two other children have moved out.
The next two kids in the family have also grown up and moved out, but not the follow the traditional path of marriage and family that their parents might have hoped. Daughter Moriah, who had been rebelling against her parents' strict religious lifestyle, decided to go live with relatives in the Midwest at the end of season one. She had been hoping to go to college, something her mother was against. It's not clear if she has enrolled in school but she is back on the East Coast. She posts photos of herself in places like Florida, where she has a boyfriend, Max Kallschmidt.
Micah Plath, who is 19, also moved out at the end of 2019 and is dating a woman named Lexi Marie. He was reportedly staying with friends for a while. He has started working at a model, something he started exploring on the show. Ethan has said in interviews that Moriah is still in touch with the Plath parents but Micah barely speaks to them anymore.
The youngest five kids are still at home.
The remaining kids, Lydia, Isaac, Amber, Cassia, and Mercy are all still living with their parents. Photos of Lydia sometimes pop up on the Instagram feed of the Rodriguez family; another large fundamentalist Christian clan who lives in Ohio. Lydia and Hosanna are friends with the Rodriguez daughters and Hosanna is scheduled to be in Nurie Rodriguez's wedding. Nurie is marrying Nathan Keller whose sister Anna is married to Josh Duggar. This may be a chance for TLC to cross-promote two of their largest reality show families in one special show.
Lydia and Hosanna Plath with their friends the Rodriguez family.
Not all the grown children get along.
In season one, Hosanna and Timothy didn't appear on the reality show. Part of that may have been simply logistics; they live in Ohio while the show filmed in Georgia. Another issue is that Hosanna and Olivia reportedly don't get along. In a now-expired Instagram story, Olivia explained that she was only willing to be involved in the show is producers didn't force her to interact with Hosanna. She implied that her husband's sister didn't like or approve of her.
Could Hosanna and Timothy join the cast of the show in season 2?
Olivia and Ethan have also said that they are reluctant to continue filming. If, as is rumored, TLC is planning a second season of the show, bringing Hosanna and Timothy Noble into it as they prepare to welcome their first child would allow the network to replace Ethan and Olivia.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.