You may think you've got the Duggar family's number,
but times they are a-changin'. Who nearly bared it all, wore some pants,
and got busy before their wedding? Buckle up! These kids are shattering all the rules.
There are plenty of time-honored traditions that the Duggar kids are expected to follow.
And it can seem like most of those limitations target the women of the family. Still, as part
of a litany of other female-focused rules, the Duggar ladies shall never cut or color their hair.
The groundwork for this was first laid out when the family made their TLC debut,
back in 2008. But — cut to 2021 — and plenty of the gals have switched up their tresses just
for fun. In August, Jana made headlines for going blonde, posting on Instagram,
"Something new happened."
"You like it?"
"That looks beautiful!"
But Jana isn't the first of the girls to make a statement with her locks. That July,
Jinger chopped off several inches, happily sporting a long brunette bob and some highlights.
And back in 2019, Jill chopped off an entire ponytail's worth of her own hair.
According to In Touch, a fresh cut or color is frowned upon by parents Jim Bob and Michelle.
Reportedly, they feel it alters a person's natural, God-given beauty.
It should come as no surprise that body jewelry is way out of line for the Duggars. But even so,
Jill shocked fans far and wide when she rocked a shiny new nose ring on Instagram in 2017. Fans
theorized that she got the piercing as an act of rebellion against her family — and maybe even TLC.
"But anyways…I'm loving it."
Jill was first spotted with the jewelry just after her husband, Derick Dillard, was fired
from the network. It all went down after Derick faced a storm of criticism for a series of tweets
exposing his controversial opinions on the transgender community, according to In Touch.
Jill stood by her man, and as soon as Derick was ousted from TLC, she left too. What better
way to celebrate the end of an era than with a statement-making body piercing!
To the outside eye, this one might seem pretty tame. But it actually made a big splash.
Jinger raised eyebrows when she started wearing shorts and pants — instead of the modest,
Duggar-approved ankle-length skirt — shortly after marrying her husband, Jeremy Vuolo.
She opened up about the move in her 2021 memoir "The Hope We Hold: Finding Peace in the Promises
of God." She detailed how mom Michelle dressed the daughters in long skirts and dresses because
of a literal interpretation from the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible. But once she left home,
got married, and started a family of her own, Jinger began to ask questions. She wrote,
"[I] realized that biblical modesty is deeper and more profound than wearing skirts instead
of pants. Modesty isn't only about what you wear. It's about the position of your heart."
"Whoa!"
Jinger explained that while she was still very much committed to following the Bible, she could
find no evidence that women shouldn't wear pants, when she read it herself. And now, she happily
sports a trendy pair of jeans whenever she likes. Nose ring-rocking Jill found herself making
headlines again in 2020 when she posted a snap of herself and hubby Derick enjoying a night out on
the town. But what really raised eyebrows was the fact that they appeared to be drinking alcohol.
According to People, a sober life is one of the Duggars' most enduring values.
The drink in question turned out to be a piña colada. And when a concerned fan
asked whether it was a virgin or regular version, Jill replied,
"regular." The star explained to People magazine at the time,
"Growing up, the whole idea of drinking was not encouraged.
I know my parents would not be happy with it, and I know that my siblings […] would
probably have an issue with it. Other ones would probably be like, 'Whatever's good for y'all,
that's fine. Live your life.' So far nobody's said anything to us about it."
“Drunkenness is absolutely sinful. But that doesn't mean that,
y'know, Jill wouldn't have a piña colada."
Jill says she feels comfortable drinking socially, arguing that it demonstrates
a healthy lifestyle balance for her kids. It's not a complete shock that Jim Bob and
Michelle wouldn't be fans of birth control. Y'know, just based on their 19 kids, you
probably already guessed that they aren't big on getting in the way of their own fertile destiny.
But some of their daughters are taking a more contemporary approach to growing their families.
Jill, for one, has been open about her decision to use contraception, sharing on YouTube,
″We use birth control, but we prefer to use non-hormonal birth control methods
because we don't want to use anything that could potentially cause an abortion. […] I
think there are probably uses for hormonal birth control for, like,
regulating things and stuff like that, but for us we just want to be careful about that."
The other girls haven't been quite as outspoken about their reproductive health, but fans suspect
that Jinger may have used birth control, too. She didn't get pregnant until over a year into
her marriage, which is a little a-typical for the Duggars. Of course, exactly how everyone's
getting busy isn't really our business anyway. This family is well-known for their modest
way of living. And that's why it came as such a shock to fans when Amy Duggar King
shared a family pool-day photo where she was wearing a red bikini. It was basically the
opposite of the Duggar uniform of long skirt and long sleeves. But Amy's no stranger to a
little wardrobe scandal. In the past, she's even shown off the girls on occasion, too.
But it's possible that Amy might feel more comfortable pushing the household boundaries
because she's the only series star that isn't one of Michelle and Jim Bob's biological kids.
"We love each other, we support each other, and that's family."
Amy is the daughter of Jim Bob's oldest sister, and she spent enough time around the Duggar house
that she appeared on "19 Kids and Counting." She basically became an unofficial Duggar kid.
But her actual upbringing was much less conservative than her cousins had experienced.
Maybe her brazen independence rubbed off a little on some of her admiring relatives.
When it comes to the Duggars, dancing is dangerous business.
Growing up, the kids were not allowed to shake it, since it was basically the gateway to promiscuity,
which in turn moves one farther away from God.
But in August 2021, Jessa threw that rule right out the window
when she posted a series of photos showing her kids dancing at a wedding. Her husband,
Ben, also posted an adorable video of himself dancing with their daughter, Ivy.
Unlike some of her rule-breaker siblings, Jessa didn't appear to face much blowback
for letting the kids feel the music. Reddit users came to her defense, with one writing:
"They probably realized the rule is stupid. Especially with kids.
How is 'kids dancing' wrong in any way?" One of the more serious family scandals came
about when Jill, Jim Bob and Michelle had a public falling out in 2017. Their family stance against
discussing money was all but lost when Jill discovered that Jim Bob
was making tens of thousands of dollars per episode of "Counting On." Meanwhile,
she hadn't seen a penny. According to reports, Jim Bob was actually pulling in up to $45,000 per
episode. It was a bitter pill for Jill to swallow considering she was basically working for free.
Long story short, Jill walked away from "Counting On" after she found out about
the massive pay gap. And things have never been the same. While
her decision to leave was also due in part to her husband's firing from the network,
as far as Jill saw it, it was time to go. In a joint statement, the couple said,
"[We] faced many pressures and some unexpected challenges which forced
us to step away from the show in an effort to gain more control over our own lives."
"It was hard, yeah. There wasn't a lot of support there, yeah, when we left."
In 2020, People reported that Jill hadn't seen her parents in two years.
By now, you've probably figured out that the Duggars are big on maintaining the status quo with
gender norms. As fundamentalist Baptists, they adhere to a strict interpretation of the Bible.
So, it tracks that they would clearly define their family members' roles. In a house of 19 kids,
everyone had to share a bedroom. But the boys certainly weren't bunking with the girls.
As Cheat Sheet noted, Jim Bob and Michelle didn't want their boys hanging out with their girls,
one on one. Instead, they wanted them to be as separate as possible.
"This is more up the boys' alley. They really like this kind of stuff."
Fast forward a few years, and fans were shocked to discover that Jessa has kicked that rule of her
childhood to the curb. In a 2021 YouTube video, Jessa revealed that all three of her kids share
a bedroom. No word yet on what the grandparents think of the progressive sleeping arrangements.
Jill Duggar has always done things her own way. She's clearly done answering
to the adults in her life, and is forging a new path in the world. Because of that,
these days she's also raising her children differently than her parents raised her.
Along with all the fashion rules she had to follow as a child,
Jill also wasn't allowed to attend public school and she was banned from watching TV. Instead,
she was homeschooled, and, allegedly a little less corrupt in the mind, thanks to zero screen time.
But when it came to her own kids, Jill wanted to do things a bit differently. Her son, Israel,
attends public school, unlike most of his cousins. And you guessed it — she
also lets her kids watch TV. While many of her siblings' kids are homeschooled,
the TV-watching policy has indeed spread to some of her sisters. According to Cafe Mom,
Joy-Anna reportedly invites her siblings over to watch TV and encourages them to bring their kids
along. We're guessing the hard part, then, is just choosing a show everybody likes.
Privacy, please
"Well, we're officially, um, courting now."
"Yay!" One particularly strict
Duggar family rule that has been infringed upon in recent years is the insistence that the kids
only go on official dates with a chaperone. But, kids will be kids, as they say, and at least one
of the Duggar clan found a way to stretch the limits. Fans were totally surprised to learn
that Josiah and his now-wife, Lauren, were hanging out — unchaperoned — well before they said "I do."
In 2018, the couple caused a stir when they went to the Silver Dollar City amusement park
in Missouri without a parent or older sibling in attendance. We imagine that Josiah was able to
get away with it because it seems like just about the most wholesome date in the world.
That, and he probably wasn't getting into any trouble, no matter who was watching.
His little sister, Joy-Anna, took a page out of his playbook when she admitted that she used to
have secret and forbidden phone calls with her now-husband, Austin, before they were married.
"Looks like they figured out how to do it."
We saved the biggest Duggar rule infringement for last. And this time, the award goes to Amy, who
shocked the world — or at least Duggar fans — when she admitted she had been intimate long before
she married her husband, Dillon. She reportedly slept with other men in previous relationships,
but waited to get busy with Dillon until they got married. As she explained to People in 2016,
"That was our decision. We had fun, but we didn't stay over and we decided early
on not to move in together. There were boundaries. A thin line of boundaries."
"Oh, I don't know what you're talkin' about."
Thin line of boundaries or not, we can only assume Jim Bob and Michelle were horrified
at the news. But Amy didn't seem to be bothered in the least. She told the outlet,
"I think that if I was a virgin on my wedding night and had never been kissed,
I would end up rocking in the corner! That is so much emotion all at once."
Despite not being fully — um — acquainted at the time of their wedding,
Amy and Dillon couldn't be happier these days. It certainly looks like they did something right!
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