To say the Duggar family has experienced ups and downs lately is an understatement, but it seems that things might not have always been as rosy throughout the years in general for the former 19 Kids and Counting stars. Jinger Duggar Vuolo recently released a new book co-written with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, where she sheds light on things she has re-examined since her 2016 marriage.
The Duggar family is part of an ultra-conservative religious movement that puts great emphasis on modesty as part of a young girl's life. Jinger shared that she's not so sure she completely agrees with everything she was taught as a child and teen, and her marriage is a big reason why.
When Jinger Duggar married Jeremy Vuolo in 2016, she was only 22 years old. After having spent most of her life with her large family, it makes sense that there were things Jinger needed to learn. Some of those lessons came through her relationship with her husband.
In their book, Jinger explains that before she got married, she had lived a really sheltered life. She writes, "I’d never lived outside of Arkansas, never moved out of my parents’ house" before adding that she'd also "never woken up or gone to sleep without the sound of muffled voices around me."
The Duggar family believe that children should share rooms, and autonomy for children isn't a priority. Once Jinger began to live life differently, she began to understand there are a lot of possibilities out there, and one of those was that it might be that not everything her parents raised her on was the only way to live.
While both Jinger and her husband are Christian, Jeremy's family isn't as conservative as Jinger's. In fact, Jinger's dad wasn't completely supportive of the relationship at first. She also writes in the book that she experienced her own doubts.
Jinger shares, "There were some ups and downs in that time, and … at one point I kind of froze, and I was like, ‘Do I want to do this?’"
Jeremy also notes that it was a tough period. "That was something for me that was really tough. I don’t like to think about that day."
He adds, "I don’t like to think about that time. But realizing that, OK, that’s something that could help someone [with their own relationship issues] because it’s something that everyone’s going to have to walk through … will we be able to come together as two completely different human beings from different backgrounds and make this work?"
Happily, the two decided to make it work. Once married, they began studying the Bible together, which led to Jinger exploring how she really feels about the way she was raised. She writes that she began exploring scripture because she "wanted to see if the convictions I'd always held were true."
There was one issue in particular that Jinger wanted to re-examine: dressing modestly. She explains, "I realized I wanted to revisit some secondary issues, like not wearing pants. I never really questioned it. Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest."
Jinger ended up landing on a solution that felt good for herself, and writes that she learned "modesty is deeper and more profound than wearing skirts instead of pants. [As] I searched the Scriptures for answers, I never found a passage specifically forbidding women from wearing pants."
But Jinger also writes that it was tough to consider a belief different from how she had been raised. "I struggled with believing something that was different from my family."
