Over the last few years, Jinger Duggar has been open about her journey to disentangling herself from the cult-like religion parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar brought up her and her 18 siblings in, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, or IBLP. She has done a lot of work to undo the negative impact that the teachings of Bill Gothard had on her life and her self-esteem, but is she angry with her parents for putting her in this position in the first place?
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Jinger and husband Jeremy Vuolo answered their most commonly asked questions this week.
On the latest edition of their Jinger & Jeremy podcast, the couple shared a Q&A session to fill in their listeners on the answers to all of their burning questions.
Unsurprisingly, more than one of the questions had to do with Jinger’s upbringing, which she recently opened up even more about in her new book, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations, which was released last month.
One listener asked Jinger if she was ‘angry’ at her parents for the way they raised her.
Jinger has shared many times the different ways she believes growing up in the IBLP was harmful to her, but according to what she said on the podcast, she doesn’t hold any ill will toward her parents.
“And I can say that very clearly because I see how so many families … wanted the guarantee for success for their kids,” she said. “They were promised it. And they said, ‘If you do this, your kids will turn out.’ And so I think that a lot of parents who walked into [IBLP], they were well-meaning.”
Being a parent herself has given her a new perspective.
Jinger and Jeremy share two daughters, Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 4, and are expecting their third child, a baby boy, next month, and being a mom has helped Jinger understand what her parents’ decision-making process might have been when they decided to jump headfirst into the IBLP.
“I can see how easy it was for my parents to get wrapped up in that teaching because they were well-meaning,” she said. “They went into it thinking, ‘This is how we’re going to teach our kids to love Jesus.’ And who doesn’t want that?”
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Jinger’s family wasn’t the only one who didn’t have a positive outcome from following the IBLP’s teachings.
To see that happen, Jinger said, has been “heartbreaking.”
“Because as a parent, you want to make the best decisions, pray through what you’re supposed to do, and I really believe my parents sought to do that for us kids,” she said. “I don’t have any anger toward them for it because, I mean, I just see [that] they did their best,” Jinger added. “They did what they thought was right in the moment.”
Now, Jinger is choosing to raise her own kids in a different way, and it’s good to see that it appears she managed to come out happier and healthier on the other side of what must have been a challenging upbringing.
