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Jill Duggar, Derick Dillard, Craig BorlaseA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The Duggars do not talk about what Josh did; he is sent away to work on a construction site with some of Jim Bob’s friends. One of the Duggar family rules is children should not “stir up contention among the brethren” (47), meaning they cannot speak badly about each other or discuss difficult topics. All of the children are kept busy with a heavy roster of chores and household maintenance. Meanwhile, Jim Bob tries to further his political career. Though his Senate campaign is unsuccessful, it does draw attention to his unusual family. The TV network Discovery Health wants to make a documentary about them. Jim Bob relishes this “window of opportunity” for the family to “show people what a Christian family can look like” (51). They go ahead with the documentary, despite the situation with Josh. Jill is initially self-conscious on camera. The film crew pays for a grocery run, allowing the children to choose foods normally outside their budget. By the time the documentary (14 Children and Pregnant Again!) is released, Josh has come home, apparently having been “fixed” by manual labor. Michelle gives birth to her 15th child, Jackson, and new filming opportunities open up. TV appearances become the family’s “ministry,” allowing them to show that children are a blessing from God.
Michelle gives birth to her 16th child, Johannah. Because the family still lives in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, Jim Bob buys a piece of land to build a huge new house. The build takes a long time, as the Duggars, including the children, do most of it themselves. Michelle gets pregnant with her 17th child, Jennifer. Discovery Health pays for the remaining build work so they can film another documentary about the family. When Jill is 16, the family becomes the subject of TLC’s 17 Kids and Counting. Jim Bob insists the family’s faith not be edited out of the show. Filming a reality show is much more intense than filming one-off documentaries, with months of filming each year. Homeschool classes are frequently interrupted to film excursions and other fresh content for the show. Despite the disruption, the perks (like food and travel) are still good. Jill hopes the show will teach other families how to be good Christians. On one occasion, the Duggars host IBLP leaders from all over the world, including Bill Gothard. Jana, the eldest Duggar daughter, is invited to work at the IBLP headquarters. Everyone knows she was invited because Gothard “[likes] blond girls” (64). In hindsight, Jill wonders why nobody thought this situation was unsafe.
In 2006, a letter surfaces (written by a girl Josh was courting) containing information about the sexual abuse Josh committed. The woman who finds the letter goes to the same church as the Duggars. She contacts church leadership and informs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about “a potentially abusive situation” (66). The ensuing investigation is frightening for Jill, who worries she will say the wrong thing and get taken away from her parents. Jim Bob is very angry; he feels he had already “taken care of” the situation by sending Josh away (67). The investigation is very traumatic for Jill; she is forced to describe the abuse she experienced at the hands of her brother, which she worked hard to forget.
In March of 2014, Jill is 22. She and her sisters have released a book, Growing Up Duggar, which details their lives growing up in the Duggar family. In a Q&A session, they talk about how much they enjoy having a film crew around in their daily lives, glossing over any challenges. Despite travel opportunities and financial success, Jill finds it stressful to be constantly observed; her life is a continuous performance. The family also sometimes receives hate mail, but Jim Bob and Michelle remind their children Jesus was also persecuted for his beliefs. Gothard considers Jim Bob’s television ministry to be a big success; the family rises in the IBLP ranks. Jim Bob continues to raise his children in accordance with IBLP values: foregrounding the importance of obedience, forbidding the use of contraception even after marriage, and banning alcohol. IBLP also encourages children not to go to college and pushes fathers to start their own businesses and employ their sons to maintain control over their family. Jill does not yet see anything wrong with this arrangement.
Josh gets caught looking at pornography and is sent away to do manual labor again. Jim Bob focuses on the show’s success, believing it allows him “to reach people for Christ” (78). Jim Bob starts talking as if he knows God’s will personally, which confuses Jill, as her father previously taught her it is not always possible to see “how God is working” (80). When Jill is 21, she keeps her thoughts away from marriage. She is busy looking after her three “buddies” (younger siblings) and training to be a midwife. She trusts her father will arrange her future for her. Through a phone call, Jim Bob introduces her to Derick Dillard, a young man who is serving as a missionary in Nepal. At first, Jill tries not to seem too interested, but she is intrigued; she also wants to do international missionary work. She and Derick talk more over Skype, always under supervision. Though she would prefer to meet Derick without cameras present, Jill agrees to go to Nepal with her father and a film crew. Scott, the show’s producer, is delighted by this new opportunity for content. The trip takes place in November of 2013. Derick asks Jill to start an official courtship; she agrees.
Jill falls in love with Derick and is sad to say goodbye after two weeks in Nepal. Derick returns to America in January of 2014, and he and Jill get engaged at the end of March with plans for a June wedding. Derick’s mother, Cathy, gets diagnosed with stage-four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is told she will probably not survive. Jill and Derick plan their wedding, which will be the first Duggar wedding to be filmed and broadcast. Around 2,000 people are invited, many of whom Jill has never met. The wedding planning is a blur, and Jill has to sacrifice the wedding she wants to align it better with TLC’s goals. Though Cathy’s health is still fragile, she is able to attend the wedding. On the day of the wedding, Jim Bob gives Jill a piece of paper to sign, telling her it is finalizing how she and her siblings will be paid. There is no additional information, and Jill trusts her father to know what is best. She signs the paper without question.
Jill and Derick get married. Jill is happy, despite the chaos filming caused. Though the show provided her family with many opportunities, “some things are not worth the cost” (107). She refuses to have her honeymoon filmed; that means TLC will not pay for it, so the holiday is brief. Upon their return, Jill and Derick go right back to a grueling filming schedule. Derick has a full-time job that makes filming even harder. Cathy’s cancer disappears; she calls it a miracle. A month after the wedding, Jill learns she is pregnant. Although Jill wants to quit the show, she is afraid of going against her parents’ wishes. Her personal boundaries are further eroded: She has to tell TLC she is pregnant before telling her family on camera. Derick points out that this level of control is too much, and Jill agrees but feels trapped. She is torn between agreeing with her husband and obeying her parents; she still feels disobeying would be a sin.
On a short mission trip to El Salvador, Jill and Derick are offered a two-year position. They agree, opting to return in a few months when Jill has given birth. It is typical for births to be part of the show, which makes Jill very uncomfortable. After several tense discussions with Scott, they compromise: Michelle and Jana will film the birth, so the family can have more control over what is shown. Jill reluctantly agrees. She is in labor for 68 hours before having a C-section. Her son is named Israel David Dillard. In a haze of medication, Jill worries she has disobeyed her father by not including him in the discussion about how her birth was filmed. Despite now being a mother herself, Jill is still concerned about stepping outside of her father’s umbrella of protection. Even Derick is expected to submit to Jim Bob’s authority, which he finds very frustrating.
Jill and Derick prepare to move to El Salvador with their newborn son. Not long before they leave, In Touch magazine publishes the investigation interviews Jill and her sisters gave in the wake of Josh’s sexual abuse. Jill feels deeply betrayed that the information she gave to the Child Safety Center in private is now public. She begins to have nightmares and is hounded by the paparazzi. In her eyes, those responsible for the leak are “the chief of police at the time, Kathy O’Kelley; the city of Springdale and its attorney, Ernest Cate; Washington County Sheriff’s Office, and its major sheriff, Rick Hoyt” (132) as well as In Touch magazine. Jim Bob and his assistant Chad try to save the show from being canceled. They want to make it clear the family resolved the issue. Feeling as though she is the only one who can make things better, Jill agrees to an interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News, despite serious misgivings. Jessa also agrees to the interview.
These chapters go into detail about Jill’s experiences of Gendered Abuse in a Christian Fundamentalist Context. The culture of profound shame and silence in the Duggar family makes it difficult for her to meaningfully heal after Josh’s sexual abuse; she copes by trying not to think about it. This is one of her only options, as she still has to live with Josh throughout her teenage years. Beyond the fallout from sexual abuse, Jill has to contend with her parents’ extreme control over her life. Their rule against “stirring up contention among the brethren” means that their children cannot have difficult conversations together (41). They cannot discuss whether their parents’ policies work well, and they cannot name the emotional abuse their parents inflict on them by controlling their lives. This section also briefly discusses Jim Bob Duggar’s spiritual abuse of his family. By claiming that he knows what God wants, he is putting himself in a position of unquestionable authority, and he is exploiting his children’s deeply held religious convictions.
As Jill gets older, she experiences increasing financial abuse. The papers she signs before her wedding day will later come back to haunt her, though their meaning is not yet clear in these chapters. What is clear is that despite years of television appearances, neither Jill nor her husband (nor her siblings) have seen any financial compensation for their work. All of the money from TLC goes to Jim Bob, who can then use it at his discretion. The IBLP instruction telling fathers to employ their sons while ensuring that their daughters and wives do not work is another form of financial abuse. Financial independence is a crucial element of adult self-determination, and it is one of the only ways an abused person can leave an abusive situation. By thoroughly limiting his children’s freedoms (especially his daughters’ freedoms), Jim Bob Duggar is creating an environment where abuses can happen virtually unchecked. Jim Bob does not only abuse his children but also creates an abusive system that allows him to continue this abuse and prevent them from questioning it. TLC and Jim Bob both exert a form of financial control over Jill and her siblings.
Now that Jill is part of a “filming family,” Performing Under the Control and Influence of TV is inescapable as well. She and her siblings have no choice about whether they would like to be on a TV show or not. When the cameras are rolling, they all have to appear to be the perfect family. Their problems have to remain hidden, especially when those problems are as serious as Josh’s abuse of his sisters. Anything captured on camera will become public knowledge, which can be very invasive. Because Jim Bob wants the show to be a ministry that teaches people about the Duggars’ Christian lifestyle, there is additional pressure to make that lifestyle look appealing and even easy. In Jill’s mind, her responsibilities to TLC are closely tied to her duty to obey her parents, and she must meet the expectations of being an obedient daughter in a Christian fundamentalist family and perform that role for TLC. Because she has been taught that obedience is so crucial, she consents to have major personal moments captured on camera; she does not feel that she has any choice. That means that her first meeting with her future husband, her wedding day, her pregnancy announcement, and the birth of her first child all belong to TLC and to the public even more than they belong to her. She is still reckoning with the pain of these repeated invasions of her privacy. The show and Jim Bob’s decisions exert tremendous control over her life and her public image, and it is only with this memoir that she begins telling her own narrative rather than performing someone else’s version of it.
It is almost impossible for Jill to develop critical thinking, highlighting the theme of Liberating One’s Thinking from a Christian Fundamentalist Worldview, because of the way she is raised. Her homeschool education takes a backseat to the show, and she is taught to always assume that her father has her best interests in mind. Because she is never expected to step out from under her parents’ umbrella of protection, and because she is expected to raise children instead of working or pursuing higher education, she does not gain control over her own life when she becomes an adult. This directive, common in Christian fundamentalist communities, discourages women from maintaining any level of independence or self-determination in their own lives. Jill lives within an ideological framework, taught to her through homeschooling, that reaffirms, in her mind, her submissive position and prevents her from questioning it. Although all of the children receive this worldview, it is worse for the sisters, because Jim Bob also teaches them to be second to and receive all wisdom from the men in their lives.
As she writes this memoir, Jill has done much work to heal from the challenges of her upbringing and indicates that her current path leads toward reconciling further with them. Though she no longer feels that her parents are the ultimate authority in her life, she still seems to place significant trust in them. For instance, when she discusses the woman who called the DHS about Josh’s abuse, she seems angry that the woman went through official channels: “Instead of talking with Mom or Pops, she got more information from church leadership, phoned a hotline, and informed DHS about what she thought was a potentially abusive situation” (66), leading to a traumatic inquest. Though Jill treats this woman’s actions as a betrayal of trust, the memoir suggests that it is important to involve outside authorities in cases of child abuse, as parents might be complicit in the abuse or might be unable or unwilling to take appropriate action. Jill nonetheless indicates that she wishes to reconcile this abuse and tell her own story. Even though she does not discuss certain aspects of her narrative, her decision to reveal the information she wants to is powerful, and she demonstrates, too, that she is independently preparing to engage with and digest these traumas further.