Shutterstock; Courtesy of Jana Duggar/Instagram
Amy Duggar Opens Up About Her Strained Relationship With Cousin Jana Duggar: ‘You’re Under Their Control’
Keeping her distance. While Amy King (née Duggar) has a close bond with cousin Jill Dillard (née Duggar), the same is not true about Jill’s older sister, Jana Duggar.
“I truly hope to the good Lord above that she is happy and thriving and working through whatever she’s experienced, but I have no contact with her,” Amy, 36, told Vanity Fair in an interview published on Wednesday, June 18. “Anyone that lives at home with anyone in the IBLP, you’re under their control, so I don’t know if she’s necessarily allowed to.”
As Duggar children are not allowed to move out of the family home until they are wed, Jana – the 33-year-old daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar – remains in Tontitown, Arkansas, with her parents.
“Sometimes it can get a little, like, what? It’s not the only thing in the world to talk about,” the TV personality said about her relationship status during a September 2020 episode of Counting On. “As for now it’s nice, I get to do a lot of different things, but … I mean, I wouldn’t mind it. There are those moments with, like, all the different couples are hanging out.”
As for Amy, the 19 Kids & Counting alum has previously spoken out about her estrangement from the large family, saying, “[I] talk to the ones that are out of IBLP and the ones that are healing.”
“As far as everyone else, no,” she said during a June 21 YouTube video following her appearance on the Prime Video documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. “That’s fine, that’s okay. You know, maybe they don’t see it yet, and they don’t see the truth or maybe they don’t wanna see the truth.”
Following Jill, 32, and Amy’s appearance in the expository doc, Jim Bob, 57, and Michelle, 56, released a statement calling the series “derogatory and sensationalized.”
“Like other families, ours too has experienced the joys and heartbreaks of life, just in a very public format,” the couple wrote on their website shortly after the episodes were released. “We have always believed that the best chance to repair damaged relationships, or to reconcile differences, is through love in a private setting.”
The mother of one called her aunt and uncle’s statement “a huge slap in the face.”
“It’s a slap in the face to their beautiful daughters, and it’s a slap in the face to every survivor,” she told Vanity Fair in her Wednesday profile. “That was their chance to be humble. That was their chance to recognize the survivors and the trauma that has actually taken place by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. And if you’re not going to recognize that, they have definitely crossed the line.”
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