Courtesy of Jill Duggar/Instagram; Getty
Counting On’s Jill Duggar Claims Dad Jim Bob ‘Put Show Above Family’: ‘Financial Business Decision’
Jill Dillard (née Duggar) claimed her father, Jim Bob Duggar, “evolved” over time as their popularity grew and eventually put the Duggar’s reality TV shows “above their family”
“It’s hard to pinpoint one time because it did evolve, it was very much an evolution,” Jill, 32, explained in an interview alongside her husband, Derick Dillard, on the Wednesday, January 9, episode of “The Unplanned Podcast.” “It’s a ministry but it’s also a financial business decision. So you can play to whatever side you want.”
The attorney, 34, added that the Duggars’ reality TV run, which included TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On, wouldn’t have “persisted as long” had the adult children declined to participate in filming.
“But we also didn’t have the freedom to make that guilt-free decision either,” the mom of three added. “You might be presented with like a pseudo-decision, choice, but then there’s still this like, ‘We kind of expect this to be in our good graces,’ type thing.”
Jill and Derick explained they were OK with filming until it started feeling more like a “requirement” rather than a choice.
“As we’re able to, we’ll do as much as we can without that expectation, but once we find out that there’s a requirement, then it’s going to change things,” Derick told hosts Matt Howard and Abby Howard, before Jill added, “Then we need to sit down at the table at that point.”
This isn’t the first time the Counting On alum has opted to speak out against her parents, Jim Bob, 58, and mom, Michelle Duggar, who raised their 19 children under the principles of Institute in Basic Life Principles, a controversial, non-denominational Christian organization.
Jill and Derick — who wed in 2014 — discussed the tense relationship in detail in Prime Video’s June 2023 docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, as well as in their September 2023 memoir, Counting the Cost.
More recently, Jill said documenting their life behind the cameras made IBLP values —which lists strict rules about the roles of men and women — more “extreme” growing up.
“I think that these rules and things that IBLP taught were emphasized more because then you have a platform and a reputation at stake,” Jill said on the “Sounds Like a Cult” podcast in December 2023, adding that they had to “protect” the ministry platform.
“The pressure was already there just because of the group pressure that we were in and the way that we were raised,” Jill continued. “But you add a TV show to that and it definitely makes that more intense.”
Jill is seemingly on amicable terms with her parents as she reunited with her large family for the 2023 Christmas celebrations at the brood’s Arkansas compound.
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