Photo: getty
Jill and her husband Derick Dillard seem to have stepped away from her family.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Mar 10, 2020
TLC fans watched Jill Duggar grow up on TV. She was nine years old when the show 19 Kids And Counting (Then called 17 Kids And Counting) started running and she was a television staple for the next thirteen years of her life. Fans watched as she grew up, courted her husband Derick Dillard, got married, and had two children of her own. Many people who watched the show loved the story of a devoutly religious family with conservative values and Jill appeared happy to follow into the beliefs and practices of her Christian parents.
But things were not as perfect as they seem for this family. In 2015, it came out that the oldest Duggar son, Josh, had molested multiple young girls, including Jill and several other of his sisters. Her parents downplayed the impact of the events, even asking Jill to do a televised interview where she talked about forgiving her brother. TLC changed the show dramatically at that time, changing the focus from parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar to Jill and her sister Jessa as they started their married lives.
In the years since then, more of the kids have gotten married and joined the Counting On show but Jill and her husband Derick Dillard are noticeably absent from the series. Moreover, they don't seem to be spending time with the rest of the Duggar family, preferring to hang out with friends who are unconnected from the family. Dillard even says that Jill's father Jim Bob won't let them in the house without his permission.
Is Jill Duggar feuding with her parents?
1. Derick was Jim Bob's hand-picked husband for Jill.
Fans of the show know that the Duggar practice a strict form of patriarchal Christianity, where the father of the family is the absolute leader in all things. The kids grew up with very strict rules about how they were allowed to interact with the opposite sex. They weren't allowed to casually date or even be alone with people of the opposite sex who weren't family. And since all the kids were homeschooled and didn't go on to college, there were limited opportunities to meet potential spouses. Derick Dillard actually reached out to Jim Bob and requested they become long-distance prayer partners while Dillard was serving a mission in Nepal. Through that acquaintance, Jim Bob decided Dillard would be a perfect match for Jill and connected the two of them long-distance. The couple met for the first time when Jill and Jim Bob traveled to Nepal to see him, an event that was on their family's show. The couple continued courting when Dillard returned to the US and they were married by 2014. Not long after the wedding, they announced that they were expecting their first child.
2. The Dillards did overseas missionary work.
Early in their marriage, publicity about the Duggar family exploded with the revelation that eldest son Josh had molest multiple young girls, incljuding Jill and several other sisters. In the wake of the scandal, the Dillards decided to go live overseas doing work as missionaries in El Salvador. TLC revamped the family's show and renamed it Jill and Jessa: Counting On, which followed each daughter's family as they continued to try and live a religious life overseas. The Dillards returned to the U.S. ten months later, where they had a second son and continued filming until 2017, when another scandal pushed them out of the show.
3. Dillard slammed another TLC star.
In 2017, TLC started promoting their new show I Am Jazz about transgender teen Jazz Jennings and her family. Dillard took to social media to criticize the network saying " “What an oxymoron… a ‘reality’ show which follows a non-reality. ‘Transgender’ is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it’s ordained by God.” While the entire Duggar clan has been known to hold anti-LGBTQ+ views, the brazen critique of a fellow TLC family was enough to get the Dillards axed from the show. The Dillard family stopped appearing on TLC after the social media showdown.
4. But was that really the reason?
In the years since the Dillards stopped having TLC cameras around, they have let a few details slip that makes it seem like being on that show was never their choice in the first place and they never got paid for it at all. In series of now-deleted tweets in late 2019, Dillard told fans they had been pressured to be on the Counting On in its early years due to contract obligations and feared they would be sued if they didn't do it. They later realized they didn't actually have contracts themselves; Jim Bob Duggar was the one with the TLC contract. He made all the decisions. Moreover, he allegedly got all the money from the contract and olny gave it to the kids as he saw fit. They didn't draw a salary from the show.
Dillard says he and Jill were never paid for being on TV.
5. Jill is barely allowed to see her family now.
Not only did the Dillards stop participating on the show, but they also started doing other things that don't fit with the typical Duggar mold. For one thing, Dillard has decided to go to law school. He's the only person associated with the Duggar family to seek an advanced degree in anything other than ministry type work. Jill has also started bucking the wardrobe rules she followed as a child and wears things like pants and shorts, clothes that were forbidden when she was a child. Most recently, the couple enrolled their son in public school for kindergarten. Not one of the Duggar kids ever set foot in public school; they were all homeschooled according to a strictly Christian curriculum.
These deviations from the Duggar norm have not gone unnoticed by Jim Bob and Michelle. According to more now-deleted tweets from Derick, the parents have decided that Jill needs to stay away from her siblings unless she has proper permission and supervision. Jill, who has training as a certified professional midwife, even had to ask permission to come over and help her sister during labor, despite her sister specifically asking for her to be there.
6. Is Jill Duggar feuding with her parents?
All the information we have about that relationship comes from Dillard and he sure makes it sound like the ties that bind Jill to her family are strained. They have been spending holidays by themselves instead of with the rest of the Duggars recently, though Jill did join her mother as sisters recently for a special brunch and shopping trip. As for Jill, she never hints at trouble on her social media pages. Neither do Jim Bob and Michelle, which is hardly surprising. The image of a happy united family is their brand and they don't want to ruin that.
Jill saw her sisters, but not at her parents' house.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.