Duggar Family Puts A Lid On It With Rules Galore
The Duggar family is one big family with an even bigger list of rules of forbidden deeds. Some of these Duggar forbidden activities are things folks take for granted every day, as they certainly don’t seem taboo to the average person. It is a given that many folks are at home watching TV at night in this nation. Chances are the TV is not only on in your home but in your neighbor’s home as well.
If your neighbors happen to be one of the many branchings out of the Duggar family members, then while you are watching TV at night, you can bank on it that your neighbors are not doing the same. If they are Duggars and following the rules to the T, then they don’t even own a TV set.
In Touch Weekly wonders how the Duggar family members can find out what the rest of the world thinks of them without getting to watch TV, listening to the radio, or reading a tabloid, all of which are taboo in a Duggar family home.
The Duggar family and their beliefs are controversial and they have two very distinct groups in the public of supporters and non-supporters of their beliefs. The recent scuttlebutt over a “liked” tweet started a firestorm for Jill Duggar’s husband, Derek Dillard. He was being chastised for “liking” a tweet that talked about the LGBT community in a positive light. It originated from Richard Grenell, who is a spokesperson for the United Nations.
Dillard liked the tweet that said, “No one should be fired for being gay. And no one should be fired for being a Christian. We should be able to work through these issues.” That would be the loving and peaceful thing to do and say, but when Dillard “liked” what Grenell had to say, those who follow the rules of the Duggars got up in arms. The Duggar children’s views don’t fall far from the tree, like an apple. Michelle Duggar, the matriarch of the family, has an anti-LGBT mindset, as seen below in a tweet.
aside from Michelle Duggar's transphobic robocall in 2014, the Duggars keep their anti-lgbtq views relatively quiet https://t.co/2rs9ybWl1m
— Joanna Arcieri (@cinefille) August 3, 2017
This “like” was not only seen as going against their religious teachings but the family as well. Josh Duggar, who is Dillard’s brother-in-law, is a big advocate against homosexuality, believing it is a “sin and abomination,” according to Blasting News. The rules are the rules and this was a big “no” when it came to the Duggar family’s rules to live by.
Another example of what many believe is very backward thinking has to do with Jill Duggar, who is a midwife. She was all set to help her friend deliver her baby and was looking forward to it when that helping hand was squashed by her parents. Anna Duggar’s sister, Susanna Keller, wanted Jill as her midwife when her baby was born, but Jill was forbidden to do so by her mother Michelle Duggar. You see, Susanna wasn’t married and having a baby out of wedlock is a sin, according to the Duggar’s beliefs.
It wasn’t enough just to keep Jill away from the baby’s birth, the family cut ties with the new mom. This was in spite of the fact that Susanna is the sister of Josh Duggar’s wife, Anna. Anna Duggar is a woman who weathered one of the biggest infidelity storms in headlines when Josh was caught as a client of Ashley Madison, a professional hook-up service for married people.
Reports had him spending nearly $1,000 to carry multiple accounts with the service, according to the Daily Mail back in 2015. Yet his sister couldn’t attend his sister-in-law’s birth because the baby was born out of wedlock.
Then Anna weathered the horrendous scandal that happened more than a decade earlier but only revealed itself years later while she was married to Josh. It was something he had done while still a teen, and unlike the Ashley Madison scandal, he wasn’t married at the time. He confessed to molesting young girls, with four of them being his sisters, according to KTLA News from back in 2015. He did this as a teenager, but it took the form of a modern-day scandal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc62p6rQLV8
Probably one of the hardest rules to enforce is the one that bans members of the family from listening to modern music. Jill Duggar once clarified the rule as a “necessary one.” According to In Touch Weekly, Jill offered up the excuse for this rule by saying, “We don’t want to stir up desires, just different things that, um, cannot be…righteously fulfilled, that cannot be, um, I don’t know, so, anyway, our family has chosen not to dance.”
A lot of the rules have to do with female-male relationships, like the one where hugs can only be given from the side until you are married. Another rule has to do with even the younger kids, as males in the Duggar family are not allowed to be alone with females of the family. They can’t babysit or have one of their sisters sit on their laps. The In Touch Weekly folks find this rule “by far the most disturbing.”
Social media is not for anyone who is not married in the Duggar family. This is why you only see the adult kids tweet and post on Facebook; it’s because they are married and that’s the only time in their lives they are allowed to have a social media account.
The Duggars don’t date. They court, which means they have a chaperone with them at all times. That chaperone is either an older sibling or a parent. Forget about kissing, even hugging and hand-holding are not allowed during the courting stage. To court someone is to court a prospective spouse; there is no such thing as casual courting with the Duggars, as it is the first stage of the marriage dance.
Michelle Duggar on First Time Meeting Jim Bob Duggar: 'I Felt that God Knit Our Hearts Together' https://t.co/uXxl0zcluF
— The Gospel Herald (@TheGospelHerald) July 19, 2017
Mama Duggar, Michelle, once divulged a wifely rule to the masses during an interview that caused jaws to drop all around the living rooms of the nation. This is a rule she follows herself and she passes it along to her daughters once they get married. While even the thought of sex is taboo before marriage, sex and a lot of it is a wife’s duty to her husband once that ring is on your finger.
According to In Touch, Michelle conveyed that if a husband demands sex, they [wives] must give it freely.” It was during an interview with Today back in 2014 when Michelle offered up her words of wisdom. She said,
“There will be times you’re going to be very exhausted. Your hubby comes home after a hard day’s work, you get the baby to bed, and he is going to be looking forward to that time with you. Anyone can fix him lunch, but only one person can meet that physical need of love that he has, and you always need to be available when he calls.”
As the Duggar kids grew up right before the fans’ eyes, some of the girls took on husbands and some of the boys took on wives. Duggar rules seem to indicate that husbands can make up their own rules for their wives.
Take Joy-Anna, who hates wearing dresses, but her husband likes her in dresses so they stay. When Jinger Duggar donned a pair of shorts, fans thought they were seeing things. While there were rules against them in the Duggar family, because her husband doesn’t mind shorts, they were fine for Jinger because they have her husband’s stamp of approval.
As far as Joy-Anna goes, she once admitted that “I don’t really have fashion. I just kind of wear whatever Austin likes.” She revealed this during an episode of Jill & Jessa: Counting On.
[Featured Image by Dirk Ercken/Shutterstock]
