’19 Kids And Counting’: Jill Duggar Says Short Engagement Was To Prevent Sex Before Marriage

The dating and marriage rules of the 19 Kids And Counting family may be considered outmoded or Victorian to some, but Jill Duggar is saying her short engagement was designed to prevent her “God-given desires” from getting out of control.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, Jessa Duggar’s first kiss will be a planned event and now that Jill Duggar’s pregnancy announcement is official for 19 Kids And Counting she has been talking about morning sickness and cravings.

Apparently, there are rumors floating around about the 19 Kids And Counting show that the Duggar girls could not help themselves and supposedly broke their chastity vows before marriage. Jill flat-out denies those rumors and even says she and her new husband Derrick Dillard planned a short engagement so they would not have to give into those cravings.

“We prayed a lot, prepared and really didn’t see any reason to have a long courtship and engagement,” Duggar told the New York Post. “Once we knew we wanted to get married, we didn’t want to put off the wedding for a long time and provide a stumbling block for ourselves; We purposed to save ourselves physically for each other within marriage (even our first kiss for our wedding day!), so we had a short engagement period.”

Jill admits that the temptation to give into having sex before marriage becomes difficult when planning a longer engagement.

“You may not wanna push the wedding date out too far, as those natural God-given desires with too much time between engagement and marriage can make it harder to remain pure,” the 23-year-old said. “If you are financially ready, and things are in place (which should be at the time the question is popped), we believe an engagement should only be long enough to plan a wedding!”

When the Inquisitr previously reported on the courting methods shown in 19 Kids And Counting and their decision to marry so quickly, it was discussed how maintaining virginity for the wedding night is actually a blessing, not a curse.

“In fact, a study published in 2000 with the NCBI found that higher intelligence in teenagers corresponded to those who waited on sex. One study published in the May 2003 edition of the Journal of Marriage and Family claimed that ‘substantially higher risk of marital dissolution [divorce] if the woman both had sex with another man and cohabited with him.’ A more recent study from 2011 ‘found that 31 percent of women who had sex for the first time as teens divorced within five years’ and the ‘divorce rate for women who delayed sex until adulthood was far lower,’ dropping all the way down to 15 percent…. A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology questioned more than 2,000 married couples claimed… [claimed that] [c]ouples who waited on sex ‘reported their relationship stability level 22 percent higher than those who did not. Additionally with abstinence the value of relationship satisfaction rose by 20 percent, communication level was up by 12 percent and the sexual quality improved by 15 percent.'”

What do you think about Jill Duggar’s stance on short engagements and courting? Do you think the ideas about sex promoted by 19 Kids And Counting are healthy?