Anna Duggar’s Choice Sparks Debate About Baby Modesty, Amy Duggar Tweets About Cheating Devastation
Anna Duggar’s little girl is spending a lot of time with various relatives while her father completes a stint in a faith-based “School of Discipleship,” so it’s not surprising that a picture of the little girl recently popped up on the Instagram page of Amy Duggar’s husband, Dillon King. However, what is surprising to some fans of the Duggar family is Anna Duggar’s wardrobe choice: her baby girl is wearing pants.
Had the photo featured anyone else’s baby, most of the Instagram comments would have been about how adorable the child is, how big she’s getting, and how cute her outfit is. However, because Anna Duggar and her husband, Josh Duggar, follow the teachings of the ultra-conservative Christian organizations founded by Bill Gothard, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), the comments underneath Dillon King’s Instagram photo have turned into a debate about baby modesty and exactly how long little girls should be allowed to wear pants without a skirt over them. This is because Gothard was against members of the fairer sex wearing pants — he believed that women and girls should dress modestly in skirts and dresses.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Michelle Duggar’s Gothard-approved outfit of choice for her young daughters is a dress or skirt with leggings underneath. Michelle Duggar says that the leggings keep the little girls modest, and she explains that women and girls should wear skirts and dresses to define themselves as female. She doesn’t say whether she thinks there’s a certain age that girls should start wearing skirts and whether pants are okay for baby girls up to a certain point, and Anna Duggar has said even less about her own personal views on dressing children modestly. However, most longtime Duggar fans probably assume that Josh Duggar followed in his parents’ footsteps when deciding how Anna Duggar should dress their daughters.
Because there doesn’t seem to be a set Duggar rule on dresses and babies, the photo below that shows Anna Duggar’s daughter wearing a pair of tiny blue jeans has caused quite a bit of buzz. For her visit with Amy and Dillon King, Meredith Grace Duggar rocked her dark-wash denim with a floral top and a sea foam-colored coat. Her look also included a white headband and matching shoes with mesh pompoms on the toes.
As Sheknows reports, some Instagram commenters were shocked to see Anna Duggar’s daughter wearing pants.
“She’s such a cutie. I’m happy that Anna let her wear pants!” @freejanaduggar wrote.
“Omg they let the little girl wear pants. She is too cute for words!” @kimberlyann0287 commented.
However, some commenters didn’t see what the big deal was. One modesty fan said that pants on a little girl are okay up to a certain point, and she shared the age she believes girls should be banned from wearing pants without skirts over them.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter if baby girls wear pants. As long as they wear skirts when they are like 6 then it’s okay in my book,” @sweet_girly3 wrote.
Another commenter said that “little ones need modesty too,” while another wrote that it was “creepy” that people were having a conversation about how much skin is okay for a baby girl to show. However, as Gawker reports, the ATI homeschool materials used by the Duggars do seem to suggest that immodest babies and young children can cause serious problems, including sexual abuse. In a document titled “Lessons From Moral Failures in a Family,” an older boy who sexually molests his young siblings blames their immodest dress for his actions.
“Modesty was a factor,” the ATI handout reads. “It was not at the level it should have been in my family. It was not uncommon for my younger siblings to come out of their baths naked or with a towel. They would often run around the house for the next twenty minutes until my mom or sister got to dressing them.”
“Changing my younger sisters’ diapers when they were really young may not have been a big thing, but it really did not have to be that way (if we had only applied Levitical law). My younger sisters used to wear dresses often, but as they were young and not aware of modesty, they did not behave in them as they should.”
So ATI followers are seemingly taught that the same modesty standards that women and older girls are expected to follow should also apply to babies and younger children. Perhaps Anna Duggar isn’t adhering to the strict rules as much these days because her husband isn’t home. After admitting to cheating on his wife and looking at internet pornography, Josh Duggar left Anna and his four children behind to spend a few months holed up at the Reformers Unanimous School of Discipleship in Illinois. Anna Duggar’s husband will likely be gone for a few more months.
Josh’s cousin, Amy Duggar, possibly hinted that his actions are still causing Anna Duggar serious pain. On November 15, she shared a few tweets that might be about Anna’s situation. One was about the devastation that cheating on a spouse can cause, and it’s possible that Amy decided to share the message with her followers because she’s sees how much Anna and her children have been suffering lately. The other tweet was an encouraging one about getting out of a bad situation.
Visualize the devastation before you cheat on your spouse. @craiggroeschel
— AmyRking (@amyduggar) November 15, 2015
The further away from the situation that you are, the stronger you’ll get.
— AmyRking (@amyduggar) November 15, 2015
Amy Duggar isn’t as strict as her cousins when it comes to how she dresses and the way she lives her life, and she has been spending time with Anna Duggar lately. Do you think that the Duggars’ “rebel” cousin might be rubbing off on Anna and trying to convince her to leave Josh?
[Image via Duggar Family Official Facebook]
