Jinger Duggar is never going to have a family as big as the 19 Kids and Counting family she was born into. Being one of 19 kids is a unique life that few can understand, and after living with that many siblings for so long, it’s no surprise that Jinger isn’t interested in following in her mom’s footsteps.
The Duggar family has become infamous for some of their child care methods, including the way the oldest daughters were required to care for several of their younger siblings. Being responsible for younger siblings when they’re still children themselves is a pressure the Duggar daughters know too well. And now that she’s a mom, Jinger isn’t willing to put her daughters in the same position.
Jinger didn’t have the same feelings about kids as some of her siblings.
“I was never the one who was like, ‘Give me your kids. I’m gonna go babysit your kids for you.’ Some of my siblings are more geared that way. They’re all about watching everyone’s kids, holding their kids,” Jinger said on the most recent episode of the Unplanned podcast.
She also revealed that having a large family as an adult was “something that I was always kind of a little bit afraid of.” But despite not having much interest in caring for her siblings, Jinger knew that motherhood was in her future.
Having a large family genuinely scared her.
“I just was really afraid of the thought of having as many [kids] as possible, but that was my destiny. That was gonna be it. I was gonna get married and have a lot of kids,” she said, adding that on 19 Kids and Counting, she would repeat “I’m just gonna have as many kids as possible” — something she said knowing that she was “so afraid” of it actually happening to her.
She couldn’t fathom the life she saw other women living.
Jinger went on to call having so many kids a “burden,” recalling how she’d see moms be put on bed rest due to having so many pregnancies.
“As soon as she was done, three months later, she gets pregnant again,” she explained. “It happens perpetually until she can’t have kids anymore.” She didn’t call out her own mother, but we can only imagine what she saw at home.
Jinger called out the imbalance of child care responsibilities she witnessed.
As a kid, Jinger had two siblings that she was responsible for helping with chores, music practice, and schoolwork. “I think that looking at that system, it is imbalanced,” she explained. “I think that parents should take care of their kids. If you have them, you should take care of them. Kids can help out, learn responsibility in other ways, but maybe not in the motherly aspects of what moms or dads should be doing.”
She added, “You have all these imbalances of kids raising kids. I think that I saw that a lot in the system and I think that that is unhealthy.”
Her views of motherhood changed after she became an adult.
When Jinger realized that she could have control over how many kids she had, she said she felt like a “massive weight” was lifted from her shoulders. She said deciding when to have kids felt like a “sweeter situation” to the idea of constantly cranking them out.
She and her husband Jeremy Vuolo have two daughters, Felicity and Evangaline. When asked if they plan to expand their family, she replied, “We’ll let y’all know.”