‘Counting On’ Fans think Lauren Duggar Has Changed a Lot Since Marrying Into the Family
The Duggar family doesn’t live the modern lifestyle that most American families do. Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar are Baptists, and they take their religion very seriously. They’ve raised their children with strict rules and values, and the kids tend to marry very young.
Josiah Duggar married then-18-year-old Lauren Swanson back in 2018. And fans think that she’s changed a lot since marrying into the family.
The Duggars don’t wait long to get married
Michelle and Jim Bob started dating when they were in high school, and they wed when they were only 17 and 19, respectively. Since then, the two have welcomed 19 kids — and have held firm on their disbelief in birth control methods. Now that many of the Duggars are over 18, plenty have already courted, married, and started families of their own.
Many people with deep ties to religion see children as blessings from God. And part of the reason the Duggars have so many kids is to raise families who will spread God’s word. This means the kids tend to marry young, which allows them to start families early in life and have plenty of children.
Lauren was only 18 when she wed Josiah
Most of the Duggars wait until their mid-twenties to marry, with the exception of Joy, who wed Austin Forsyth when she was 19. But Lauren Swanson (now Lauren Duggar) was only 18 when she married Josiah, and the two started trying for a baby right away.
In 2018, only a few months after the two had wed, they learned they were expecting their first child. But within a short amount of time, Lauren realized she’d miscarried. She opened up about her loss on the show, once saying that she felt like she had nothing to live for now that she’d lost her baby. Several months later, the two announced they were expecting once again, and Lauren delivered a healthy baby girl in November 2019.
Fans think she’s trying too hard now that she’s a Duggar
When Lauren first joined the family, she always looked very trendy but cute; it was hard to tell she lived a sheltered life for so many years. But in time, her style has shifted a bit; fans think she’s now trying “too hard” to look like a celebrity.
“Once [Lauren] got all intermingled with the Duggars and saw how fashionable and trendy the Bates girls are, I think she started trying too hard and it shows,” one user wrote on Reddit. Others thought Lauren’s pose with her daughter in a recent Instagram photo looked too staged, which is something else the Duggars have been called out on before. “She looks like she’s trying so damn hard to make it look like she’s bonded with that baby in every posed picture,” someone else wrote.
It’s been largely believed that Duggar women must conform to their husband’s rules
The Duggar family’s values prioritize the men as the head of household. This means that when the women wed, they follow their husband’s rules rather than the rules their family set. It explains why Jinger has led a much more modern life since marrying Jeremy Vuolo; he wasn’t raised the same way she was.
Now that Lauren is more well-known than she used to be, her fashion sense has shifted. But she still dresses very modestly despite wanting to be on trend. It’s possible that Josiah set some new family rules when it came to how to dress. Or, it could be the opposite — maybe she’s exploring her own fashion sense even more, and it’s leading her to dress differently than before.
