Jinger Duggar Finally Reveals Her True Thoughts on Birth Control and Alcohol
Jinger Duggar Vuolo has opened up about her childhood and where her adult beliefs have veered from those of her parents.
In her upbringing, the former 19 Kids and Counting star learned that using birth control and consuming alcohol were sins. Now that she’s a married adult, and a mother herself, she revealed how her feelings have changed from what her parents initially taught her on those subjects.
Why Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar stopped using birth control
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar followed the teachings of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Based on those beliefs, they made their children abide by strict rules about dating, dancing, birth control, and drinking alcohol, among a list of other things.
In an interview with ABC News, Vuolo said she had a “sweet childhood” in some ways. However, she also grew up terrified of being punished for her sins, no matter how minor. For example, she recalled hearing a story of a boy who died in a car accident, and it was presented to her as if it had happened because he’d listened to music with drums.
Notably, early in Jim Bob and Michelle’s marriage, they used birth control, and she got pregnant despite that. After experiencing a miscarriage, they connected her use of oral contraceptives with the traumatic event. They thought they were being punished and stopped using birth control, eventually having 19 kids.
Jinger Duggar Vuolo reveals she ‘no longer’ sees birth control as ‘totally wrong’
Vuolo’s memoir Becoming Free Indeed details her upbringing in her parents’ strict religious belief system and her decision to forge a new path with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo. She said he played a vital role in opening her to new ways of thinking and realizing she didn’t have to obey her parents’ beliefs as an adult.
And though the mom of two daughters didn’t say she uses birth control, she told People she had completely changed her feelings on that subject. She said, “I always thought that was totally wrong,” but added, “I just no longer see it as that. I definitely have changed.”
Jinger Duggar Vuolo thinks others should have the ‘liberty to drink if they so choose’
While talking to People, Vuolo also touched on her feelings about drinking alcohol, explaining she no longer believes it to be a sin. She explained, “On every topic, I have had to come back and say, ‘Well, what does God’s word actually say?'”
“The Bible is very clear about drinking, and it simply says that alcohol is not a sin. Jesus made wine at a wedding,” she added.
Vuolo doesn’t partake, but she doesn’t care if others do. “I don’t have a problem with other Christians [drinking alcohol],” she declared. “It’s their liberty to drink if they so choose.”
At this point, the former Counting On star finds some of her old beliefs laughable. “I could be so consumed with that — with having a chaperone, with not kissing before you’re married, and not holding hands before you’re engaged,” she noted. “All of these things that I had set up for myself that now I kind of laugh at.”
