Olivia Plath From ‘Welcome to Plathville’ Says Fundamentalist Families Often Have ‘Skeletons In the Closet’ 

Olivia Plath wants people to look beyond the picture-perfect facade of reality TV. The star of TLC’s Welcome to Plathville says that shows like 19 Kids and Counting gave fundamentalist Christian families a powerful platform to share their conservative worldview. But those seemingly harmless shows hide the dark side of their lifestyle. 

Olivia Plath says she was raised in a ‘cult’

In a new interview with Teen Vogue, Olivia opened up about her childhood in the “fundamental Christian world” which she described as “a cult.” 

“I was a pastor’s kid, I grew up on a farm, I was homeschooled, so my life was very isolated,” she recalled. “By the time I was 13, I was being given books on how to be the best wife possible, so from a very young age I assumed that what was expected from me in life as a woman, and what I was told what was expected of me as a woman was to get married and to have kids and to be a stay at home mom.”

Initially, Olivia seemed to be following the path her parents laid out for her. At 20, she “got married super young to another kid from a fundamental world” – Ethan Plath. As Olivia and Ethan embarked on their life together as newlyweds, Olivia was already starting to question some aspects of her upbringing. That led to serious conflict with her in-laws and, eventually, her husband. In October 2023, the couple announced they were divorcing after five years together. 

As Olivia started the process of reassessing and reformulating her beliefs, she also began to look critically at reality shows – including Welcome to Plathville – that portray a cozy, wholesome image of the conservative, patriarchal lifestyle she was in the process of rejecting. 

The ‘Welcome to Plathville’ star calls out the Duggar family  

The Plaths are hardly the only big Christian family to get their own reality show. There was also the Bates family (Bringing Up Bates and United Bates of America), the Willis family (The Willis Family), and the Putnams (Meet the Putnams). But the most popular were the Duggars who stared in19 Kids and Counting and Counting On. All those shows tended to focus on the quirky aspects of big family life, like massive grocery hauls, or celebratory moments, like the birth of another child. 

“For many years, fundamentalist Christian families have been given a platform and been idolized on TV without people actually understanding what’s going on behind the scenes,” Olivia said. “Everyone looks at it like, these are large families with siblings who love each other and everybody’s close, and that’s something that’s missing in families today. These are families that are living off the land or being out in nature, there are so many good things here that we’re not seeing in today’s kids.”

But the feel-good programming glossed over a darker reality, according to Olivia. She specifically called out the Duggar family, who had both of their reality shows canceled after eldest son Josh Duggar was accused of sexual abuse and possessing child pornography. (He was convicted of the latter charge in 2021 and is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence.)

“People aren’t talking about what actually happens behind the scenes, but if you look at the fundamental world, if you look at these fundamental families that are put on pedestals” people will find “skeletons in the closet,” she claimed. 

“There are a lot of really ugly things that hide behind [it],” Olivia added. 

“If you are going to idolize a fundamental lifestyle for the seemingly good, wholesome things, you also have to talk about the other side of it where people are being harmed and not believed when they talk about it,” Olivia said.

With that in mind, Olivia says she’s committed to appearing in Welcome to Plathville Season 6 if the show is renewed by TLC. 

​​ “You have to show what happens when someone walks away from it,” she said. “You have to show what happens when someone questions it. Otherwise it’s just, it’s not the full story.”

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