What we can learn from Jill Duggar’s new book, Counting the Cost

Have you seen the media’s many shock headlines about Jill Duggar’s new tell-all book? I was tracking the release of Counting the Cost for several months before it came out. This was one I knew I had to read! (If you do buy it, use one of my Amazon links. I am an Amazon affiliate and collect small advertising fees).

Back in the heyday of “19 Kids and Counting,” I was a big fan of the Duggar family as a whole. I read Michelle’s book, watched the show, and wrote articles about what I learned from them.

Despite the family’s odd way of dressing, Michelle Duggar inspired me to try out thrift store shopping, have more children, and question my dependence on hormonal birth control. If the whole truth be told, she probably also was a contributing factor to my decision to home school my boys for a couple of years.

They made home schooling look so fun and freeing on their show. (And my kids did think it was a blast).

So it was not all bad things that came from the Duggar craze. Thrift store shopping and viewing children in a favorable light are excellent values. Sure.

We could do without the guilt about our clothes, internet use, and our need to use the public schools though.

I could tell Jill Duggar had other thoughts to share on the topic of the Duggar lifestyle, so I dove right into her book.

The thing was I never had peace with all of their extra stringent rules. I wrote all about my feelings on the Duggar methods in this post back in 2015.

My excitement to read Jill’s book is ironic because I refused to read Prince Harry’s book. I felt like he was betraying his own family. You might say Jill was doing the same, but for me it hit different. I just had to see what Jill had to say.

And y’all, Jill has much to say. I think she wrote Counting the Cost to set the record straight and tell her side of the story. She doesn’t want a whole generation of Christian parents out there thinking if we do everything like the Duggars, everything will be okay. There are problems, and she wants us to know that.

I won’t give away the whole book. It seems like that’s what every other sensational headline is doing. (Click bait headlines annoy me so much.)

Jill takes us from childhood until today and tells us what everyday life was like behind the scenes of all of the family’s t.v. shows.

An important question for me was if Jill trashes her own family in her book.

The answer is no. However, her feelings of betrayal towards her father, Jim Bob, do come out loud and clear. She tells her side of being in this famous family and explains to us all of the negative side effects that the show had on her family.

Power and money are corruptive forces. Maybe that’s why God has never allowed me to have much, or maybe it’s my own laziness, but I digress…

What the other articles you read about Counting the Cost won’t tell you is that Jill also praises how fun it was to be a kid in the big family growing up, especially before the t.v. show began.

This book is not at all a horror story. I think it’s more a story of how you can take a wholesome family with maybe some extreme beliefs, add money and fame, and create a little bit of disaster.

My biggest takeaways from Counting the Cost:

#1. Never ever agree to film a reality show in your house about you and your family. This literally never turns out well.

#2. Power corrupts people. They never want to lose that power once they have it.

#3. Money corrupts people. They get greedy.

#4. There are major rifts in the Duggar family as a result of the years on television and the way that Jim Bob managed the profits, using their grown children but usually not paying them.

If you put your kids under contract with a t.v. show, they should be paid for that.

#5. Forgiveness: Jill and Derick and Jim Bob and Michelle are going to need to come to a place of forgiveness in order to restore healthy family relationships going forward.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean allowing the bad behavior. It means you acknowledge the wrong that was done and let your bitterness go. Forgiveness can be difficult to do, but it hurts the person harboring the hurt feelings more than the person who has not been forgiven.

Jill’s sister Jinger also wrote a book this year criticizing the beliefs her family practiced. Apparently, the Duggars are faithful followers of the Basic Life Principles of Bill Gothard, which I had never heard of before. That book is worth reading too, though I have not read all of it yet.

Jinger’s book is not as critical of her parents and does not give us the tea that Jill provided, from what I understand. I only listened to the first couple of chapters of Becoming Free Indeed on Audible.

Any time you expose family drama, you hurt your family relationships. Granted, Jim Bob asked for this trouble when he held his family up on television as an example for how he thought we should live.

As the Duggar children grow up, they are having to sort out their own beliefs just as we all do.

But when it feels like your parents are opposed to everything you want to do, that’s extra challenging. My heart goes out to these girls especially, as the rules seem to affect women the most.

Jill now wears pants and sends her kids to public school, just like I do. I firmly believe Jill and I could be good friends, and I warmly wish her the best.

In the book you learn that due to a television contract that Jim Bob tricked her into signing, Jill and Derick were not allowed to be missionaries with the International Mission Board. Of course, that leads to hurt feelings.

The Dillards’ problems with the Duggar t.v. contracts partially inspired Derick Dillard to become a lawyer, because of the way they were bound by a contract that they did not get to even read until it was too late.

My hope is that the Duggars and Dillards can find forgiveness for each other.

This book was excellent. Jill actually hired a ghostwriter, Craig Borlase, to help her write her story. I read the whole thing in two sittings, and honestly I don’t often finish the books that I start.

You can find Counting the Cost just about everywhere books are sold.