Father’s Day might be over, but Jinger Duggar is still feeling grateful for husband Jeremy Vuolo’s parenting skills.
“Happy belated Father’s Day @Jeremy_vuolo! Our girls are so blessed to have you as their daddy,” Jinger, 30, wrote via her Instagram Story on Thursday, June 20 alongside a photo of herself, Vuolo, 36, and their daughters Felicity, 5, and Evangeline, 3. “You are so selfless, fun, and kind. We love you more than words could ever describe 🖤.”
The 19 Kids and Counting alum also shared a video of Vuolo playing soccer at The Game of Legends soccer match in Ontario, California on Sunday, June 16.
“We got to watch @jeremy_vuolo play in @thegameoflegends.co by @culturebymoalifc on Father’s Day. What a game! 🔥,” she captioned the clip.
Duggar and Vuolo tied the knot in 2016. Their wedding, which marked their first time sharing a kiss, was documented on season 3 of 19 Kids and Counting. The TLC series centered on Duggar and her 18 siblings as they were raised with the fundamentalist Christian teachings of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Jinger’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, also starred on the show.
Jinger has since reexamined the values she was raised with, including IBLP founder Bill Gothard’s teaching that families should have as many children as possible.
“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 during an appearance on the “Unplanned” podcast earlier this month. “Even on the show, if you watch those shows, I’m sure I probably said multiple times, ‘I’m just gonna have as many kids as possible.’ I just say it over and over. But I was afraid. I was so afraid.”
Jinger added that she felt a “massive weight” lift from her shoulders when she realized she had control over the size of her family.
“I think it can be a sweeter situation where they’re coming in when you’re like, ‘Oh, we’d love to have a kid now, let’s have a kid,’” she said. “Instead of the burden of kid after kid.”
Jinger penned a book about her upbringing titled Becoming Free Indeed: Disentangling Faith From Fear, which was released in January 2023.
She said on “Unplanned” that it was “hard” to tell her family about the memoir, although she had a “clear conscience” because the book focused primarily on her experience with IBLP rather than on family drama.
“I chose to write my book from the perspective of the theology being the driving force, because I thought, ‘If my mom reads this, if my dad reads this, if my siblings read this, how are they gonna take it?’” she explained. “You can be offended that I say Bill Gothard is a false teacher, but I don’t want you to be offended over a petty thing that I might’ve said about you. So, I chose to keep it focused on the issues of the teaching that I was raised in [and] to keep it more broad where if anybody reads this coming out of a harmful teaching, they can be brought out of their teaching too.”
Jinger added that although her relationship with her parents is “not perfect,” she loves them and is “grateful” for them.
After Jinger and Vuolo’s time on 19 Kids and Counting — the show came to an end in 2015 after news broke that Jinger’s brother Josh Duggar molested multiple girls, some of whom were his sisters, when he was a teenager — they appeared in the spinoff series Counting On from 2015 to 2020.
TLC officially cut ties with the Duggar family in 2021 after Josh, 36, was arrested for receiving and possessing child pornography. He is currently serving a 12.5 year prison sentence following his May 2022 sentencing.
