19 Kids and Counting alum Jinger Duggar‘s latest book reveals some unexpected details about the effects of her ultra-conservative upbringing.
In People Pleaser: Breaking Free From the Burden of Imaginary Expectations, which debuted Tuesday, January 14, the 31-year-old revealed that she didn’t learn to swim as a kid due to the constraints of her family’s modest wardrobe. (Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar raised their 19 children as followers of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, with women expected to wear dresses or skirts falling at least to knee-length.)
“Since I was a little girl, I wanted to know what it felt like to push myself through the water, to swing my arms and kick my legs to keep me at the surface. But I didn’t know how,” Jinger wrote. “Here’s what I did know for sure: Long skirts were not designed for learning how to swim.”
Jinger went on to joke that “the laws of physics, gravity and buoyancy don’t play well with long skirts,” explaining that she gave swimming a try when she was younger — and it didn’t go well. “Another way of saying ‘long-skirt swimmer’ is ‘one who sinks,’” she added. “And because long skirts were the only swimming fashion available to me as a kid, and because I had a thing about not wanting to sink, the skill of swimming was not something I picked up during that time.”
Every Time Duggar Kids Broke a Family Rule: Jinger Wearing Pants and More
The former reality star admitted that being around “water of all kinds” felt “scary” without knowing how to swim. As an adult, however, Jinger has begun to dip a toe in since welcoming daughters Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 4, with husband Jeremy Vuolo. (Jinger announced in October 2024 that she’s pregnant with the pair’s third baby.)
“I want [my kids] to know how to swim. I want them to know that I can too,” Jinger wrote. “But I was still so scared, thinking back to the few times I’d tried as a kid, the long skirt encasing my flailing legs.”
Jinger was initially “hesitant” to try again — her people-pleasing tendencies made her “scared to fail” — but she found comfort in a friend named Rebekah, who helped her learn.
“We’re still at it, my swimming lessons, taking it baby step by baby step (or maybe I should say baby lap by baby lap),” Jinger wrote.
People Pleaser isn’t the first time Jinger has discussed her experience with dressing modestly. In May 2021, Jinger opened up about making the choice to break free from the rules of her upbringing.
Jinger Duggar’s ‘Becoming Free Indeed’ Book Revelations
“My mom had always dressed us girls in skirts and dresses, a standard that was taken from Deuteronomy 22:5, which says, ‘A woman shall not wear a man’s garment,’” she wrote in her second book, The Hope We Hold. “Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest. But I wanted to discover for myself what the Bible had to say.”
Jinger explained that she started “digging into” the deeper meaning behind familiar passages of scripture after she married Vuolo, 37, in 2016. She realized that modesty isn’t “only about what you wear” but is also “about the position of your heart.” Jinger also “never found a passage specifically forbidding women from wearing pants.”
Last year, Jinger recalled the first time she wore pants around her parents. “The first few times I went back [home], I was not wearing pants. I wore a skirt just to honor [them],” she said on the “Unplanned” podcast. “That’s a big deal for my family, and my heart is not to rub anything in anyone’s face and be like, ‘I’m doing this. I’m doing my own thing.’ … It’s not to make them mad.”
People Pleaser: Breaking Free From the Burden of Imaginary Expectations is available now.
