Jinger Duggar Admits Relationship With Her Parents Is 'Not Perfect' But She's 'Grateful'

Jinger Duggar Vuolo is offering an update on the state of her relationship with her family. The 30-year-old Becoming Free Indeed author addressed her current dynamic with parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, as well as her numerous siblings, in a new podcast conversation. 

Jinger appeared alongside her husband, former soccer pro Jeremy Vuolo, on Wednesday's episode of The Unplanned Podcast, to discuss their courtship, family and the former TLC reality star's break from her ultra-conservative upbringing under the teachings of disgraced pastor Bill Gothard.

"I love them," she said of her parents. "We have differences. Everything's not perfect between us. But I think that, at the end of the day, I love them and I know that they know that."

Jinger -- who currently lives in Los Angeles, California, while the majority of her family members remain in their home state of Arkansas -- shared that she maintains close contact with her family through phone calls, FaceTimes and a series of group chats with the supersized brood. 

"I try to call my mom regularly, and call her and see what she's up to," Jinger said. "I talk to all my older sisters often." 

Jinger wrote about her faith journey and family life in her 2023 book, Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear. Co-written with Corey Williams, Jinger's book made it clear from the outset that it is not meant to be a tell-all about her reality TV-famous family, but rather an exploration of how she set about "disentangling" herself from Gothard's Institute in Basic Life Principles. Jinger and her siblings -- 19 children in total -- were raised under the teachings of IBLP, which espouses a conservative Christian lifestyle that includes modest dress, female subservience, homeschooling and large families. 

"I’m grateful for my childhood," Jinger said on Unplanned. "It was not perfect. I shared a lot of difficulties that I struggled with throughout my childhood, but at the end of the day, I'm grateful for my parents."

Jinger also explained how she delicately navigated the balance of expressing her own changing beliefs while maintaining a loving relationship with her family members. 

"I ultimately want to play a long game of showing them that, 'OK, I love you. I know that we disagree on a lot, but I want you to see that I'm walking with Christ and this is what I'm doing,'" she said. "I don't feel like it's a sin to live my life in this way, to do what I'm convicted of now, and I want them to see, long term, those things, but I don't have a heart to, like, rub it in their face."

She admitted that those initial conversations were "hard." 

"They don't have to be happy about it, but it's what I need to do," she said of Jim Bob and Michelle. 

"I am honoring them," she also noted. "Honoring doesn't mean obeying. It doesn't mean doing everything they say." 

Jinger married Jeremy in 2016, and the couple has gone on to welcome two daughters: Felicity, 5, and Evangeline, 3. 

"Once I realized that, OK I don't need to have as many kids as possible, I just felt like a massive weight off of my shoulders," Jinger said on Unplanned. "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!' Instead of the burden of kid after kid, 'I'm just getting over having a baby and I'm having another baby.' Sometimes that happens, but it's not a burden."

She added, "As a couple, we are our own family unit and so I need to love and honor my parents, which means respect them, but I don't have to bow down to everything that they say I need to do. That, for me, was very clear."

Beyond declaring her own independence, Jinger said she hoped that her book would help the rest of her family also separate from IBLP. 

"I wanted just to play a long game with my family relationships, to preserve those," she said. "To be able to be a good influence on them, to get them out of these teachings, was my goal."

Becoming emotional, she called the writing process "the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was the right thing to do." 

She added that she has lost friends in the process.

"I think it is painful, like, when you leave everything that you've known and you sacrifice relationships over it -- it's hard," she tearfully said. 

Last year, Jinger spoke with ET about her parents and her childhood. 

"People can try to put stuff back on my parents, but ultimately, I look at that all of those years they poured into me and sought to give me their best," she said. "They were promised that this would bring their kids success and God would be so pleased with them, so I saw that that was their heart all along and they really were loving and faithful parents."

Jinger said at the time that she was fairly confident that her parents would read her book.

"I think they want to hear from my perspective, my story," she said, though she didn't go so far as to predict what they might think of what she's written. "I think I'll let them speak for themselves once they're ready to speak, if they're wanting to, once they read the book and give feedback on it -- it will be interesting to hear."

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