Is Jill Duggar still estranged from dad Jim Bob Duggar? What her bombshell memoir reveals
Jill Duggar grew up in the spotlight – she and her 18 siblings – after her parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar landed their own TLC reality show in 2008, at the time known as 17 Kids and Counting.
In the over ten years that the Duggar family have been in the spotlight, they've never quite been able to escape criticism and scandal, in large part thanks to their association with Bill Gothard's religious organization the Institute in Basic Life Principles, and because of Josh, the eldest Duggar kid, who was found guilty of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse in 2021.
Despite the repeated controversies, Jill, the third oldest Duggar kid (after Josh and twins Jana and John-David) is carving out her own space in the spotlight, separate from her family's scandals and ultra-conservative Christian values.
The reality star, now 32, has just released her debut memoir, Counting the Cost, and in it, she does not hold back from exposing the mistreatment she felt at the hands of her family, her estrangement from her father, and the hypocrisy of her brother Josh, a convicted sex offender.
Is Jill Duggar estranged from her dad Jim Bob Duggar?
Regarding her strained relationship with her father, Jill previously maintained to People: "My father and I do not have one-on-one contact."
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Throughout the book, she accuses her dad of several betrayals. She claims Jim tricked her into signing a contract which subsequently ordered her to abide by any and all filming requirements, despite the fact that, she also alleges, for years she never received any income from her contributions to the show.
In the book, she also recalls a tense fight between her and her dad, which culminated with her telling him: "You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother."
Has Jill Duggar reconciled with her dad Jim Bob Duggar?
Towards the end of the book, Jill revisits an unlikely reconciliation with her dad after the birth of her third son, Freddy, who was born in 2022.
She revealed her father had never visited her and her husband Derick Dillard at the Oklahoma house they lived in for three years, nor at the house they had moved to months before Freddy's birth, but when Jim Bob came to pick up his wife Michelle at the residence, he came in to meet his grandson.
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Jill writes in her book: "He looked content, but like he was quickly having to redraw a map of how Derick and I lived... In previous years I had seen him a few times at family events – weddings, funerals, court cases – but never somewhere this quiet, this private. He looked different. A little older, perhaps. The way he carried himself, there wasn't the same sense of authority and power that he'd once had.
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"As soon as Pops saw baby Freddy, his expression changed. His eyes found their old sparkle, his smile fired up again. Of all the many different parts to him, it was plain old Grandpa Duggar who I found easiest to love. There was nothing complex there, nothing to worry about. Just a man taking delight in the precious baby that his daughter has brought into the world."
Ultimately, she wrote: "We were able to connect in ways we'd not connected for years, and I was grateful for this unexpected gift."
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