7 takeaways from ‘Shiny Happy People,’ the new Duggar family documentary
The Amazon Prime docuseries digs deeper into the Duggar family, their TLC show and their connections to Christian fundamentalism
The Duggars, who portrayed an image of wholesome Christian values, had their pristine image tarnished in 2015, when reports surfaced that eldest son Josh Duggar was accused of molesting multiple girls when he was a teenager — including his own sisters. Months later, Josh admitted to being unfaithful to his wife after reporters found his account on the infidelity website Ashley Madison. In 2021, an Arkansas jury found Josh guilty of receiving and possessing child pornography.
A new Amazon Prime docuseries premiering Friday, “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets,” takes a closer look at the family — their rise to fame and their connections to the ultraconservative Christian organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), which until recently was a major player in the Christian home-schooler movement.
The thesis of the four episodes, which feature interviews with daughter Jill Dillard and her husband, Duggar family friends and former IBLP believers, hinges on this relationship — arguing that Josh’s crimes were a reflection and a product of a wider culture of abuse, both within the family and the religious group they belonged to.
1. Family friends say the Duggars wanted Josh to confess to molesting young girls — after he was married
In the first episode, “Meet the Duggars,” the docuseries introduces two close family friends, Jim and Bobye Holt, who were also IBLP members.
As a teenager, Josh Duggar began dating the Holts’ daughter, Kaeleigh. Referred to as “courtship” within the community, the process requires young men to first ask their love interest’s father if they may date — for the purpose of marriage.
The Holts said they found out about Josh’s alleged abuse after the two started dating in 2003, when Josh was 15 — five years before “19 Kids and Counting” debuted on TLC.
According to Bobye, Josh’s father, Jim Bob, told them: “Josh has gotten into some trouble. You know, he’s touched his sisters inappropriately.” Josh had apparently been doing so since he was 12, the Holts said.
Jim Holt asked the Duggars when they planned on telling him and Bobye about Josh. According to the Holts, Michelle said they hadn’t planned on saying anything. The Holts recalled her saying: “We were going to have Josh confess to Kaeleigh once they were married.”
“So, are you saying you were using my daughter as, like, a carrot to get him to behave the right way?” Jim Holt remembers asking. “And [Jim Bob] goes, “Well, yeah. Kinda.”
Bobye Holt added that, in conversations with the Duggars, Jim Bob and Michelle refused to use the word “molest” to refer to their son’s actions.
2. Family members say the Duggars referred to physical abuse as ‘encouragement’
The documentary features commentary and testimonies from multiple former IBLP members, who describe the organization as a “cult” that tried to advance Christian fundamentalist teachings. Several said the Duggars’ TLC show reminded them of their own strict upbringings, especially depictions of the docile, obedient Duggar children in their pilgrim collars and pantaloons.
“When I was watching the Duggars, the attitudes of the children are what I noticed right off the bat. My heart broke for them, because they were so calm, and they were so peaceful and well-behaved, and I knew what it took to get there,” said Lara Smith, a former IBLP follower.
Part of that was instilling fear in children by hitting them, sometimes going to extreme measures, ex-IBLP members said.
They described a method called “blanket training,” which involves placing a child — as young as 6 months old — on a blanket with a favorite object just out of reach. When the child reaches for it, the parent hits them. If they continue to reach for the object, they’re hit again.
“The idea is you’re breaking the rebellious spirit,” said Eve Ettinger, a writer and podcaster who grew up in the IBLP.
Michelle Duggar wrote about blanket training her children in her 2008 book, “The Duggars: 20 and Counting!” An excerpt appears in the second episode:
“Throughout the day, when I knew I would have five minutes or more of interrupted time, I would focus on blanket training,” Michelle wrote. “Some days we might practice blanket time three or four times; other days we only got it in once. But gradually, it became a common practice.” (In her book, Michelle doesn’t specify hitting her children. Rather, she “corrected” them.)
Jim Bob’s niece Amy King told interviewers she saw her cousins being beaten with a rod by their parents when they were children.
The parents “called it ‘encouragement,’” King said. “But it was, like, in the sweetest tone ever. Like: ‘Do you need encouragement? I think you need encouragement.’”
3. Jill, one of her brother Josh’s victims, says she felt ‘obligated’ to help save the show
The fourth child of Jim Bob and Michelle, Jill Dillard, recalled the “urgency” with which her father and TLC producers tried to figure out what to do after Josh’s behavior first became public.
Part of this attempt to save the show involved appearing on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program in 2015 — mere weeks after the allegations against Josh had surfaced. The interview was arranged by Jim Bob’s publicist, Chad Gallagher (who has also worked with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee). On Kelly’s show, Jill and younger sister Jessa shared details about the incidents with Josh — and came to his defense.
“Our case, it’s very mild compared to what happened to some,” Jill said at the time. “I’m sad because this is my older brother, who I love — a lot — and I had to make that choice to forgive him. It wasn’t something that somebody forced.”
“In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done the Megyn Kelly stuff,” Jill said in the documentary.
“I don’t really like to even talk about [the interview], because it’s not something I’m proud of,” she said. “If I hadn’t felt obligated to, one, do it for the sake of the show and, two, do it for the sake of my parents, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Her husband, Derick Dillard, called the PR move a “suicide mission,” adding: “You’re going to destroy yourself, but we need you to take the fall so that you can carry the show forward, because the show cannot fail.”
After the interview, “19 Kids and Counting” was taken off the air and replaced with “Jill and Jessa: Counting On.”
4. Jill didn’t want TLC filming her delivery. Footage was aired anyway.
Duggar births and weddings drew huge ratings for the show, so when Jill became pregnant with her first child, producers assumed that they would be filming the birth, she said. A few weeks out from her delivery date, producers floated having one person filming in the room with her. Jill told producers she didn’t want them there at all.
“I knew for sure, I was like, nobody’s in my delivery room. Like, nobody. And nobody’s there for the labor, watching me. Like, I don’t want any of that,” Jill said.
Producers were shocked at first, Jill said, but ultimately got their way: The couple were to shoot the delivery themselves. Jill and Derick bought cameras and shot “diary cams” and other footage for the show.
After the birth, Jill and Derick said they asked TLC to pay them “just enough” to cover the out-of-pocket costs for delivering the baby. Producers told them they had already “paid the family” — meaning Jim Bob. For 7½ years of her adult life, Jill continued, she was never paid for her time on the show.
“The women and girls in this family, they are really the draw of that show,” said Danielle Lindemann, a sociology professor who appears in the docuseries. “The Duggar women are doing the labor, literally doing the labor, but they’re being shut out of who has the money and who has the power.”
4. Jill said she was manipulated into an extended TV contract
In June 2014, on the eve of her wedding to Derick, Jill said her father laid out a contract on their kitchen table. It was already open to the signature page.
“‘Okay, I just need you guys to sign these.’ Like, everyone was signing them,” Jill recalled. “I didn’t know what it was for.”
They found out in 2016, when the couple was living in El Salvador doing mission work. They had told show producers that they would be in El Salvador for 10 months, and producers had traveled to film them. But Jill and Derick said they were being pressured to return to the United States for additional shoots. They refused to go.
“Now it’s a matter of principle. We’re going to be here,” Jill said. “That was the first time we really put our foot down and said no.”
But contractually, they had to. The contract Jill had signed the day before her wedding meant she was now obligated to appear on the TLC show for the next five years. “That’s not what I thought I was signing,” she said.
At that point, the couple began asking about being paid for their work on the show.
“Jim Bob said, ‘What do you want, $10 an hour?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. What’s it worth?’” Derick said. According to him, he never got a straight answer from the Duggar patriarch.
Jim Bob eventually offered a few of the older children a “lump sum” for being on the show, Derick and Jill said, but to get the money, they would need to sign another contract with Jim Bob’s production company. “It would be like, forever,” Jill said. “We were automatically like, we’re done.”
6. The show may have elevated Jim Bob’s standing within the ultraconservative IBLP
Much of the series is dedicated to explaining the culture of the IBLP, specifically by examining its founder, Bill Gothard. Under his leadership, the IBLP became a major influence in the Christian home-school movement, creating a full curriculum based on the bible. It also had several other initiatives, including a paramilitary organization, former members and journalists said.
At the height of its power, the ministry’s teachings seeped into public school classrooms, private prisons, police and military groups. According to Ettinger, one of the ex-IBLP members, leaders of “the Joshua Generation” — a multigenerational plan in which Christian home-schoolers gain control of the U.S. government — were inspired by Gothard’s teachings.
Gothard resigned from the IBLP ministry in 2014 after facing accusations that he groomed, molested and sexually harassed women and girls he worked with. One woman alleged he had raped her. But while his influence waned, his teachings persist, and the institute still wields an “enormous amount of money, assets and funds,” ex-members said.
The Holts, longtime friends of Jim Bob and Michelle, said they believe the Duggar patriarch is trying to “emulate” Gothard. “From what my understanding is, it’s that Jim Bob and Michelle are now his replacement.”
7. Ex-IBLP members feel TLC did ‘propaganda’ for the group
Several former IBLP adherents shared their shock and dismay that TLC had followed the Duggars in the first place. The show ended up being highly consequential for the network, Lindemann, the sociologist, pointed out. After “19 Kids and Counting” — and all its other iterations — TLC transformed itself from a network that aired medical documentaries to a reality TV juggernaut.
“TLC went from being ‘The Learning Channel,’ to ‘The Lurking Channel,’” Lindemann quipped. And made many millions of dollars in the process.
The arrangement was mutually beneficial: Jim Bob made no secret of viewing the popular cable show as an opportunity to minister to the masses. And he was successful, the documentary argues: popularizing a sect of Christianity that had been largely underground until that point.
Josh Pease, a journalist and pastor who appears in the docuseries, compared the Duggars with Tom Cruise. The actor “kind of legitimized Scientology,” Pease said. “In a lot of ways, that’s exactly what the Duggars were for Bill Gothard.”
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