47 pages • 1 hour read
Counting the Cost
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Chapter 8-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Pushed Aside”
Jill and Derick receive news from IMB that they can no longer wait for Jill to be formally released from her contract. They are both devastated to have lost the job. Jill is angry that her father refused to send her the whole contract. Jim Bob later clarifies that the contract is about to expire. If he had provided this information earlier, Jill and Derick might have been able to work for IMB after all. Derick begins law school and gets into trouble over bigoted comments he makes on Twitter. Jim Bob offers help, but Jill refuses, not wanting her father to meddle in her life anymore. She and Derick write an angry, 27-page letter to Jim Bob. He sends a brief response apologizing for hurting them and asking for forgiveness. He does not answer any of the questions posed in the letter.
Jill receives a letter from the IRS about her taxes, which Chad and Jim Bob have always filed. She learns her income was reported as $130,000 a year from the show for the past 10 years. In reality, Jill only ever received the one-time payment of $80,000. When Jill confronts her father about this, they fight and then stop speaking for several months. Eventually, they all attend a discussion with a mediator from their church. The discussion goes badly, with Jim Bob calling the letter Jill and Derick sent him “the most disrespectful thing [he has] ever read” (241). He yells at Jill and her husband, insulting them and demanding apologies. At the end of the session, the mediator suggests Jill and Derick go to therapy. They start seeing Ray McIntosh (a pseudonym), a Christian therapist. Though Jill grew up believing therapy is bad, she finds McIntosh’s approach helpful, and she begins to work through her trauma. TLC never airs Jill and Derick’s exit interview, so speculation about their departure abounds. Some people believe they were fired because of Derick’s tweets.
Because of the incorrect tax reports, Derick is ineligible for grants and financial aid to pay for law school. Jim Bob sends Jill a detailed list of the money he spent on her over the years, including paying her rent, buying her a car, and so on. The total adds up to around $130,000, which he uses to justify not paying Jill a salary. He offers a one-time payment of $20,000, hoping to end the discussion around money. If they keep asking, Jill will lose her inheritance. Jill and Derick hire an attorney to demand to be given “the 2014 contract as well as copies of the Mad Family Inc. bylaws, minutes, and other details that [Jill], as a shareholder, should have seen already” (251). Jim Bob is furious, enlisting many of Jill’s siblings to pressure her into accepting the $20,000 and signing an NDA. They refuse. One night, Michelle shows up at their house and leaves a full copy of the contract from 2014. Jill learns her parents earned at least $8,000,000 from all the shows over the years. Her wedding was the most-watched episode of the show when it aired. After more back-and-forth, Jim Bob and Michelle finally pay Jill and Derick $175,000. Jill knows they could have asked for more, but she worried about appearing greedy.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Real. Not Fake”
Jill decides to have a cocktail on a dinner date with Derick. It is her second time trying alcohol, and Derick also rarely drinks. They are celebrating their oldest son’s first day of school. Contrary to IBLP teachings, they decided to send their children to public school. Jim Bob sees a picture from the dinner and is upset with his daughter for drinking. On another occasion, after learning Derick had two beers one evening, Jim Bob offered to send him to rehab; he declined. The relationship between Jill and her parents is still tense. In therapy, she is working on trusting people outside her family. She realizes God is not angry with her for going against her father’s wishes and that many people in her life use the Bible to manipulate her into behaving in certain ways. Jill hasn’t seen her father in six months when her grandmother dies. They have a small reconciliation at the funeral, after which Jim Bob invites Jill to spend more time at the family house. Jill is cautiously optimistic life is changing for the better.
One day, Jill learns Josh is being investigated by Homeland Security, though she does not know why. The COVID-19 pandemic hits, and Jill and Derick record a video explaining why they left TLC. In 2021, Jill gets a visit from Homeland Security about Josh. She is uncomfortable when they ask her to discuss the sexual abuse from her childhood, so she refuses to discuss it with them. Paparazzi harass Jill and Derick, asking many questions about Josh.
Josh is eventually arrested for possession of child-sexual-abuse materials. The Duggars are shocked; TLC cancels Counting On. Jill gives her deposition for her lawsuit against In Touch, which is traumatic. She learns she is pregnant but miscarries a month later. Jim Bob appears in court to testify during Josh’s trial; it does not go well, and Jim Bob receives a warning from the judge about his behavior. Jill learns she is pregnant again and worries about having to testify in Josh’s case. During the trial, people reach out to see if she is okay, and she feels very supported by those around her.
Even her other siblings reach out, connected by their shared history and the new questions they are asking about how they were raised. The experience is painful, but it gives Jill hope for the future. Toward the end of the trial, Jill is told she will not be required to testify after all. She goes to court for the first time to watch the proceedings. She firmly believes Josh should be in prison, and she does not think he seems remorseful. Josh is found guilty, and Jill and Derick release a statement saying their “hearts go out to the victims of child abuse or any kind of exploitation” (282).
Epilogue Summary: “A Photo”
Jill is nearing the end of her third pregnancy. A family friend warns her not to abandon her parents or discredit them in any way. She has had this conversation with many family friends who still follow IBLP teachings. There are things from her childhood for which she feels grateful, even when other people criticize them. She enjoyed helping build the family home and feels her parents encouraged her and her siblings to treat each other well. Nevertheless, there were also things about her upbringing that wounded her and still cause her pain to this day, especially being on TV.
On McIntosh’s advice, Jill focuses her attention on healing her own wounds instead of hashing things out with her parents. McIntosh also helps her and Derick connect and communicate more deeply. Jill’s case against In Touch magazine is thrown out, which is a surprise. The judge, who also presided over Josh’s case, grew “skeptical of anything to do with the Duggars” (291). Jill feels like she was lumped in with her brother, even though she was one of his victims. Despite the fact that the judge acknowledges In Touch was wrong to release “the graphic reports of child sexual abuse victims” (292), Jill has no opportunity to seek justice for what happened.
Jill is uncomfortable with the assertion that what happened with Josh was her parents’ fault. She partly blames IBLP and the ideology she and her siblings grew up with. She reflects on her parents’ flaws as well as their good qualities and insists Josh is ultimately responsible for his actions. She believes that even though extricating herself from her family was painful, it was still worth it, because now she is able to think for herself about what she believes about God and the Bible. She realizes standing up for herself is not a sin but a sign of freedom and self-respect. Josh is sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. Jill invites Michelle (but not Jim Bob) to attend her birth and gives birth to a third son, Freddy. When they return home from the hospital, Jill invites Jim Bob to meet his latest grandchild. She lets him hold her son and takes a photo.
Chapter 8-Epilogue Analysis
Jill makes a couple of references to Derick “making comments on Twitter, speaking his mind about various topics and making a few enemies” (232-33) but glosses over them, revealing her position still as a member of the fundamentalist community to some extent. In fact, Derick made several anti-trans tweets misgendering Jazz Jennings, a transgender woman who is the star of the TLC show I Am Jazz. At the time, Jennings was still a teenager. Derick also posted now-deleted anti-gay tweets about Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent, a couple who are the subject of TLC show Nate & Jeremiah by Design. In a particularly harsh incident, Derick criticized survivors of the 2018 Parkland school shooting in Florida when they spoke out in favor of gun control. By remaining vague about these details, Jill refrains from giving her own opinion on any of these issues. This speaks to her still being part of the Christian fundamentalist community, despite her separation from her family. Although she exercises her control in her opinions throughout the memoir, the pervasive influence of this ideology is illuminated here.
In the book’s final chapters, Jim Bob does everything he can to maintain control over his daughter. Her journey of Gendered Abuse in a Christian Fundamentalist Context makes that control increasingly difficult. After years of hearing that therapy was dangerous, Jill ends up finding it to be healing and helpful. She starts establishing personal boundaries, including refusing to rehash her childhood sexual abuse when questioned by Homeland Security. She ultimately realizes that standing up for herself is not a sin. This is a crucial step toward recovering from spiritual abuse that sought to turn Jill’s deeply held religious beliefs against her. When it comes to recovery, Jill and her father have opposing views. He rejects therapy but tries to send Derick to rehab for drinking a beer. Jill recognizes that drinking alcohol occasionally is not the same thing as addiction, moving toward a more grounded perspective. Jill has recounted the years of spiritual and intellectual abuse Jim Bob has inflicted on her, but here she gestures toward reconciling with some of that abuse and exercising her independence. She analyzes her religion and its teachings personally.
Now that she is no longer beholden to her family and to TLC, it is easier for Jill to develop critical thinking skills, which speaks to Liberating One’s Thinking from a Christian Fundamentalist Worldview. Distance from her parents is lonely, but it also helps her understand herself and her experiences. She decides to trust God instead of only trusting her parents, which allows her to establish her own relationship to religion. When she considers her options carefully, she realizes that she wants to send her sons to public school. This is a major shift away from the way that she was raised. Many Christian fundamentalists, not just those involved with IBLP, place a heavy emphasis on homeschooling. They often worry that public schools will pull their children away from their faith and teach them concepts they deem dangerous, like sex education and evolutionary biology. By sending her sons to school, Jill is accepting that her children will meet others who are not like them and that they will interact with new ideas that could challenge them.
Despite all this progress, Jill is not willing to blame her parents for Josh’s sexual abuse. While it is true that Josh is responsible for his own actions, his parents deliberately minimized the impact of his actions, pushed their daughters to give interviews about the experience, and failed to get professional psychological help for Josh in his adolescent years to help him meaningfully change. When Josh is arrested, Jill feels the strain of Performing Under the Control and Influence of TV once more. She is no longer part of the show, but she is in the uniquely awful position of having her brother’s trial be highly publicized. As Jill undergoes profound personal changes, she remains aware that she is still a public figure who will receive scrutiny. When Derick was making his bigoted tweets, many news outlets incorrectly reported that he had been fired from TLC because of his actions instead of leaving on purpose with Jill. Life in the spotlight means that people will speculate about and misunderstand aspects of Jill’s life. This book is an opportunity for her to finally tell her side of the story instead of deferring to others.
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