When I first read about Josh Duggar’s Ashley Madison account, I felt the same schadenfreude as just about everyone else who was angered, offended, and/or amused by the irony. A guy pulling down six figures to defend “traditional marriage” actively seeks to violate his own marriage vows? The most virulent anti-Duggar in the world couldn’t have written a better denouement.
Coming just a few months after Josh’s molestation scandal effectively ended not just his career but his family’s multimillion-dollar media empire (at least until they write their redemption narrative and cash in further), this scandal makes it clear that the guy has serious sexual problems. At least he has publicly acknowledged his hypocrisy. But this time around, will he get the help he obviously needs? Or will his parents continue to think they can cure whatever ails him through their weird blend of denial, blind faith, and prayer?
What troubles me — and what, frankly, makes me feel a tiny bit of compassion for Josh — is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the senior Duggars have learned anything from what’s transpired over the past several months. They seem never to have comprehended that there’s a disconnect between their failure to protect their own daughters from a predator within their family, and Michelle Duggar’s robocalls implying that transgendered women will molest your daughters in public bathrooms. They have some sort of profound cognitive dissonance that enables them to hold up their family as a model for everyone else (albeit paying lip service to the idea that of course they aren’t perfect) while sweeping egregious crimes under the rug. Allegedly, Jim Bob and Michelle honestly couldn’t understand why people were upset that Josh had molested his sisters. The family had moved past it, so why couldn’t everyone else? (Whether the girls really have moved past it, or have been allowed the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and mental space to even process it, is a whole other issue.) They evidently see no incongruity in promoting “family values” their own family can’t follow, nor any hypocrisy in trying to force those values onto everyone else while knowing, but not publicly admitting, their serious failures in that arena.
According to a “source with ties to the family” (so take that for what it’s worth), their response to this latest news is to be “absolutely baffled by how this could have been possible.” Well, part of how it could have been possible is that you had a teenage boy acting out sexually, and you figured that sending him away to help remodel a friend’s house would cure all his problems. According to what the source tells People, the Duggars are praying a lot and relying on their faith. Which is all well and good, but maybe they also need to look at their own role in their son’s dysfunction: refusing to get him help as a teenager, raising him in a patriarchal culture where women are relegated to baby makers and sex objects, and modeling grotesque sexual behaviors. They keep responding like passive victims, rather than taking a long, hard look at themselves, their parenting, and their belief system.
I think Josh is a cretin. But here’s why I also feel a little sorry for him: He was raised in a narrow, sexist, legalistic cult. When he molested his sisters, his parents seem to have acted without any genuine compassion for him or the girls. They blocked the legal investigation and sent him away from home for hard physical labor. They apparently thought it was enough to punish and “forgive” — meaning gloss over his sins and put locks on the girls’ bedroom doors — without addressing the cause of the problem. (Blaming it on Satan or fallen human nature or whatever is a convenient way to avoid accepting any responsibility themselves.)
He was sheltered and taught to repress his sexual feelings, yet as soon as he said, “I do,” he was expected to start fathering prodigious amounts of children just like Good Old Dad. He was homeschooled and had limited contact with people who didn’t view the world in exactly the same way as his parents. He operated on a “buddy system” that grants an older child far too much power over and responsibility for a younger sibling. His sex education appears to have consisted of watching his very creepy father hump his mother and hearing his mother advise young wives to give their husbands sex whenever the men want it, except for strictly proscribed times during menstruation and after childbirth.
How in the world could he have developed a healthy view of sexuality — his own or anyone else’s — in this environment?
Yes, he is now an adult. Yes, he took an obscene amount of money for a job based on promoting a very narrow definition of family that he himself was not, despite appearances, upholding and that hurts other people. Yes, he is a hypocrite. He deserves to be called out and held responsible.
But he is also a 27-year-old guy who never went to college, got married at 20, and had his first child within 13 months. He did not have much opportunity to explore the world, figure things out on his own, formulate his own beliefs, make mistakes and learn from them, or go through other character-forming experiences that many young adults get to have. He didn’t get a Rumspringa.
Surely Josh has faced incredible pressure. The eyes of the world, or at least a certain segment of the U.S., have been on him. His courtship and marriage had to validate the way he was raised. He has had more power and visibility than many people his age, but it has been predicated on following a very specific set of principles, associating with specific people (Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, et al), and espousing a set of beliefs that he may or may not actually agree with or find reasonable.
I am not excusing his hypocrisy or the damage he has done. I am trying to understand, because I’m fascinated by what goes on in the brains of people like him who have such a profound disconnect between their public and private personas. I think it would have been incredibly difficult and required deep wells of strength and/or rebellion — the kind his upbringing is designed to squelch from infanthood — to risk everything and publicly say, “My family’s beliefs are not mine; they don’t define who I am or how I perceive the world. And now I’m going to go be a sex-hungry hedonist for awhile.”
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His former employer, the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Council, is not standing by their man (really, how could they at this point?). But his wife may not have that option — and she is the one, next to his kids, for whom I feel most sorry.
Take Josh’s sheltered upbringing and lack of education, the legalistic expectations that have always been imposed on him, and the public scrutiny. Add to that the idea that you’re responsible for keeping your husband happy in bed so he doesn’t stray, all while having as many babies as your body can conceive, and the pressure from both your parents and your in-laws to view your husband’s transgressions as God’s test of your own faith.
I have been bothered by some of the internet comments criticizing Anna Duggar for not already leaving Josh. Granted, she too is an adult. She potentially is putting her own children in harm’s way by staying with an admitted child molester, and that is absolutely, utterly inexcusable. But I don’t think many people understand just how deeply ingrained the habits of obedience and submission must be in her, nor how much she has been brainwashed throughout her life, nor how much strength it would take for her to strike out on her own now — an uneducated woman with four children.
People‘s source claims that everyone in her world will “support” her in staying with Josh and trying to make her marriage work. “Pressure” might be a better word than “support.” This is not unconditional love. This is not, “The people around her have her back regardless of what she decides.” This is someone else telling her that her husband’s transgressions are God’s way of testing her, and only by responding in one specific way — sticking with him — will she pass the test. On the other hand, because of her husband’s past predilections and the fact that they have small children, the stakes of her decision are potentially much higher than anyone in that circle seems willing to publicly acknowledge.
Cults convince you that if you leave, you’ll go to hell. You only leave a cult when you realize that hell can’t be any worse than what you’re living with every day. Whether Anna Duggar reaches this point remains to be seen. For her sake and her children’s, though, I hope she does reach it, and soon.
August 24 update: It looks like at least one person in Anna Duggar’s life not only wants her to leave Josh, but is willing to offer financial support if she chooses to do so.
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