Jinger Duggar details her decision to wear pants despite religious upbringing: 'My convictions were changing'

Jinger Duggar has explained why she abandoned a childhood rule requiring her to wear only skirts and dresses, writing that "my convictions were changing" as she studied Scripture apart from the framework she was raised under. The account appears in excerpts from "The Hope We Hold: Finding Peace in the Promises of God," a book she co-wrote with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, published in May 2021.

The excerpts were reported by Fox News, E! Online and Entertainment Tonight, which credited the book to People magazine's coverage. All three outlets carried the same core account: that Jinger, one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's 19 children, grew up under a strict dress standard and later chose, as an adult, to reexamine it against the Bible rather than accept it as inherited fact.

None of the three reports specifies exactly when Jinger began wearing pants, how her parents reacted in the moment, or what specific conversations followed within the family beyond the general concern she describes. The reporting is drawn entirely from the book excerpts themselves rather than a separate interview, so the timeline of her private decision beyond what she wrote is not established by the coverage reviewed.

The standard she grew up with

Jinger wrote that "my mom had always dressed us girls in skirts and dresses, a standard that was taken from Deuteronomy 22:5," the Old Testament verse the family used as its basis for the rule. "Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest," she wrote, "but I wanted to discover for myself what the Bible had to say."

She described the standards as unquestioned fixtures of her upbringing: "Growing up, I had a set of standards that I took as givens." It was only after she and Jeremy "had begun studying Scripture together" that she said she became more aware of "the different beliefs and doctrines Christians held" outside the framework she grew up in.

'My convictions were changing'

Now, as I reexamined and compared them to scripture, my convictions were changing.

Jinger wrote that her review of the Bible did not turn up the prohibition she had been taught to expect. "I never found a passage specifically forbidding women from wearing pants," she wrote, concluding instead "that biblical modesty is deeper and more profound than wearing skirts instead of pants." She summarized the shift in reasoning this way: "Modesty isn't only about what you wear. It's about the position of your heart."

E! Online's excerpt of the same passage renders a closely related line slightly differently, quoting her as writing "Modesty isn't about what you wear. It's about the position of your heart" — the outlets agree on the substance of the quote but differ on whether Jinger wrote "isn't only about" or "isn't about"; this account reports both as they were quoted rather than resolving which is the exact original wording.

Weighing the decision against family ties

Multiple outlets quoted Jinger describing real hesitation about how the change would land with her family, rather than presenting the decision as simple or costless. "I knew they deeply cared about their convictions, and I didn't want to hurt them now that I didn't share those convictions," she wrote, according to Fox News. Entertainment Tonight's excerpt of the book adds that after settling her position scripturally, "my heart was free" and that she "felt no inner conflict" about the choice going forward.

The reporting identifies Jeremy Vuolo as part of the process that led her to revisit the rule, describing him as initially "caught off guard" by her questioning before supporting her continued study of the topic. Beyond that characterization, the coverage reviewed does not detail specific conversations between the couple, nor does it independently confirm details of Jinger's upbringing beyond what the book itself states.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Fox News, E! Online and Entertainment Tonight. It restores a story originally published on this site in May 2021; figures are as reported at the time.