FAMILY
Jinger Duggar Says Her 18 Siblings Being ‘Segregated by Sections’ Made Her Less Close to Sister Joy Anna
19 Kids and Counting alums Jinger Duggar and her younger sister Joy-Anna Duggar had a far more distant relationship as kids than they do as adults.
Joy-Anna, 28, appeared on the Wednesday, July 19 episode of the Jinger & Jeremy Vuolo podcast, and Jinger, 32, posed the question, “Were we close growing up?” to which Joy-Anna responded, “I mean, not really. I would say we were close in proximity … the bond was not really there.”
As for the reasoning, Jinger attributed it to their “age gap,” as they are four years apart, which seemingly was a lot for their large family with 19 siblings.
“I felt like the age gap was segregated by sections,” Jinger explained. “[Our family was] separated by an age gap of the older kids, the middle kids, the younger kids. I was, kind of, in the older section for many years. The six oldest is what it was.”
“So when we would go to like political events or whatever we did, I was in the older half,” Jinger continued. “And then I just kind of felt like you were one of the little kids, and you were sandwiched between, you know, a lot of boys or whatever.”
Meanwhile, Joy-Anna offered a different theory, saying it was because “we were so different.”
“I think part of it is because I was so like, I will not be a girly girl. I will not wear nice clothes. I will not, whatever,” she recalled of her mindset back then. “And anytime we had to go anywhere, it was a constant battle. Like, we are going to get Joy out of this nasty t-shirt that she’s been wearing for three days. And she’s going to wear a nice shirt. I would always wear the boys’ t-shirts.”
“So, I think that was part of it, too, is we just had very different interests, and I was like, ‘I will never understand why they like shopping so much,'” Joy-Anna admitted.
