Jinger Duggar Reveals That She Learned To Swim As A Child In New Book

19 Children and Account alum Jinger Duggara latest book reveals some unexpected details about the effects of her ultra-conservative upbringing.

In People Pleasure: Breaking Free From the Burden of Imaginary Expectationswhich debuted on Tuesday, January 14, the 31-year-old revealed that she didn’t learn to swim as a child due to the limitations of her family’s modest wardrobe. (Jim Bob a Michelle Duggar raised their 19 children as followers of the Foundation in Basic Life Principles, and women are expected to do so wear dresses or skirts fall to at least knee length.)

“Since I was a little girl, I wanted to know what it felt like to push myself through the water, swing my arms and kick my legs to keep me afloat. But I didn’t know how,” Jinger wrote. “Here’s what I knew for sure: Long skirts were not designed for learning to swim.”

Jinger went on to joke that “the laws of physics, gravity and buoyancy don’t play well with long skirts,” explaining that she tried swimming when she was younger — and it didn’t go well. “Another way of saying ‘long skirt swimmer’ is ‘one who sinks,'” he added. “And because long skirts were the only swimming fashion available to me as a child, and because I had a thing about not wanting to sink, the skill of swimming was not something I picked up during that period.”

The former reality star admitted that being around “all kinds of water” felt “scary” without knowing how to swim. As an adult, however, Jinger has started to dip her toe in since welcoming daughters Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 4, with husband Jeremy Vuolo. (Jinger publish in October 2024 that she is pregnant with the couple’s third baby.)

“I want (my children) to know how to swim. I want them to know that I can too,” Jinger wrote. “But I was still so scared, thinking back to the few times I had tried as a child, the long skirt covering my flailing legs.”

Jinger was initially “hesitant” to try again – her pleasurable tendencies made her “afraid to fail” – but she found solace in a friend named Rebekah, who helped her learn.

“We’re still at it, my swimming lessons, taking baby step by baby step (or maybe I should say baby lap by baby lap),” Jinger wrote.

Pleaser people this is not the first time Jinger has discussed her experience with modest dressing. In May 2021, Jinger opened up about making the choice to break free from the rules of her upbringing.

“My mother had always dressed us in skirts and dresses, a standard taken from Deuteronomy 22:5, which says, ‘A woman may not wear a man’s garment,'” she wrote in her second book, The Hope We Hold. “Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest. But I wanted to find out for myself what the Bible had to say.”

Jinger explained that after she married Vuolo, 37, in 2016, she began to “dig into” the deeper meaning behind familiar passages of scripture. She realized that modesty is not only about what you wear but that it is also “about where your heart is.” Jinger had “never found a passage specifically prohibiting women from wearing pants.”

Last year, Jinger remember the first time she wore pants around her parents. “The first few times I went back (home), I wasn’t wearing pants. I wore a skirt just to honor (them),” she said on the “Unplanned” podcast. “That’s a big thing for my family, and my heart is not to rub anything in anyone’s face and be like, ‘I’m doing this. I’m doing my own thing.’ … This is not to make them mad.”

People Pleasure: Breaking Free From the Burden of Imaginary Expectations available now.