Jill Duggar also says that she did not receive any money for appearing on the show until 2017, despite TLC reportedly paying her father's production company over $8 million.
Jill Duggar is opening up about the almost eight years she spent filming her family's popular slate of reality shows for TLC in her memoir "Counting the Cost," which is on bookshelves now.
A good portion of the book discusses Jill's fractured relationship with her father, who she says paid his children just $80,000 for appearing on shows that earned his production company over $8 million from TLC alone.
Jill writes in the book that the tension between father and daughter hit a boiling point when she decided to start wearing pants.
That decision violated the principals set forth by the Christian fundamentalist organization that the Duggar family belongs to, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). The IBLP believes that women should wear long, modest skirts that cover their legs.
Jill writes in the book that she made the decision to wear pants shortly after her sister Jinger made the same decision, and with the blessing of her husband, Derrick, who did not agree with Jim Bob's assessment that pants "make guys think bad thoughts."
That decision became national news after a fan who ran into Jill at a local amusement park in Arkansas posted an image of the reality star wearing pants on social media. Oddly enough, Jill had run into her parents that same day but managed to largely avoid them and then carefully hide her lower half when she did see them, she writes in the book.
Jill writes that the decision to wear leggings that day was largely practical.
"I'd decided that since it was going to be cold and I'd be on the rides, it wasn't the day for dresses," writes Jill.
The day seemed to go off without a hitch, writes Jill, until Jim Bob saw the photo and called her in for a meeting about her sartorial choices.
"You know, Mom's got this book somewhere that talks a lot about clothing and modesty and what it does to men when they see women wearing pants," Jim Bob told his daughter, writes Jill. "Maybe you should give that a read."
Jill then decided to get a nose ring at the age of 26, and promptly received a voice mail from her father saying she was "ruining [her] life," she writes.
"Instead of his Sweet Jilly Muffin, I was now a threat to the rest of his children, and a threat to his authority," writes Jill.
By the point, Jill and Jim Bob had been at odds for years over a number of issues, writes Jill, so she and Derrick agreed to organize a mediation session with her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle.
That session quickly devolved into Jim Bob screaming at his daughter as she sat silently crying, writes Jill.
"You know why you're crying, don't you? Your conscience is talking to you, that's why," Jim Bob said according to Jill. "You're guilty."
At this point, Michelle also began to cry, writes Jill.
"You want to know why I'm crying?" said Jill. "It's that you think I'm some kind of a horrible person just because I wear pants and a have nose ring..."
Jill then points out how her father praised a girl with tattoos and a nose ring just before they sat down for their mediation session, before ending her response by saying: "You treat me like I'm a prodigal who's turned her back on you. You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother."
Earlier in the book Jill writes about how her father paid brother Josh Duggar for being on the show but none of his other children.
She also writes that her parents let Josh sit in the room and watch as Megyn Kelly interviewed her and sister Jessa about being molested by their older brother as children.
Jill has said in recent interviews that she does not interact with her father unless they are in a family setting, with money being another issue between the two.
“We estimated that TLC had paid Mad Family Inc. over $8,000,000 total,” she writes in her book about the money the network gave to her father's production company. “Our wedding alone had netted well over $100,000 for Pops, and Israel’s birth had been the focus of two special episodes, earning Pops another six-figure sum. Yet when we’d asked him to cover our $10,000 deductible and out-of-pocket expenses from the hospital stay, he’d pushed back.”
In the end, Jill fought to get an additional $175,000 on top of the $80,000 given to each child. She also writes that Jim Bob's company informed the IRS that she had been paid $130,000 on top of that, which he charged back to his child for expenses like meals and utility bills.
TLC and a rep for Jim Bob did not respond to requests for comment.
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