14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, word got out that devout Christian, family values activist and ex-reality star Josh Duggar, who had already been publicly shamed by being exposed as a child molester, was also a cheater. He had 2 different paid accounts on the infidelity site Ashley Madison, to which he already owned up.
With all this, Anna Duggar, his wife and the mother of his 4 children, has decided that she will not divorce him, even if her family is pleading with her to leave. Her religion and her upbringing is preventing her from walking away from a man who has proved to be, time and time again, the exact opposite of who he claimed to be.
Anna Duggar is a prisoner in her own life and the fact that she was denied the right education is to blame for it, one Georgia mom says in an open letter posted to Facebook, which has gone viral in the past few hours.
Anna Duggar is a prisoner of her own life
You can see the post from Jessica Krammes Kirkland in full below. It was actually posted to her account one week ago, as rumors started to make the rounds that, despite the latest scandal involving her husband (the second in a little over 2 months), Anna would stand by her man.
Moreover, insiders said, she was praying more than ever before and would even end up absorbing some of the blame for what Josh had done, as if it had been partly her fault that he had sought to have relations outside of the marriage.
Had Anna received the proper education at home, she would have seen things differently.
Kirkland’s post isn’t against the pious lifestyle that the Duggars and those around them lead. It’s not anti-religious, in the sense of speaking against notions like saving yourself for marriage or sticking by a spouse through thick and thin, and not heading for the hills at the first sign of trouble.
However, it is very much against limiting a woman’s opportunities in life by depriving her of an actual life experience, and more importantly, of a proper education.
Anna Duggar can’t leave Josh even if she wanted to, Kirkland writes: if she did, her entire community and even her family would turn their back on her. If she did, she would have nothing to fall back on because she never got an education to know how to provide for and take care of herself.
Her entire life, she did exactly as she was told: she was a loving and understanding wife and a good mother. Now that she found out that neither was enough for Josh, she is left with no way out.
Education is the most powerful tool
Anna Duggar would have been in an entirely different position if she’d received a proper education. Not only would she have been able to make her own decision as regards leaving her husband or not, but she would have been equipped accordingly to handle the consequences of said decision, whichever it might have been.
Kirkland says that the Anna Duggar situation should serve as a lesson for all parents of girls: empower them since they’re young by providing them with the most powerful tool they could ever have at their disposal. Offer them access to education.
“We HAVE to teach our daughters that they are not beholden to men like this. That they don't have to marry a man their father deems ‘acceptable’ and then stay married to that man long, long after he proved himself UNACCEPTABLE,” she writes. “Educate them. Empower them. Give them the tools they need to survive, on their own if they must. […] I wish someone had ever, just once, told Anna she was capable of this. That she knew she is. As for my girls, I'll raise them to think they breathe fire.”