Jason Duggar and his wife, Maddie Duggar, opened up about why they are waiting to have children.
During an appearance on his sister Jinger Duggar and her husband Jeremy Vuolo’s “Jinger and Jeremy” podcast on Wednesday, August 13, Jason, 25, initially faked out his sister by pretending he and Maddie were expecting their first child.
“No, he does that to me all the time,” Maddie, 21, quickly clarified. “We are not expecting at all! We are not trying to be expecting.”
Jason then asked fans of the Duggars to “stop” saying the newlyweds were “trying to be expecting” because that’s not currently the case. (Jason and Maddie tied the knot at The Estate at Tennessee’s Sweetwater Creek in October 2024.)
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“I’m trying to finish up school,” Maddie pointed out.
While the couple “love babies,” Maddie and Jason agreed that they want to enjoy being newlyweds before focusing on starting a family.
“We love kids. We get ‘baby fever,’” she admitted. “But, I want to wait and I want to just enjoy this time. I can always get pregnant later on, Lord willing. Right now, we just want to chill.”
Maddie said she felt it was important to devote enough time to settling into her marriage since she and Jason “are still getting to know each other.”
“We know each other, but we’re still getting to know each other [in the] first year of your marriage,” she said. “I’m going to wait until after school. I have one year of school left.”
Maddie continued, “I graduate next May and I don’t want to worry about a baby before then! I think we’ve got some time … Immediately, no babies. No babies at all. We just babysit and get humbled whenever we do babysit!”
Jeremy, 37, encouraged the young couple to “get [their] judgement” out now by watching “misbehaving children” in public places so they know what to expect when they do become parents.
“Say things like, ‘We would never let our kids do that,’ ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, ma’am,’ that kind of stuff because once you have the babies, you won’t be able to do that anymore,” Jeremy warned them. “Enjoy it because when you have the babies, [it’s] a judgment-free zone.”
Jason concurred, “All that is out the window!”
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Earlier this year, Maddie addressed speculation that she was a “crazy fangirl” of the 19 Kids and Counting family before she got together with Jason.
“I am a fan of [Jason] now, but no, I was not a crazy fangirl,” she insisted in an April YouTube Q&A, before explaining: “My family did watch a few episodes, like, on a beach vacation randomly. So, I was on TikTok one day and I was scrolling along, and it was a video of where each of the Duggar kids is now. I was like, ‘Oh, I remember them. I’ve seen them before.’”
The two eventually connected over social media, with Jason developing feelings for Maddie partially because of their shared religious commitment.
“She loves the Lord and she’s, like, normal and that’s when it clicked,” Jason remembered.
“Jinger & Jeremy” releases new episodes every Wednesday.
