‘Counting On’: Do the Duggars Have Surveillance Cameras in Their House?

When it comes to reality TV families, there aren’t many that are bigger than The Duggars. Jim Bob Duggar and wife Michelle first came on the scene with the series 17 Kids and Counting, followed soon after with the series Counting On which opens up the spotlight on their older kids a bit. The family is a staple for TLC, continuing on despite controversy popping up from time to time.

While the clan is spread out a bit more now, growing from a family of 19 to a family of 21, many fans still look back at where it all started and carry on some wild theories about the family. As CheatSheet points out, before the kids grew up and spread out to start their own families, they all lived under one roof in the Duggar family home in Arkansas.

One prevalent theory is that Jim Bob and Michelle installed surveillance cameras all through their home, keeping an eye on any visitors and their own children throughout the day.

A big reason fans believe this rumor about the family stems from the Duggar’s view on privacy. Namely how there is no such thing as privacy in their family, especially for the children.

The 7,000 square foot Arkansas home was constructed by Jim Bob and crew back in 2006, with some help from Michelle when it came to house designs. CheatSheet singles out the “iconic spiral staircase” in the home that makes appearances in many Duggar holiday photos each year. But despite its size, the home only has three bedrooms for all of the kids and their parents.

The rooms are separated based on gender, with the girls — including unmarried Jana Duggar — sleeping in one of the rooms and the boys taking up space in the other. One can assume that they are a pair of large bedrooms, but it is still something that gives some fans brain wrinkles.

“That’s just really weird,” one commenter wrote on a video with Jill Duggar giving a tour of the house. “I mean who builds their own home only to have three bedrooms for 21 people?”

This all plays into the privacy issue for the family. If you’re a Duggar, you’re fully connected to the family at all times. They do everything together, including entering a courtship with potential husbands and wives.

As CheatSheet points out, there is always a member of the family to watch over another member who is getting ready to date someone. They’re not allowed to hold hands or hug their potential dates and they have to have chaperones on all dates.

And if you’re a Duggar kid texting your boyfriend or girlfriend, Jim Bob and Michelle had to be copied on all of the texts. The same seems to go with FaceTime, Skype, and many other forms of contact. Someone is apparently always in the room listening, like the Stasi.

“Young men would have more of a struggle seeing bad stuff, so what we’ve done with the smartphones is that we’ve … actually locked out Safari and any Internet search at all, and then we’ve just had basic apps,” Jim Bob once shared in an interview according to InTouch.

With all of this out in the open, it isn’t a surprise that fans and critics suspect that the Duggar home is filled with cameras. Users on the forum Free Jinger point out that the Bates family, another Christian fundamentalist family similar to the Duggars, keep an eye on their 19 children with a surveillance system. This led to speculation that the Duggars likely do the same.

“I believe they have security cameras, but it was the Bates who commented on how nice it was to be able to see where everyone was. The Bates have a similar system. The Duggars also have an intercom system,” one user wrote.

Other users like those over at Reddit have defended the idea by noting that it is typical in the South where many still live on family farms, with the “main house” usually keeping an eye on the property when it’s large.

There is no confirmation that the family has installed cameras, but it wouldn’t be strange. They are fairly famous at this point, widespread, and clearly like to keep tabs on the entire clan. If it is there property, they can do what they want in America.

The one thing that is certain is the family has television cameras pointed at them at most times, so they might not even need any extras.