Just recently, Justin Duggar and Claire Spivey moved to a new home.
They’re living across state lines from Jim Bob Duggar, but they’re still Duggars.
That means that despite their extremely young ages, they could embark on their parenthood journeys at any time.
Some fans fear that an announcement like that could come this week.
Justin and Claire had only been (officially) courting for five months when they married in February.
Eight months later, the 18-year-old Duggar and his 20-year-old bride are still making their way through their first year of marriage.
Purchasing a new home was a big deal, but it’s not the only milestone ahead of them.
Early this week, Justin told viewers to “stay tuned.”
He promised some sort of announcement from himself and from his wife, Claire Spivey.
Justin did not go into detail, but there’s only one announcement that fans expect from married Duggars.
“Wedding video with ‘surprise’ pregnancy announcement at the end?” one redditor speculated after the tease.
Another declared: “Oh guaranteed she is pregnant.”
Meanwhile, another Reddit user similarly felt that it was obvious: “Pregnant!! What else?”
If we were talking about normal newlyweds, we’d be like whoa, don’t rush them.
Eight months of marriage is no time to try to start vocally expecting every announcement to be about pregnancy.
Their ages also make that not just unusual but downright inappropriate.
But if we were talking about normal newlyweds, everything would be different.
They wouldn’t have been teens at their wedding in 2021.
Justin and Claire would have dated like real people do instead of a brief “courtship.”
Because of the extreme fundamentalist lifestyle and fringe ideology of their families, Justin and Claire had few choices.
Now, they are married and can have some independence that way.
But their lives were largely planned out for them from birth, including an extremely early marriage … and early parenthood.
These same ideological pressures encourage Justin and Claire to have children soon.
That could mean now, conceiving before Justin is even 19, or it could mean within the next few years.
Either way, fans expect that Justin and Claire will be very young parents compared to others in their generation.
Part of that is to meet the goals of these fundamentalists.
It is very difficult to convince many people to surrender their freedoms and personhood to join an oppressive cult.
If you raise someone isolated from the rest of society and tell them that all of the freedoms and opportunities beyond this little world are evil, they seldom leave.
For that reason, it’s prudent for extreme communities existing on the fringes of society to deliberately push to have many children.
Jim Bob Duggar has claimed to not be affiliated with the Quiverfull movement, but it’s … adjacent.
The other motive behind pushing their kids to become parents before they’re old enough is, well, to trap them.
A lot of ex-fundamentalists who escaped their communities and made new lives for themselves almost didn’t leave.
Factors that kept them afraid were a lack of prospects, fear of being cut off from loved ones, and often very real threats of violence.
But a common factor, especially for women hoping to escape, is children — who tie them to their husbands and to their cult forever.
That is not to say that Justin is scheming to trap Claire in their lifestyle or that she is pining to escape.
Right now, they are both victims, not perpetrators, of the cult and likely would be repulsed at the idea of experiencing freedom and making normal choices.
But when they do announce a pregnancy, it will cement their bonds to each other … making it that much harder for either of them to ever leave the life.