What works for one won’t necessarily work for all. I’ve been following the comments on Hawkgrrrl’s recent post about dating with interest, particularly in light of Elder Holland’s recent address to the CES folk. The relevant portions of his speech, in which he raises a number of reasons why our young people may be delaying or avoiding marriage, together with my observations, follow.
“Let me list some specific things that I think you should teach your students to be glad about and over which they should cease being fearful. I note, for example, getting married, having families, and welcoming children into the world. We in the presiding councils of the Church hear far too often—and perhaps you do as well—that many of our youth and young adults are terrified to get married. In extreme cases they are fearful that the world is about to end in blood and disaster—something they don’t want to take a spouse or child into.” (Elder Holland)
Now let me see, just who is it preaching all that last days, fear-inducing, increasingly evil world, pre-millennial doom? I think I’ve been hearing that at church most of my life. It might be an idea to bear in mind that some people hearing that rhetoric are going to believe it, will take you absolutely literally on that. It will worry them. And it’s a surprise that their resulting anxiety renders them incapable of seeing any possibility of living a normal happy family life? Maybe this is Elder Holland’s way of telling the CES folks they’ve overdone it, and he’s asking them to dial it down a bit. In trying to scare the laid back, don’t care segment of the youthful population into good behaviour, they’ve simply terrified the anxious types.
“In less severe, more common cases, they are fearful that the world will just get more difficult, that jobs will be too hard to find, and that one should be out of school, out of debt, have a career, and own a home before considering marriage.
“Good grief! On that formula Sister Holland and I still wouldn’t be married! Seriously, when we got married we were both still undergraduates at BYU, with neither set of parents able to help us at all financially, no way to imagine all the graduate education we had yet ahead of us, and this with $300 dollars between us on our wedding day! Now that may not be the ideal way to start a marriage, but what a marriage it has been and what we would have missed if we had waited even one day longer than we did once we knew that that marriage was right. Sure, there was sacrifice; certainly there were restless days and weeks and months; certainly there was some burning of the midnight oil. But I tremble to think what we would have lost if we had taken “counsel from our fears,” as President James E. Faust would later tell me over and over and over that I and no one else should ever do. What if we had delayed inordinately? What would we have missed?” (Elder Holland)
If inflation in the US was anything like we’ve experienced in Britain over the past decades, I’m thinking that $300 could have been a lot more than it sounds now. Today’s university graduates are knee-deep in student debt, for an increasingly costly education. In England, university tuition fees have tripled from the level of only 10 years ago. Nevertheless, the closest I’ve seen that matches Elder Holland’s description of those who feel they “should be out of school, out of debt, have a career, and own a home before considering marriage”, is what seems to me the somewhat sensible idea that at least one party in the couple should have completed their education, and be in a position to find paid employment. Currently, student loans in Britain are repaid once earnings reach a minimum level, and are deducted from a salary. The repayment period is 25 years. I don’t know anyone who feels they should be free of debt before marrying. No-one plans to wait 25 years. Likewise, I haven’t met anyone who believes they need to qualify for a mortgage, never mind to own their home, before considering marriage. Rising house prices (which have more than tripled here over the last 20 years), have led to increasingly lengthy mortgage terms, and most people are entering the housing market quite a lot older than in the past. This looks like a straw man to me. What are your observations?
I really liked rah’s relevant comment on Hawkgrrrl’s dating post:
“I think we tend to underplay the impact that economic prospects are having on our youth. The fact is that family supporting jobs are becoming rarer and rarer. Add to that the pressure to start families early and to have a stay at home parent and it can look kind of crushing. Hanging out is by far the logical option if you are staring down years of school and exclusive relationships where you are attracted to the person carry all kinds of spiritual dangers. The world just isn’t like was in the 50s through 70s. Family sustaining jobs and career paths on a single income aren’t plausible, even here in the richest country the world has ever known, just because you are willing to work hard. Getting there requires careful planning, lots of education etc. In some sense, we as Mormons need to lay off preaching/saying that our kids can “have it all”. Most people can’t get married at 22, have 6 kids by your 30s, be financially stable (if not prosperous), have a single income, be EQ president etc. etc. Yet to me that seems to be the ideal we put out there for them. As a guy that can just appear crushing.
“… I completely empathize with college kids staring into the face of all this and thinking…maybe I should play it cool a bit. And for people whose economic prospects are much dimmer even more so. I just can’t imagine that all this doesn’t impact our dating age kids behavior, self evaluations, confidence etc. All Mormons can’t be 90th percentile and sadly the ideal we put out there for our youth kind of requires it (and then it is a stretch). If dating means charging down this path head on…dude I would totally just hang.” (rah) [emphasis mine]
This is a very different world. And yes, I have heard those stories about the Great Depression in the 1930s. Still, today’s young people are competing for jobs in a global market place, where wages at the low end are being pushed forever down. I wish our leaders could recognise that they’re where they are because they likely are upper percentile folks. It’s unfair to say you can do what we did, and get to be where we are, because that’s not the case for most folks.
Elder Holland continues:
“I still think the best definition of marital love is James Thurber’s, who said simply that love is what you go through together. I will be eternally grateful for what Pat was willing to go through with me—that she did not feel I had to have my degree and a car and a home and a career all in hand before we could marry.
“And we wanted children as soon as we could get them, which in our case did not turn out to be as easy as we thought. In fact, if we hadn’t determined to have our family as promptly as we could, we might well have been a childless couple, as some of our friends and some of you, through no fault of your own, have found it your lot in life to be. It took us three years to have our first child, another three to get a second, and four to get a third. And then that was it. A full-term miscarriage for a fourth closed that door to us forever, so we have rejoiced in the three children we have been able to raise. But what would our lives have been like if we had waited or delayed or worried unduly about the economics of it all? Which of our children would we give back? With what memories or love or lessons with each of them would we ever part? I shudder to think of it.” (Elder Holland)
This is of course Elder Holland’s own personal experience. It’s okay to feel you did the right thing for you, not so okay to believe that what was the right thing for you is going to work out so well for everyone else. We are all entitled to our own personal revelation on that point. I might also suggest, that while it may not have been what they wished, and likely was a source of sorrow, the timing and spacing of their children was nevertheless, would have had some benefit.
“Brethren and sisters, I think we have to start earlier to teach our students the place of marriage and family in the great plan of happiness. Waiting until they are of marriageable age puts us way behind the curve. And I don’t have to tell you that social trends, declining moral standards, and the “vain imagination” of popular entertainment will regularly be in opposition to that teaching.”
I’m not sure that ever more emphasis on marriage will be helpful. At. All. As it is, the heavier emphasis on marriage and parenthood at the last General Conference had my 17 year old son in tears.
“For example, it is alarming to us that in the last 50 years the natural median age for men to marry has risen from age 22 to age 28! That is the world’s figure, not the Church’s, but we eventually follow the world in some way in much of its social trending. Add to this such diverse influences on the young as the increased availability of birth control, the morally destructive rise of pornography, an increased disaffiliation with institutional religion, the pervasive quest for material goods generally, the rise of postmodern thought with its skepticism and subjectivity and you see the context for anxiety and fear that a rising generation can feel. With these kinds of winds blowing in their lives, they can be damaged almost before mature, married life has begun.
“Furthermore, so many young people I talk to fear that if they do marry they will be just another divorce statistic; they will be another individual who dove foolishly into marriage only to find there was no water in that pool. Couple that leeriness about the success of marriage with the tawdry, foul, often devilish mocking of chastity and fidelity and family life so regularly portrayed in movies and on television and you see the problem.” (Elder Holland)
So, here I’ll first refer to Jack Hughes’ comment over on Hawkgrrrl’s post:
“… [Millenials] are also more likely to have grown up seeing divorce and failed marriages, much more than their parents did. It’s counterproductive for the older generations to keep blaming the younger for not living up to the older cultural expectations in a different world. And for many it can be absolutely crushing.” (Jack Hughes)
That bit about having seen more divorce. That. The divorce that many have seen is the divorce of their own parents, or aunts and uncles. The divorce they have seen is the divorce of close family members who were raised in the church. Close family members who absolutely followed the advice to marry young, and start a family immediately. And it didn’t work out. The divorce they have seen, is for many of them not divorce viewed from a distance, but divorce up close and personal. It’s all very well to blame post-modernism for scepticism, but real scepticism comes from hearing the very same rhetoric about marriage that failed those in their own families, who followed that advice. I’m in my mid-40s, and I when I look at the cohort I grew up with at church in YM/YW it’s a sobering thing. All of them married before I did. All of them subsequently divorced and later remarried.* What are your own observations on the prevalence of divorce?
“We have our work cut out for us to preserve and perpetuate both the holiness and the happiness of marriage. You can begin by showing the blessing, the reward, and the reality of a happy marriage in your own lives. That doesn’t mean you should be Pollyannaish about marriage; every marriage takes work, and yours will too. But, as always, your first and most penetrating lessons to your students will be the lessons of your own life. You show them in word and deed that your marriage and your family mean everything to you because they should—they must. Help your students “be not afraid, only believe” in marriage and family in these last days. Lucifer will make that harder and harder to do even as it becomes more and more important to do.” (Elder Holland)
My first thought is, how will students feel when they realise divorce spells the end of employment for a CES employee? That’s certainly one incentive to keep a marriage going. That aside, yes please. Let’s put an end to Pollyannaish rhetoric. I heard a lot of talks, GA quotes and the like growing up about how folk had never heard their parents say a cross word to each other, and it was all painted sweetness and light. How parents need to make sure they never argue in front of the children, and only put on their best faces etc. Got to wonder how many people hearing that, then got into their own marriages and discovered against all expectation that it wasn’t like that for them. Let’s get real.
My own parents married young, and had 7 children within 12 years. My father had no qualifications, and whilst always employed, it was generally in jobs he hated. It was stressful. I saw them argue from time to time. I also saw them apologise, and work things out. Yes, it was hard. Very hard. They succeeded. Personally, I think it was beneficial to see that yes, sometimes you will argue with your spouse, and hey, that’s not the end of the world. You can still work things out. It didn’t put any of us off marriage. All seven of us are happily married. We didn’t all follow the prescription however.
Maybe it was my position as the eldest, or more a quirk of my personality, or my particular sensitivity to the stresses, but having lived the early marriage lots of kids thing as a child, there was no way I could face living it again in my adulthood, simply on the basis of an injunction from high church leadership to marry young and have lots of children. I’d have been suicidal. Thankfully, that wasn’t the Lord’s plan for me. I was able to attend university at a time when that was still fully funded in Britain, and I made the most of the opportunity. I married when I was ready to marry, at 25, having completed my graduate education. I have the 2 children I was meant to have, but no more. My sister, a much more relaxed, happy-go-lucky individual, apparently oblivious from her position as the second child, to the stresses my parent’s experienced, took the route the church preaches. She married at 22, had her 1st child within a year, and had her 5th and final child the year her husband finished his graduate education. It was tough. But it worked for her.
My point is, we are all different. And the Lord doesn’t have the same plan for each of us. What we need to be teaching our youth is to be seeking the Lord’s guidance for their individual lives, and to follow that guidance. If they can learn to do that successfully, everything else will fall into place.
Discuss.
*A small group, in the same academic year cohort; 3 girls, 2 boys, none of whom married each other. That’s 4 out of the 5 of us who divorced. 80%.
Wheat & Tares 
Even though I can be grumpy and betray my “Happy” moniker, I have tried really hard not to directly say anything bad about existing church leaders.
So I won’t say anything, but I am left with questions when I recall https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/like-a-broken-vessel?lang=eng Elder Holland comments, “And I have seen it in young fathers trying to provide for their families. In that regard I once terrifyingly saw it in myself. At one point in our married life when financial fears collided with staggering fatigue, I took a psychic blow that was as unanticipated as it was real.”
$300 in 1963 = $2300 in 2014; far more than I had when I married my RM at age 19. Fortunately, 15 years later we still love each other and we’re both finishing doctorates. But still not a path I’d necessarily recommend.
I admire and love Elder Holland, but he has had an incredibly successful career, academically and religiously. To extrapolate that unique success onto the lives of the general church population is kind of like the Powerball lottery winner exhorting everyone to buy a ticket because it worked out so well for him.
Oh let me tellya. The line about school, work, church, career and kids all at once was drilled into me from an early age and it was just the way you had to do it, otherwise you were ‘selfish’. I can’t even begin to tell you how much pain and dreams were crushed when the full weight of this collapsed on me. I am divorced with a 12 yr son who is unbaptized because his totally inactive mom won’t let him do it, his self worth isn’t great because of the divorce and everything. My career flopped, my education flopped and I have been struggling ever since. I wish so bad I could back and tell myself not to listen to Pres. Benson, Kimball, Elder Hartman Rector Jr. (it says here you got a PH.D, great, where’s your family?) and Elder Nelson of the 12, my stake president and Bishop and Mission President all of whom put an ENORMOUS amount of pressure on us to get married right now, today, just pick someone and do it. I have been asking God why all this and I have gotten nothing and i’ve been asking for 10 years now. I am single dad, mid 30’s and I just don’t even care anymore when it comes to marriage advice from Church leaders, the guilt trips and manipulation just don’t work anymore
“Brethren and sisters, I think we have to start earlier to teach our students the place of marriage and family in the great plan of happiness.
What in the sam-hill is he talking about? What church does HE go to that we aren’t teaching it early enough?? I go to one that in last general conference told my 8 year old to start praying for their spouse RIGHT NOW. I was glad my 9yo daughter didn’t hear that part. Shnikeys.
I’m elated with the sister missionary age change so we can shift away from teenage brides. I went to Ricks in 1999 and a lot of my friends got married early – and a lot of those friends in my married ward are now divorced. Holy heck, let people experience life as an adult first; and, you know, wait for their brains to finish developing. We are giving kids and singles enough complexes as it is by teaching them they aren’t whole and complete unless they are married.
We got a wedding invitation the other day from a former young woman in our ward that has been in college six months. I told my daughter I would kill her if she tried to pull that on me. As of now she knows I won’t pay for her wedding without a BA degree in hand, although I might negotiate if she doesn’t finish her degree within two years she has to pay me back for the wedding.
p.s. I always wonder if all this hand wringing over the number of kids people are having comes from the statistical department in Salt Lake as they project future tithing payers in the next generation….
There’s a huge difference between getting married and having children. My husband and I married before he was finished with school and it was okay. We didn’t have kids until 30. I can’t imagine if we had children when we were both still in school and without a good job. The financial strain alone would have been terrible. With the birth control options that are available today there is no reason a couple who chooses to marry young needs to have children young as well.
My parents always said to us growing up that the biggest mistake they made was marrying young and having kids right away. Their relationship was immature and unstable (my perspective) and financially, they were in no position to have a family. They never caught up financially to their peers who waited.
Unfortunately, I have been informed that our stake is focusing this year on encouraging the YM/YW on marrying and having children young. I find it disheartening, as well as inappropriate, that of all possible topics, this is what the stake has chosen to focus on this year.
I thought we were past this. I don’t know why I thought so, as I have seen recently an emphasis among the women I know on the number of children one has and its correlation with how awesome a woman is. “She has eight kids – she’s awesome!” “Her life long goal is to have ten kids before 35 – how awesome!” I am increasingly seeing families with more than six children with parents who are my own age (35) or younger. For the longest time, the only people I knew with large families were the same age as my parents. It seemed to skip a generation, and now my peers are reliving the ten kid philosophy. I keep hearing that young people are delaying marriage. This is not the case in my neighborhood (Portland, Oregon).
I’m reminded of an anecdote my father told me about his friend, a son of President Hinkley. He had brought home a girl after his mission with the intension of marrying her strait away. Apparently President Hinkley told his son that he was not in a position to get married and should wait till he had more education under his belt. Maybe my Dad got the story wrong. It seems hard to believe, given the emphasis in LDS culture. But I think President Hinkley was a practical man who didn’t let dogma get in the way of reality.
My advice to my kids is to have eyes wide open, know the choices and consequences, and that with different paths come different challenges…but none will guarantee anything at all.
My oldest is 22 and in college and not close to marriage as she is finishing her degree and getting ready to go study abroad for a semester.
My younger is 20yrs old and married, happily in the temple.
I am divorced now, after a 23 yr temple marriage that started a year after I returned from my mission, and had about $2,900 in the bank after I bought the ring…and still had 2 years at BYU before I graduated.
Did I get divorced because I married too young? Did we get divorced because we had children at age 23? Did getting married young help us forge our marriage through working together?
Nope. There are specific reasons I’m divorced, and they have nothing to do with choices I made at age 21.
The difficulties in life, whether married or not, with children or not, can’t be foreseen or predicted.
What you do is put yourself in the best possible place to have the hope for what kind of future you want, and then you go after it and try your best.
I can appreciate others’ opinions about marriage and all, but they don’t understand what I went through. What works for them doesn’t apply to me. I don’t go buy the DVD on the guy who has made millions flipping houses because it is a simple 3 step program to wealth.
And there is no 3-step program to happy marriage. You work at it. However you choose to start it, or work through it, what works for some does not work for all because of all the factors and unforseen variables contributing to it over the years.
And being divorced isn’t the end of the world. Holy cow…can you stop saying “Sorry tohear your marriage failed.”?? It just makes me want to reply, “Well, I’m sorry your bald and got fat in your old age.”
It’s a new chapter. New things ahead, with a new set of challenges. There isn’t a “challenge free” path. There are just choices, and then when life happens, we make more choices. I hope to be happily married again some day. I’m not dead (yet).
My kids were affected by the divorce, for sure. It isn’t keeping them from dating and wanting to be married. It is just making them more aware of things when they hear others like Elder Holland talk. Because they know their parents started off right…missions and temples and church activity and all…and yet it didn’t work. It helps them focus on the real things that matter in a marriage, not the false teachings or promises on someone else’s formula for success.
They also know their dad is super happy being divorced. In fact, I have a magnet on my fridge for them all to see that reads…”Yay Divorce!!” I don’t have a disease because I’m divorced. I’m still their dad. We’re still a family, we’re still happy. We just are different. As different as 50% of the other marriages (which means…we’re kinda not that different).
Why is that so hard for church to preach that different is OK? Why isn’t being single into your late 20s or 30s ok? Why isn’t being financially stable to prepare to raise a family OK? Why isn’t waiting to be emotionally and mentally prepared to raise a living child in this earth life OK?
Can we please teach our children conformity is not the answer to happiness in life. I’m happy for you in your journey, Elder Holland. I wish you were happy for me. Cause I’m pretty happy as a divorced single dad in his 40s, and my kids know it.
I am extremely lucky in my marriage of several decades. I followed prophetic counsel to get married shortly after I returned from my mission and I have not regretted it.
However, I recognize that just because I was really, really lucky and it turned out, does not mean my success was in any way tied to the age of my marriage. We were just fortunate enough to be compatible and have a desire to grow together over the years.
But I have a question.
Is Elder Holland’s advice to encourage young marriage any way related to the dramatic loss of young people who are leaving the church in droves?
Could this advice be a solution to the apostasy problem?
And if it is, then wouldn’t it be better use of his time to deal with the core problems causing the apostasy (i.e., no good answers to difficult questions) rather than applying a panacea to the problem?
Just a thought with no basis other than probable speculation.
@ James 9
All of the folks that have left my ward have left together as couples. And unfortunately if one spouse has a faith crisis married to a stereotypical believing Mormon, the result too often is divorce. That isn’t good.
I personally feel that the church preaching about marriage at all is wrong. I don’t feel spiritually uplifted hearing speeches about it. Why put so much pressure on the youth. When I was in young women’s that was all they taught us. How to be a good wife and mother one day. I felt as though my whole reason for existing was to become a loving wife and mother one day. I went to BYU to find a good LDS man who would take me to the temple so we could live happily ever after. When it wasn’t happening for me I was encouraged to go on a mission. Upon returning home from my mission I realized I had somehow missed my window of opportunity. The guys at BYU were now younger than I was. I found myself graduating and wondering “What on earth am I supposed to do now?” I never intended to get a degree or have a real job or career. That wasn’t what I was made for. I was supposed to be a wife and mother. I was lost. I graduated with a degree in Art, which prepared me for nothing. I thought well, where are there a lot of post graduate singles? I will go there to find my husband. I moved to Mesa Arizona. Once I turned 30 I was kicked out of the singles ward. This was a clear message from the church and the powers that be that for me marriage was a hopeless endeavor. That was a very depressing time for me. I was not dating. My career path was going nowhere. I was barely surviving financially. I really wish that the church had never preached marriage to me as a youth. By doing so I felt like a failure. I chose the wrong path for where my life was going. Had I been encouraged to make something more of myself I would probably have majored in Engineering and tried to work towards a career that would sustain me financially. I feel stupid for buying in to the rhetoric the church was dishing out. I eventually did get married at 35. I stayed in the marriage for 19 long torturous years. I vowed that my daughter will never buy into the church marriage brainwashing. I frequently complain to the leaders in her young women’s about their lessons. I am constantly asking them to prepare our young women for real life. Please have lessons in self defense, self worth, auto mechanics, careers, etc. They act like they are listening and really understand but then the next week they teach the girls how to make butter. The week after is making homemade suckers. It is up to me to bring my daughter up with her feet planted firmly on the ground because it won’t happen at church. I feel as though my influence on her is paying off. She is planning on being a surgeon. She is in the robotics club at school and is going to Nationals. She is a leader in ROTC at her High School. I am very proud of her drive and accomplishments. She will go far. Hind sight is 20/20, I guess. It is too late for me but at least I can aim her in a better direction.
Advice on matters that will affect my life profoundly and particularly financial is just that – advice. The brethren aren’t paying my bills, and as they say, talk is cheap. I can’t pay the mortgage with General Conference talks. Kids need to own their own choices.
Former Sheep: Making your own butter?? What is this? An Amish reality TV show?
I completely agree with Elsie that there is a big difference between marrying young and/or while still having a significant amount of education to complete and having children while young or still having to complete education.
First, it is a proven fact that the amount of marital satisfaction goes down in the first year after having a child, and empty nesters are generally happier than those with children. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter, but this certainly makes sense to me because kids are both expensive and stressful, while not allowing nearly as much time for oneself, or for relationships.
I married young, while we still both needed to complete undergrad degrees. I had our daughter not long before I started law school. While figuring out marriage has it’s challenges and getting through school has financial hardships, the amount of stress we had trying to get just one of us through grad school with a baby was so much greater.
And I get the whole hoopla about trying to get young people out on their own and more independent versus taking ‘the easy way out’ by living in mom and dad’s basement forever, and puting off marriage for that reason. But, I know a lot of young LDS couples who live with parents anyway.
It’s a lot of responsibility to think about providing for another, and I really would never advocate having children before you consider yourself financially stable – whatever that means for you.
A Happy Hubby, thank you for that pertinent link. It certainly adds food for thought. I know a lot of people rejoiced in that talk at the time. I guess it at least shows Elder Holland isn’t himself “Pollyannaish” in his description of life experiences as a young father.
Kgstar. Thanks for that figure, it’s more than a lot of people I know had when they married as well.
KLC, agreed. We can’t all fill those successful positions. It’s the nature of the beast. There aren’t that many of them as a percentage of available jobs.
whizzbang, I am so sorry. I remember that rhetoric too. As I recall, there were some Spencer W Kimball quotes about how it shouldn’t matter who you marry; provided they were a worthy church member, you ought to be able to make it work, that I heard a few times. So damaging.
Kristine; “What in the sam-hill is he talking about? What church does HE go to that we aren’t teaching it early enough?? I go to one that in last general conference told my 8 year old to start praying for their spouse RIGHT NOW”
I know. I guess he isn’t in the classes hearing it, and only sees that people aren’t doing it the way he thinks they should be. Or something. As I pointed out in the OP, our youth really are feeling that pressure. I don’t think it’s lack of teaching that’s the issue. The further emphasis in General Conference was not helpful, for my son at least.
Elsie “There’s a huge difference between getting married and having children.”
Absolutely. I married at 25, first child at 28. By then we’d both completed our education and were in employment. Post-partum was horrible, with both children, and there’s no way we’d have been able to cope with that with the additional stresses doing so any earlier would have brought. Even my sister who did things the prescribed way, once mentioned that in retrospect she would have preferred for her and her husband to have a little more time together before throwing children into the mix.
“I thought we were past this. I don’t know why I thought so, as I have seen recently an emphasis among the women I know on the number of children one has and its correlation with how awesome a woman is.”
Yes. I don’t think it ever really went away in some quarters. I recall a year or so ago meeting a retired CES couple (well he had been the CES employee), and one of the first questions was how many children did we have. I certainly got the message that they didn’t really feel 2 was a satisfactory answer. And I seem to remember the institute director, back when I was a student speaking in terms of the “obligatory 5”. Not sure where that number came from. I guess it’s a number that sufficiently distinguishes from the world where up to 4, while not overly common at the upper range, would still have been considered acceptable. But I don’t know. I also recall reading somewhere, that 5 was generally considered the maximum safe number of children a woman could bear (consecutively not concurrently)without the strain on the womb then becoming an issue in outcome. But I don’t recall the details.
“I am increasingly seeing families with more than six children with parents who are my own age (35) or younger. For the longest time, the only people I knew with large families were the same age as my parents.”
Me too. Although some of my siblings have large and growing families as well. As I wrote my sister 5, one of my brothers 8, and another of my brothers 6 so far. I’m finding hard to believe that large families are that much less common than they were as well, but perhaps it depends where you live.
Nate, nice story. Helpful anecdotes like that are few and far between, and don’t get nearly the same emphasis as the others currently it seems.
I recall once hearing a tale about a couple who had married because their Bishop had told them to, and it didn’t work, but that they were responsible for their decision. A valuable moral, that I’m surprised made it into a manual. I think it was a very old manual even at the time. There was a point when we were being taught from the wrong lesson manual in Sunday School – a very old manual for 17 yr old, back when I was 15. Those were cool lessons, from a lovely old really cool guy, who went on to become the stake patriarch. It did concentrate on marriage, but there was a lot of practical stuff, intended to really help prepare you for marriage, and what marriage really is, down to earth stuff in there that I’ve not seen in later curriculum materials. Sadly someone noticed we were getting the ‘wrong’ lessons, and manuals were changed.
Maybe Elder Holland needs to dig out those really old manuals. They were probably produced in the days when the auxilliaries produced their own materials without the oversight of the correlation committee. Definitely not “Pollyannaish”.
Heber: “My advice to my kids is to have eyes wide open, know the choices and consequences, and that with different paths come different challenges… but none will guarantee anything at all.”
… “Can we please teach our children conformity is not the answer to happiness in life. I’m happy for you in your journey, Elder Holland. I wish you were happy for me. Cause I’m pretty happy as a divorced single dad in his 40s, and my kids know it.”
Good advice. I’m glad you’re happy with where you are.
James: I’m so glad things worked out for you.
“Is Elder Holland’s advice to encourage young marriage any way related to the dramatic loss of young people who are leaving the church in droves?
“Could this advice be a solution to the apostasy problem?
“And if it is, then wouldn’t it be better use of his time to deal with the core problems causing the apostasy (i.e., no good answers to difficult questions) rather than applying a panacea to the problem?”
If so, I think they’re taking the wrong tack. I think our young people are already feeling the pressure. It isn’t that they don’t know what is expected of them. Piling it on is only going to make them feel worse, and might end up driving them away sooner, I’d have thought.
Former sheep, I’m glad your daughter is getting that encouragement. and you’re right. The current rhetoric does nothing to help those who want to marry, but just haven’t been able to within the approved timetable. Dialing it up will only make that worse.
Hawkgrrrl: “Kids need to own their own choices.”
I agree. And marriage is such a big choice. Unfortunately, the message some seem to be getting, is that the consequence is that if they do as they are being told (in this case marry young, produce lots of kids), they’ll be blessed, they’ll be happy. Some make the choice on that premise (and those who make the choice to hold off are painted as not doing what is required). It’s a simplistic application of choosing the right.
Not much is done to dig in to what they think the blessings and/or happiness might entail, so it’s good that Elder Holland is pushing for realism in teaching it. But as I mentioned in my comment to Nate, the real specifics of what the consequences might be, and how to make and own the choice are rarely covered. Yet it seems, if I’m remembering that ancient manual correctly, those things were taught much better in the past (pre-correlation).
kt, thanks for adding that experience.
What about all of the singles who may never end up getting married, for a wide variety of reasons and perhaps through no fault of their own? Piling on all of this “don’t delay marriage” rhetoric is not helping, and is actually shaming.
Additionally, we really need to stop demonizing divorce. To be sure, divorce is never pleasant, nor easily decided, but for some couples it is the most sensible way for all parties to have healthy lives going forward. I know plenty of LDS couples who probably should have gotten divorced by now (including my own parents), but remain in toxic, sometimes abusive marriages because of the social stigma divorce carries.
Jack, agreed. On your first point see my #19 to former sheep.
I think you’re also right about the stigma of divorce. Seeing couples stuck in bad marriages, and who are doing nothing about it, doesn’t recommend marriage to anyone. Additionally, if fear of divorce is a problem for some, removing the stigma makes taking a chance on marriage a more comfortable prospect.
Before I ever quoted Kimball, Holland or Benson on marriage to my kids, I shared this:
“It is a rule . . . in all the world that interest is to be paid on borrowed money. May I say something about interest? Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels . . . it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands nor orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.”
― J. Reuben Clark Jr.
This is true in all cases.
Thanks for linking to Elder Holland’s talk. I would suggest that people read it before making a comment based solely on the post.I am grateful for Elder Holland’s wise counsel.
IDIAT, I read the whole of Elder Holland’s talk as well. The reason why I didn’t comment on it as a whole is because it would have been a tangent. But since the main theme of his talk was to live without fear in the latter days, I wouldn’t point fingers at the world as the ones who are causing this fear. To the right wing conservative / Glenn Beck wing of the party who is stockpiling weapons and ammo as part of their food storage, or for my relatives who have read “Visions of Glory” and think the second coming is in 2-4 years and that the UN will take over, and that armageddon is *just* around the corner . . . . I’d like to point out I’ve been disagreeing with the fear mongering as I’ve seen prophets speak about hope in the future and seen how they’ve poured millions of dollars into BYU-Idaho to help prepare youth for what they tell students is a bright future.
I still think he’s wrong about saying we need to focus on marriage earlier and with more force. Believe me, 15 years ago I got that so much I didn’t even care about getting a degree, I went to Ricks for an MRS. Not. Good.
IDIAT, I read through the whole talk. “Be not afraid, only believe”.
My message to my kids is the same, don’t be afraid to find your own path. Believe you can do it. Even if that means not being married young and poor like Elder Holland.
Don’t be afraid if you are faced with divorce. Believe there are good things ahead in the next chapter in life.
Don’t be afraid if you are 23 or 33 and not married yet even though all of mormondom seems to be married already with kids.
Yes…I think that is good advice for church members. Don’t make huge life changes out of fear. Make them out of love and accept the fact many paths lead to goodness in our lives if our heart is in the right place, and we try to single our eye to the Lord.
I agree with Hawk that advice is just that–advice. Each needs to evaluate their own situation and make up their own minds about what path to follow. Having said that, it doesn’t necessarily make advice to think about marriage and children early good or bad. Kids are exposed to tons of advice and influence from a variety of source. Some good, some not so good.
It’s so easy to be critical of advice coming from church Leaders if it doesn’t happen to fit our own experience or thought pattern. Our experiences are no predictor of the experiences of our children. Because our experiences are our own. Unless our kids are brainwashed, they are mostly capable of assessing their own situation.
Sometimes they will make mistakes, like we did.
My sense is that advice from Church Leaders tends to be better than most.
I like that, Jeff. I certainly want my daughter’s experience to avoid the pitfalls of my own. I like how you said, our kids are capable of assessing their own situation. This is true even at age 9!
Last year my daughter had an activity day about modesty where they asked them all to come as pretty princesses to come learn about modesty in their search for princes to take them to the castle/temple. I *on purpose* didn’t tell my daughter about the activity as I didn’t want her to go. Well, as she walked home from piano lessons her AD leader saw her and brought her along. When she got home she told me they dressed them up in prom dresses and put dangly earrings on their ears and talked about covering up their body parts. I was so grossed out. I told my daughter I hadn’t wanted her to go.
She tells me, “What, you think I just have to think about things the way you do? You don’t think I can listen to what they tell me and make up my own mind?”
Touché. I stood corrected.
Kristine,
I admire your daughter!
I do like the idea of not being afraid and making a good life for yourself.
But the problem I see with the section of Bro. Holland’s talk when he says, “Good grief! On that formula Sister Holland and I still wouldn’t be married!” is that he is going against all the advice we hear in conference. We are told to stay out of debt, finish our educations, be chaste, (therefore?) marry young, and have children quickly.
At least in my family’s situation, my husband and I had to choose which of these pieces of counsel we would follow. We did want to get married, but we couldn’t have kids, finish educations, and stay out of debt all at the same time. In our case we chose to go into debt. But it only worked out because my husband eventually had the ability to choose a well-paying career that would pay off that debt and support a family on its own, we had no permanent health issues that bankrupted us, and the problems in our marriage have not been earth-shattering or soul-crushing. With worse luck or worse health or less money, it would have been a disaster.
Even though it’s worked out well for us, I’m super happy that none of our young adult children are married yet. The odds are just against them being as lucky, and I think their odds will improve as they are able to support themselves and come into their own as independent adults.
It’s not devaluing the idea of family. It’s valuing family enough to take time to plan for it and get ready for it and to make a good life for yourself whether you’re married or not.
Jeff…I like that.
The problem comes when people feel the obligation to agree with an apostle, and the apostle is suggesting the best way is one certain way.
His message wasn’t like yours or Hawk’s.
Young people with faith will feel very influenced by the authority Elder Holland holds.
Something that used to get me but I am long over over is, my younger sister and her husband dated while in university, both graduated, got killer jobs, married and then paid off all their debt, bought all new stuff then had 3 kids and they aren’t even 35 yet, they have a house and just got back from Mexico. They bucked all the advice and counsel and are faithful members but heck if I would have done that well…I got the ‘you’re selfish’and this kind of thing-I feel like the Church gave me the gun to shoot myself in the foot
Jeff, with the others. I’ll say I have no problem with advice that is presented as just that. We do indeed get advice from many different sources, and from those with a variety of experiences. I might wish that leaders are more circumspect in their framing of advice as being just that, given their position of authority. But that’s not what seems to be happening.
I heard only last week that E. Bednar addressing the missionaries in one mission refrained from standing when the mission stood to sing “Called to Serve”, which confused many of the missionaries. Then after told them a) that standing shouldn’t become a tradition (that’s an old bone with me, on standing for hymns, because something is going to become the tradition – if not standing, then sitting) and b) that they need to keep their eyes on the Brethren and follow them as things get tougher and more confusing, so if the Brethren remain seated so should they. Quite apart from the fact that that kind of manipulative object lesson makes me sick to the stomach…
Anyway, I’m digressing, Elder Holland’s address, was to the CES folk about what they need to be teaching to the youth and YSAs. I wish I could be confident that it’ll be filtered through them as advice, but I’m not.
Roger, nice quote. So many messages to balance.
Heber #25. I like that message.
Anarene “It’s not devaluing the idea of family. It’s valuing family enough to take time to plan for it and get ready for it and to make a good life for yourself whether you’re married or not.”
Amen.
whizzbang. I can see that would have been difficult to come to terms with.
Thanks for picking up my comment from the previous post. I really do think this is about the pressure to “have it all” and an implicit there is a “best way” to do it. I wish when they gave these talks our leaders would spend much more time emphasizing the legitimacy of different paths chosen through careful consideration and personal revelation. Some talks do, but I would say most of them simply don’t or it is a one line caveat. That just isn’t enough IMHO.
Personally, I am fine with encouraging people to not be afraid to marry young if they have found the right person. I definitely counsel against marriages that are precipitous and too quick when the people involve know each other so little. I think that is more problematic than “young”.
I also strongly council for couples to seriously consider waiting before having children. There are two primary reasons for this. One I strongly believe that marriages should be built on a solid foundation of friendship and shared experience. Especially for couples who don’t know each other very long (6 months isn’t very long, or is year really) they deserve time to build a strong relationship together. The years my wife and I spent as a couple before kids were so foundational to preparing our relationship for the long road ahead (and we knew each other since 8th grade). Taking time together gives you the opportunity work out relationship bumps, build love, trust and friendship. It also hedges against the risk of a wrong match (it happens) and gives the opportunity for two incomes, creating a stable financial base etc.
When kids come along responsibility, stress and risk go up dramatically in so many ways. Even very common things like post partum despression, a complicated childbirth, job loss and the loss of insurance etc. etc. become much more dire when small children are involved. It doesn’t mean you have to have everything perfect for kids. You don’t need a house with a nursery or your dream job or be out of student debt. But you do need a strong marriage and reasonable plan. Finding that together as a young married couple can be wonderful. Why rush?
Hedge,
“I might wish that leaders are more circumspect in their framing of advice as being just that, given their position of authority. But that’s not what seems to be happening.”
I am fully aware of the dichotomy of our situation within the Church. But I also wonder if we put things in the proper order.
Preaching over the pulpit by anyone should never trump our agency. In the end, how can it?
While I am tempted to write down a list as to what the priority is to listen to for ourselves, I didn’t it.
Yeah, I get the “follow the prophet” message, but following the prophet into our own personal ditch, ignoring our own agency, seems incorrect to me.
Thanks for that further comment rah. I like your advice.
Jeff, “but following the prophet into our own personal ditch, ignoring our own agency, seems incorrect to me.”
For those who do that, I get the impression they frame it as an act of faith. Just like those in the Willie and Martin handcart companies. We’re still teaching the wrong lessons from those experiences. There’s been a musical on that touring the church in Britain just this last year…
The aspect that I think is so bad about the application of this advice is that people aren’t all the same. We are marrying someone who likewise has his or her own agency, and just saying that we can marry anyone is kind of foolhardy. Marriage is yoking ourselves with another person for life. Until we know who we are and our values and who they are and their values, we shouldn’t be making these kinds of decisions.
And “values” are not the same as “going to church.” That’s a heuristic that is destined to fail. We sit in the pew next to families who believe in spanking or don’t, who like homeschooling or don’t, with two working spouses or one, who like to spend holidays traveling or with family, these are the types of things that drive a wedge in marriage. These types of values and expectations.
Has a general authority ever acknowledged a circumstance in which it is appropriate to ignore their counsel while giving that counsel?
Has a general authority ever insisted that their counsel should be followed in spite of the negative consequences?
Daniel, there is Elder Oaks remark that they teach the general rule, and don’t ask him to comment on your exception, something to that effect.
The sense I’m getting from Elder Holland, however, is that it is precisely because so many seem to be excepting themselves from the counsel, that there is a concern. I’d agree with him that fear isn’t a good reason, but the rest… That’s why I suggested what I did at the end of the OP.
I’m familiar with Elder Oaks’ remark. It was made in a talk about this very subject. One remark. This subject has been a staple of general authority discourse for a couple of decades, and we have one oblique reference to the theoretical possibility of an exception (but he couldn’t tell you what it might look like). That sound more like a escape hatch for when he may be confronted with the unpleasant results of his teachings rather than a sincere effort to teach.
Daniel, I’m fine with no description of what an exception might look like. That makes it easier for members in my view. It would be all too easy for people to get bogged down in details of whether any particular exception fits the model for an exception ;-).
Hawkgrrrl agreed. So far as I read it, Elder Holland didn’t say it didn’t matter who we married. But those SWK quotes growing up. Yeah, eyebrow raising.
Hedge,
“For those who do that, I get the impression they frame it as an act of faith.’
And I think that could be an appropriate course of action. If it’s not a “well, I’ll just jump off this cliff and see if there is anyone there to catch me.”
One can take an action on faith if they consider it carefully and decide for themselves it is the right thing. Of course, when we make decisions, it is always the right thing until it turns out badly, then…..
I don’t ever think that we should have, nor do our leaders expect, blind faith. I know many people still think they do, but I do not. Nor would I…..
I’ve always thought lessons about financial self-reliance and lessons on marrying young/dropping a litter were at complete odds with each other. I’ve sat through many a self-reliance class thinking, “You want me to have lots of kids, pay tithing, live off one income, put money into our callings, have food storage, have emergency savings, plan for retirement (including several couple missions), save for our many kids’ missions, AND buy Deseret Book products?!”
I think it is also fair to acknowledge that in what I consider one of the best GC talks of the last decade Elder Holland recognized that he and Pat were never actually in poverty. It was a frank admission of his privilege, even in their “poor” student years (at Yale). I wish more of that made it more regularly into talks like this.
Jeff, we certainly don’t disagree on that. My concern is that our youth are somewhat vulnerable, and don’t always get the message about prayerfully counseling with the Lord in their decisions, as opposed to feeling they are doing the right thing in following the counsel of leaders. It can very much depend, on who their teachers have been, what they’ve been taught, and what was emphasised. Hence my: “What we need to be teaching our youth is to be seeking the Lord’s guidance for their individual lives, and to follow that guidance.” in the OP.
Laurel, yes. My parents survived early marriage, large family partly thanks to the British welfare state of the time. We benefited from vouchers for milk, and school meals. Government-funded musical instrument tuition was available for any child who wanted to take advantage of that. I did, as did several of my siblings. And back when I attended university the government paid tuition, and paid maintenance grants. I qualified for the full grant. And students receiving such grants weren’t permitted to work more than a very small number of hours.
It’s very different now.
rah, thanks for adding that. It’s an important point in this context.
Hedgehog, It almost sounds like your situation the result of your parents marrying young and having lots of kids pushed your family into a situation where your family was not self-sufficient. So they were back to being a cafeteria Mormon and picking which commandments to follow. I hope that doesn’t offend. I grew up with a large family and very little money. At times my parents were only able to put food on the table and get hand-me-downs for clothes.
A happy hubby, it’s very true. It doesn’t offend in the slightest. By many LDS cultural standards we certainly weren’t self-sufficient. Attitudes in Britain are very different to those in the US to such things. Here we say, that’s what we pay our taxes for, mostly. Unless heavily influenced by right-wing LDS culture. Some are. We had a German sister in my previous ward, who absolutely abhorred that right-wing LDS cultural attitude. You might say my parents did pick and choose. We did also live off our food storage from time to time. They did their best to follow the spirit, and do feel they were meant to have all those children.
Who’s to say the Lord doesn’t also work within the particular cultural and social climates of the nations within which we live, and uses those means to bless us, so that we can achieve what we need to achieve. I tend to think he does. My experience would indicate that. I’m also grateful to my nation. And I’d hardly want to dispense with my siblings at this point. We also learnt to work, had paper-rounds, and got part-time jobs before we attended university.
It’s always struck me as highly ironic though, which is why I mentioned it.
Hedgehog–
Hear! Hear! (am I doing it correctly?)
#3 (KLC) – don’t damn Elder and Sis Holland for their successes, be it marital, financial, or vocational. Attributing same to just ‘dumb luck’ (which at least you got very right with the PowerBall analogy b/c it’s dumb to play and extraordinary luck to cash in) is to ENTIRELY miss the point. The Hollands started out with a modest nest egg (equal to $2,300 in today’s money according to one estimate), and had nothing handed to them. Hard work, delayed gratification, and working TOGETHER tends to build over time, which is 52 years and counting in the Holland household.
Alas, only in Hollyweed fiction is anyone consistently this “stupid-lucky”:
One of the problems LDS singles have is a huge discrepancy betweeen who they really are and the kind of person they are told they should marry. Real people are quite variable and imperfect. But the expectations for a spouse cultivated at church are far higher and far more narrow. It comes as no surprize to me that so few fit the mold and few will settle for “less” than what they are taught to expect and seek.
In my case, I was taught at church in a way that lead to desire to marry someone perfect like a Farrah Fawcett with a burning testimony who would have 12 children. But the real me is socially ackward and a geek and I look more like String Bean on Hee Haw. I was never even close to 100% on board with everything taught at church. I used to think if I could only get the most popular and beautiful girl at school to fall for me it would solve all my social problems. Little did I suspect that even if that had happened it would have ruined her reputation, not salvaged mine.
I believe that one of the best solutions (that our youth are specifically taught to avoid) is to consider dating outside the narrow confines of the Mormon Fortress. There you will find more variability including a few partners who will appreciate you for who you are and not compare you to some impossible ideal pounded into your head at church.
The cost is high. You may never convert them (my guess about 10% will convert) and you will face more expectations to be sexually active,(again not 100%). But in my perspective the joy of having a family and raising children even if it is not the picture perfect Mormon family is far greater than perpetual singlehood in a church community that over-values families at the expense of ignoring and marginalizing singles.
Love the comment Mike. And I think you make an excellent point about unrealistic expectations.
My observation is, it was much more acceptable to marry non-members 50/60 years ago, in this part of Britain anyway. It was patently clear to everyone that there weren’t enough member men. Growing up many of the older ladies whose families had raised them in the church had married non-members and raised families. I remember a RS event where one described how she’d gone about deciding to marry her husband. Back then it was also far less common for anyone here to serve a mission, so “returned missionary” wasn’t on the radar as required for a husband anyway.
Douglas, I think it’s you that is missing the point. My comment was about probabilities, it didn’t damn Elder and Sister Holland and it didn’t ascribe their success to dumb luck.
The message our young people are given, in that talk, and 40 years ago when I was their age is that if you follow a very narrow set of rules: marry young, don’t delay children, then the Lord will bless you. And how does the person proclaiming those rules know that? Well, because he blessed them.
So if I marry young and don’t delay having children will God bless me with the presidency of the largest private university in the US and then make me an apostle? In any large population you’re going to find the far tail end of the bell curve, but statistical outliers don’t prove anything.
I would love to hear church leaders, especially those in positions of great power and influence, speak more about how our youth can make wise decisions rather than on get rich quick formulas for success in marriage and in life.