When my children were little, I intended to raise them in the Church. I believed commandments such as the Word of Wisdom and the law of chastity would help them avoid pitfalls that might cause them pain and anguish. I also thought the Church community would be a positive influence. I liked the idea of service projects, learning to give talks and plan gatherings, and the way the Church expected missions, college, jobs, and marriage. It’s a good life.
As they got older, and as my oldest son’s social and emotional challenges became more apparent, I started to take a different view of the Church’s influence and expectations on my children. I was starting to notice how the Church’s expectations had shaped my view of my own life. I felt like an oddball and a failure because I wasn’t married. I married in my 30s, got divorced, and never remarried. No matter how impressive my professional accomplishments were, they were still just a consolation prize and that’s how I viewed them. My life was second-best, a trial to endure, and a disappointment to me.
It took a lot of work to let go of all those teachings I had internalized over the years. (Please no gaslighting in the comments. Anyone who says the Church doesn’t set marriage up to be the most important thing in a woman’s life is lying.) Those expectations were tangled up in my testimony and I couldn’t throw out the bathwater and keep the baby.
I let my son quit Church the month before he would have turned twelve. He wasn’t going to hit the Church milestones for Young Men. I didn’t want him feeling second best, like his life was a trial at worst and a consolation prize at best. I didn’t want the Church to create expectations for him and in him that he simply wouldn’t be able to meet. He recently turned eighteen and I have never regretted the lack of the Church’s influence in his life.
Questions:
- If you have kids, have you weighed the Church’s influence on their lives while deciding whether or not to keep attending Church?
- If your kids attend, do you think the Church’s influence on them is different than it was on you growing up?
- If you don’t have kids, how did the Church’s teachings influence how you feel about that? Do society’s expectations about relationships and children differ that much?
Wheat & Tares 
I had a talk with my daughter last week about this very thing. She came out at 21, got married at 30 to her wife, and now they have two wonderful sons. Of course, the church wouldn’t accept her, and for a while, even the boys. So, she’s no longer a member. In the process, I’ve had my own crisis of faith because of having to defend loving a child when I went to my ward. This has all weighed upon me.
When we were talking about this, she said it’s like the church is a third parent, an absent parent to boot. There are the expectations, the dismay, the guilt, and the trying to please even when they aren’t around, and it continues even after you’ve left home (the church).
I looked back on my 70 years of life, and that pretty well explained it, and I even tried to live up to what was expected. It’s not a good way to live or to raise children. We each carry enough “sins” from our generations to complicate things when raising children, so why compound it with the church? It took me way to long to figure out that I could have a strong and good moral code within myself without having to rely on a religion to instill it in me. I think the same can be said for our children.
Janey,
You say it so well “I didn’t want him feeling second best, like his life was a trial at worst and a consolation prize at best.”
For people that don’t conform in some way, the church is not a comfortable place to be in. To make it all about focusing on a cisgender heterosexual temple marriage means people that don’t fit that cookie cutter always feel off. Yes, this includes people with disabilities; marriage is often unreachable for them. Certainly our government makes it so that if they do pair up they lose their SSI.
Pairing up can make housing affordable, but then they need to marry to be considered worthy, and if they marry they lose one income so… There’s no way to win. The church and the world aren’t welcoming.
There’s a lot more to say on this topic. Maybe I will get time later today.
I have two teenagers. A daughter that church works reasonably well for, and a son that recently went from being a 3rd class member of the church (a boy that can attend YM, but can’t receive the priesthood or go to the temple) to a 4th class member of the church (a boy that can only attend YW). Needless to say, church doesn’t really work for him. Even in the 6 months before the recent rule changes, he didn’t come to church with us very often. He would come to sacrament meeting occasionally, but would usually walk home and skip the 2nd hour. Prior to the recent changes I would invite him to church each week, though we didn’t pressure him to come. Now I no longer feel that I can invite him.
With the recent changes, we had to ask ourselves as parents if we could still attend a church that treats our child like this. We also had to ask ourselves if our attending would poison our relationship with our son. Would our attendance be a weekly slap in his face? We’ve tried to have honest conversations about this, and he says he doesn’t mind our continued attendance. I also don’t always trust that he tells us the whole truth about his feelings. At the same time, church still works for my daughter. She was made the president of her YW class the same week they kicked my son out of YM. If my daughter wants to still attend church, should we support her in that? Can we support our son in not attending at the same time we support our daughter in participating?
So we’re currently stuck in the middle. For the first time, I’ve asked to be released from a calling. We still attend every week, and I’m sticking it out in my other calling. We’re entirely boycotting GC this weekend, because people who can’t be trusted not to say hurtful things aren’t invited in my house. The church still has many values that I want for myself and for my kids, but more of them seem to come with asterisks these days. I still want them to completely avoid alcohol and tobacco, though I don’t care that much about coffee and tea. I still want them to avoid sex at a young age, even if I’m less sure that that extends all the way to marriage. I still want them to love their neighbor, and serve others, and have a connection to the divine. I want them exposed to role models (both adults and peers) outside of our home to show them how to be good people. I also want them to be valued for their full potential.
I have son who is a high functioning autistic child. Recently in Elders Quorum we had a lesson where it was discussed how all the men of the Ward needed to do their best to push young men onto Missions as anything else was a failure.
I was kind of shocked by it and expressed that my son probably wouldn’t be able to make the strict nature of a mission work but that it was important to me that he saw the men in the ward being Christlike as that would have the most impact on his life.
I immediately had someone push back and say that I was going to set my son up for failure if I didn’t demand he serve a mission because that’s a commandment given to all men. I silently flipped that man off in my head and thought, “If it comes down to God and a Mission or my son, I’ll pick my kid everytime.”
I don’t know if Hank will serve a mission but I’ll be damned before I allow the church to come between he and I or God and him.
I am a never married, 57 year old, childless women. You summed it up perfectly: “My life was second-best, a trial to endure, and a disappointment to me.” I have said more than once, that I want a refund.
I am working hard to try and appreciate what I have, but boy is it tough if you don’t fit into the mormon mold.
My kids are adults, not interested in the church, and I can’t blame them, although they simultaneously have fond memories of leaders and friends they had. While their experience bears some resemblance to my own as a youth, it’s also quite different in some really bad ways. The focus on culture wars nonsense really wasn’t as strong a thing when I was a teen. We didn’t have “personal progress” even yet (I think it piloted when I was a junior in high school maybe), and there was no For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet. We didn’t have early morning seminary until I was a senior, and then I quit after a few months because it was terrible and also involved dangerous driving conditions. I think that might have been local variation to some extent; I did see the Satanic Panic stuff happening in society at large and the church specifically, although it was WAY worse when I got to Utah to go to BYU.
What I realized fairly late in the game is what was alluded to above, that my own parenting was much better than the advice of church leaders, and that the church is kind of a de facto third parent in your kids’ lives, even if you don’t intend that. It undermines your parental authority and influence. It can convince your kids that coming out is unsafe, even if it’s totally safe. It can make them think your love is conditional on their participation and conformity to church stuff, even if that’s 100% not true. No amount of un-brainwashing, even on a weekly basis, will convince your kids contra the indoctrination that happens in a church setting. I’m sure that’s true for Catholicism and Evangelical churches as well.
We eventually got the family to understand the church system, culture, and friend groups didn’t work for my oldest ever – and we participate for community parties and stake level service activities. It’s debatable that even that level of cultural interaction works for my oldest. There is religious trauma there as “religious principles” and the black & white thinking literalism of Autism combine to create a religious-expectation of behavior from multiple family members that only produces shame, not spiritual growth.
The baby in the family just turned 8. I have spent the last year preparing to “be the bad guy” and say “No baptism” because our family is not ready (and may not ever be ready) for that level of social and cultural participation. I don’t need the baby triggering a bona-fide mental health crisis in her older sister as she restates all the “faith-based cultural certainties” that she would pick up from church culture.
And I am “the bad guy” because “faith in God and church is good” – so how could I want to block my baby getting baptized? I totally get it. I want the church community and faith in God to work for people. I even wanted that for both of my children for a very long time.
And I will be the most vilest of sinners here to keep the church culture out of our family culture because weaponized faith kills the people – and it has already maimed by oldest child’s soul.
Both my kids hated church when they were younger. My oldest had earnest questions and just got shushed or told the “pray & ponder” default answer, so I eventually started taking the kid with me to EQ or adult Sunday School until COVID hit and we all stopped going. My youngest has low-functioning autism and Primary was a sensory nightmare–nobody made any considerations for him beyond designating a “quiet room” in the ward where he and either my wife or I got exiled to. He was unable to communicate at all when younger, and seemed to be getting nothing out of the experience at church, so eventually I just decided to take him to the park instead.
In the years since COVID, my oldest has come out as trans. There’s no place for him in the church right now, and there may never be. My youngest learned to communicate by typing, and revealed not only a sharp, inquisitive mind, but to my huge surprise he is a fervent believer in Jesus Christ. I asked him if he wanted to attend church, and he typed “Yes, but not the one we used to go to. I didn’t like it then and don’t think I will now.”
So yeah, not much for us at the LDS ward anymore. And I’m not interested in hearing how prayer might change my oldest, or how “blessed” I am for having a special needs kid who is actually a savvy disciple with no patience for dull meetings. My oldest spends Sundays with friends or drawing, and I like to watch other church’s services with my youngest. He rather enjoys sermons and traditional church hymns. I’m still more surprised than anyone.
God has a tremendous if harsh sense of humor.
Nathan, I don’t agree with some your EQ compatriots that a mission is a commandment. None of the three in the first presidency served a mission, if I understand correctly. For Jews, circumcision is a commandment. If a boy isn’t circumcised at 8 days, he will get circumcised at some point, because it is a commandment. War offers no excuse, or does it. I went to First Presidency’s articles articles at Wikipedia. Here’s what I found.
President Nelson was born in 1924. He graduated from high school at age 16, so about 1940. This was too young to serve a mission, and it was before we entered WWII. Maybe we totally shut down our missionary program 1941-1945, but I really don’t know. Men of draft age were not to be recommended for missions (20 Nov 1943), but an urgent request was made before the end of the war for missionaries who spoke Spanish (8 Feb 1945), so maybe there was some missionary service–maybe. “He earned a bachelor of arts in basic biological sciences with high honors in 1945, and a doctor of medicine degree in 1947, at age 22.” Perhaps a mission was not possible after his BA degree in 1945 at age 20/21, but maybe not. It probably was available in 1947, when he was 22 years old, still within the age range of serving a mission. He had already married in 1945, the year that he graduated with his BA. Perhaps he could have postponed marriage and medical school to serve a mission at age 20/21, if a mission was a commandment. I read somewhere that he didn’t serve a mission because of the Korean War, but that came later, so I believe that source intentionally misrepresented the truth. He was already married by the time the Korean War started, so that war was not his reason for not serving a mission.
Anyway, looking at Russell Nelson’s life experience, I conclude that missions are not commandments. He probably could have served in 1945, but he did not serve. Instead, he got married, and marriage is good and honorable. I won’t blame Pres. Nelson for breaking the commandment to serve a mission because there was no such commandment, and Nathan, if you son does not serve a mission, I will not blame him, or you. Who is teaching that a mission is a commandment? Why are we doing this?
Dallin Oaks was born in 1932. He graduated from high school in 1950 (per Wikipedia), so about age 18. He graduated from BYU in 1954, after marrying in 1952 while a student at BYU. Per Wikipedia, he did not serve a mission because he had joined the Utah National Guard. If a mission was a commandment (which I do not think that it was), then he should have served a mission and not joined the National Guard, right? Did he sin in joining the National Guard? I don’t think so.
Henry Eyring was born in 1933. Per Wikipedia, he served in the Air Force from 1955 to 1957. If my math is right, he would have been about 22 years old when he entered the Air Force. He married in 1962, at about age 29. We read that he was in ROTC while in college, so his 1955-1957 active duty was probably per his ROTC contract: education in exchange for service. But if the ROTC was going to prevent him from going on a mission, and if a mission is a commandment, would one not err to accept the ROTC scholarship? He would have been 24 years old when he left the Air Force in 1957, and he didn’t marry until 1962, so he could have served when he left the Air Force, and I believe that he would have served, had there been a commandment. There was no commandment.
I cast no blame on the current members of the First Presidency. They are good role models for the faithful. They did not serve missions, and I do not believe that they violated any commandment, for there is no commandment to serve a mission. I use them as examples of good people trying to figure out their lives. For them, a mission simply did not work, but had there been a commandment, I expect that they probably could have figured it out.
Commandments generally do not come and go. For the most part, what is a commandment today was also a commandment 50 or 1000 or 2000 years ago, and will remain a commandment for the known future. Guidance, suggestions, advice, and recommendations may change, and should probably change as life changes, but commandments rarely change. I am not aware of a commandment that all men shall serve missions. I am aware of the advice that all men should serve missions, but there are always exceptions, as there should be with most points of advice.
Please don’t tell your sons, nephews, or neighbors that they are sinners, covenant breakers, and commandment violators if they do not serve a mission. Perhaps it would be good if they did, but I find no such commandment. We should not make commandments where God has not made them.
The lived experience of the previous posters breaks my heart.
Here’s what I believe: your kids and you are the best and you don’t require any institution to create the love and wisdom you share.
Georgis: you’re absolutely correct in principle, but this is one of those teachings that winds up being a “Do as I say, not as I [didn’t do]” thing. Certainly the rhetoric from the top about serving missions has softened a little, but anecdotally I hear that it is as strong as ever at the stake and local levels. One thing that has improved is the lessened stigma for those who return early from missions. This used to make a young person an utter pariah, to the point that two people I know who returned early just started outright lying by omission about it. (I don’t blame them.) Now I haven’t heard much, and I know multiple early-returners who have received high callings including local leadership.
I appreciate the vulnerability of the post and the comments thus far.
Despite being who the church was made for in visible ways, starting around the time I was a Deacon, I just found I never really seemed to belong. That never really seemed to change on my mission or at BYU or in married wards as an adult. It wasn’t overtly terrible but quite uncomfortable. Around 2018, never really belonging coupled with my dissatisfaction with the church’s position on social issues, lack of historical or financial transparency, and just plain boredom made me want to quit, but I hung on and pretended because I didn’t want my wife and kids to leave me behind.
Around 2020/2021 soon after we returned to in-person church, the ward clerk gave the most horrific talk in sacrament meeting, completely eviscerating the queer community. It would have made Elder Oaks and Elder Holland blush. Incidentally, Elder Holland’s horrific musket talk came shortly after. When I confronted the bishop about the talk in the hallway about a week later, he agreed with me he didn’t like the talk but it would have been rude to cut the speaker off or set the record straight. I countered that in order to spare his feelings it was rude to the rest of us to have to endure it. You cannot escape rudeness in this type of situation, you only get to pick who gets spared, and he chose to spare the white guy.
A few weeks later my two oldest kids (around ages 15 and 12 at the time) told me that talk made them very uncomfortable (I wasn’t even sure if they were listening). Turns out, my kids were experiencing church similar to the way I was, that they just didn’t really feel at home there despite no one being directly mean to them. Here I was hating my church experience, not realizing that they were also frustrated with the lame reasons given to deny women and minorities a theology equal to that offered to the white men. So we tried to stay on our terms a while but since that’s not a thing, we all left together.
I’m incredibly fortunate that my community is incredible and provides a better community than church does for us, and without all the shade on the marginalized to boot. So I think we are better off, not really even missing the best parts of the religion.
I am the parent of 2 college-age kids. I think they have had a very different experience from me for two reasons. One is that the youth program has been pared down so much, and the other is that aside from Sunday attendance we have not pushed them to attend any activities they weren’t interested in, which meant they barely participated in most of it. When they were younger we would have fairly open discussions after church about what was taught, where questioning and disagreeing was allowed. Knowing my kids personalities, I frankly think that approach gives them a better chance of staying connected to the church as adults than being really rigid, but I have no idea what the future holds.
We have strongly encouraged them to attend the local YSA ward, primarily for social reasons. It has been beneficial, particularly for my more introverted kid. My long term worries are about pressure for marriage and mission. My son has just hit mission age and is noncommittal about it so far. He’ll get no pressure from me, and frankly going a little older than 18 is in my opinion a good thing, but suppose he doesn’t ultimately go. Will any Mormon women be willing to date him? Does not going sentence him to marrying outside the church? Being a good spouse and finding a good spouse are more important to me than checking the Mormon temple boxes, but I don’t want options to be foreclosed by church culture. I fear it will.
My heart goes out to everyone who has had a negative experience in the church, and I acknowledge the pain and damage that it can cause, especially when you don’t fit the mold. Just as I don’t think that the church is a good fit or beneficial for every person, I also don’t think that it’s damaging and harmful for every person. I think the church is a net positive in the lives of many youth.
I have given a lot of thought and consideration and weighed the church’s influence on my children’s lives as I’ve decided to attend or not. Some of the factor’s that I’ve considered include Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, Bandura’s social learning theory, Fowler’s stages of faith, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, etc… I have come to the conclusion that for my children, belonging to the church has been beneficial for them in helping them grow in to happy, kind, moral people, who live with integrity and authenticity, love others, and make the world a better place. (I also acknowledge that going to church isn’t the only way to get this outcome, and that the way my wife and I parent them has a huge effect, and would have that effect whether we went to church or not).
But even more important than looking at the theories of development and weighing the pros and cons, the biggest factor in deciding to attend church is… my children like it. They know that my wife and I are very nuanced and we have our own beliefs, and that they can choose not to attend church or their activities if they don’t want to (and often we’d prefer them not to because we don’t want to give them a ride). But they enjoy church, they enjoy the activities, they have good friends at church, and they’d be sad if we told them that they couldn’t attend. (Maybe it’s because we’ve moved to a foreign country, and attending an English speaking branch offers comfort and familiarity). So, yeah, we’ve continued going to church and I think it’s been really beneficial for my children.
In response to Hawkgrrrl’s comment, I will acknowledge that it is a gamble raising children in the church, because as she says, “The church can convince your kids that coming out is unsafe, even if it’s totally safe.” That is something I have worried about, and we’ve had a lot of open conversations and have weekly un-brainwashing conversations about church and the gospel, and I feel good about where we’re at. I think that raising your kids in a different religion or with no religion is also a gamble. I regularly work with youth who are involved with drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancies, difficulties with the law, depression, friendlessness, etc… and I believe that many of them would be healthier happier individuals if they had had the influence of the church in their lives. Perhaps they would have benefited from a little of “the indoctrination that happens in a church setting.”
Sorry, if this is a duplicate post, it didn’t go through earlier.
My heart goes out to everyone who has had a negative experience in the church, and I acknowledge the pain and damage that it can cause, especially when you don’t fit the mold. Just as I don’t think that the church is a good fit or beneficial for every person, I also don’t think that it’s damaging and harmful for every person. I think the church is a net positive in the lives of many youth.
I have given a lot of thought and consideration and weighed the church’s influence on my children’s lives as I’ve decided to attend or not. Some of the factor’s that I’ve considered include Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, Bandura’s social learning theory, Fowler’s stages of faith, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, etc… I have come to the conclusion that for my children, belonging to the church has been beneficial for them in helping them grow in to happy, kind, moral people, who live with integrity and authenticity, love others, and make the world a better place. (I also acknowledge that going to church isn’t the only way to get this outcome, and that the way my wife and I parent them has a huge effect, and would have that effect whether we went to church or not).
But even more important than looking at the theories of development and weighing the pros and cons, the biggest factor in deciding to attend church is… my children like it. They know that my wife and I are very nuanced and we have our own beliefs, and that they can choose not to attend church or their activities if they don’t want to (and often we’d prefer them not to because we don’t want to give them a ride). But they enjoy church, they enjoy the activities, they have good friends at church, and they’d be sad if we told them that they couldn’t attend. (Maybe it’s because we’ve moved to a foreign country, and attending an English speaking branch offers comfort and familiarity). So, yeah, we’ve continued going to church and I think it’s been really beneficial for my children.
In response to Hawkgrrrl’s comment, I will acknowledge that it is a gamble raising children in the church, because as she says, “The church can convince your kids that coming out is unsafe, even if it’s totally safe.” That is something I have worried about, and we’ve had a lot of open conversations and have weekly un-brainwashing conversations about church and the gospel, and I feel good about where we’re at. I think that raising your kids in a different religion or with no religion is also a gamble. I regularly work with youth who are involved with drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancies, difficulties with the law, depression, friendlessness, etc… and I believe that many of them would be healthier happier individuals if they had had the influence of the church in their lives. Perhaps they would have benefited from a little of “the indoctrination that happens in a church setting.”
How about the kids that are friendless, even when they attended church? I have at least 3 kiddos who experienced this. We have a close transgender loved one.
All my kids have chosen not to attend any more, and I am glad because than I don’t have to worry about the toxic affects of some messages. They all attended to about 18, so it’s none of my business in any case.
One of my sisters left the church because of how the other girls treated her in YW. Sometimes church makes a good social structure, but for many it does not.
I was born and raised in the church. I recently read through my teen diaries and was surprised how often I mentioned negative feelings about my mandatory church attendance during those years. I truly had nothing positive to say. Time is kind to memories, as I now have fond memories of the friends from that time and place. Despite a childhood aversion to even admitting I was LDS and hating church as a teen, for some reason I stayed with it for decades and raised my 3 children in the faith. Like Janey said, I thought it would be a positive influence and the parental pressure to keep our family together forever was immense.
I married a non-member. If you haven’t experienced it, you cannot understand, but despite everything you do you will always be at best a second-class member in the ward. As mentioned in other comments, there are many ways in addition to this one that will place you in a permanent lower-class caste. It is not a fun place to be. My eldest, a girl, loved church, had a strong group of friends there, and is still 100% in with her family. I also have 2 sons. While they attended growing up, they did not love church, did not have a strong group of friends, and even at my most TBM I could see how they were kept on the fringe. I’m pretty sure the only reason they went was to make me happy. They both left before me and sometimes surprise me by their insightfulness. They figured out the discrepancies and hypocrisy long before I did. For my daughter, the church community has served her well and raising her in the church would appear to be a positive. For my sons, I really don’t know if raising them in the church would be considered a positive, though I hope it was. Perhaps all I can hope for is a net neutral… I’d like to think there were some positives, but I don’t think that they would be drastically different men if I hadn’t raised them that way. I do know that being in a part-member family brought a lot of unnecessary heartache, so that’s a negative. I also know my boys (and me) were heavily pressured on many occasions to participate in camps or adventure activities that were hyped as this incredible event that were not as advertised. I was livid when I found out on one high adventure that the boys were sent out into a neighborhood one evening in groups of 3 to go door-to-door handing out pass-along cards. WTF? That kind of bait and switch had a very negative result and major loss of trust. I made the best decision that I could at the time, and that’s all one can do.
We’ve decided to raise our children (elementary and preschool age) outside of the church after years of being in but the decision has been grueling. There are only two houses in our neighborhood who don’t show up on LDS tools- a problem we signed up for moving back to Utah after years of living outside the state.
We worry all the time that they’ll be ostracized, lonely, and left out. My husband and I had very different experiences as teenagers in the church- his mostly positive with his friend group coming nearly exclusively from his ward, mine mostly negative with my friends not in my ward. But we’re both out now together which has been helpful.
Uplift Kids and the book No Nonsense Spirituality have been helpful in my parenting as we’ve transitioned out- replacing daily Come Follow Me lessons and the fear of “what will I teach them?”
I am a convert and I liked what the church provided for families. I married a member and we raised our sons in the church. My sons are inactive. As youth some of my sons had friends, some didn’t. My husband is TBM and I am nuanced. What I struggle with is that my sons equate our loved for them with their church activity. I didn’t grow up with these religious pressures and I turned out fine. My children grew up with religious pressures and left with trauma. I was naive and thought that family church activity would magically produce missionaries and temple goers. I am happy being nuanced and I am happy where my sons are. It hasn’t been an easy process.