A presentation titled Pregnant Possibilities was given by Mark Tensmeyer, Joseph Stanford, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, John Kidd, & myself (Rick Bennett.) This was similar to a presentation at Sunstone & John Whitmer Historical Association in August, September, & October 2025. We tackled the question on how many children Joseph Smith should have had with his plural wives. (It is a lot less than you think!) Mark gave a history, Joseph outlined the science behind calculating pregnancy, Rick did the calculations on expected number of children & probability Joseph Smith had no children from his plural wives. John ran 1,000,000 simulations of the scenario to randomize women’s cycles and coitus, and Amanda discussed birth control & abortion in the 19th century. It’s a fascinating presentation that we hope to publish soon. Check out our presentation from August & October. (You may want to view on Youtube to see the slides used in the presentations.)
Don’t miss our other conversations about Joseph Smith’s polygamy: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/polygamy/
Copyright © 2025
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Pregnant Possibilities
The polygamous unions of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo present historians with a persistent and colorful mystery: the apparent lack of known children fathered by Smith with any of his wives other than Emma. Clearly, Joseph Smith was fertile, having fathered nine children with Emma. This question regarding the lack of progeny was the central focus of the 2025 Sunstone Symposium session, “Pregnant Possibilities: Sexuality and Early Mormon Polygamy,” which involved a multidisciplinary approach combining historical research, statistical modeling, and reproductive science.
The presentation drew on the expertise of historian Mark Tensmeyer, JD (focusing on historical claims and Joseph Smith’s movements), Dr. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto (discussing abortion and birth control history), Dr. Joseph Stanford (an MD specializing in fertility and the mechanics of pregnancy), Rick Bennett (a biostatistician who hosted the session and developed the mathematical models), and Dr John Kidd (who ran 1,000,000 simulations.)
Does Marriage Equal Sex?
The puzzle of the missing children was vividly encapsulated by Joseph Smith III, who found it “incomprehensible” that his “father should have had such a crew of lusty young women as wives, and not one of them had a baby by him. Not one, not a single baby”.
The presentation emphasized that while there are no identified or verified children from these plural unions, historians cannot definitively state that there were no children. Factors such as high infant mortality, stillbirth, or children who grew up under different names could account for unknown progeny.
Mark Tensmeyer examined the foundational question: Does the fact that Joseph Smith married these women mean that he was sexually active with them?. While there is direct testimony of consummation for some wives (such as Emily Partridge and Melissa Lott), for the majority, evidence is absent or scarce.
Arguments supporting consummation included the 19th-century societal norm where a marriage was often not considered complete if unconsummated. Conversely, arguments suggesting limited or no consummation centered on:
- Smith’s lack of cohabitation with many plural wives.
- Other motives for marriage, such as dynastic connections or integrating plural marriage into the community.
- The fact that Smith and his immediate circle were not actively trying to conceive children with plural wives, contrasting with Brigham Young’s later efforts to “raise up seed to Joseph”.
- The gradual rollout of polygamy, which was necessarily shrouded in secrecy and denial, particularly due to Emma Smith’s disapproval and limited knowledge of the full extent of the practice.
To address the historical ambiguity, the researchers focused on 33 “consensus wives”—those agreed upon by prominent historians—and developed various models based on different assumptions regarding sexual frequency.
Modeling the Probability of Conception
The statistical analysis required defining key reproductive terms. Fecundity refers to the biological capacity to conceive, while fecundability is the daily probability of pregnancy in a given menstrual cycle.
Dr. Stanford explained that calculating the probability of conception is complex, as the probability is highest in the couple of days prior to ovulation. The models used data from historical natural family planning users to estimate the day-specific probabilities of pregnancy, applying these estimates across the various historical interpretations of Joseph Smith’s sexual activity.
Biostatistician Rick Bennett developed four main models based on the estimated frequency of intercourse, accounting for Joseph Smith’s busy schedule, travel, and ongoing sexual relationship with Emma1:
| Model Name | Core Assumption | Key Groups Excluded | Expected Pregnancies (calculation / simulation.) | Probability of Zero Children (calculation / simulation.) | Statistical Conclusion |
| Restricted Volume | Highly restricted interpretation; most marriages unconsummated. | Teen brides, polyandrous wives, older/pregnant wives. | 0.70/0.85 | 48%/41% | Not unusual, about 50-50 |
| Low Volume | Assumes all non-special classes (e.g., non-polyandrous, non-teen) were consummated, but with limited frequency. | Younger wives (14 and under), wives with legal husbands, older/pregnant wives. | 1.36/1.47 | 24%/22% | Not unusual (Compared to rolling doubles in Monopoly) |
| Medium/ Consensus Volume | Assumes all consensus wives were consummated, often only 1-2 times near the ceremony, with exceptions for women like Emily Partridge. | Older/pregnant wives. | 1.92/2.36 | 13%/9% | Not unusual (Still possible by chance) |
| High Volume | Maximizes possible sexual encounters with all consensus and some disputed wives (reflecting a more critical view). | None (except likely infertile/ pregnant) | 6.40/7.75 | 0.1%/0.03% | Unusual (Unlikely to happen by chance) |
The conclusions were stark: the Restricted, Low, and Consensus models show that the probability of zero pregnancies is not unusual. The High-Volume model suggests that if intercourse occurred that frequently, zero children would be “very unlikely to happen by chance,” necessitating an explanation through contraception or abortion.
A separate, high-volume model focusing on Fanny Alger alone (due to the length and nature of the relationship) suggested an expected 3.25 children, with a probability of zero children at about 0.03%, meaning it would be unlikely that Fanny should not have had a child in that model.
19th-Century Reproductive Agency and Intervention
Historian Amanda Hendrix-Komoto provided context on 19th-century sexuality, noting that non-academic conversations often overlook the long history of birth control and abortion. She highlighted that before the 20th century, people defined pregnancy differently:
- The definitive moment of pregnancy was often considered quickening (when the woman first feels the baby move), which generally happens around 19–20 weeks.
- Many people believed the soul enters the fetus at quickening.
- Before quickening, interventions were often referred to as “restoring the menses” or “regulating the menses” rather than ending a pregnancy.
- Women commonly used herbal teas, vaginal douches, and suppositories to reduce the number of children. While these methods were not perfect, they were somewhat effective.
There is limited direct evidence of early Mormon practices due to the secrecy surrounding polygamy. However, Heber C. Kimball, in an 1857 speech, acknowledged that he knew many women who used doctors to “kill the children,” stating that this practice was “just as common as it is for wheat to grow”. Furthermore, Brigham Young explicitly linked the spirit entering the body to the mother “feels life come into her infant” (quickening).
These findings suggest that early Mormon women would have encountered ideas about abortion and birth control before converting to the Church. Importantly, women possessed agency; they did not need external figures like Dr. J.C. Bennett to control their reproduction, as midwives and other doctors knew how to induce abortions.
In summary, the statistical data supports the conclusion that the lack of identified children is statistically expected if Joseph Smith’s sexual engagement with his plural wives was limited. However, if relations were more frequent, the historical context confirms that 19th-century women had the knowledge and means to utilize contraception or early abortifacients to prevent births.
Don’t miss our discussion of Dr Ugo Perego’s DNA test results on possible children of Joseph Smith.
What are your thoughts about the presentation?
Wheat & Tares 
Seems like a lot of theorizing rather than accepting the stark reality that there were no children and what that might mean – that Joseph wasn’t consummating any of these unions. They were, in fact, a way to build his dynastic network and connect theses people and their families to the Fathers, and were altogether different from Brigham’s motivations for plural marriage.
@aurelius or the possibly even simpler explanation that he just liked oral and Emma wasn’t down for it.
Very interesting analysis. Thanks for sharing!
Concerning LDS polygamy doctrine and the claim it began with Joseph Smith there is the problem of the lack of progeny produced by Joseph Smith. There is also the problem that the Doctrine & Covenants has Joseph Smith teaching that the the sealing power and the Spirit of Elijah was connected to vicarious baptism. This teaching was given coincident to Smith and other church leaders being involved in polygamous marriages. And, of course, Smith publicly denied these marriages and relationships.
What a mess. Really, it is a mess.
Adding to the mess is that the Utah Mormon church made polygamy the cornerstone of its exaltation theology. It then had to change these doctrines once the polygamy practice was made illegal.
And as of today, LDS doctrine is that “celestial marriage” is required for exaltation but those who do not obtain this checkbox in mortality will not be denied the blessings of exaltation – the word “required” does not mean what you think it means. But if “required” now has wholly abstract meaning in the LDS religion, then is anything in the religion sure and absolute?
What a mess.
Aurelias11, but then you have all the nasty historical evidence that sex was really going on.
So, let me give you the opposite extreme explanation, with a bit of outrage that you want to protect a sexual abuser.
Just what did Emma see when she caught Joseph in the barn with Fanny that had her accusing him of adultery if it wasn’t sexual? And had Oliver Cowdry accusing him of adultery. Oh, but it wasn’t sex, just adultery. Joseph wasn’t even claiming polygamy, he was just caught having sex. Your denial that anything sexual happened is stupid. Many of the women testified under oath that there was a sexual relationship. Are you saying they ALL committed perjury? And what about when Emma got SO upset when Joseph came out of a bedroom with one of Joseph’s wards (sort of a legal daughter) that she kicked her and her sister out of their home. No, to me the real situation was that polygamy was a cover Joseph invented to explain that he had some kind of right to be having sex, when the reality was he just couldn’t keep his pants buttoned up. He was no more than a serial adulterer, who pretended that God told him to do it. And just like men did back then to hide their affairs, he used birth control and gave his mistresses herbal (abortion causing) tea to drink that “restored” their periods. Or sent them to doctor Bennet. Really, what he did was prevent them from exposing him by publically becoming pregnant. And wasn’t Fanny sent home to her parents in shame because she was pregnant, but miscarried. I know, there is not concrete proof, only pretty good evidence. So, people like you can deny, deny, deny. But when you back away from your denial and see the overall picture all the circumstantial and even legal evidence suggests, your denial is just pretense that Joseph wasn’t a real jerk, who treated women very shabbily. Why was he really tarred and feathered? Because he was caught in very improper behavior toward a teenaged Johnson girl. But yes, the church wants to pretend it was because he was really such a virtuous man and the mean men who tarred and feathered and wanted to castrate him and it was all because he was a prophet and claimed to have seen God, not that he was diddling a 16 year old girl. Sure, to protect the girl it wasn’t published, so we only have circumstantial evidence. But he was caught over and over in compromising situations where he didn’t even claim polygamy and you think it was to build a dynasty? Real stupid. The man just couldn’t keep his britches on and had to invent “polygamy” to justify it.
And yeah, I do not like Joseph Smith very much. So, Sorry if this is harsh…no, not really. Wake the hell up and smell the coffee. Joseph was having sex with the women and doing *everything* possible to keep it hidden.
“What is interesting among all these observations is that none of Joseph Smith’s plural wives ever accused him of abuse or deception, including the seven who did not gather to Utah with the main body of the Church. Decades after their feelings had matured and their youthful perspectives were expanded by additional experiences in subsequent marriages, it appears that none of them claimed they were victimized or beguiled by the Prophet. None came forth to write an exposé indicating he was a seducing imposter or claim that polygamy was a sham or a cover-up for illicit sexual relations. Even mild criticisms seem to be absent in the historical accounts and reminiscences of the Prophet’s plural wives. It seems that if any of Smith’s polygamous wives eventually decided that he had debauched them, their later scorn might have motivated them to expose him through the press. Certainly, numerous publishers would have been eager to print their allegations.”
–Brian C. Hales–
@Jack, do you know how many of those women remained active in the church? Because one can be abused and not believe it. Happens all the time, even without the added weight of religious beliefs and the ‘promise’ of salvation to further make it difficult to see. Why would they caim abuse if their salvation depended on them believing it wasn’t?
Jack, do you know that it took the survivors of Jim Jones several years and modern counseling about cults to admit that they had been victimized by a cult? Do you know that only 10% of rapes are ever reported? Do you know that most child sexual abuse survivors never say publicly that they were abused? Do you know what rape culture is. Do you have a clue about victim blaming? Do you know how much effort the church went to in order to hide any wrong doing about polygamy? Do you have one clue why a woman might not accuse Joseph Smith of any thing at all if he beat her to within an inch of her life or raped her? Especially back then when a woman was considered damaged beyond repair by any sexual activity outside of marriage. If they said “abuse” it would be saying their marriage was not valid. Back then, spousal rape was not rape, and a man had the legal right to beat his wife if he never used more than a stick bigger than his thumb, so beating her to death with his fists was a husband’s right. Just like I never told anyone I was being abused before I had an understanding that it WAS abuse, those women back then had no concept that abuse could happen in a marriage because it was all a husband’s right, and to admit it was not a marriage and Joseph didn’t have the right to mistreat them would be admitting they were a loose woman willing to sleep with a man not her husband. Of course they didn’t say anything and if you expected them to, it just shows your own ignorance of the situation.
And there were women who escaped from polygamy and tried to tell what happened to them. My great great grandmother was one who left her children and escaped to California and did try to tell about how she was treated. She was a first wife, so she was the legal wife, and even then, her experience was treated as fodder for the slander magazines. It was all sensationalized for prurient effect and made her look pathetic. You might find something if you get into the literature of the “twin relics of barbarism” that is all about the evils of slavery and polygamy. So, look up your 1800s anti slavery and anti Mormon literature and you might find how her husband beat her and forced her to accept his two teen aged cutie wives, who were younger and sexier than she was after giving birth to six kids.
I just listened to Dr. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto’s portion of the video where she talks about abortion and birth control available during Joseph Smith’s time. That is so interesting! I have wondered for years whether abortion and/or birth control techniques were available to Joseph’s many wives and whether that is possibly an important reason that no children from these wives have been discovered. If I understood her correctly (I just listened to the whole thing once), it sounds like even Dr. Hendrix-Komoto isn’t certain how effective the abortion/birth control techinques available to Joseph’s wives actually were. It sure would be interesting to know more about that.
I haven’t watched the whole video yet, but I didn’t see mentioned in the summary from the OP how the availability of birth control/abortion techniques were used (or not used) in the mathematical models described. Hmm, I just re-read the OP, and while it didn’t seem to be directly stated, it seems like the usage of abortion/contraceptives were not included in the mathematical models. Instead, the OP is arguing that as we increase our assumptions about Joseph’s sexual activity with these wives, the likelihood of pregancies and children becomes higher, but because there are no known children, the case for the use of contraceptives/abortion to prevent these pregnancies becomes more and more probably (to the point where it seems highly probably at high levels of sexual activity). It sure would be interesting to know how much sex Joseph was having with all these wives and how much abortion/contraception was in use to prevent/abort pregnancies! So many frustrating unknowns here!!
The strange thing is that while the historical record clearly shows some women speaking negatively of their experience as polygamous wives none of Joseph’s wives are on record criticizing the practice. In fact, the opposite is true–many of them spoke of having received a profound witness that it was right for them to be sealed to Joseph.
@Jack:
1. The OP is discussing why Joseph apparently didn’t conceive any children with any of his plural wives (or, more precisely, how many children we would expect him to have given various assumptions).
2. Your comment is discussing why you/Brian Hales don’t think Joseph abused/took advantage of his plural wives through his sexual relationships with them.
Yes, those 2 topics are both related to Joseph’s polygamy, but they’re still very different topics. Therefore, your comment is off topic. Do you have anything to say about how many children you would expect Joseph to have had with his plural wives, or why there are no known children from those relationships?
mountainclimber,
Yes you are correct. We made the assumption that no birth control or contraception was used in any of the models, and in the restricted, low, & medium models, the probability of 0 pregnancies could have happened without using birth control or abortion.
In the high model, it seems very unlikely that 0 pregnancies would have happened naturally, which means that if one subscribes to a high amount of intercourse, the best way to explain 0 pregnancies would be Joseph and his wives used birth control and/or abortion in order to explain the lack of pregnancies/children (or perhaps miscarriages), OR he had less intercourse than shown in the high model.
Thank you for trying to keep this on topic. I was surprised how easily people like to derail the topic to either defending or attacking Joseph Smith. I’m just trying to EXPLAIN why Joseph having 0 pregnancies/children with other wives might not be as surprising as most think. I know Joseph Smith’s polygamy is ripe for polemics. It was fun to use my math background to shine a different light on the topic. It was great working with Mark, Joe, Amanda, and John on this unique perspective on Joseph Smith’s polygamy.
mountainclimber479,
I should clarify–both of my comments are responses to Anna.
Jack, neither you not Anna are discussing the presentation. You’re engaging in polemics about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, which is not the topic of the presentation and is off topic. Please address something that Amanda, Joe, John, Mark, or I said in the OP.
I’m a descendent of Elvira Ann Cowles. She was married to Jonathan Herriman Holmes, then later sealed to Joseph Smith.
I have seen documents where she said she was married to Joseph and the marriage was consummated. Also have seen things that imply that Jonathan was not having sex with her out of respect for Joseph until after his death – they later had children.
I was surprised to find a reference to Elvira having a miscarriage right after they left Nauvoo in the Daughters in My Kindgdom book… which I believe would have been Joseph’s child.
It would have been a scandal for the unmarried women he was sealed to to get pregnant and so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out about prevention and even abortion, but I suspect there were pregnancies – like Elvira’s miscarriage.
I don’t believe he didn’t consummate his polygamous marriages – and many of his wives later said he did consummate their marriages.
I was specifically responding to other comments. We have never limited discussion to ONLY the OP here. Yes, we tend to react to people who are never on topic. So, Jack is responding to me and I first responded to Aurelias, then I responded to Jack. I make a policy of never responding to the same comment or twice so I don’t get into the private argument kind of thing, but if we are limiting things to only responding to the OP, then fine, let’s make that commonly known. But please let’s not start with “for this thread only, I am going to gripe about anyone who is off topic,” when normally we let people at least respond once to other comments.
But, if the poster of OP wants comments to only directly respond to his comment, then please OP writer, state it as such in your OP.
So, limiting my comments to ONLY the OP:
I thought the OP was interesting, but other than “very interesting,” did not have anything specific to say at that point. Now I do have a response to the OP. Please state in the OP if you are going to gripe about comments directed to other commenters, as that is a slight change from our normal interaction pattern. And there sure a lot of questions your study brings up that people are going to use to try to take off on tangents. Like what historical evidence is allowed because there is evidence that at least Fanny got pregnant, and there is speculation that Elisa R Snow was pregnant and Emma shoving her down the stairs caused a miscarriage.
So, there are two reputed pregnancies that were miscarried.
Also, not all of Emma’s children made it past infancy. I have no information on possible miscarriages Emma had, but is it possible that while “fertile” there was something about Joseph that few of his fetuses made it to birth and few made it to one year if they were born. That possibility was not considered in your study as a reason there are zero descendants of Joseph from any of his wives.
There is at least one of his wives who thought her child was Joseph’s. I have a senior moment on her name, but the daughter was Josephine something. But the only way we can check if some possible children of Joseph were actually his is DNA. But that doesn’t tell us about the possibility of miscarriage or stillbirth. No live births does not equal no pregnancies. There is the possibility that rather than birth control or abortion, Joseph just had a hard time producing live births in all those statistics and probabilities.
Megan–like you, I’m a descendant of Austin Cowles, Elvira’s father. I’m not sure how much he knew about Elvira’s two marriages, but he was very anti-polygamy, and wrote an anti-polygamy statement that was published in the Nauvoo Expositor. I wonder if he did know about his daughter’s marriage to Joseph Smith, and if that contributed to his hatred of polygamy.
Anna, most of my posts here get yawns. I was a little surprised there were a few spicy comments attacking and defending Joseph Smith. While I know that drives engagement, it felt like a food fight and this was my attempt to guide the discussion in a “better” direction. It would be better for views, I’m sure, to allow the spicy comments, but I’m a bit more interested in different conversations than the usual flame wars prevalent everywhere on the Internet. I’m trying to be an oasis from that. I was only attempting to guide the discussion.
I appreciate the info about the miscarriages. In my presentation, I discussed the concept of a clinically identifiable pregnancy. There is scant info about miscarriages in the historical record, so it’s that hard to account for that in the model. If you have info about these diary entries, I would be very interested in that. There is a possibility that Fanny Alger miscarried, but my understanding is the sources aren’t very reliable. If you have info, that is certainly something I’d like to include in my paper.
Since you mentioned Eliza Snow, there was a paper by Andrea Radke-Moss stating Eliza was gang-raped in Missouri, and speculation this caused her to be infertile. She never had any children, so in our models, we assumed she was infertile and excluded her specifically from all models. I mentioned there were approx 8-11 women excluded mostly due to age-related infertility. One person I know knew Eliza had no children but thought the infertility argument was suspect. Maybe it is, but maybe it’s not.
The story about Emma pushing Eliza down the stairs has been thoroughly debunked by Don Bradley. It was claimed to have happened in the Smith Homestead, but it’s is physically impossible to have occurred there. If it happened, it would have to be in the Mansion House or somewhere else. It certainly didn’t happen in the Smith Homestead as alleged in the well known story.
Josephine Lyon is the daughter of Windsor and Sylvia Lyon. I mentioned that in one of my last slides in the presentation above. Ugo Perego confirmed this and 5 other alleged children are not children of Joseph Smith.
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate them.
@Anna, I completely agree that you were following W&T’s “unwritten order of things” in your comment, as W&T generally does allow commenters to respond to other comments, even if the response leads the conversation off topic. My own personal comments on W&T would certainly have cases of this as well, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing it again in the future, so I certainly don’t want to be hypocritical.
I interpreted Jack’s comment as being an independent comment (not a response) that he chose to post when he saw the OP related to Joseph Smith’s polygamy–a reflex comment in defense of the Church/Joseph without really considering the true topic of the OP. If Jack’s comment was in response to you, then his comment was probably also within W&T’s “unwritten order of things”. Jack has a bit of a history of sometimes posting comments out of the blue that aren’t very strongly related to OPs here, and are also not necessarily responses to other commenters (for example, restatements of official Church stances that everyone here is already well aware of, bearing testimony instead of thoughtful commentary, or otherwise off topic). He recently posted an off topic comment on the post on moral agency that other W&T commenters complained about as well.
It sounds like Rick would like to keep comments on his blog posts perhaps a bit different than the other bloggers here, so I’ll try to keep that in mind when I comment on his posts.
Rick, thanks for your response to my questions. I have another one. You are a statistician, and I am not! You are careful to only classify the “high volume” sexual activity model as not producing children as “not unusual”. Your language about the other models (restricted, low, and medium) almost makes it sound like it’s not a surprise at all that Joseph didn’t produce any children with his plural wives. However, take the medium model, for example. There is only a 9-13% chance that Joseph wouldn’t have produced a child under that model. Perhaps, statisticians would use the term “not unusual” for this, but would you be OK with saying it’s “not very probable”. It seems to me that under the medium (and even the low) volume models, that it’s “probable” that Joseph would have produced a child with a plural wife. I understand that you’re pointing out that there still remains a reasonable chance under the medium model that Joseph wouldn’t have produced a child, but it seems much more “probable” that he would have. Would you object to me using “probable” in this way?
At face value, if the “plural marriages” of Joseph Smith involved carnal knowledge then what we have is a “doctrine” that serves as a cover for adultery and fornication. Keep in mind that Smith was marrying woman already married! Because of this reality, I find the apologists for Joseph Smith polygamy to be in a tough spot. Sealing women to Smith and other church leaders could exist as a spiritual act, but that leaves the Utah Polygamists out. Allow Smith to be the originator of polygamy and you have a doctrine easily explained as nothing more than sexual games.
My middle ground is that Smith engaged in sexual games and entertained polygamy as a justification. There are many reasons Joseph Smith found himself in “deep water” and this is one of them.
My point on Josephine was that her mother said and seemed quite positive she was Joseph’s daughter, which only implies that there was a sexual relationship between her and Joseph, which is again getting off your topic and into the argument that no children means no sex. And sorry if I was unclear that genetic testing turned out that the mother’s belief was incorrect.
And while Jack claims to be responding only to me, his comment seemed independent to me and he is frequently off topic arguing that the church really is true, no matter what we are discussing.
Rick, for my comments on your posts in the future, I won’t argue off topic with those who pretend Joseph was other than a flawed person.
Miscarriages and stillbirths are things we cannot expect to have good information on, because they were not often even considered a pregnancy if it was before quickening, which most are. Even fullterm stillbirths are not recorded on church records as a child that ever existed and women are not really allowed to mourn for a stillbirth. We are much more open about the topic today than in the 1800s, but it still isn’t really something that gets written down, so it really isn’t any wonder we cannot get solid information. We only really know that Emma had several children who died in infancy, but that was pretty common back then. So, the theory of bad genetics with possible miscarriage or stillbirth is just speculation.
I honestly think we just have to take the women who testified under oath at their word, that the marriages were consummated, and stop using the “no children” argument means “no sex.”
The rest is speculation or fancy statistics 😉 about how probable that is.
I find it deeply disturbing that statements by the women involved, attesting to sexual activity with Smith, are discounted. It is such an obvious relic of patriarchy. The whole “she said/he said” explanation for believing what HE said stems from views such as that of early English Common Law where rape ‘is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved…’. There is also the patriarchal distrust of even the sworn testimony of “criminals, women, children, or idiots.” As for “reliability”, which is used to weaken the connection between these women and Smith, it’s quite often the problem of distance in time. And if statements become unreliable the farther in the past they are, I will have to take as the prime example the entire Biblical record and its fan fiction spinoffs.
Rick B,
As I’m sure you already know–Zina Huntington was 7 months pregnant with her husband’s (Henry Jacobs) child when she was sealed to Joseph. And Don Bradley has further suggested that of the initial group of 6 women who were sealed to Joseph in Nauvoo 4-5 of them were pregnant. As I remember,
Don explains that perhaps Joseph’s reasons for “targeting” pregnant women was to demonstrate (to those who were in the know) that 1) his reasons for sealing them to himself were entirely virtuous–and 2) that perhaps he was seeking to build a dynastic network (as arelius11 has already suggested) by being sealed to women who would soon have children.
The second reason may sound a bit strange to us today. But I think Joseph’s intent was to initiate a sequence of connections that would bind all of the saints to himself thereby securing their place in the heavenly order things–at least as he saw it. And who knows but what we may learn one day that Joseph is indeed a very large “branch” near the “trunk” of the Tree of Life.
I’m not trying to be too strict on “off-topic” comments. When Mountain climber noted Jack was off topic, I agreed. My issue was I hate it when things devolve into “Joseph sucks” vs “Joseph was awesome.” That argument is never going to be settled, and that’s really what I was objecting to. It is a non-productive argument that will never be settled, and only makes everyone angry. It is a subjective argument, not objective. The other comments are fine.
Now, I’ll put my math hat on and answer Mountain Climber’s questions. The decision on how to pick when something is unusual often takes a class period to explain. I often give the example that if you toss a coin 10 times and get 5 heads and 5 tails, that would not be surprising. If one gets 4 heads, does that mean the other person is cheating you? Most say, probably not. How about 3 heads? Still probably not. How does one decide when the coin is an unfair coin? Even if one gets 1 head and 9 tails, your probablity of heads is it occurred 10% of the time. You may say that seems like an unfair coin, but if you flip a fair coin 1000 times, I guarantee you’ll get a run of 10 tails in a row at some point. How does one decide when something is unusual?
Honestly, one can pick whatever value one wants to. It is called a significance level, and we usually use the greek letter alpha to describe this. An alpha of .05 says you’re going to be wrong 5% of the time, and right 95% of the time. I always say if you got that as a test score, you’d be pretty happy. It is the most common value we use.
For small sample sizes, sometimes we use an alpha of 10%, meaning we’re wrong 10% of the time, and right 90% of the time. Statisticians can always be wrong, and one can never “prove” anything (although if one chooses an alpha of less than 0.1% of the time, most agree that is good enough to “prove” something true. Even then, that’s not good enough for genetic tests.) There is always a chance that we will be wrong, but being wrong 5% of the time (& right 95% of the time) seems pretty good.
When I was helping out with some genetic tests as a graduate student, due to the large number of genes in the human body, and trying to determine which genes were associated with different cancers or diseases, we used an alpha of 0.00000000000001. At that level, we would be able to narrow it down to about 6 genes that MIGHT be associated with a certain cancer. We would conduct more tests to see if we could get the same gene to show up in multiple tests and only then would we say gene x is associated with a certain cancer.
So, using the 9-13% range for the medium model, if one chose an alpha of 10% (rather than 5%), it could be considered borderline significant. One could argue that it is unusual. Just for comparison, most people are familiar with rolling 2 dice. Here’s the probability of rolling each number.
2: 2.8%
3: 5.6%
4: 8.3%
5: 11.1%
6: 13.9%
7: 16.7%
8: 13.9%
9: 11.1%
10: 8.3%
11: 5.6%
12: 2.8%
Now, if we’re using an alpha of .05 or 5%, we would call rolling a 2 unusual. Rolling a 3 is borderline unusual. Rolling 4-7 would be considered not unusual. In a way, the 5% is a bit arbitrary. I wouldn’t be confident in saying 2 is unusual and 3 is not unusual. We don’t want to be that strict about it. So yes, Mountain climber, you could say 9-13% is a bit unusual and akin to rolling a 4 or a 5 on the first try, but we’ve all rolled a 4 or a 5 on a pair of dice.
This is where sample sizes help. If we roll a pair of dice 10,000 times and we get a 4 just 3% of the time, I’m going to be a lot more confident in saying that the dice are not fair. If I roll a pair of dice just 6 times, and don’t get a 4 in those 6 tries, I’m going to be a lot less confident in saying the dice are unfair, due to the small sample size. Obviously 10,000 rolls is much more convincing than 6 rolls. So, one shouldn’t look only at the significance level alone. Sample Size is an important consideration.
We only have 1 Joseph Smith. How often did he have sexual relations? Only he knows and he’s not here to ask. That’s why we tried to come up with different scenarios to allow for the many different beliefs. Honestly, I was a bit surprised that the probability of 0 children was higher than I expected it would be. But if you want to use an alpha of 10%, rather than 5%, you can argue that the medium model was indeed borderline unusual. But 5% is the most commonly used alpha.
I hope in giving the table of dice above, one can see that rolling any number 2-7 happens infrequently, but it will happen. Betting on a 7 gives you the best chance to win, but betting on a 2 is probably going to pay you more money. Rolling a 2 does happen, even if it is unusual. I hope that helps.
‘stop using the “no children” argument means “no sex.”’ I totally agree Anna, but the polygamy skeptics LOVE that form of reasoning.
Jack, why Joseph was sealed to married women is a complete mystery to me. Even Brian Hales said he would have advised Joseph against it. I find all justifications for this personally difficult to reconcile & accept. I wish Joseph had not done polygamy at all. Whether I like it or not, we just have to deal with the data & history as we have it.
@Rick B, thanks for the refresher on statistics! I took a good statistics class in college, but it’s been a long time. If I’m not mistaken, I believe what you are calling “not unusual” is what my stats class long ago called “not statistically significant”?
I think I understand well what you mean by not unusual, and using 5% as the general boundary line between “not unusual” and “unusual”. When we get to your medium model, we are really talking about something that is probably enough that it wouldn’t be considered unusual in the same way that rolling a four or a five isn’t unusual.
That all said, it still remains true (I believe?) that it is more probable that Joseph would have produced a child with a plural wife under the low, medium, and high volume models (just like rolling a seven is more probable than rolling a two on any given roll of dice), but it’s only the high volume model where we get to the level of certainty where a statistician is comfortable saying that zero children can be considered an unusual result.
Nailed it Mountain Climber!
Just a quick observation. I find it funny that the same people who argue that we should believe JS’s wives when they say positive things about him and polygamy (or at least refrain from saying negative things) also argue that we shouldn’t believe their numerous statements and affidavits about the marriages being consummated.