A few weeks ago, Pres Oaks said the quiet part out loud about why they reduced the age of sister missionaries. During an interview with the Church owned Desert News, he made the following statement.
“In the time that we have lowered the age for young men and for young women in the past, we’ve seen an increase in people who meet someone in the mission field and marry them, which is perfectly appropriate if it doesn’t start too early in their missionary service.”
Having been on a mission, I can truly say WTF! Lets start with a little background. When I went on my mission in 1976, males could leave at 19, and females at 21. At this time, women were not encouraged to go on missions, so it was assumed but not explicitly stated that the age of 21 was so that if the young woman was not married, then they could go. Another reason assumed for the age gap was so that the Elders would not be attracted to the “much older” sisters. While just two years does not sound like a lot, I can assure you as new 19 year old missionaries, that the Sisters in our district at the LTM seemed like old ladies (no offence Hermana McMurtry!).
In October of 2012, President Thomas S. Monson announced a major change lowering the ages to 18 for men and 19 for women. This set off a frenzy of young women going on missions. But there was still an age difference, but only a year. During the press conference announcing the change, Elder Holland said that there was value in the year difference.
Now, some will ask why the difference in ages for young men and women. My friends, please. We have had a lot of experience in full-time missionary service and we have learned there is value in having at least some separation between the ages of the men and women who are serving and it works best when the sisters rather than the elders are the older.
Elder Holland during 2012 press conference
Elder Holland didn’t say what that value was., but again it was assumed that it was to keep the Elders from hooking up with the Sisters in the mission. (I’m told by my kids that “hooking up” can mean different things, but in my context it is just getting together, although the other meaning could also apply!). But the one year didn’t seems to make a whole lot of sense.
Then in November 2025, it was announced that young women could leave at 18 also. Why the change? Elder Holland is dead, so maybe the “value” is gone? Pres Oaks answered above. So that more Elders and Sisters would hook up ( get your mind out of the gutter) and come home as couples!
Counter Oak’s words to then Elder Kimble’s talk in 1968 (emphasis mine):
So, can I impress that again? LOCK YOUR HEARTS and leave the key at home! Wherever you live, leave the key home with your folks. And your heart – it’s only that part of it that deals with people generally that you open up. We just can’t tolerate it, can we? We can’t individually; we can’t totally. Someone said, “Well, is there any harm to marry a Mexican girl if you are working in Mexico! “No, that isn’t any crime, but it proves that some missionary has had his heart open! He has unlocked it! Is it wrong to marry a German girl when you have been on a German mission? Why no, there is no crime in that, if you met her some other way. But when you meet her in the mission field and you have opened your heart, I tell you it isn’t right, and you have shortchanged your mission! Just keep your hearts locked. Your whole thought should be missionary work. How can I make it more plain and more important than that? I’d like to because there is no reason whatever for any missionary to ever become involved, not even in a decent way, with any girl in the mission field. It isn’t the place! You guaranteed, you promised!
While I was not subject to this talk during my mission, I have heard from others that it was required reading during their missions. What I was subject to was a final interview by my mission president where he point blank asked me if I had fallen in love with a girl on my mission. The point being this was bad, and he wanted to nip it in the bud before I left the following day. Now during this time the main worry was falling in love with a local girl. The two year age gap between Sisters and Elders was doing its job very well.
So why do you think this change was made? I think the leaders have seen the later ages for marriage in the population generally transfer to the LDS members, thus delaying child birth, and hence reducing the number of children members are having. Children of record (baptisms of 8-year-old children of members) in the LDS Church have generally trended downward over the last 20 years, falling from over 100,000 annually in the early 2000s to roughly 91,000–94,000 by 2023–2024, reflecting lower birthrates. This decline is sharpest when compared to the 124,000 reported in 1982.
Pres Oaks in the interview cited above did admit that this lower of the age was “part of the Lord’s plan to overcome the tendency of waiting until the late 20s to have a first marriage,”. First marriage? Is this a tacit admission that early marriages have a higher rate of will divorce and thus the need for a second marriage?
If you served a mission, did you get the “Lock Your Heart” talk?
Did any of the missionaries in your mission get together after their mission?
Did any missionaries come back and marry a local person?
Do you think “speed dating” is coming to Zone Conferences anytime soon?
(BTW, AI killed it on making the photo above!)
Wheat & Tares 
Oh man, “Lock Your Heart!” I’d plumb forgotten about that talk, but it was indeed still required reading for incoming missionaries when I served in the early-2000s. Thanks for the Proustian reverie!
And yes, talk about mixed messages! Someone is going to get pregnant in the mission field sometime soon, and the First Presidency will have no one to blame but themselves.
Yes, “lock your heart” was one of thr missionary mantras when I served. Few missionaries violated that in practice. My son’s generation, (immediately pre-covid) was completely different. Nearly 20% of his colleagues “hooked up” with someone they met on their missions. They read “lock your heart” in the MTC, then ignored it completely in the field, especially when it comes to fellow missionaries. Mission presidents I know are now thrilled when couples meet in their missions, and happily attend receptions.
“Lock your heart” was required reading in our mission. With renewed emphasis after an Elder in my zone had a fling with one of the local woman, who was slightly older than him.
At least one Elder and Sister who met in our mission married later, but this fefinitely was frowned upon.
So I guess this is one more thing that in ten years, the church will be saying, “Oh we never taught that, it was just some MPs opinion…” like so many other “truths” that have seen a quiet 180 reversal.
At least the “don’t date the local girls” part of the “lock your hearts” policy obviously arose as a defense against the historical trope during the polygamy era that Mormon Elders were really sent on missions to recruit young women as polygamous brides.
In terms of DHO’s reversal of the policy as an attempt to get more marriages, I personally find it almost criminal the amount of pressure put on kids (and I use that word specifically) at BYU and in the Mormon corridor generally to marry extremely young and to have babies immediately. It was bad in my day (imagine thinking a 21 yo young women was an old maid!), but it has gotten even worse with the mission ages for boys being lowered. But totally in keeping with DHO’s MO. So many bad outcomes from this pressure to marry and reproduce young.
“Age at first marriage” is a data point tracked in surveys such as the US census. I think DHO is looking at statistical reports and getting upset about demographic trends. It’s not an implication of more divorces. He seems to be trying to lower the statistical age at first marriage by changing the mission age and trying to get teenagers to “hook up” to use OP’s words. What could possibly go wrong? He’s also trying to get people to have more babies by lecturing them which just seems out of touch, at least to me.
We had a mission rule to read “Lock Your Heart” on a weekly basis the entirety of my mission. At least two marriages that happened between missionaries that I’m personally aware of. They both got a jump start on their “dating” before arriving home. (Served 1996-1997)
Asael Smith must be rolling over in his grave now that missions have been designed as a mechanism for matchmaking.
What is the purpose of missions if we reach the point where the sisters act like unsupervised Russian princesses and the elders like demented stoats? This will not spread the Gospel.
Neither will it build strong marriages. The elders and sisters will not truly know each other in any sense remotely close to enough to know whether they should marry. Infatuation may result in, but not love.
The leaders must come to realize that there is a cost encouragement of young people to marry and produce children at the rate of crazed rabbits. There will be many children, yes. But they will be children of divorce, since their parents had an insufficient basis for marriage.
When I think of marrying someone you served with as a missionary (especially soon after returning home!), the term “trauma bond” comes to mind…..
“Lock Your Heart” was reprinted in our mission’s local handbook, though I don’t recall our mission president ever bringing it up other than a quick exhortation to read it during our brief orientation at the mission home. We had a few instances of “unlocked hearts,” but those were all, so far as I knew, instances of elders and local girls, not missionary to missionary.
More to the point of the post, I was made aware by local members (this was in the Philippines) who had themselves had served in the Manila area in the early-to-mid-90s were actually encouraged by their mission president (and American as I recall) to get to know their fellow Filipino elders and sisters with an eye to dating marrying after they got home. The mission president would go so far as to bring up in one-on-one interviews whether the elder or sister had eman eye on anyone and then try to work transfers to get them into the same district or at least zone to see if there were any signs of compatibility. This is of course second hand so I don’t know how well it worked or if there were any unintended consequences, and the plan, I was told, only included Filipino missionaries. Foreign missionaries were kept out of the loop though I have to think it became an open secret as time passed.
I’ll be interested to see how well President Oaks’ plan works out, but, as others have stated above, I have to think there will be some unintended consequences too.
*… had an eye on anyone… (The dangers of typing on a phone).
Hinkley marrying at 26 . . . Victory for Satan.
So, now not only do we have emotionally immature boys out on missions, but the girls will be equally young and inexperienced. The numbers coming home early will go up. Then they are going to start encouraging missionaries to fall in lust! Oh, this is such a great idea. I am so grateful that we have a modern prophet to have such inspired new programs. [end sarcasm]
A more productive approach to having better marriages, less divorce, and more babies, might be for the church to give wedding gifts to all couples of a paid for house and then inexpensive care for children younger than school age and then sponsor inexpensive after school programs for school age children. Oh, and good health care.
But, it is only stupid Democrats who say outrageous things like “it takes a village to raise a child.” Stupid, stupid Hillary. Good Republicans and good Mormons know all righteous people are rich, so they can hire the help they need. [end bitter angry sarcasm]
So, we have a church doing nothing but demanding 10% of total income paid to it first, and giving nothing back to members. Then it does everything politically possible to scream how evil government programs are that help struggling families pay the bills. So, the *church* actively makes it too expensive for young adults to do anything but live in their parents basement, while shaming the young who KNOW they can’t afford it, to get married and have lots of babies. Sounds like the very definition of stupid to me, but then they have inspiration from God, so, of course, shaming young people will produce the results they want. That is if they *want* young people to leave the church because those young people see that the church pushes ideas that make the rich richer and the poor poorer and make it so they cannot afford marriage+children+groceries+housing+healthcare.
So, yeah, go ahead. Make it more likely that young people will fall in lust on their missions and get married at 20. Then we will have young couples with babies living in their parent’s basement.
“E” said: “Age at first marriage” is a data point tracked in surveys such as the US census.” Good catch! I can imagine the Q15 sitting there with a statistical presentation on the screen, with age of first marriage highlights for USA in general, Then all LDS, the LDS who went on missions before and after the age 2012 drop for women, the Oaks getting his grand idea to lower it even more!
I served late 80s at the age of 21 and I was required to read lock your hearts. However it seems it wasn’t all that applicable. Preaching doesn’t change much. We still do what we decide to do or don’t do what we weren’t going to do anyway. I also want to note that regardless of the rules for ages of going on a mission, many people go at later ages into their 20s. One of my zone leaders in my first area was one of these older missionaries from Spain (we were serving Spanish speaking in El Paso). He was in love with my 2nd companion Sister Taravella. She actually picked out her wedding dress on her mission and they married within a couple months of leaving the mission
I’m writing this comment sitting in a foyer after our services just finished and I’m listening to 3 sisters and 2 elders laugh and flirt with each other.
The stated purpose by Pres. Oaks is a pretty logical progression if you assume that the missionary effort is less a about getting new converts and more about keeping young people on board when they become adults.
now it’s essentially a match-making program
when a couple is really dedicated to the church it’s going harder for one of them to leave later on if they think the other party won’t go for it
singles have more time to think about these things and choose what they do/don’t believe in before finding a partner
its kind of like banking on fear of their spouse’s disapproval to keep people in the church, and, personally, I don’t think that’s a good idea for the church in the long run
if people aren’t feeling enthusiastic about being part of your church and have to be coerced to stay and made too afraid to leave, then that’s a ‘you’ problem not a ‘them’ problem
And there we have it. It used to be that the age gap was to prevent mission hookups. But now they see and admit the usefulness of it. Meeting and falling in love in the cult mindset. Yikes. And at the age of 19/20. Too young. But that’s what the church likes. They like continuity of control. They can control the youth while their minors through the youth programs. When they become adults, they pressure them to go right to a mission after high school graduation. This makes it so there is no exploration gap in college where they might find employment opportunities and freedom from Mormonism and their Mormon families and discover that they aren’t reliant on the church and that there is nothing wrong with finding their own path away from the church. After their missions, the church wants the young adults to marry as soon as possible in the temple. Harder to self-explore when you have a TBM spouse. And then they want them to have kids as soon as possible. Then there is no time whatsoever to self-explore. That way they become reliant on the church and its community, at first. Once they gain footing, they then become the leadership pillars of the church communities and lead others in the same paths.
When I read DHO’s age change announcement I just shook my head in disbelief. Like Anna my thoughts went immediately to the immature and woefully unprepared very young adults throughout the church, but especially at the BYUs and Ensign College, getting even MORE PRESSURE to hurry up and get married and have a bunch of babies.
Just because a young man or woman is 20 doesn’t make them automatically ready for marriage. Out of the 14 girls in my Primary and YW class 12 were married by age 21. My friend Mary Alice and I were the outliers. She has never married and I was 30 when I married. Of those 12 marriages only 3 couples are still together. That’s a whopping 75% failure rate! Most of the other 9 girls left their marriages around ages 30-35 because they suddenly realized that they had never had a chance to have a life of their own and discover who they were before they married. The other marriage failures were due to husbands insisting on unrighteously ruling the roost; abusing the wife and children physically, verbally, emotionally and sometimes sexually; or because of infidelity. With the girls I knew in my BYU student ward and in classes we took together another common cause for divorce was that as soon as they finished putting their husband through school while also having a bunch of children which left my friends exhausted and sometimes no longer looking like they did on their wedding day the husband divorced them and went looking for a new and “better” wife. When I was a ward mom of a BYU ward young divorced men cruising chicks in YSA wards was a serious issue in all unmarried student wards. I warned my ladies to avoid these men like the plague.
My former neighbor who has worked many years as a women’s advocate at the BYU student health center stated that the number one reason for moving the health center right next to married student housing was and continues to be domestic violence. This is one of BYU’s dirty secrets that they try to keep well hidden. As an advocate my friend helps young married women find a safe place to stay while she and the other advocates try to help them get counseling and legal assistance. Her biggest concern is that bishops are telling these young women that they need to stay married even if the husband is abusive and/or unfaithful. According to best psychological practices if a spouse begins to abuse their partner in any way the chances are very high that the abuse will only escalate. As someone who was both verbally and psychologically abused during a previous engagement to a man whom everyone thought was such a kind, righteous, spiritual pillar of the church and whose eventual wife died of her injuries at his hands I can testify that abuse rarely deescalates and most often accelerates quickly. I was lucky to get out when I did.
Another issue that is not brought up is the fact that often in the church a couple goes on a few dates, is engaged for a short time, gets married and then often has a baby within the first year of marriage. How on earth are they supposed to really get to know each other well before they marry? They don’t, which causes innumerable problems. I wish that the church would advise potential marriage partners to spend enough time together to know their significant other well before getting engaged and then stress the importance of premarital counseling. It’s much easier to get out of an engagement than a marriage.
Both my husband and I had parents who were too young (age 19) when they got married and who were woefully immature and unprepared for the hard work that a successful marriage takes. Both of us and our sibs suffered from the constant bickering and fighting (but no physical violence) that we witnessed almost daily. Growing up we both thought that our family was the only one in the ward that had these problems. As adults we discovered that most families in our wards were this way because the parents had married young, had more kids than they could deal with and had no idea what marriage actually entailed. In talking to friends and relatives it is so sad to realize how many people were/continue to be the walking wounded as a result of the church’s teachings about marrying young. The weird thing is that both of our families were thought to be among the best in our wards. Little did they know!
I fear that DHO’s ramped up young marriage rhetoric will only increase the number of divorces and children who suffer because their parents were too young and immature to understand what healthy marriages and family relationships require. The sin be upon the church’s head.
Here’s the complete quote:
President Oaks: I think it will increase their time for planning their lives, whether they use their possibility to serve a mission or whether they plan their lives in other directions. It simply increases the options. I also hope that it will reduce the age of marriage. In the time that we have lowered the age for young men and for young women in the past, we’ve seen an increase in people who meet someone in the mission field and marry them, which is perfectly appropriate if it doesn’t start too early in their missionary service. I think it’s part of the Lord’s plan to overcome the tendency of waiting until the late 20s to have a first marriage. I think we will see a reduction in the age of marriages for Latter-day Saints.
Here’s the original article:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-oaks-dedicates-burley-idaho-temple
When I was living/working in Europe in 2014, my wife and I regularly hosted the full-time missionaries (elders and sisters, though separately) for dinners and sometimes accompanied them on teaching appointments. This was not long after the age change, and as a result there were almost an even number of elders and sisters serving in that area. Even as recent as then, “Lock Your Heart” was still making the rounds, though not as explicitly required reading. The mission president there would give a printed copy of it to missionaries who were “struggling” with such issues, such as a homesick elder pining away for his high school girlfriend to the point of being distracted from his work. One time a young sister we knew had confessed to having a crush on one of the elders in that mission, who happened to be a native of that country. It was totally innocent and chaste and she barely knew the guy, but she fessed up to the MP and was given a copy of “Lock Your Heart”, which really upset her and unnerved her, to the point where she was worried she might be sent home. My wife helped to calm her down, explaining that Pres. Kimball’s words in that instance were relics of a different time with different social norms. That sister finished her mission, and continued corresponding with that young elder she had feelings for, though such behavior was officially frowned upon. A year or so later, they reconnected and eventually married. They have 2 kids now and seem as happy as ever. I suppose nowadays they laugh about the seeds of their relationship being sown in forbidden soil. Now it seems that was the point all along.
But no, I don’t think it’s a good idea to push sexually frustrated teenagers together in an artificially stressful environment and constrain them with very strict rules that limit their ability to interact in healthy ways (i.e. no dating), while at the same time promoting the ideal outcome of missionaries marrying each other, especially at a time when their brains aren’t yet fully formed and they have never had to live or act as independent adults. If you think BYU is a pressure cooker of marriage expectations now, missions under this construct will be several times worse, with correspondingly negative outcomes.
And after reading “Lock Your Heart” in context, it’s very clear that are racial/ethnic motivations there, and Kimball was trying to put the brakes on possible miscegenation (still very much a taboo in the Church at the time, and even well after 1978), green card marriages, and young elders “going native”.
I didn’t get the lock your heart talk; I got the I’d rather you come home in a box than lose your morality talk. No less, it came from my mother.
It should be noted that DHO’s attempts to meddle in LDS marriage culture are nothing new. Back when my now-wife and I first got together (2005-ish) there was a DHO talk from a YSA fireside being heavily circulated at the time, in which he forcefully decried the practice of single adults “hanging out”, instead insisting they go on traditional formal dates, where the man initiates and asks out the woman. Even as TBMs, we mostly disregarded this counsel, and did a lot of hanging out in casual gatherings as we were getting to know each other better, and be our authentic selves in front of each other, which suited us well. We were both in our mid-20s, had college degrees, were starting out our respective careers, and each had several failed relationships behind us. Though we did go on dates sometimes, neither of us cared for the pretentiousness of the ancient social rituals of one party “asking out” and then being expected to pay for the evening’s activities. Back then, I’m grateful that she and I were able to take a nuanced approach, and compartmentalize DHO’s exhortations, not as prophetic/apostolic counsel but as the opinions of an old man complaining about “kids these days”. The best part is, I got to marry my best friend, which I highly recommend. Dallin Oaks can go suck eggs.
Jack Hughes: miscegenation was still in the youth Sunday School manuals as recently as 2010, when they were cited by my horrified teen as one of the many reasons the church was terrible. He was not wrong. 2010 is really late for that kind of garbage to be in the manuals. And yes, it was definitely part of the prohibition on elders finding young local brides.
I wrote quite a bit about this in my mission memoir (The Legend of Hermana Plunge). There were a few couples whose mutual interest was pretty well known when I was serving–one couple we referred to as Romeo and Juliet because he was assigned to check on her at night, and she would come out on the balcony to talk to him; they are still married. One of my companions married one of our baptisms, but again they were both Spaniards, so less of a “stigma” I think. They are still together. There were others who married someone from the mission but were just friends when they were on the mission, including me. There was pressure for missionaries to avoid flirting, and also encouragement to rat out others they thought were flirting. That was actually in writing. I thought that was a terrible idea if you want people to be able to get along. You can’t create a culture of tattling when it comes to crushes because EVERYONE had crushes. If they didn’t have crushes, well, I kind of think they are lying. There was one elder who bought my companion a big floppy straw hat because he thought she was cute, and we all laughed about that hat. I had a companion who wanted a transfer because she didn’t like me, and she fabricated a relationship between me and an elder, “tattling” on me to the mission president. I was pretty pissed about her slagging my reputation, and I complained to one of the Spanish sisters who told me “What happens between you and Elder So-and-So is nobody else’s business!” I kept pointing out that there was in fact nothing going on between us, but she was also kind of right.
In sexist fashion, the president never said a word to me about it, didn’t transfer me, but took this elder to task as if it were true (it wasn’t!), and kept us on separate islands our entire missions, which we both just shrugged about. We were friends, and we did think it was funny and bewildering, but that was the extent of it. Other missionaries would often say “You and him? Really?” And I would have to say “No, not really!” Others would try to push the relationship forward, thinking it was fun and normal to gossip about relationships.
There were other missionaries who full on broke rules on this stuff, went hot tubbing with local girls and did cocaine. There was one elder who left the mission to be with his boyfriend who was local, but the whole branch sided with the young couple and returned to Catholicism. We kept accidentally meeting them in public, and they would said “Oh we left that because of [names of the couple] and we think it’s terrible they can’t be together.” I pointed out that Catholicism was probably worse than Mormonism if we were talking about gay rights, which I think was true in 1990, but it didn’t matter. Funny thing was, the gay couple showed up at church a few times (although they brought a puppy that peed all over the floor, which wasn’t great since we held church in our apartment).
Having said all that, I think prohibiting mission crushes is futile. But turning missions into a dating service? Wow. It already sort of functioned like one in my experience (and yes, the women were older, but there was still a lot of age overlap). But at 18 years old? Yikes. There was a Bette Davis movie in 1948 called June Bride about a magazine that runs a promotion to give a young couple their dream wedding. The lucky bride is still in high school. Dallin Oaks would have been 16 years old when this movie premiered. You don’t have to look far to see the cultural influences that pass for prophetic vision.
I appreciate BB for generating this post, as it will become a more visible topic in Mormon society as the younger sister-missionary situation becomes more real. I saw a half-dozen LDS missionaries at our local golf course’s driving range last summer (on their P-day). The 4 boys and 2 girls were chatting with and teasing and light-heartedly joshing each other w/o any seeming reservations, and I thought, “good on them”. At least this day will be fondly remembered after their misson is over, and – as this W&T post predicts – there may be a marriage or two as a result.
Jack Hughes,
We might ask ourselves what the world looks like 20+ years after Elder Oaks’ gave that counsel. First off, fewer people are getting married–and when they do get married it’s at an older age. And to top it off, they’re having fewer children.
Of course, maybe none of those (what I consider to be) negative outcomes have to do with a failure to follow Elder Oaks’ counsel. Even so, I think it’s worth considering that his concerns were based in a prophetic concern for the future.
Jack,
If DHO were really prophetically concerned for the future, there are so many other much more important things he could call out about the current moment in history than marriage age. I think this statement from him is more appropriately categorized as tone deaf.
Yep, our mandate was to read Spencer Kimball’s “Lock Your Heart,” weekly. It was the biggest inside joke in the mission. It along with the aphorism, “If you don’t look once you are not a man. If you look twice you aren’t a missionary.”
Rhetorical question for Mormons of all ages – what would your dating/marriage experience have been like if you had never been part of LDS Inc? Ruminating on this has been part of my midlife crisis.
Reading/commenting again here after a bit of a hiatus and noting that in BB’s post of three weeks ago, JCS has a new target for ire: crazed circus clowns.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday – Go Patriots !!
My mission president is current Q12 and has a now stale joke of elder/sister marriages that occurred during his tenure as a result of “all the mission dances we held.”
15 years later I was living in Texas and there was a small scandal where an elder went AWOL and eloped with one of his converts…
Jack, have you considered WHY people marry (if they marry) at an older age and have fewer children? I would suggest that many people have taken brain science that states that the brain isn’t fully developed until age 25 seriously. Even with best intentions as a 19 or 20 year old you simply don’t have the maturity to make the best decisions for yourself and others whom you are responsible for. When I think of myself at that age I realize that while I was mature in some respects I certainly wasn’t in many others. I would’ve made a terrible wife at such a young age.
With the economy as bad as it is in the US and other countries having a lot of children is difficult. Wages are stagnant while the cost of housing, healthcare, groceries and more keeps rising. Utah, home of church headquarters, used to be an affordable place to live. Apartments are now nearly as expensive to rent as houses are. How can you live as a family of six or seven in a 2-3 bedroom tiny apartment that rents for $1500 or more per month? Today I saw a video for a beautiful 5 bedroom home in a historic district built in the 1880’s with a large lawn, garage and all sorts of built in goodies going for $290,000 in Mississippi. Compare this with my 80 year old home in Provo that has 3 bedrooms, only a tiny cellar, and a small yard that was last appraised for $510,000. The McMansions in the stake go for at least one million dollars or more. Many people think that they can afford such houses but often realize too late that the financial strain is more than they can handle. As I drive through those neighborhoods the number of houses for sale is staggering.
As far as the size of families is concerned there are other reasons besides money that need to be taken much more seriously. I was only able to have one child because of health issues that I didn’t even know existed. Many other women also have health issues that they weren’t aware until they got pregnant the first and often the only time. It isn’t their fault that they can’t have more children. Pregnancy takes a serious physical and emotional toll on a woman. Pregnancy can often be the catalyst for depression and other mental illnesses. Some women are unable to get pregnant or to stay pregnant. My sister had 8 miscarriages before having to have a hysterectomy at age 27. Other women wear themselves out having back to back babies which isn’t healthy. One of my SILs had 3 children in 30 months, and her doctor threatened to tie her tubes if she didn’t take a break because she was a wreck and so were her little ones.
I refuse to listen to men tell women how many children they should have because they have absolutely ZERO concept of what pregnancy and child rearing require of a woman. It is also grossly unfair to the oldest daughter(s) to be forced into raising their younger siblings. I speak from experience. My brothers all freely admit that I was more of a mom to them than my mom often was. I was forced to care for them when, especially as a teen, I couldn’t go out and do fun things with my friends. I know many other oldest daughters who were forced to raise their younger sibs, and not one of them looks back on those experiences with joy or satisfaction. Why are oldest daughters expected to help raise younger siblings when oldest sons aren’t required to do the same thing? This double standard proves that patriarchy is alive and well in the church and in society today.
When Latter-day Saints in Utah and environs in the 1950s got married in their late teens or early twenties, like President Oaks did, they weren’t doing it because they were holy and righteous — rather, that was the pattern in the larger American society. They did it because their circumstances as part of the larger American society made it possible, not because they were being obedient to church counsel.. The general pattern in the United States of the 1950s was for saints and sinners alike, coast to coast.
The societal and economic circumstances of the 1950s no longer exist. Accordingly, and even appropriately, it makes sense that marriages, statistically speaking, are generally happening later. Latter-day Saints in the United States still follow the pattern of the larger American society — and that makes sense because they have to live in the larger American society.
We cannot return Latter-day Saint marriage patterns to the 1950s. Marriage patterns are driven by societal and economic circumstances, not by “righteousness.”
A Poor Wayfaring Stranger & ji,
I agree that times are hard economically–and that that has everything to do with changing attitudes towards marriage and family formation. Even so, while its true that we have to ride the wave of current economic circumstances, I think we should be careful not to make the assumption that the marketplace isn’t impacted by righteousness or the lack thereof. It’s my opinion that the current economic climate has everything to do with shifting cultural values in the West.
Yes, things are always in flux–but the marketplace will accommodate cultural values where there’s a large enough majority living by them. Theoretically–if few people were making purchases on the sabbath then most businesses would be closed on that day. And so it goes with just about every aspect of our financial concerns–the market will adjust. That said, I think the real question is: to what degree are our materialistic values responsible for the current economic situation?
As someone outside the Jello belt with kids in the right age group, serving a mission may be the only times in their lives they are actually around a reasonable number of LDS members of the opposite (or same for one mine) sex. So there’s that.
Jack,
I cannot agree that getting married at age 20 is righteousness, while getting married later, such as at age 27, is unrighteousness.
Some people do get married at age 20. Some of those are LDS, some use other descriptors, some are good people, some are bad people. President Oaks got married at 20, and more power to him as I support everyone in their own decisions — you might see getting married at 20 as an indicator of righteousness, but I don’t.
Some people get married at age 27. Some of those are LDS, some use other descriptors, some are good people, some are bad people. President Hinckley got married at 27, and more power to him as I support everyone in their own decisions — you might see getting married at 27 as an indicator of unrighteousness, but I don’t.
ReTx brings up a great point. For many young Mormons, there is no Mormon belt, no BYU, and dating Mormon singles can and will prove to be tricky. The mission provides a good opportunity.
The dating pool weighed heavily on my mind in my 20s. I married at 28 to a girl I met in a singles ward in Salt Lake City. I thought then I was free to leave Utah to find a career elsewhere. I ended up staying in Utah. But I know that so many BYU students were thinking the same thing. They had a window of opportunity to find a believing spouse and BYU and Utah were full of opportunity. A school or career-related relocation away from the Mormon belt meant a decreased pool and difficult dating prospects. Dating non-believers for so many just wasn’t an option. For that entailed navigating sex boundaries that many non-believers wouldn’t understand.
Those sorts of dynamics make marrying young attractive to many young believers. However, the downsides of marrying young, which many have pointed out, are simply not well broadcast to the young Mormon population, and they need to be.
The talk “Lock Your Heart” was in our mission booklet. It was one of four talks we were required to read regularly—probably every month. I served in Canada from 1999–2001, and the emphasis on not developing romantic feelings for a local girl was very real. It was actively discouraged and closely policed by zone leaders, district leaders, and the mission president.
At the same time, this was eastern Canada (Québec, Montréal), where the pool of active LDS young adults was extremely small. Local members often encouraged flirting between sisters and elders because, in their view, it was the only realistic way their children would ever find a spouse within the faith. This created a deeply unhealthy dynamic in which some of the most faithful and dedicated local leaders—especially those with children—quietly undermined mission leadership’s directive to “lock your heart.”
Both of my parents served missions, though not in the same place. They didn’t fall in love or flirt with each other on their mission. My father returned from Japan, and my parents were engaged within weeks of both coming home. I was born before he turned 22. I’m the oldest of six children, and I deeply resonated with comments about eldest daughters being forced to raise younger siblings—except in my case, it was the oldest son doing that work.
My parents went through a long, painful, and messy divorce that involved infidelity. Although it was finalized while I was on my mission, it had really been a decade in the making. Upon returning from my mission and attending BYU, I felt haunted by the specter of divorce. I often felt quietly “selected against” in the dating scene because I came from a so-called broken home, and I do think my background sometimes made me seem like a risk—the unspoken idea that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Growing up hearing conference talks repeat the line “No other success can compensate for failure in the home,” I became obsessed with avoiding what I believed was the ultimate life failure: divorce. As a young adult, I couldn’t understand how two returned-missionary parents, married in the temple, could have such a disastrous outcome. So I decided to study marriage “correctly.” I took electives on marriage and family—one in the religion department and another in the social sciences.
The religion course was largely pro-marriage boosterism. The social science course, however, was genuinely useful—and accurate, as far as the data went. That’s where I learned about the higher failure rates associated with very young marriages. That knowledge tempered the overwhelming pressure to “find your next companion” that I felt from family, church leaders, and the broader LDS culture. Frankly, the fact that this information was even taught at BYU would probably be considered heretical today, since it could discourage the kind of early marriages President Oaks appears to want to promote among younger generations.
I ultimately decided to do the opposite of what my parents had done. My father married at 21, right after his mission, after only a few weeks of dating. I waited. I graduated, started working, and built some financial stability before even considering marriage. I met my wife after we had both begun our careers—she had been teaching for three years, and I was working in corporate training. I married at 28; she was 25. Even then, we waited seven years before having our one and only child.
All of this is to say: I think we also got lucky. I believe my son is having a much healthier and more stable childhood than I did. Growing up, I was constantly aware of financial stress and of how stretched our family was. I subordinated a lot of my time to unpaid work in the family business and took on extensive caregiving responsibilities for my younger siblings. I think that burden stunted what could have been fairly strong academic potential. Shortly after my mission, I was briefly engaged and nearly rushed into marriage. Breaking off that engagement was one of the most painful decisions I’ve ever made—for both the person I hurt and for myself. Because I married later and waited to have children, we ended up with only one, even though we hoped for more.
I’m deeply grateful for how our family turned out. My wife is the oldest of five, and her parents’ painful divorce is almost a carbon copy of my own parents’ story. That’s why I worry that pushing earlier marriage and earlier childbearing will, if it succeeds, harm many children—especially if couples aren’t given the time to truly know each other and enjoy each other’s company before children enter the picture. Also, I now look at divorce so differently now. I think the realistic possibility of divorce is really the only way to truly have a happy, fulfilling marriage. I now know that the absence of divorce does not mean that a marriage is fulfilling or healthy. That is just not something I was taught, but I wish that it was taught more readily to the youth in the church today.
I served from 2001 to 2003. We were given six or eight talks to read along with our various materials when we arrived at the mission home and “Lock your Heart” was among them. So we were clearly encouraged to read it, but I’m not sure that anyone ever followed up to see that we did. I’ve always had the personality to read anything you put in front of me (I’m an expert on cereal nutritional facts and shampoo ingredients) so I read it one time and determined there was nothing of value there.
I’m aware of one couple from my mission that got married. I bumped into them years ago and they went out of their way to insist that it didn’t start on the mission. I believe them. There may well be others, but I’m not aware of them.
I do happen to know that one of the elders married the mission presidents daughter . . . who was about 13(?) while were there. Of course, they got married about a dozen years later, so it’s not quite as scandalous as it might seem.
For my part, I never had any crushes on any sister missionaries, even if Hawkgrrrl doesn’t believe me. 😉 I only served in one zone that had sisters, and I’d only see them a couple times a month. For the majority of my mission I’d only see sisters about once a month at large meetings. Back when missionary numbers were less even (my mission was about 85% male) elders and sisters probably had very different experiences in these interactions; all sisters were regularly interacting with elders, but most elders were not regularly interacting with sisters.
Jacob L, when you said “Local members often encouraged flirting between sisters and elders because, in their view, it was the only realistic way their children would ever find a spouse within the faith”, it brought back lots of memories. There was a town in my mission that had a branch President with several daughters. It was well known that him and his wife wanted his daughters to marry an American Missionaries and take them to the States (this was in Chile). He had already succeeded with his oldest daughter, and had two more to go. Not only did he want his girls to marry in the faith, but I think just as important was getting to the United States and all the opportunity that would allow them.
Regarding the issues with the Mormon dating pool, particularly for those who live in areas without many Mormons, is a real concern, or at least it has been. I had a flatmate at BYU who was from somewhere in the Southeastern US (I don’t really remember which state). She said that her family could only afford one semester’s tuition for her, and so her job was to find a husband during that short time. Every week she had a new date, and she had her schtick down pat: a home-cooked Southern meal in our apartment followed by a massage on living room floor. She would shoo everyone out of the apartment on Friday evening to keep her domain roommate-free for her seductive arts. One Friday I was asleep, and woke up when she was in the middle of one of her “dates.” I walked out to the kitchen, which was empty, and peered over the couch to the living room floor where her date was stretched out while she massaged him. She was flustered and tried to sound friendly toward me while shooting daggers out of her eyes at me to get the hell out of the apartment. I said, “Oh, M, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to see who you had on the floor tonight!” She was piiiisssseeed. But she did in fact get engaged before the end of semester. I actually think he was a townie, not a student. (Do people in Provo say Townie? We said that in the college town I grew up in.)
I’ve read the statement that Oaks made, and to be honest, I think people may be overinterpreting it a bit. I never understood him saying that the possibility of couples meeting on missions was the primary motivating reason for the age change but rather a hoped for secondary effect. The problem, I think, is that he never did outline the full reasoning for the change. I imagined it to be some combination of giving women some more crumbs of gender equality in a very unequal church, and possibly helping youth retention. It’s clear that Oaks in particular is a bit obsessed with increased marriage rates and declining birth rates, but I’ve not heard the other apostles speak of it quite as much, except maybe Andersen.
As for “Lock Your Hearts”, it was once recommended we read it by my mission president. Someone shared a copy and I read it, and I thought nothing more of it the rest of my mission. So it was there but didn’t seem to be a high priority for my mission president to preach about.
I am aware of one or two couples who met on my mission. I heard rumors that one relationship in particular was becoming enough of a distraction to get one of the missionaries transferred.
I confess to having dated at least one missionary from my mission, but nothing came of it. I know of another couple from the mission that also dated and did not marry each other, though they got as far as being engaged briefly. I also confess that as a teacher at the MTC, some missionaries in the district I was teaching confided in me that one of the sisters in the group had a big crush on me. I ignored it, but later ran into her after her mission, and since I was still single, I confess I asked her out once. I was curious if there was any possibility there. There wasn’t.
I know of one couple from my mission who actually met after the mission at a mission reunion. Spencer Kimball would approve, I’m sure, hearts locked and all.
There are also a handful of marriages between missionaries and locals that I’m aware of. The one I know best involves one of my companions. They did first meet while he was a missionary, but I’m fairly certain he didn’t think of her as a potential spouse at the time. It was a pretty long and meandering path to them getting married and was probably 4-5 years after they had first met. They are still together and they have since served as mission president of said mission.
Based on all these experiences, I tend to think there can be a lot of fairly innocuous interactions between missionaries that result in things happening down the road without them being a problem on the mission. I know there are exceptions to that. I don’t expect the age change will have a material effect on marriage ages; sorry President Oaks.
I served in the Dominican Republic in the late 90s and don’t remember reading this specific talk, but “lock your heart” or something similar was definately emphasized. I remember two missionaries returning (one them was a local from a different part of the country) and marrying a girl they met on the mission. The rumor going around (and you know how that goes if you served a mission) was that the American RM invited his mission president to the wedding but he refused to attend. There were also rumors (again, rumors) of little kids running around named “Elder.” A missionary in my district in the MTC actually did “hook up” with someone in the MTC, and one of my friends married an Hermana he served with. So whatever the intent of “lock your heart,” it didn’t seem to be working. Maybe the Church is finally realizing that militantly repressing thoughts or behaviors you are trying to avoid often has the opposite effect. Also, the Church knows people who serve missions are more likely to stay in the church (at least that’s the conclusion they came to). You can’t have young women going to college and getting “woke” ideas anything like that. This seemed to be the idea when they lowered the age for young men, anyway.
Argentina, 2011-2013. The saying was “lock your heart and throw away the key.” Having locked my heart and thrown away the key, it took me ten years of pounding on the safe before I could get it cracked open again! So that was bad advice.
My trainer from la Fabrica married a sister missionary from la Fabrica. I went on one date with a sister missionary later, at the Y, but we didn’t go on a second date. One elder from la Fabrica went back to Argentina soon after his mission was over and he married a local girl. I think a sister missionary from Chile had a pretty big crush on me but I didn’t encourage her.