For those unfamiliar with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, I’ll give you a quick primer on one of the main characters, conservative activist tradwife (in today’s parlance), Serena Joy Waterford. There have been comparisons made between this fictional portrayal of a conservative woman advocating for strict gender roles and patriarchal Christianity, and figures on the right such a Erika Kirk, Amy Coney Barrett, Phyllis Schlafly and others. Atwood wrote the original story during the Reagan administration, so the character of Serena Joy was meant to explore why a woman of faith would deliberately side with her oppressors.
In the novel, Serena Joy is a former anti-feminist crusader who helped architect the rise of the Gilead regime–a Christian nationalist group who gains control of the nuclear arsenal and takes over the majority of the US government, stripping women of rights (immediately siezing bank accounts and redistributing them to their closest male relation) and forcing women into strictly enforced roles:
- Marthas – older or infertile women who work as cooks or domestic servants
- Handmaids – fertile women forced into sexual servitude to bear children for Commanders and their wives. When they are assigned (usually as a reward to high-ranking Commanders), their name is changed to “Of” and the man’s name to indicate his ownership of her.
- Wives – Women married to high-ranking Commanders who oversee households and hold the highest possible status for women. They are also prevented from reading, barred from all decision-making roles, and are largely confined to their homes. In Gilead, Serena Joy who was previously a highly paid speaker and author, now holds this role.
- Aunts – Women who train and supervise Handmaids, using violence to enforce Gilead’s ideology
- Jezebels – Handmaids trafficked into prostitution in secret clubs by a subset of Commanders who are unsatisfied by raping Handmaids while their dour wives look on
- Unwomen – Rebels, activists, lesbians or unproductive women sent to the “Colonies” (places decimated by toxic nuclear fallout) to die doing forced labor
- Econowives – (not featured in the TV series) wives of low-ranking men who must perform all household duties without domestic help
In both the novel and the TV series, Serena Joy is a complex character who becomes the prisoner of her own creation, losing her voice and power within a system she helped promote. She is often cruel, desperate for a child (like most women in post-nuclear Gilead, she is infertile), and frustrated with the way she is treated by the men she has brought to power. Her key characteristics include:
- Architect of Her Own Captivity: Before Gilead, she was a famous public speaker promoting traditional roles for women. Her irony lies in her being trapped by the very ideology she helped create.
- Cruel and Calculating: She often treats Handmaids (specifically Offred/June) with harsh cruelty, jealousy, and emotional abuse, fueled by her desperate desire for a child.
- Extremely Intelligent and Ambitious: Serena is strong-willed and intelligent, frequently grasping for power within the limited scope allowed to wives in Gilead.
- Bitterly Narcissistic: She displays signs of narcissism and intense bitterness, often unable to show empathy for others’ suffering while focusing solely on her own longing for a baby.
- Complex and Paradoxical: While she is an antagonist, she is also a tragic character who evokes sympathy for her loneliness and servitude, only to switch to acting maliciously again when her position is threatened
So, what (if any) parallels do we see between the fictional Serena Joy, and the women who use their power to uphold patriarchy and fight against feminist goals like equal pay and reproductive rights? Serena Joy publicly supports a system centered on limiting women to domestic roles, while she is politically engaged, strategic and influential outside of the domestic sphere. This is a similar tension when politically powerful women promote roles that they do not allow to limit themselves. This is a core contradiction that we also see in today’s political climate when some conservative women advocate for “traditional” gender roles while they do not operate within the constraints they advocate for others.
Women advocating traditional gender roles while holding public power. As we see in the roles available to women in Gilead, most women are servants to the regime, but some are enforcers (Aunts, Wives).
Moral language tied to political hierarchy. Whether directly or indirectly, these narratives offer a critique of modernity, progress, and diversity.
Female participation in male-led movements. Women who advocate for these systems may have mixed motives: some may expect to have a voice in these groups. Serena Joy in Atwood’s novel doesn’t have a particularly good outcome, but in the series, she has a more mixed trajectory.
Politics of grievance and restoration. This includes a yearning for a nostalgic past that is often idealized and imaginary while avoiding reckoning for how oppressive the past often was to minorities, women, and children
How does this relate to the LDS church?
Recently, there has been some chatter about women with prominent careers being elevated to leadership roles (over women only, hold your horses). Women who felt that they were limited from pursuing careers based on following male leaders’ advice and the role models of prior women leaders have complained about these changes in which these “disobedient” women are being rewarded with leadership roles. I’ve been hearing this for a couple decades now at least,[1] but it is a complaint that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in a patriarchal church culture that tells women it values one thing (being a feminine, sweet-tempered stay at home mom) but shows that it really values another thing (being well educated with a highly successful career and leadership experience).
Additionally, the online “mom-fluencer” space is largely dominated by LDS women who create “tradwife” content, promoting the idea that being a full-time mother is fulfilling and wonderful, Instagram-worthy even. Their content is very popular…and lucrative for the creators. In other words, they are advocating to other women that they should forgo the accolades of the “world” and careers while using that same messaging to have a highly successful career (or at least to try). Whether they succeed or not, they create a very performative relationship to the ideals of feminine domestic labor espoused by a patriarchal system. It’s truly not a realistic portrait of motherhood, cooking, parenting, or marriage. It’s curated to sell products and even more to sell an ideology that limits women’s choices rather than making them more educated and free to choose what works for them.
It seems to me, at least as I consider most of the “conservative” women I know (not those who are strongly politically engaged–just the ones who assume they are aligned with conservative ideals), that they are not really at all conservative in how they view gender roles or women. They might be a stay at home mom, but they don’t necessarily think everyone should have to choose the same thing they did. I do find they are often poorly informed about the history of women’s rights, which party has done what to protect women’s rights (including from rape, abuse, or financial control of men), and that they have the privilege of ignoring those things because they have a fairly acceptable husband / family situation that shields them from worrying about it too much. Obviously that’s just anecdotal based on my own conversations with (mostly LDS) women I know. They don’t generally self-describe as feminists, but they also agree with pretty much everything if you actually talk about the things feminists want.
Aside from how these contradictions play out in the LDS church, there are many conservative women in the MAGA movement whose role seems to conflict with the messages they are supporting and the systems they are advocating for.
- Do you see these paradoxes in the Mormon church and/or conservative politics?
- How do you square the role of women in supporting patriarchal cultures or ideas?
- Are the Mormon women you know proudly anti-feminist, feminist, or something else?
Discuss.
[1] During the “I’m a Mormon” campaign was when I first realized just how many women resented that they gave up careers only to find that women who had successful careers were considered valid Mormons too.
Wheat & Tares 
I hesitate to start the discussion, being a man, but here’s my perspective. My ex-wife bought into the Mormon myth that women should stay at home, not work, and raise their children while men work and bring home what they earn to the family. So she stubbornly refused to get a job even though we were upside down financially. I guess I kind of bought into that idea as well because I handed over my paycheck and trusted that she would take care of the bills with what I earned. After 25 years of marriage, it came to an end when I realized she was not managing the money and still refused to help in any way to get us out of debt. When we finally divorced, I calculated that she spent an average of $150 per month more than I made. In other words, I was in deep do-do. After being divorced for about 10 years, having climbed out of debt, I remarried my present wife, who was a teacher like myself. She had a similar experience with her ex, in that he found every excuse not to work, particularly if she had a job. Now, together we have separate finances, yet we are on each other’s accounts. She pays some bills, I pay others, and we both have our own spending money. We have shared goals and common aspirations. We also both realize that we would be in very different positions if our first marriage had been more like our present marriage. This has also colored our view of the church and conservative views generally, and about women specifically.
If the Ezra Benson/Camille Johnson situation teaches us anything is it that these men are just giving their opinion. The 12 especially need to stick to their assignment: Special Witness of Jesus Christ.
My mother worked. When I was little she got a lot of flack for that but said she was entitled to personal revelation and that was what the Lord wanted for her. After a few years it was pretty obvious that was the right choice for our family and she never heard much criticism after that.
Patriarchy sure hits different when you grow up nonbinary in a world that doesn’t have a name for that. I knew which role I was assigned but didn’t want to be stick with that and I thought both roles sucked.
The paradox of choice is extremely relevant to this issue. The hypothesis is that the more freedom we have to choose, the more confused and unhappy we become. Fundamental reason for this paradox is we humans have regret when we observe that alternative choices may have been better than the choice we made.
Woman face the greatest of all competition between good choices. Having children and being directly involved in their mothering is a very good choice. Having a profession and providing value to others and gaining feedback that one’s talents are valuable to others is a very good choice. It is extremely difficult to make both choices and there is an extremely high opportunity cost associated with each choice.
Please appreciate that men solved this dilemma of competing priorities long ago by elevating the choice of “providing” as superior above all else. The “patriarchy” as it actually exists is not that men hold power over woman but that men removed from their psychology the need to choose between direct emotional care of their dependents and the pursuit of a profession. Thus men do not feel guilty for leaving their wife and children and especially so if they are leaving in order to improve the material comforts that can be provided for them.
But of course it is easier for men to make their choice as they are not as emotionally attached to their children. Women who choose a professional instinctively have yearnings and desires to be more present for their children. To me this is the reason the dilemma of choice is magnified for women. For no matter which choice woman make they will feel regret. Woman want to be closely involved in the lives of their children and they desire the positive feedback that is gained by directly contributing to society. Both good choices, both with extremely high opportunity cost.
It appears to me that a response by some woman to this conflict of choices is to (1) become bitter about having to make a choice and (2) develop narratives to shift guilt for their feelings to others such as “the patriarchy”. I understand why this happens, but I think there are healthier ways to cope. My hope is woman could be more constructive to each other in managing the conflict of choices.
I feel the church is trying to be more supportive from an institutional position, but I believe the messaging and culture have a ways to go.
My wife and I made our choice. I taught school so I was available for child care on weekends and at times during the summer. My wife worked as an RN on weekends and took extra shifts in the summer. No regrets. The idea that men are not as emotionally attached to their children is complete nonsense. Modern neuroscience reveals that there is a difference between how the sexes connect with their offspring and the pathways that are triggered, but men are just as committed caregivers as their wives. Deep parental love is very common in both sexes, even if expressed differently. I would lay down my life at any time for my children and they are now adults. My grandchildren? Suprisingly for me, I have found my emotions even more intense.
The Church has not really supported the realities and challenges that families have faced… IMO ever. They have dictated programs (FHE), they have have challenged ideological variations (much to the harm of women’s healthcare and mental health), but have they offered daycare for families? Have they provided funding for the ocntinued education of young mothers?
Nice to hear that men solved their conflicted feelings by shutting down their nurturing instincts and basic emotions at a societal level. That probably won’t lead to massive mental health issues or violence later on. I suppose it is better that they do this so they won’t have to learn to feel both the good and the bad, and won’t have to be burdened by needing to choose for themselves. I am grateful for a church that provides only one plan for our lives and can limit personal agency as much as possible so that not one soul will be lost on the way back to heaven. I’m sure the COJCOLDS gets all the glory here.
But moving on from the sarcasm, I agree that a great number of women that wouldn’t consider themselves feminists agree with a huge majority of feminist causes when they are presented individually. I often find it baffling. I think a lot of this comes from the way most positions have become very strongly correlated. If I tell you how I feel about the feminist movement, you can probably make a good guess about how I feel about gun control, social welfare programs, and what kind of car I drive. We may be developing an allowance for cafeteria Mormons, but we strongly police cafeteria conservatives and cafeteria liberals. As a result, women that align with a number of conservative positions can end up supporting anti-feminist policies that have been tied up in the larger package. (Similar policy bundling also happens on the political left.)
Anon,
As you write, parental love is expressed differently. A dad feels fulfilled playing catch with his son and helping a child with homework or project. This is why moms get exasperated at their husbands who feel they have contributed to the caretaking of the kids when there contribution is a fraction of what mom put in. But yes, I love my children as much as my wife does, even though she spends much more time engaged with them and much more emotional energy thinking about them. And boy does it offend my wife when I suggest she shouldn’t care so much – LOL.
Well, first of all in today’s world, working outside the home is not a choice, unless you are supper lucky and marry into wealth.
A while ago, I discover that all of my granddaughters say they will never marry and they will not have children. Some raised in the church, some not. So, I asked around and read up on the subject.
What is going on now especially with Gen Z, is that women are pretty disgusted with being forced both to work and be the sole caretaker of children and do all the housework and the emotional labor of making sure that she schedules her husband’s doctor appointments and buys his mother a Mother’s Day gift. Women are tired of grow adult men who want their wife to be their mama. They want their wife to be wife, wage earner, their mother as well as mother to children.
So, women are swearing off marriage and men. They want a grown up partner and all the men they can find are still basically children and want their wife to mother them. So, they keep dumping the jerks.
There is something in society that is telling males they do not have to be grow ups and accept the responsibility of supporting the family at the same time they still expect their wives to be emotional support to them and give them children, only not the work of constant dirty diapers.
It is like men rejected the patriarchal concept that they support wives and children, but kept all the bad stuff from patriarchy like wanting a wife for sex, for emotional support, for taking care of their social schedule, for doing house work. They want the wife to give them children, but they do not want to have to do the work of caring for children. This makes having a man one heck of a lot of work for a woman, with really no benefit. No wonder the women do not want it. Why have an extra baby who wants sex?
Not my opinion, but what the surveys say that Gen Z women are saying about the dropping birth rate and their own refusal to marry.
They blame social media that tells men they want a trad wife. But social media is not preparing men to take financial responsibility for supporting a trad wife. But the incel type of social media teaches hatred for women, but blames them for the lack of sex these poor babies suffer. Well, duh, women don’t want to have sex with men who hate them. Other influencers teach a kind of “masculinity” that is physically strong, but only cares about “looks maxing” and wants a simple way of earning lots of money by sitting around and making content for social media. The dumb teen agers watching see people making money and don’t realize they (the dumb teen agers) are the suckers giving money to the influencers. They want to BE the influencers, but the world can’t support more influencers. And as one of our commenters like to say, they want to play video game in their parents basement while wearing crocks and sweat pants.
The church is also guilty of this. They teach the boys they are special because they have priesthood. They suggest the way to get a hot wife is to serve a mission. But nobody ever did a study to see if the prettiest girls want an obedient good missionary. I suspect they want more. The young men then are disappointed and disillusioned that the prettiest girls are getting a doctorate in law or medicine. But the girls see that in a modern world they are going to have to support themselves and they are getting ready to do that. Gone is the world where they boys get home from missions to the girls waiting to marry, with only the ugly girls who can’t get a man getting an education and career.
Men need to change their attitude and see women as equal partners, not their mama who cleans up after them but still thinks he is sexy and all that he wants from his wife. They need to share equally in housework and child care.
So, I said the church was guilty of wanting women to be full time homemakers and sparkling career women. Well, a woman cannot do both, so the men gotta decide which they want. And you can see the double standard in who they marry compared to who they call into female leadership. They marry a woman who will support HIS career, and stay at home with ten kids while he spends hours at church. Then they promote in the church women who are lawyers. Like my husband, he married a 19 year old, then yelled at his daughter that she was better than getting married at 19. What he wanted in his wife was not what he admired in women and wanted for his daughter. Thank you dear, I will never quite forgive your hypocrisy on this. What is sad, is he did not even SEE his own hypocrisy
So, men gotta make up their minds, do they want women to be career women, or do they want to support a trad wife. I suggest they make up their minds before marrying and are honest about it. I also hope they realize a trad wife is da**ed expensive in today’s world. They have to be able to afford a trad wife if that is what they want. But most men can’t do it. And if they want a working wife, they NEED to step up and do half the housework and child care. They cannot expect women to do the full second shift. And if you men do not know what the second shift is, I advise you to do some research.
For me, I was supper happy as a trad wife for the years I did that. I was much less happy trying to do all the house work, all the child care, fix his poor depressed life, counsel rape victims, while poor dear was out of work and sitting around playing video games. I about divorced him over the sitting around playing video games while I was doing all the housework, childcare, and supporting us all in a very stressful job.
The Church often soft launches changes in various policies that have been taught for decades, thru social media platforms instead of announcements by Q15.
Often readers don’t believe the changes come from the Brethren, but are from some rogue commenter or hacker. This is such a cowardly way to change anything imo. For example: This post (~April 6,’26) from Nate on the Church’s OFFICIAL FB page, regarding a wife whose career provides the primary source of income, while he enjoys being a stay-at-home Dad. It provoked lots of negative comments from people objecting to the dissonance with the Family Proclamation on an official LDS web page. So we get implied endorsement instead of anything official, creating more confusion! 🙄
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1NtWZW6gSD/?mibextid=wwXIfr
I’ll begin with a note about your observation that the church has said one thing but shown a preference for another. I hadn’t thought of it until you put it that way, but it sounds a lot like the economic concept of revealed preference, which is based on the idea that humans often actually act in ways that diverge from what they claim to want, so economists go looking for evidence of revealed preference to really understand how the world works. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when institutions also have revealed preferences. Also we shouldn’t necessarily treat the church as a monolith, but it’s tempting to do so for a variety of reasons.
I’m married to someone who embraces the feminist label and has a career. I don’t think the career part makes her as much of an outlier at church as it once did, but self-identifying as a feminist in the church still does, it seems. It’s all about branding, in my opinion. I think perceptions of the feminist label vary across the political spectrum, and on the right in particular feminism is mostly associated with the most radical views expressed by feminists on the left, even if one might sign on to the majority of feminist causes from the last century. Feminism for many is mostly about ones’ views on abortion and not about the right to vote or have a bank account or access to historically male professions. I suppose that it’s not crazy to associate feminism with mostly present-day debates, but I lament that feminism can’t be a bigger tent than it’s perceived to be.
Anna makes some important points about the attitudes of the rising generation of young adults. I personally believe this is the biggest cause of declining fertility rates. I don’t think women have collectively stopped wanting motherhood; I think they started wanting equal partners in raising children in a world where 2 incomes are increasingly the norm, and have rationally concluded they would be happier opting out of the whole thing altogether than facing parenthood with a man child who needs to be raised alongside future children. I’m not against public policy incentives for parenting, but fundamentally I think this is a cultural problem to solve, and specifically a male cultural problem.
A committed parent and spouse doesn’t worry about their own fulfillment. That isn’t an expression of love, that is an expression of selfishness. They do what is best for the child. They also act in a manner which is very supportive of their spouse. Which I think means that we should do things together.
My wife and I both enjoy gardening. One day an older neighbor drove by and pulled up to our curb. I was planting a new rose bush and my wife was mowing the lawn. He motioned me over and asked, “How do you get her to do that?” I smiled and said, “We both come out when we get the housework done.” Also, my wife is an avid athlete. I’ve never played catch with my children without her out there with us.
Quentin: Your comment about revealed preferences triggered a memory for me. When I was an executive at American Express, sometimes women would ask me if I felt judged for being a career woman. It occurred to me that I literally never felt judged by the men for it–only the women. When men at church realized I had a highly successful career–often more successful than theirs–it’s like I went from being invisible to being sought out and treated with respect. Most women didn’t care, but if they were unhappy with their own choices, they sometimes would be bitter about it. One woman snidely remarked “Oh I didn’t know we were allowed to ignore the prophet’s counsel.” I laughed and said “It’s YOUR life.”
It’s a neat trick how the right has smeared the term “feminist” to the point that some women speak out against it, but I have never met one yet who said that who was willing to give up the vote or that she thinks marital rape is A-OK.
Anon: “A committed parent and spouse doesn’t worry about their own fulfillment. That isn’t an expression of love, that is an expression of selfishness. They do what is best for the child. They also act in a manner which is very supportive of their spouse.” I am not sure mental health professionals would agree with you. I’ve even heard church leaders say something about needing to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Historically, women who stayed home and were responsible for the domestic sphere have suffered from having to be “on” 24×7. Their home is their workplace. It’s not a place of relaxation and enjoyment.
There’s also a lot of discussion among mental health professionals about how child-centric parenting norms have gone too far, espousing ideas that are not good for families, children or parents.
@A Disciple
Medical textbooks used to teach that men breathed more using their diaphragms while women breathed more with their chest muscles and that was an innate secondary sex characteristic. This continued up until a woman, Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, showed that corsets kept their wearers from moving their diaphragms completely and that when women didn’t wear them they breathed just like the men.
Likewise, none of the differences you’ve mentioned are innate. They’re all taught. The lessons start when baby girls are given toys from the pink aisle, which are often nurturing themed, while boys are given toys from the blue aisle, which aren’t. The lessons continue with the examples of characters on TV and often of family members. Should a child despite all that show the characteristics that you’ve described as being innate to the other gender they are often teased mercilessly by other children and sometimes adults until they stop, and too often they are subject to more serious forms of abuse as well.
Socializing children into performing their assigned roles is a major part of what patriarchy is, although there’s more to it than that.
There is no anthropological evidence that any of those differences are really biologically based. If you were raised in a different culture you’d believe that completely different things were natural to each gender.
Incidentally, if you were to guess my assigned gender based on your supposedly innate characteristics, you would guess completely backwards. I match almost none of them.
Folks,
Explaining how things are is neither an endorsement of those things or a preference that the things do not change. Things are what they are and, as AI explains: “Research generally indicates that men do not feel as much pressure to care for children as women. While modern fathers are increasingly involved, mothers still experience higher levels of societal pressure, stress, and “intensive parenting” expectations.”
Both working fathers and working mothers feel stressed by the challenge of managing work and family responsibilities. But mothers feel it worse. AI explains: “studies consistently show that working mothers experience greater stress and higher levels of burnout (68% vs. 42% of men) regarding work-family balance compared to working fathers.”
This is the environment we have and it is fairly universal across 1st world cultures, with one significant difference. In certain cultures, grandparents and siblings step in to help working parents. The USA, especially white America, is not one of those cultures.
Married families can live on a single income. Both my daughters have done this with their spouses having normal, non-executive jobs. But I understand this is not the norm and I also appreciate that many women want a profession, if only to have better financial security.
The conclusion of my 1st post is to observe that the dialogue about women and motherhood and working is not constructive. I see bitterness, blame and finger pointing. Please appreciate that I sympathize with feelings of annoyance about “trad wife” influencing. At the same time, I find it concerning that the rejection of motherhood and mothering finds acceptance with some women. A thing, like motherhood, can be a good choice even if it is hard and requires sacrifice. I believe both men and women struggle with the sacrifice part.
Men also make excuses to shift responsibility. Yet note that mainstream culture has no reservation about criticizing unhealthy male behaviors. Love him or hate him but Jordan Peterson made a career out of telling young men to avoid nihilism and despair. A similar “grow up and be godly” talk was the standard at the LDS General Conference Priesthood session. What message does the church give men today? I don’t know.
Lastly, the church is not indoctrinating men that women should be barefoot and pregnant. Both my active LDS boys are marrying career minded women. The last time LDS leaders spoke about mothers prioritizing home and children was Dallin H. Oaks in 2018. There were more such talks in the 20-teens. The homemaking message was not a priority for President Nelson.
Disciple’s error is in assuming that all women are like his wife. We’re not all like that.
I’ve done both the tradwife thing and the career mom thing. My relationship with my kids improved markedly when I went back to work full-time. Being away from each other most of the day gave me a lot of perspective. My drive to be the perfect mom gave way to being an adequate mom, and chilling out benefitted my kids too. Plus, it forced their dad to be more involved. I grew up believing that I wanted to be a tradwife, and I had a lot of angst about going back to work. But it sure turned out great for our family!
I have close friends who have stayed at home with the kids. They obeyed the prophet and quit work. I did too. Then I got divorced and went back to work. They’ve stayed married and stayed home. The differences are stark at this point in our lives. I’m happy, busy, and have independent kids who are learning to be adults. My friends try not to complain to their husbands, but this is an actual quote from our last lunch together: “Sometimes I think the best thing I could for my kids is die, because then at least they’d learn to do some things for themselves.” Another wife described the struggle she had in wanting to watch a show. She ended up dragging the dog bed to the laundry room and sitting on it to watch her show. The focus on kids results in some really poor boundaries.
I think of that when people like Disciple insist that women naturally want lives like that. What’s your wife saying to the friends she meets for lunch? Conservative men who speak on behalf of their wives — well, I take it with a grain of salt.
Although, as hawgrrl points out, there are women willing to speak in behalf of the conservative lifestyle. They don’t live it; but they’ll support it. The Church doesn’t need very many women to have careers and develop leadership abilities. There are very few women in Church leadership. Most faithful LDS women are like my friends. That’s what the Church wants. A couple maveriks have careers and remain faithful; that’s enough for the RS General Presidency.
I wish we could hit a cosmic reset button and return (collectively) to the basics–establishing a society that is built on genuine concern for the welfare of our neighbors. And I’m of the opinion that in such a Zion-like society it would go without saying that our own children are our closest and neediest neighbors.
That said, I think the West has gotten into the unfortunate and rather frightening habit of placing the wants of adults above the needs of children–which is the antithesis of Zion, IMO, and a sure formula for destruction.
Jack: Fortunately, your parenting fears are largely unrelated to reality. My parents were raised in a time when kids’ needs were not only minimized, but kids were routinely beaten if they stepped out of line–by any adult who happened to be nearby, not just their own parents! Parents seldom knew where their kids were. Child labor was the norm. Boomers likewise often fell into adult-centric patterns, protecting their husbands from any irritation by the children by punishing the kids into compliance. “Wait ’til your father gets home!” was a very real threat, and dads would hit their kids with belts. This idyllic “past” you envision is far more like the current reality in which “gentle parenting” is the norm rather than punitive fear-based parenting. Now, clearly some parents take that child-centric approach too far, into the realm of permissiveness, to the point that some parents are raising little narcissistic assholes. One of the reasons many young people don’t want to have kids is that they take the responsibility of it VERY seriously, far more than their parents did, and they also live in vigilant times where anyone with a cell phone can call CPS on them if they dislike (or even misinterpret) their parenting practices.
Hawkgrrrl,
Maybe I was unclear–but I was talking about returning to the basics more than returning to the past per se–and then rebuilding society in a Zion-like fashion. Even so, while there’s a lot of truth in what you say about the past–I think the academy’s view of those days is way too prejudiced and jaundiced. They paint a picture that is void of virtue–where there is almost no compassion, concern, or caring on the part of men and where all women were quietly miserable. That’s a lie.
But what concerns me even more is that the present generation–collectively speaking–views everyone from that past as either dysfunctional or evil–without seeing the problems of the present. It’s a forest for the trees sort of thing. And the particular problems that we face today are the evils that can bring an entire civilization to its knees.
The proclamation on the family is prophetic in both its counsel and its warnings. IMO, the West will probably continue to be strong militarily–for a while at least–but it will not be able to withstand the loss of our basic identity as children of God–nor the loss of the basic elements that are part and parcel of the foundational structure of human existence.
I find Moroni’s words telling–when he’s grieving over the loss of his people:
“O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!”
It’s what he *doesn’t* say as well as what he does say that I find fascinating. He doesn’t say, O ye kings and priests, ye rulers and magistrates, ye teachers and counselors. He zeroes in on the root of the problem: all of the basic relations within the human family–what I call the relations of life.
And so it behooves us to receive the counsel that has been given by the apostles on marriage and family. Because if we don’t–and we become the prideful gentiles (that are spoken of in the Book of Mormon) who think they know more than God about the foundational aspects of structuring the human family–then we will see the “calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”
Jack, Can you shift from platitudes to realities? How does one “receive the counsel that has been given by the apostles on marriage and family”? Really and specifically, if you please, with no platitudes. Might the answer include some of the following?
– LDS men should marry before age __,
– LDS men should earn enough to provide for a large family (this may include working a second job),
– LDS women should marry before age __,
– LDS women, once pregnant, should not earn an income as long as the family includes a minor child,
– LDS couples should endeavor for at least _____ pregnancies within the first ten years of marriage, and _____ additional pregnancies within the next ten years.
I think Latter-day Saints already largely “receive the counsel that has been given by the apostles on marriage and family,” and I support the principle of teaching correct principles and letting people govern themselves. But I discern that you think we’re not doing well enough, and I hope you can shift from platitudes to real suggestions. Can you put some meat on the bones?
So I will say from the outset, I did the higher education thing, PhD, married, worked for several years before having children in a job I was well suited to, but with IT developments since I left has changed enormously. I was a patent searcher back when that meant looking at the paper documents. There were of course classification systems as now, and databases we used to download lists of patents to look at. Spending the day in a library wandering the archives and assessing the relevance of the documents I was looking at suited me very well. Today the whole thing would be online.
My husband and I have two children. And that’s as many as we could cope with. It’s fair to say we’re a neurodivergent household. There’s only so many interactions with others we can handle, and none of us are good at juggling too many things. So it worked for us to have me stay home, and my husband work in paid employment. We didn’t have family living nearby who could help with things like childcare. I don’t regret that choice. I wasn’t capable of doing everything. However, I am very glad that I took the opportunity to get an education, and work experience in a job I loved before I made that choice. I might have felt very differently had I not. We’ve also been very lucky in when we bought our first home before prices tripled and costs were less than 3x one income. Prices have risen much further since, and that’s not a possibility for our kids who are both now over 25, and single. I have no desire to see them hurry into marriage and children. Even so, the choices we made mean we won’t be looking forward to an affluent retirement.
The rhetoric we are hearing at the moment about earlier marriage and having lots of children is something that I find disturbing.
Jack, the idea that there’s anything “foundational” about the Ozzie and Harriet/Leave It to Beaver-style family structure that the Church continues to push as the ideal is laughable.
Throughout Biblical history, women were essentially commodities to be bought and sold, and they are all but absent from the Book of Mormon narrative. Returning to that sort of world would be horrific. Polygamy, which subjugated women both in the Hebrew Bible and the 19th Century, complicates the picture even further. Nothing about it bears any resemblance to a nuclear family circa 1955, which is a problematic template in and of itself that we celebrate well past its expiration date.
Paul, who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, tolerated marriage for those too weak to practice celibacy like he did. The Family Proclamation would seem like lunacy to him, especially with its implication that prophets ancient and modern spoke with a unified voice on these issues and foretold of calamities if we don’t emulate Father Knows Best.
Patriarchy’s track record is oppressive in the extreme, and we still cling to the worst aspects of it. The fact that the Church now begrudgingly concedes that women may have value beyond their ability to bear children is a step in the right direction, but not a very big one.
ji,
Can’t do that my friend–nor would I want to. The proclamation is more about establishing principles than it is about setting forth a prescribed manner of living. And as such its message allows enough wiggle room for folks to do the best they can according to their individual circumstances–even though their situation may be far from ideal.
And I should clarify: I’m not talking about the church per se–but the entire West.
Mike Spendlove,
I understand how some folks might read the proclamation as a retreat into some sort of 1950s Nirvana–but don’t let’s be silly. Just read it for what it says without importing all of that mucky-muck into it. It’s a very straightforward document about basic ideas and principles related to marriage and family and how sexual identity underscores the relationships involved.
Jack,
The proclamation does teach distinct gender roles within family life. It states that “fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness” and are primarily responsible for providing necessities and protection, while “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” My family of shared responsibilities and a two-income household would be held as out of compliance by many faithful LDS at the time it was written. Most LDS view the document as reinforcing pre-1990 gender expectations which no longer exist because it links family responsibilities, and by extension career choices, closely to male and female roles.
Why can’t we admit that historically the document was drafted so church leaders could justify their opposition to SSM? If we factor that in, there is really nothing profound it has to teach couples facing the vicissitudes life in 2026 and should be viewed as a archaic statement that has been repurposed for a role for which it was never intended following the legalization and acceptance of SSM. Context matters.
Great conversation here. I was hoping for more about the Mormon Aunt Lydias – the most terrifying and insidious of the enforcers of the patriarchy, especially to young girls.
The women who are called to be teachers and leaders in the young women’s program were invariably the submissive, sweet and conventionally attractive tradwives who cheerfully taught me that my worth as a human was tied to my purity and virtue as determined by men.
It’s hard to overstate how deeply destructive and corrosive such beliefs are to young minds and how they can be a real impediment to maturing into an independent adult.
But Jack, you say “it behooves us to receive the counsel that has been given by the apostles on marriage and family” — what does that mean? What should we be doing? What should we be doing differently? Please, can you give me something real instead of mere platitudes? I want to understand, but I am frustrated by mere platitudes.
Invoking platitudes seem like pointing the finger and wagging the tongue, or maybe as drive-by testimony — but is that effective dialogue? To me, it seems that meaningful engagement would be more helpful.
Speaking of revealed preferences, you’d think that if the gender role parts of the proclamation were as important to the church as the parts against same-sex marriage they’d spend as much money and effort lobbying for policies that make fulfilling those roles feasible for everyone, like making housing affordable. The church doesn’t spend any of its economic and social capital on anything like that.
@fearlessthing841c31ef6e
I’m glad that my daughter decided that the LDS Church wasn’t for her before she got exposed to a lot of that toxicity, but I’m very sorry that I have to say that because the church is that way.
Former nonbinary Sunbeem has a good point. For all of it talk about supporting mothers and family, the church does nothing but talk. They do not support legislation that would help mothers to actually be happy as full time mothers, let alone be happy as working mothers. They are opposed those things Democrats push for that might help working mothers have children let alone more children. When rent/housing is 1/2 the total income and childcare is another 1/3 on top of that, that leaves 1/6 of an income for *everything* else. Food, clothing, transportation, taxes, tithing. Look at an average budget of a tithing paying couple with two preschool children who both work, and you see that the income of both parents is gone long before they even get to food. How are they doing it? They are avoiding it. By not being a couple or not having children or just going into debt, or living with Mom and Dad. So, the church opposes subsidized day care, they oppose any day care as if women can earn money with babies in tow. They do not support inexpensive housing, but buy up land and put super expensive housing on it. Just how pricy were those condos next to Temple square in SLC. By encouraging Republicanism, they oppose snap, Medicaid, and other supports for low income motherhood. By opposing abortion, they are making pregnancy very dangerous even with exemptions for “life of Mother.” The people paying attention to deaths due to delaying abortion have counted several in Texas and other states because doctors do not want to risk prison, so the woman who is having a miscarriage bleeds out in the parking lot. This makes women afraid to risk having children. They tell pretty talks about a woman who doctors told her that the pregnancy might kill her, but she went through with it, refused cancer treatments or whatever, and miraculously she survived. As if faith will save your life if you refuse to be treated for cancer because that would kill or deform the baby. Or if you just have faith, the pre-eclampsia won’t kill you or the baby. No, God expects us to have intelligence as well as faith. And the church NEvER tells the story of the faithful mother who goes against doctor’s advice to abort and she and her baby die, leaving a devastated husband alone to raise three motherless children.
The church actively sets mothers up for a more difficult time, and then can’t figure out why the birthrate is dropping. What is *wrong* with women today that they are not willing to sacrifice everything for more babies? I just can’t imagine why the birthrate is falling when the church, by supporting Richpublicans, supports the oligarchs getting supper rich by not paying a living wage, rather than supporting the needs of the working masses. But the church doesn’t push for higher minimum wage. The church doesn’t support low cost housing.
The church doesn’t support anything that would make motherhood better, they just try to make women feel guilty for not wanting babies they know they cannot afford.
ji,
OK–here are a few things that I think we can cull from the church’s teachings on the subject–and remember that I’m speaking to the entire West:
–We should work harder at staying married–we should not have a 50% divorce rate.
–We should not cohabitate.
–We should not have children out of wedlock.
–We should avoid abortion–except in special circumstances.
–We should live the Law of chastity–no sex outside of marriage.
–We should avoid pornography.
–We should remember that we are children of a loving God.
–We should remember that gender has eternal characteristics.
–Marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
–Children should have parents who are loving and are completely faithful to each other.
–Fathers should prioritize providing, and protecting–and presiding in lovingkindness.
–Mothers should prioritize nurturing their children.
–Mothers and Fathers should help each other and work together as equal partners.
–Families should seek to live by the teachings of the Savior.
I have to say that I’m very worried about the West–generally speaking. I used to hope that we’d seen the worst of the world in the mid-twentieth century–and that from there we’d be in a steady climb to the Millennium. I’m not so sure of that anymore. In our attempt to improve society we’ve thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water. With rampant infidelity, divorce, fatherlessness, sexual promiscuity, etc., the family has been shredded. Is it any wonder that we don’t know who we are anymore? The West is having a collective identity crises–too many children are brought up in situations where they are unable to gain any sense of who and what they really are. I could be wrong, but in my honest estimation that kind of depravity will get us on a fast-track to implosion–faster than anything else, that is.
Thanks, Jack. I think we agree more than we disagree. I think our difference is that I am looking at the level of individuals and specifics and you’re looking at the level of societies and generalities. Your perspective has validity.
For example, I also wish our society didn’t have a 50% divorce rate. But I know that divorce decisions are almost always made by individuals in individual circumstances. I would almost never want to tell anyone that he or she should have tried harder to save their marriage, or that they can’t have a divorce because of the prevailing societal rate — yeah, no doubt some marriages could have been saved if “they” tried harder, but I want to respect the privilege of people to make that difficult decision for themselves and to remain in communion with them afterwards. Maybe another way to say it is that I guess I want to minister to and accept individuals in their real circumstances, messy as they may be, rather than bemoaning societal trends — but if you and I were at a table together somewhere, I would agree with your general observation.
That said, all your “should” statements (save one) are good, if we are looking at the societal level, and if we are looking at them as ideals without trying to enforce them on individuals. The one I quibble with is “[c]hildren should have parents who _____.” Children have no say in what their parents do, so I disagree with any statement that implies a child’s failure for choosing parents who don’t _____.
I appreciate the opportunity for dialogue.
Oh, one last thought — you have written a number of times about “the West,” and I suppose that means you think the East is doing better — but I am not certain that things are overall better in the East. I say this after having spent much time in many places in the East. Yes, at a societal level, there are some differences between the West and the East (and also between the global North and the global South), but I can affirm that there are good people everywhere. Overall, I prefer living in the West, and I would hope for more of the world to move in the direction of the West even as we may hope to improve the West.
Thanks, ji.
Oh, I agree with the notion of not judging individuals. Being a child of three divorces I can attest to the fact that loving people in difficult situations is the best thing we can do. But a culture–that’s is a different animal. I think the kingdom of the devil needs a vigorous shaking every now and again.
Re: The West: I agree that there are bad actors and elements all around the globe–but the West is the world that I inhabit. And as much as I love it (I’m a flag waving conservative) I can get really frustrated with how cool we think we are–especially when I consider the prophecies vis-a-vis the gentiles in the Book of Mormon. We’ve been warned–and we need to behave ourselves.
@Jack
That list is a lot better but one of the items is still frustratingly vague: “We should remember that gender has eternal characteristics.” What does that even mean for a person like me? Here’s a few possibilities:
– It means I’ll have eternal gender dysphoria. I can’t say I’m a fan. I don’t understand why a loving Heavenly Father would do something like that to me.
– It means I’ll be cis in the resurrection. Ick, no! I don’t want that to happen any more than you want to wake up as a woman in the resurrection, Jack, and for the exact same reason. I can’t imagine why a loving Heavenly Father would do that to me either. I’d rather take the dysphoria.
– It means that I’ll have the mishmash of social, emotional, and physical characteristics that my dysphoria insists I should have. I don’t have the opportunity to try that in this life, but in a future living among a Zion-like people who are understanding and accepting of people’s differences that would probably be joyful.
“We should remember that gender has eternal characteristics.” is a statement that’s only satisfying to people who have never seriously wondered if they had eternal gender characteristics or if so what they were like. It’s terrifyingly ambiguous to everyone else.
Getting back to revealed preferences, the Church could do a lot to decrease divorce if it decided that was a priority. For instance, when I got married all my friends from other churches thought it was strange that my church would be willing to perform a marriage ceremony for us without first doing a least a few sessions of individualized couples counseling. The Church does essentially nothing to prepare people with the skills they need for marriage and takes an “endure to the end” approach if problems occur. That’s far from a healthy approach.
One of the biggest problems the Church seems to have about gender is just how binary they see it, and from what I can tell it’s mostly a generational thing. People who got married in the 1950s were swimming in this milieu in which the gender binary was crammed down your throat 24/7. The women had to be ultra-feminized. The men were performatively masculine, avoiding contact with a woman’s world. It’s not reality, and it’s not ideal. It’s actually quite immature. The so-called gender norms are just a list of stereotypes that render all men basically interchangeable with other men and all women interchangeable with other women. So of course if that’s what you think then you might believe what Pres. Kimball said, that basically ANY man and ANY woman, if they are “living righteously,” can make a marriage work. That’s a childish way of looking at things, and it’s unrealistically naive. But it does set it up so that any failure can be blamed on the individuals who just didn’t “live righteously” enough (as evidenced by the divorce). There’s a real blame the victim mentality at play here because the one party that can never bear any blame is the Church itself for providing poor or unrealistic counsel.
I think the idea of eternal gender is a relatively new idea, and I am not certain the idea has a divine provenance. The first I ever heard of it was a general conference address by Elder Packer, and I think it reflects his good faith effort to be helpful. I think he delivered his address soon before the family proclamation came out, maybe even while it was being drafted.
I am not convinced that gender is eternal. God (male?) created Adam and he was in the image of God. God then divided Adam and created Eve? and they were in the image of God. Maybe God possesses all male and female traits in their fulness. I also am not at all convinced that spirit children come from a sexual act. If there is no blood, is there juices created in the loins? maybe our sexuality is created for this world only. Scripture is silent on multiple parents.
Former Nonbinary Sunbeam,
I can’t say that I have a good answer to your question. I do, however, believe that the first order of business on the part of the Savior’s atonement is to preserve identity. And so thankfully our loved ones will continue to be the people we know and love. And that means your loved ones will be grateful that you will continue to be the person they know and love.
That said, there is also the aspect of healing in the resurrection that we need to recognize. And what that means for nonbinary folks I don’t really know–except to say that I believe our comfort level with our identity will be based–more than anything else–on the measure of charity that we have in hearts. And that applies to everyone irrespective of gender.
And so with that (and that) said, there a couple of things that come to mind when I ponder on this subject. And the first is: while I don’t believe (or really know) that eros will cease to be an aspect of human identity in the after life–I suspect that it will be swallowed up in the love of God. And if so, that means that our primary motivator in the afterlife–charity–will bring us a fulness of joy irrespective of how we identify in terms of gender.
And the second thing that comes to mind is the idea that President Nelson spoke of: that in this life we are like acorns that barely sprout. And that it is in the afterlife that we develop into a full grown might oak. And so while I believe that our basic identity remains intact what we become in eternity far exceeds our expectations and imagination with respect to how we will interact with others–and indeed with all of creation.
@Jack
To be honest I’ve never lost a minute of sleep worrying about the doctrine of eternal gender. My parents were always caring and supportive and never pushed me into meeting any gendered expectation I didn’t want. If my earthly parents can do that I’m sure my Heavenly Parents can as well.
But I have friends who did not grow up like that and they’re justifiably concerned that the same thing that happened to them in this life will happen to them in the next life. It’s an extremely painful subject. I feel like I’m in a unique position to advocate for them because we have common experiences that most people aren’t even aware are things that happen.
I’ve also shown that some common interpretations of that doctrine have absolutely horrifying implications for me and to the extent that people double down on those interpretations it pushes away people like me. It’s a doctrine that needs to be treated with much more sensitivity than it is.
What exactly is going on in that picture?
Betty Crocker: Valid question. Looks like a post-lobotomy housewife is cutting into…a casserole? Why she’s doing that, who knows..