A recent address by general Relief Society president Camille Johnson has caused some stir online. (Read this excellent post on the topic by fellow Exponent blogger Caroline.) President Johnson chose to pursue a law career in direct opposition to the prophetic counsel of her day to stay at home with her children. Many women (including myself) were frustrated by the current praise from church leadership for her life path, including a comment on her social media from President Dallin H. Oaks himself. Was pursuing a financially unnecessary career solely for personal fulfillment in addition to motherhood really an option? It never felt like an option to me!
In the online discussion that followed, I was surprised to see many active LDS women coming to defend the church and rewrite history. I read a comment from someone I knew personally in the 1990s stating that she’d never heard a prophet say women needed to stay at home. (In response to which I exclaimed, “What?!” so loudly at my phone screen that I startled the cat on my lap.) This woman is my age and went through the exact same young women’s program as me, and she and I even discussed the need to be stay-at-home moms when we were still teenagers. The idea that she could now claim these things had never been taught astounded me. Does she genuinely not remember?
I’m a product of the LDS Young Women’s program of the 1990s. I became a Beehive in my Utah ward in June of 1993 and graduated from high school in May of 1999. If there’s one thing I can personally claim expertise on, it’s what women and girls in my generation were told we should do with their lives. It was extraordinarily clear. We were supposed to get married as soon as possible after high school, have lots of babies, and stay at home with those children. Planning for a career or choosing to work outside of the home for any reason other than a complete emergency would be Satan’s plan for my life, not God’s.
There’s an old church film from 1991 called “For This Child I Have Prayed”, that I just watched for the first time in a quarter of a century. I was shown this film many times in my Young Women’s classes in the 90s, but I’d forgotten about it since graduating high school. If you have twelve minutes to spare, you can check out the full video here on the church’s website:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/video/2011-03-0061-for-this-child-i-prayed?lang=eng
If you don’t have enough time or interest to watch it, I’ll give a recap! A very bright young woman in a lab coat is congratulated by a female teacher who puts her arm lovingly around her and says, “Kelly, I want to congratulate you on your excellent test scores! They were some of the highest I’ve seen in my thirty years of teaching.” The teacher asks if she’s heard back on any scholarships, compliments her “tremendous mind” and expresses hope that she will make “immense contributions” to her field of research. Kelly uncomfortably responds by saying, “But I want to have a family”, to which her teacher kindly reassures her that it’s possible to do both, explaining that most corporations have plans that allow maternity leave for mothers to care for their babies. She again praises Kelly’s mind and encourages her to think about all of the people she can influence in the world, not just her own children. Kelly looks torn and concerned.
(I would like to briefly pause this recap to point out that no male teacher has ever said these words to a future father. Men don’t wrestle with the choice of whether to have a career or a family. I wish more LDS men would realize the domestic burden that LDS women have collectively taken on to provide them with the freedom and flexibility to achieve their dreams, build their resumes, and maintain financial independence for life. This is an exclusively female dilemma.)
Next in the story, Kelly reads her patriarchal blessing. It tells her she’s been blessed with many talents – which she is supposed to use in her home to teach her children.
Later in her school’s media center, Kelly’s best friend bounces up excitedly to announce she was accepted into the university of her choice. The friend makes Kelly promise to come visit her at school, then rattles off a list of things she wants to do with her life. First off, she wants to own a sports car. (As do all unfaithful women, I’m sure.) Then she says, “There are so many doors out there open for me!” Kelly mentions to this friend the children she’ll have someday, and the friend immediately jumps up and backs away from her uncomfortably, saying, “Whoa, no kids for me for awhile! When I meet the right guy and we build up some security, maybe. I’ve got plenty of time before I start thinking about a family.” Kelly looks lost in her thoughts, contemplating her friend’s plans.
At home, Kelly goes to the attic where she finds a box of her mom’s belongings. She puts on her mom’s wedding veil and thumbs through her mom’s childhood scriptures where a primary leader had written, “For perfect attendance in primary. May you grow to be a righteous mother in Zion”. Kelly smiles. That lady knew what’s up.
Kelly goes on to uncover even more secrets from her mother’s past, including a certificate for highest academic achievement and that she was voted “Girl Most Likely To Succeed”. It’s becoming apparent now where Kelly got her intelligence from, and it wasn’t her father (if he’s even her real father). A melodramatic song plays as Kelly looks at her mom’s achievements from her youth, and the lyrics are:
“My mother loves unselfishly, helps others in their need. She loves the teachings of her Lord and teaches them to me. Of all the things that she could choose (like a sports car!), she chose the will of God, To love and lead us back to Him.”
Kelly asks, “Mom, you could’ve done so much. Why didn’t you ever go after a career?” She replies, “I was blessed with more opportunities than most. After graduating from college I accepted a position with a big company. I was 24 and had my master’s degree. It was during that time that I met your father.” Kelly is captivated, and her mom continues, “At first I wanted to do both – marry your dad and continue with my career.” Skipping ahead, her mom tells her, “Your father and I decided to do what the Lord wanted us to do, so we began to study the scriptures and learn what the current prophets said on the subject.” They chose to have her dad earn the living while her mom took care of the family. Kelly says, “Yeah, but sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it. All the cooking and cleaning and laundry.” (Kelly can sense that her mom’s life is at least somewhat unfulfilling.) Her mom says, “Hey, I do a lot more than that!”, and shows her a box of letters and drawings from her kids.
Kelly’s mom pulls out a letter from Kelly’s older brother after he left on his mission. In it he admits how ungrateful he was for everything she did for him growing up, and how much of her life probably wasn’t very exciting. He acknowledges that staying at home and raising kids wasn’t easy for her, but thanks her for doing it anyway. He ends the letter by saying that when he finds the right woman to marry, he hopes she’s exactly like his mom.
Her mom tells Kelly that she wouldn’t trade any of her memories for all the money a career could offer her.
I am a little stunned by this. In this church produced film they admit right out loud that the mother’s life often wasn’t pleasant, but that message is paradoxically presented against a background of heartwarming music. As a young woman absorbing this message, I was being told that my future as a stay-at-home mom would frequently be unfulfilling, but that I should be happy anyway.
Kelly asks her mom what she should do about her own schooling. Her mom says to keep at it, because her own schooling (the master’s degree she abandoned) helped her become a better mom. (I was surprised her mom didn’t also mention the hot guys she’d meet in her religion classes at BYU.) Kelly thanks her mom, and they hug. Emotional music plays as Kelly makes the decision to be a stay-at-home mom, not a career woman. It doesn’t matter that she’s only seventeen and might not meet a cute RM into girls with bowl cuts for another decade or so.
The final lyrics are:
“As I prepare for motherhood and children I may raise, Be near me Lord, that I may teach, inspire in loving ways. Help me to walk the path that brings my children back to Thee, That we’ll find joy throughout our lives, together on our way.
And I will prepare to fill woman’s role (not get paid for any work I do), Accept the Lord’s will with all of my soul. I’ll raise children up, I’ll love them, I’ll lead (except at church), And I’ll take the time to bring them to Thee. And as I prepare for children to raise, Be near me that I may bring them to Thee.”
I see myself in Kelly – I wanted achievement and a career, but concluded it was a temptation from Satan that I shouldn’t pursue. Looking back, I think her teacher and best friend were actually the heroes (not the villains) in her story. Kelly was a teenager, and it was absolutely the right time in her life to focus on herself and her own career goals. A husband and family may or may not come, and if they do her own career goals are still equally as important as her husband’s.
Nowadays this just looks like a cheesy film from the 90s with silly music and goofy outfits and acting. But back then, to my teenage self, this felt like a message from God directly to me. Camille Johnson’s declaration that she felt free to follow her own personal revelation baffles me. The insistence by so many women in the church that this was always fine baffles me even more!
I hate the feeling of being gaslit by old friends and church leaders (and the cat on my lap hates it, too). Acknowledging and apologizing for what happened to so many of us would go a very long way, but instead both our female and priesthood leaders are choosing to pretend it simply never happened.
(I recently wrote another blog post about my experience growing up female and being encouraged to set aside career ambitions here: I Might’ve Been a Rocket Scientist (Like My Dad), But I Was a Girl – Exponent II)
Yup. When I was 16-18 years old, I had an intense bond with my young women’s president. She herself was a 35-year-old, never-been-kissed, going-back-for-a-degree, under-employed accountant, only renting a room but never owning a house, absolutely shocked that—despite her faithfulness—her life had not resulted in marriage and babies. But rather than encourage us girls to set a solid future for ourselves, even “just in case,” she still told us regularly to hold out hope for marriage and babies. To this day I believe she still sets the table for two every night and sleeps on only half of the queen-sized bed (in her still rented room), to prove to the Lord there’s still room for a worthy priesthood holder in her life.
This is tragic.😥
Oh my gosh! Everything about her life reminds me of a quote from Kristen Oaks, soon to be First Lady of the LDS church. In an interview with Sheri Drew a few years back, she said:
“This is for young women right now, coming out of college…I think that women now are really worried about careers, and they feel they have to develop themselves, and I would just say to them, “Don’t get lost in that”. Because it’s awfully lonely when you’re 50, and all you have is your career – because I’ve done that.”
Dallin H Oaks then followed up on what Kristen said: “I think that as young women have been encouraged – properly, in my view, to get an education and make plans to support themselves, that many young men have seen the accomplishments of the women in such a way as to be frightened of them. And I think that a woman who has prepared herself properly needs to be careful that she can communicate to a young man the fact that she’s willing to put that career aside, to be a Latter-day Saint wife and mother, and she can take it up later. I’ve had many young men say, “I don’t think young women today are interested in being married. I can’t find anybody because they’re all committed to their careers, and that does stand in the way of marriage, and it frightens off shy young men, for whom we should feel so sorry.”
The message to unmarried women getting older is frequently to diminish themselves, their careers, and their financial independence to make themselves more appealing to men. I pulled those quotes from a blog post I wrote a couple years back on this topic:
https://exponentii.org/blog/meeting-dallin-and-kristen-oaks/
Ah, that makes me ragey! I am 42, never married, no kids. But as it turns out–I have a dog, I have friends, I have hobbies, I went back to school a few years ago because I wanted to (and had an absolute ball and learned so much about the world, history, religion, how women find God-he and God-She and so on). I have money in the bank, I have a travel itch, I have a house and a retirement account. And I have a career–one that I’m good at, that matters and that, when done well, can amplify important topics and help people learn more about their world.
Maybe, instead of dismissing everything that women accomplish outside the home, and devaluing everything that women do inside of the home, church leaders should tell those young women just coming out of college to imagine the life they want to have to at 50. What do they want to have done? Who do they want to be? Then go to work building that life.
And maybe, instead of feeling sorry for young men, we should ask those who can’t find a woman who wants to marry him to look inward and see if there’s a reason why. Because all the stats point to the reality that most women still want to get married. They just might not want to marry you, man who is “intimidated” by a woman who goes to work in the morning. That sounds an awful lot like those young men are not interested in women who consider themselves equal to men.
The who idea that we should feel sorry for the men who are too intimidated by smart, successful women makes me want to punch a wall or something. (Then the idea that it’s the women who should change themselves in a negative way in order to make the men feel better, rather than the men getting over themselves, is infuriating.)
Heidi, you’re my hero! You hit this spot on.
“I’ve had many young men say, “I don’t think young women today are interested in being married. I can’t find anybody because they’re all committed to their careers,”
I call BS. I think he totally made that up, or took a one-off comment out of context. It doesn’t ring true at all.
Barf. Seriously. I can’t even.
Just in case someone needs a counter example, I’m 54 next week, never married, art historian with a PhD and a tiny dog. I am the director of the art museum at a tiny liberal arts college doing fulfilling work I love. I’ve traveled, I taught in Paris for 2 summers. I have friends and family. I have a pretty green house with a pretty cottage garden. And I still believe that it’s better to be lonely alone than lonely married and I’ve seen too much of that.
Sounds like you have a lovely life! I agree that it’s better to be lonely alone than lonely married. I don’t understand Kristen Oak’s statement that all she had was a career. Isn’t providing for oneself an accomplishment? Didn’t she travel or have hobbies or friendships? Marriage isn’t going to complete anyone if they don’t already have an identity.
Also, lonely? When she presumably had Church “friends” and a “Church Family”? RS, callings, helping others, choirs, all the activities that still happened then? All those Primary girls and YW to indoctrinate..oops…I meant influence to lead faithful, fulfilling, Mormon lives…Not forgetting “Every member a missionary”
This is legit my dream tbh
Wow! These are shocking sentiments from well-educated people. “Feel sorry for them”? Feel sorry for a guy who doesn’t want an educated woman with a career? Embarrassing for everyone
I had roommates like this who were waiting waiting waiting, often afraid to leave Provo or Utah without getting married. I thought of them as “gray people,” like the little souls captured by Ursula in The Little Mermaid.
I’m never married, 57. I usually eat a nice dinner out and then sleep in the middle of my queen sized bed in the home I own.
All of you single women are honestly living my dream, too. Not that I hate my children or anything, but I fantasize being a cat lady and living alone on the Oregon Coast with no one to take care of but myself (and my cats).
My adult kids could visit me. I could even have a boyfriend. But to have my own place and solitude sounds amazing and just heavenly.
Grass must be greener. I have cried and cried and cried about not being married and having no children. I’m still trying to come to terms with it.
That’s true. Sometimes we forget that what we talked for granted is what other people want desperately. I likely wouldn’t feel the way I do if I wasn’t tired from a lot of years of motherhood, I’m sure. Sending you love Lily. ❤️
😔 How sad. Trying to remain so faithful and believing she will be blessed in the end.
It reminds me of Mona Lisa Smiles. Julia Robert’s character rents a room from a woman who sounds like that.
That is tragic and how many women in the church sit and wallow in feelings of worthlessness because they haven’t attained the “highest and holiest” calling of motherhood. Motherhood is one of many many wonderful contributions women can make.
I’m back in the workforce and am so happy. The only time I felt lonely was being a SAHM. I think many empty nesters feel lonely too without the fulfillment a career can bring.
Wowza! I’ve never seen this film but definitely internalized its message through the culture, conversations, and expectations all around me. As you explained the mentor’s and best friend’s conversations I felt disoriented . . . “That’s good!” No. “That’s bad.” Wait. Celebrating a student for her abilities is incredible and so rare!! Following your dreams is natural and normal and joyful. This message is super problematic. My heart aches.
It’s so disorienting to watch this old film again and realize that my while brain is telling me the friend and mentor are saying good things to her, my gut (still apparently a 12 year old girl) is simultaneously uncomfortable with what they’re telling her. Our bodies are weird. They remember things we’ve tried to unlearn!
I could have written every word of this. We’re the same age too, I graduated in ’99. I grew up in SoCal, but the messaging was exactly the same. When I would say that I had plans to serve a mission and go to grad school before getting married at 25, my dad would laugh at me. He was totally dismissive of my mom’s regrets that she was one class shy of her associates degree, but that (after six babies), it was too late to accomplish that goal because the degree program has changed too much with technology and she would have to start from scratch (which my dad did not encourage her to do and she did not do because he provided well enough that she was never going to need to work). My older sister did go to grad school (good for her!!! 👏👏), but the endless teasing and genuine concern for her future (for making it through BYU undergrad and grad school without securing a husband) made a serious impression on me. Sure enough, all the overt and subliminal messaging worked and I got married at 20 (barely got my bachelor’s, which is good because my dad always told me I should do that just in case my husband got hit by a truck someday). Even with my husband’s graduate level education and steady employment, we have struggled financially for our entire marriage because we followed prophetic council to start our family right away. I am alarmed that my kids are still getting some of this messaging and keep telling them that it is to really important to build some security before starting a family. It’s just common sense, for crying out loud!
I got married at 21 at BYU and also finished my degree as a backup plan, in case my own husband got hit by a truck or something. Unfortunately at 42, that degree seems to have been totally pointless. No employer cares at all about my two decade old degree that I never used for anything, and almost nobody wants to pay me more money because I have it. It feels like the entire point of my education was just to be there as a marriage option for an RM looking for a wife.
So true Abby. Degrees usually half a fairly short shelf life. Better to have one than not, but don’t expect it’s going to be all you need to re-enter the work force. Far from it.
I went to YW in the early and mid 2000s and we were taught this exact same message. I haven’t been to church since college over a decade ago but I can’t imagine the message to young girls is much different. I am frustrated by my feminist progressive Mormon friends acting like this messaging is a thing for. The past. Maybe they don’t show this movie anymore, but pretty sure LDS girls today receive a very similar, if not entirely the same, message.
Yep. I went through YW in 2003-2009 and got the exact same message. My plan was to go to BYU and get married by nineteen and maybe finish my degree – if my five babies permitted it – just in case something tragic happened to my husband. I thank the Goddess every day I didn’t get married at 19. I had a lot of growing up to do, and I was able to do so in my 20s. I got married at 28, I’m still childless at 33, and my husband is supporting me in going back to school to get a master’s. I still want kids, but I won’t be giving up the career I’ve built from scratch with no guidance or preparation once I have them. Not only would being a stay at home mom wreck my mental health, I refuse to raise any daughters I have the way I was.
I have left the church, but I have hope that it’s changing for the young women who are still members. I know that my mom, who was in YW with my two younger sisters, stopped preaching marriage-only rhetoric after I started my career, and I’m grateful she saw my struggle and recognized that what she was yea hung had to change.
It also really upsets me that the Church puts so much emphasis on “self-reliance” (not to mention the undercurrent of prosperity gospel), while at the same time setting up young couples to struggle for decades by expressly telling them that it’s selfish and lacking in faith to establish financial security before having babies.
Out culture also pushes fast and young marriages, so in addition to having babies before becoming financially stable, we’re having babies before relationships are stable and brains are fully developed – then the judgement that comes when these marriages often fail is intense. (And so many young women find themselves trying to support themselves as divorced moms with little or no job experience after high school.)
Imagine if everyone waited a little longer to get married and a little longer to start having kids. A few years earlier head start just on retirement accounts alone makes a huge difference come retirement age, but so many people can’t start saving for that when they are young because every penny is going to tithing, diapers and formula. It’s not a terrible thing to have babies young, but it certainly adds unnecessary stress and makes it harder to get ahead. It’s silly for us to not acknowledge that fact. Even Camille Johnson didn’t have her first baby until after she passed the bar.
When I became a student at BYU I was shocked to learn that BYU students had babies on welfare. It seems ludicrous to me now that I felt that way because how else could they have obeyed prophets’ counsel to not delay having children? It does go against the teachings of church leaders to be self-reliant.
💯 When my husband was in grad school, most of the LDS couples going through med school went on welfare in order to start their families. Some of them had up to three or four kids before graduating medical school (not to mention long residencies that followed that don’t tend to pay well).
I was right behind you – ’97 to ’03 – and what I observed was a complete disconnect between the rhetoric and the lived reality. All the women in my ward I admired and looked up to worked, but it was like they had to sweep it under the rug. Very do as I do, not as I say. And that’s part of the problem too. We have this explicit, albeit somewhat softened from the Benson era, message to stay home (that video – oof!). Then there are women everywhere ignoring that, but doing so quietly, perhaps even professing beliefs that are the exact opposite of what they are really doing. Of course there’s dissonance. Of course we’re being gaslighted.
You know what’s funny? I remember totally be taught to judge the women who worked in my ward growing up. There was no ambiguity – they were less righteous. There was one woman in particular who owned her own wedding reception venue that I couldn’t think about without judging her lack of character, dang it.
Fast forward to middle aged me, and this summer I’m taking my girl scout troop to a woman owned wedding venue to meet the owner and learn about her business and how she started it. I’m holding her up as a great example. At least I’ve learned and I’m not passing on the things I was taught!
I posted this quote from Eyring 1997 in the other blog post. We were explicitly taught that working mothers were less righteous. It makes me sick now to think it was said and I internalized it.
This quote is referring to working mothers (mentioned in previous paragraph)
“Looking for the path to safety in the counsel of prophets makes sense to those with strong faith. When a prophet speaks, those with little faith may think that they hear only a wise man giving good advice. Then if his counsel seems comfortable and reasonable, squaring with what they want to do, they take it. If it does not, they consider it either faulty advice or they see their circumstances as justifying their being an exception to the counsel. Those without faith may think that they hear only men seeking to exert influence for some selfish motive. They may mock and deride”
Beelee, I’m the exact same age as you. And a lot of my young women leaders worked – but all of them worked out of necessity. No one in my area was very rich and so these women needed to work to help pay the bills. The sad thing is the they all worked in low-skill service industry type jobs. The “best” job that any my young women leaders had was working nights at the Customer Service Call Center for a major credit card. At least two of my leaders worked there. They were like, “It’s great because I’m able to be home with my kids when they are home from school.”
I look back on that and I’m so sad for them. What if they’d been able to pursue careers that would have led to jobs that would have paid better? Or had better hours? Yeah, maybe they would have missed out on more time with their kids . . . but maybe not.
(And I’m not saying that service industry jobs are bad, I’m just saying that these women should have had more options.)
“You didn’t tell the best jokes in the world, but hey mom you never failed me.
I’ve got your nose and your hair that won’t curl, but mother you never failed me.
You took the time to care, you made the time to share, you were the best you could be–
And I know you gave up a lot, but look at the kids you’ve got, mother you never failed me.
I know you didn’t play ball very well, but mother you never failed me.
When we had a secret, you never would tell. Mother you never failed me.
You gave me the best you had, and if you feel bad missing your master’s degree–
Well, I hope that you know at least, tho I’m no masterpiece, mother you never failed me.
Mother you never ever failed me.”
–Michael McClean, from the 1984 LDS Church film “If You Love Em, Tell Em.”
https://youtu.be/vlTCKWyBdDQ?si=0Nzy61Ep0nLk63b4
(Only now am I realizing how prevalent this message was in our LDS media, too. Not just from the pulpit!)
The gaslighting is infuriating. I was raising a young family in the late 80s and early 90s. President Benson’s talk about mothers being in the home made my working outside the home an absolute misery. Not only was the guilt debilitating, but that talk caused a great deal of animosity and competition among the sisters that exists to this day. I was judged and felt shunned. (I took a day off of work once to help out with a Relief Society activity. As I was rounding a corner I saw a group of women, including the RS presidency, talking about working moms. I heard enough of the coversation, before they noticed me, to become aware that they were specifically talking about me. At age 65, I still can’t get over it. Sorry for the rant. This topic makes me see red.
In 2008 a Relief Society President called my wife to repentance for having a career, and strongly implied our problems conceiving were due to that lack of obedience. The message is strongly internalized, it seems. (Wife still has a career and I’ve been a stay at home dad since Covid.)
The Eternal Marriage student manual is on the church website (under Institute manuals). It was published in 2001 and is still sold today and used to teach the institute class. It is full to the brim of “mother stay home” messaging.
I appreciate your post. The comments on Instagram and Twitter that say things like “ Show me where church leaders said this” or “ General authorities for general advice, and you are supposed to pray for personal revelation” make me see red. Some of us gave up everything to stay home to “follow the prophet” (and maybe angry about it the whole time, but that’s a separate issue) and now it’s like, “you didn’t have to do that” or “you should have trusted your intuition and had more confidence in your personal authority.” Cool, cool.
Exactly. And this begs the question, why aren’t we allowed to trust our own intuition or personal revelation when it comes to our yoga pants?
And how does “general authorities give general advice” jive with the quote Erin shared above from Elder Eyring in 1997, that basically says you should NOT weigh what the prophet says and how it fits into your life because that is a lack of faith and you should just listen to it? It can’t be both ways. They can’t tell us to follow the prophet no matter what and seek our own revelation to build our own lives–well, unless the next argument is that seeking your own revelation will never contradict anything the prophet says. Sigh … the knots we must all twist ourselves into to make everything somehow fit even though it literally cannot fit.
Yup. Graduated from high school in 1996 in Davis County, UT and I don’t recall ever hearing a single word of encouragement towards a career at church, or at school, or at home.
I also grew up Davis County! I graduated from Clearfield High in ’99. It was definitely not a progressive time or place for women and girls.
My grandpa, Clayton Holt, was a history teacher there a long time ago and my Dad graduated from there in the early 70s!
I remember a teacher named Mr. Holt, but the details are fuzzy. I need to go get a yearbook and look him up and see if I had him as a teacher. It’s a small world!
Abby, this is so spot on. The title alone sums up so much of what I’ve been feeling the last few days. I’m slightly younger than you. I never saw that video, but the sentiment was everywhere when I was in Young Women (1997-2003).
I talked about this in my follow up post about getting inadequate career advise in Young Women. https://exponentii.org/blog/the-lds-church-gave-me-inadequate-career-advice-part-two/ In 9th grade seminary the teacher took the Old Testament story about the people of Israel asking for a “King like other nations” and tied it into mothers wanting to work. He gave us a page full of quotes from President Benson and President Kimball telling mothers to say home. That lesson did so much damage in my life. I thought about it often as I contemplated career choices. If there is one thing I would change about my teenage years it would be that I missed class that day.
Also my mom was so influenced by the “Mother’s Come Home” talk that she took it to mean she couldn’t do ANYTHING outside the home. She cut herself off socially in a lot of ways. And then applied that to my life. She didn’t sign me up for any sorts of clubs or sports or let me participate in afterschool activities in elementary school because she felt it was best for all her children to be home with her after school. Ugh, I’m almost 40 and I’m still mad about missing a 4th grade activity that was held after school.
So yeah, I’m ticked that all of this is just being pushed aside as if it didn’t happen and have lasting impact in our lives.
Sometimes I think about the small things that might’ve altered the course of my entire life as well – like if I’d just missed a certain seminary lesson or been sick one week at church. But then I realize the messaging was so pervasive I could never have avoided it. It was death by a thousand paper cuts, not one big stab to my heart. (But I do still wish you’d missed that day in school, too!)
If I went back and sat through my classes as a teenage girl now I think I’d be horrified at the messaging I was soaking in, completely unaware it could even be questioned at all. I’ve forgotten 99 percent of the lessons in specific details, which I think is what makes it so incredibly difficult to unlearn. If I could simply pick one event that happened to me, I could re-wire my brain to think differently – but when it was thousands and thousands of messages over years, I can’t remember them all to deal with the pain they’ve caused me!
I wonder if my Mom did something similar to yours did, cutting us of from things outside the home. I’d never thought about it in this way, but my mom didn’t like me hanging out with friends frequently and would often give me early curfews. She wanted us home with our family, but it really just meant hanging out in my room alone and reading a book. That’s an interesting thing to think about.
My Young Women’s President told my twin sister and I, when we were 16,
“I’m just so worried that both of you will go to BYU, and be roommates, and just stay inside and study, and never go out and meet anyone. Then when you graduate with your degree, without a husband, you’ll have graduated with nothing.”
She was worried about us because we didn’t have boyfriends or tons of dates lined up in rural Midwest…where there are basically no Mormon dating options. We were extremely social and had plenty of friends.
Thankfully, I was liberal enough at that point to question her and told my very traditional grandmother what she said. My grandma said, “That’s not true and don’t you listen to a word that woman says” haha. I was very much encouraged by my parents and grandparents to get an education. However, they also told me to do it mainly as a backup plan, and to still be a SAHM ideally.
I’m a little upset with the way conservative anti-education rhetoric has increased lately. Myself and my 4 adult sisters have all gone to college and have successful careers. But my parents are now discouraging my 16 year old sister at home to not pursue an education, even at BYU, because it’s a “liberal indoctrination camp”. I’m worried things are going backwards a bit.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear this. I hope you and your sisters can help your young sibling to get an education. Things are not just going backwards “a bit” — in a lot of places, they’re going backwards at a breakneck pace, alas.
Non-Mormon here, high school class of ’00. I attended an LDS ward for about 6 months in 2000 and I remember being shown this movie, either in Laurels or early morning seminary.
It’s fine if the LDS church wants to back away from “all women should be mommies and homemakers.” In fact, I’d encourage it. Wages have not kept up with productivity so that most workers are not being fairly compensated, which means most families can’t make ends meet on one income even if they’d like to. If the church wanted to say, “Because of the times, we have decided to modify prophetic counsel on the working composition of families,” I imagine most would welcome that.
But acting like the church has always taught that young mothers have the option of a career if they feel so called is very disorienting, to put it politely.
I was a YW in the early 2000s, but my Mom and all my leaders were taught this mindset, so I learned the same things. I didn’t plan for college because I wanted to be a SAHM. I wish I had done so much more before I had kids…and I even felt the need to justify why my husband and I waited a whole year before we started trying to have kids (we were married civilly and had to wait a year to go through the temple and wanted to make sure our children would be born in the covenant…which I guess thank god for that because otherwise I probably would’ve tried to have kids right away). Then I had a major self-worth crisis when I had several miscarriages because my body couldn’t do the one thing that I could offer of value.
I’ve definitely been teaching my girls differently.
Wow memory unlocked!! I remember this video! I was in YW in the early 00s and I still got all this messaging. I’m so sick of gaslit about this by other members.
Oh I totally saw this as a teen. And it made me so profoundly sad. Deep inside I had big dreams, and I could see all the nonsense and unfairness (why are we just on an endless cycle to be kids and make kids? Don’t we get to DO anything??). I succeeded in pushing it down though— I didn’t really have any role models besides EVERYONE on ALL sides telling me who God expected me to be. The only counter voice was my own, so I tried to adapt my dreams to comply, and at least get a taste of my passion in getting my education (where it was allowed!), even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to live it further.
It’s so sad that I thank God that no children came until I was 28.
They were showing this film specifically in seminary super Saturday meetings in the UK in the mid-80s. If I recall correctly the mum’s masters degree was in biological sciences. I remember seeing it then. It bites deep. It didn’t stop me studying an engineering subject, or getting my PhD before 25, just before I married. Yet here I am at nearly 55, having been a SAHM since my first child was born. There are reasons I didn’t return to work. But it would be nice to feel any decisions were entirely my own, without this background of gross manipulation. I feel ragey everyone I recall that film in particular.
*every time I recall
Seen elsewhere claims the film is dated 1991.. in which case was there an earlier similar film? Where can I have seen it? I only saw it the once, which was definitely enough, and I never forgot it. I’m having difficulty imagining it was shown in Institute, or Britannia Ward RS, though not impossible I guess. I finished school in ‘87, BEng in ‘90 and PhD in ‘94…
I’m sure this film was the updated new version of another similar film from the 80s – you for sure would’ve been getting the same message back then! If you happen to find it somewhere, come back and link it here in the comments. I would love to see the predecessor of this movie!
Also at my 17th birthday interview the bishop asked me why didn’t I have a boyfriend, and did I want to finish up a nun!!! I was very studious at school.
Camille has become the poster child of following your aspirations, dreams, and personal revelation…in spite of counsel from the brethren. I feel it’s a watershed moment for the women of the church. How will the church get around topics like garments, praying to heavenly mother, wow choices, working women, etc… now that personal revelation seems to trump”counsel”. I’m feeling so much more empowered to truly shape my faith life from a place of autonomy and personal authority.
I’d forgotten all about that horrible movie! I must’ve suppressed it out of sheer embarrassment! I’m a dude who was shown this film during early morning seminary in the late-90s/early-00s, and even then I was filled with second-hand cringe for all the girls in the room forced to sit through that abomination.
I guess I’m just here to back up the OP, and establish that even the guys knew what the messaging to Young Women was. It wasn’t a mystery, and anyone saying otherwise is lying.
Love this post, thank you. This video is such an outstanding example of this. I’m a few years younger, started YW in 1996, and I never saw this video, but my family discouraged me from imagining myself as a doctor and even as a teacher. I remember being given a white hanger from a YW pres. to hang my future wedding dress on, and the expectations and message you describe were very clear to me. I had a very strong sense that the more children I would someday have, the more value I would have to the church. I recently had lunch with a favorite BYU professor and he told me I was a brilliant writer at age 24, but had zero confidence in my abilities. It really disturbed me that that was where I was at at that point, 0 confidence in my ability to launch a career. A post Mormon friend recently told me “I didn’t know not getting married or having kids was a choice.” Even though I sincerely wanted to have a family, I also experience the total lack of feeling like there was a choice.
I felt very gaslit by both US society and by what the church taught me growing up when I moved to Montreal 7 years ago because I saw there are much better ways within our reach to support and protect women in their lives and family relationships and provide them with real choices. Quebec has 12 month paid maternity leaves for all employees. You can extend them to 18 months also. They law is to save jobs for women during this time, no need to reapply. They also provide highly subsidized day care for all residents, so people with all incomes can have both parents working full time. Both Quebec and Canada also provide payments to families to help pay for children’s needs and all the costs of adding to your family. Seeing how society supports women here has given me a stronger sense that the church’s messages to girls and women have deep roots in the traditions of sexism and putting women down in US society and policies. We assume American patriarchy and traditions are God’s will for women.
Because of the lack of supportive policies and benefits for families and esp. women in the US, having both partners be fully invested in developing their careers at the same time puts strain on their families and requires all the family members to sacrifice. A lot of the time it does not work out easily or well. Usually one person brings in the most income, and the other person does something smaller that subsidizes. It’s just practical. And I think the church has long been attuned to this. It’s the women they ask to sacrifice work ambitions.
Women working quality jobs (whether they are the primary or secondary bread winnner) they can actually live off of is a great virtue not only due to personal fulfillment because it gives them financial independence and real choice to stay or go in their marriages. It nurtures partnership instead of patriarchy. When we don’t work good jobs, and then we’re in an abusive situation, we are often stuck because we’re financially dependent. This happens to so many LDS women. Even if men are the primary income earners, husbands should sustain women in working toward the best work situations they can have, supporting them through school, helping more at home and with parenting, etc.
Whenever mentors and authorities tell girls there is one virtuous path they should prioritize and try to make personal decisions for them, this leads to problems and resentment whatever the messaging is. There are secular-raised women in their 30s or 40s who have no partner, no house, no kids, and a job that provides little meaning or joy. The fact there is less income and property buying power accessible to younger generations contributes to them feeling betrayed they were taught to invest in careers first. They resent being raised in the midst of 1990s girl power that pushed them to prioritize work over relationships. I think their bitterness stings just as much as ours, it might be worse in many cases because they are lonely and may feel they have nothing of what they really wanted.
With my 15 year old daughter, I’m changing things so much from what was taught me. And I know the moms around me are too, both in and out of the church. That’s what gives me hope at this point. I’m sure my messaging won’t be perfect either, but I’m trying to support her in getting in touch with a stronger sense of her self, her desires, what kinds of work and relationships she wants to have in her life, etc.
It’s genuinely hard to imagine a world where women are supported by their entire country to continue working by subsidized daycare options. So many women quit the workforce because daycare will take all or most of what they earn at their jobs – not taking into account the fact that they’re building their careers, their paycheck will go up, and daycare costs will disappear as their kids get older (and that their husbands should help pay for it out of their checks, too – it’s not her responsibility to personally provide childcare or pay for it exclusively from her own paycheck!). Even if they only break even for a year or two, her invoice earning ability will be elevated for decades and decades by not leaving the workforce. And that may not matter to a young mom who is tired in the moment, but it will matter to her so much down the road when she needs to work again because of divorce, death, disability, or even just better mental health. If she has a career established, she’s going to be okay. If she doesn’t and is dependent solely on a romantic relationship from her college days surviving to have food and shelter and financial freedom, things frequently crash down around her in mid life and beyond.
Wouldn’t it be something if our empty church buildings and hundreds of billions of dollars helped provide childcare for young moms?
“It’s genuinely hard to imagine a world where women are supported by their entire country to continue working by subsidized daycare options. ”
Check out how Sweden supports mothers.
– Both moms and dads get paid parental leave, and 30 days of the dad’s leave is required to happen while the mom is back to work so the dad will step up and learn how to care for the child.
– The state runs child care centers and the limits the cost of them to being around 150-250 euros a month.
– Parents of children receive a monthly stipend to pay for the child’s expenses, so that people who want to have children are not blocked from doing so by financial considerations.
– Their taxes (33% of income) cover the cost of a government health care system which has $20 copays for most services.
– Their taxes (33% of income) cover the cost of higher education.
The Nordic countries support family values now, instead of being like the U.S. and the LDS Church: claiming to support family values while building an economy based on the exploitation of women’s reproductive labor.
Amen
That’s a great idea to use the wealth of the church to support women and families this way. I’ll add that the wealth of the church could also be used to help women develop skills to get better jobs as well as counseling to help process all the damaging messages women have received over the years.
I remember a quote that said the day a woman left home for full-time employment marked the beginning of the end for her marriage
I taught seminary in 2007-2008 and I’d like to bear my testimony that this video was still in the curriculum then.
I did not show it. What an insult.
And it’s still right on the church website for anyone to use in a class, so it’s not like they’ve felt the need to retire it yet.
Great job at illustrating the gaslighting.
I’m sad to say it, but as I compare the LDS Church with other Christian churches, the distinguishing factor of the LDS Church is that it’s really “The Church of Male Dominance” with a little Christianity thrown in.
About 10 years ago I realized that the LDS Church uses the same tactics as abusers. It does everything it can to prevent members, especially women, from developing an individual sense of self and being able to set boundaries and limits. Then in the face of the severe problematic consequences this causes to women’s lives (in their marriages, their careers, their families), the LDS Church denies the role it played, lies about its past teachings, and gaslights members.
I think the church operated under the assumption that if the church organization asked too much from it’s male members, they would rebel and walk away from providing church support sooner. Because of the way that church organization administration authority is structured, it needs more men engaged, not less – so it was easier to “lean on” (and abuse as collateral fallout) women.
Because the church is male-centric and the narrative is written from male points of view, there is a “the woman could have said no, could have challenged the situation” – but enough “challenging the situation rebellions have been shot down” that that isn’t a realistic answer on the table.
This makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing this. My brother says the church has long had a culture of “winners” and “losers” among men. The winners are those with high paying and prestigious jobs, wives and kids, and leadership callings. The losers are those missing this. He found himself on the disfavored side. The pressure on men is really high and the mold very specific. I believe this is a big part of why, despite all the sexism, the church loses 5% more men than women. One reason I want women to have more power at church is so that they can stand up for their children, including sons who don’t fit the mold according to male leadership’s ideals and goals and the culture that has been built up. Moms don’t tolerate their kids being pushed out and treated as losers/not good enough.
WOW. That movie is something else.
To pile on – I was a freshman in high school when Benson gave the infamous “to the mothers in Zion” talk in 1987, so I’m a bit before you. I did go to Ricks College right after high school and basically flunked out my first year because I was there to find a husband, not to LEARN anything. No one batted an eye when I went home after only the one year. Worked random jobs until 21 when yeah, I guess I can serve a mission, nothing else to do … Finished, came home, worked some more, finally STARTED college (in Oregon, not Utah) when I was 24 and graduated when I was 28. I still felt like I was in school just to kill time and sometimes even like I was doing something wrong. There was zero career encouragement during school and I landed my first post-college job pretty much by accident which FINALLY got me on a good track.
Married at 31 and everyone was so relieved! I continued working full time until my first baby was 4 months old and wanted to switch to part-time but day care was so expensive that there was no point. Day care for part time would cost more than my entire salary, so I quit entirely. My husband and I did make that decision with a lot of prayer and trying to do the right thing FOR US, not dictated by anyone else. I re-started working part time when my youngest started kindergarten, so my “full time mom with nothing else” was about 12 years. I don’t begrudge that time – my kids for various reasons needed me 100% focused on them for awhile.
What I DO regret is blowing the entire decade of my 20s. I could have gotten my degree years earlier than I did, gone to grad school, traveled overseas, done internships, worked in some interesting places … but I did nothing because that’s not what I was “supposed” to do, and no one ever encouraged me to do anything differently. I didn’t know I could! That makes me angry. Still. Even with being 50 now. I will absolutely not raise my daughters the same way – they’re all teenagers and we talk college and career plans, and contributing to our community ALL THE TIME.
The church apologists in the social media posts make a lot of excuses, but with this one, we’ve gotten into outright lies. “No one ever said that!” Oh. Yes. They. Did. This is seriously disturbing.
Thanks for jogging my memory. I’d forgotten about this one!
Ok this post is so maddening because I converted to the LDS church in 1987 and for sure the messaging to women was to marry and have kids and doing anything else was selfish and ego driven, but I’m sitting in my car laughing at the comments under the pictures, so thanks for that. 😂
Amen Abby! I don’t know how some people do the mental gymnastics they do. But many of us know what we were taught. We resisted the urges Satan put in our hearts to dare to be full human beings, and we have the wounds that those “choices” inflicted on us.
That’s the awful part – we collectively pushed down some of the best and most beautiful parts of ourselves, believing they were wrong to pursue. I would give anything to go back to tell myself to do things differently! I wish I had known it was okay to listen to my own intuition about what I actually wanted to do with my life. (Also hi, I miss you! Let’s hang out. Come to Utah or I’ll come to Idaho. Or let’s meet in Hawaii!)
Oh my goodness, I just watched the video and the song! I’m too old to have seen this, but I graduated from high school just before the Ezra Taft Benson talk, and he did not mince words. How anyone could wonder where we got these messages is just ridiculous.
When I did finally marry at 27, and mentioned in my pre temple marriage interview that we didn’t want to have kids right away, my bishop asked why. I answered that we want to just enjoy getting to know each other first. He then asked if we thought we didn’t know each other well enough, and then gave me some counsel to have children. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me when I said we wanted to wait a couple of years to have kids, it completely changed the way I felt about him.
Oh, how I remember those messages! I did get my degree and taught school for several years (until the cost of daycare for 3 children didn’t make sense) and I clearly remember how I had to justify my job on many occasions — “I am only working until my husband finishes school!” I really felt like I should not be working because being at home with my children was a more righteous choice.
Abby! It’s been a long time! Thank you for observations.
As a man in the church who grew up not giving a second thought about what women were being asked to sacrifice, it’s ironic that I ended up following the opposite path that I thought I would take, and I ended up being the homemaker while my wife works. And it was very easy for me to make that decision, because literally nobody was expecting me to fulfill that role.
And even if I had decided to remain in the workforce, I didn’t have manipulative, touchy-feely videos telling me that it was my important duty as a man to self-actualize and provide the financial means to support a family.
It is very frustrating to see this rewriting of history. I can’t remember if we had seminary classes together, but I’m sure we saw all these same videos that made it very clear what exactly we (well, mostly women) should be doing to prove our worth (ie value) to God.
It never occurred to me at that time, that it was possible that God had nothing to do with those ideas, and that they might be coming from the leaders of a man-made organization that’s trying to uphold an outdated social order that primarily benefits men at the expense of women.
Nice to see a friend from the old days speaking up. Best wishes.
Hey Nathanael! It’s been so many years! I want to ask how your dad is, but my mom just died earlier this year so maybe first… is your dad still alive? (And if yes, how’s he doing? And if no, aww, I missed the funeral and I loved your dad. I’m hoping he’s still alive. 😅)
Anyway, thanks for your comment! I imagine bucking traditional gender roles to be a stay at home dad after a lifetime of priesthood lessons about providing would be just as hard as a woman choosing a career. You are a trailblazer as well.
I don’t remember ever having a seminary class with you, but who knows. We might have! We definitely would’ve seen the same videos and had the same lessons, regardless. I have been undoing the religious trauma of Davis County Mormonism in the 90s for well over a decade now, so I’m sure we can relate on many things!
I was part of Ordain Women a decade ago. That’s when my religious beliefs started falling apart and I decided to be public and ask for change. I haven’t stopped talking since.
It’s good to hear from you! Keep up the good work whenever you’re at, too.
By “easy” I should clarify that I meant that I had no pressure from the church or society to take that path. That and it actually agrees with my personality. But dealing with the assumptions of people in the church about being a male homemaker was not easy. I was called “Mr. Mom” more than a few times (usually by older men), which is dumb on multiple levels, which I’m sure I don’t need to explain here.
My Dad’s still alive. Doing reasonably well, but you should call him and check in. He loves hearing from former students, and I recall him really enjoying having you as a student. You can get to me at nathanael dot net. Just replace the first “a” in my name with the “at” symbol. I can send you his phone number.
Thank you for writing this! I’m 43 and a longtime exmo, but I would have probably been about a 16 y/o Laurel around the time (1995/6) that general conference featured a speaker whose entire talk was centered around how women be mothers and should not work outside the home. I looked at my sister, and we looked over at our mom, a woman who had worked most of her teenage-adult life as a singer, dancer and performer. She stared back at us. And then the three of us stood up in the middle of the talk, walked out of the chapel and drove straight home. She wanted so much for us. She’s gone now but I hope somehow she knows how much power she showed my sister and me that day.
That’s a beautiful story. ❤️ My mom just passed away on New Year’s Day. I think it was exceptionally hard for our mom’s generation to buck the trend. My mom was a stay at home mom and I don’t think it suited her very well, unfortunately, but she followed the other prophet until the day she died.
Thank you. I’m sorry for the loss of your mother. My mom and I had a really complicated relationship, and she stayed in the church until the day she died, but I’ve never forgotten the way she walked out with us like, “Nope. Not this for my daughters, if that is not what they choose.” And I agree, I think there was an unbelievable amount of pressure on our moms that I see now much more clearly as an adult than I did as a teenager.
I think that the messages given to young women in the 1990s depended greatly upon where they lived and who their leaders were. My daughter, who was raised in Great Falls, Virginia, in the 1990s, certainly did not receive the same messages that the author apparently received. My daughter attended BYU, then went to medical school at the Univ of Utah, and now is a happily married doctor with three children.
I would guess that your daughter did receive these messages, but was lucky also able to receive alternative examples of what women could do. It would have been extremely difficult to have avoided them completely if they were raised in the church – it would be like an adult member saying they’d never heard of the Book of Mormon. It was in almost every lesson, every Sunday.
I grew up in the same stake as Great Falls VA in the 1990s and I can attest that yes, these messages were present. I was also lucky enough to have alternative role models, encouraging parents, a very strong sense of self, and a patriarchal blessing that mentioned a “profession” so I now have 2 children, a master’s degree, and a career that I thoroughly enjoy – but all of that is despite the marriage-and-motherhood lessons I received (nearly constantly) not because of them.
It’s crazy how much influence even just a patriarchal blessing can have on someone’s life – I’ve heard stories of professions changed, marriages entered, kids born and cross country moves all based on what a patriarch decided to say to a 13 year old one particular day in their life. I’m glad yours mentioned a profession – and I’m so sad mine didn’t! That’s all I would’ve needed to have given myself permission to pursue one. I’m grateful there are alternative role models out there for girls. ❤️
Sorry that you heard those messages. Maybe my wife and I insulated our daughter from them more than I realized. Our daughter was valedictorian of her class at Langley HS. She had so much obvious intelligence and talent. She understood that she would serve others, including a future family, by developing them as much as possible.
Did I miss it in your recap? The mother said we should listen to the current prophet. You base your argument on material more than thirty years old. Furthermore, most people don’t have stellar careers. Many work at minimum wage jobs that offer little glamour or personal satisfaction. The young woman in the video is atypical and the message is directed at the majority.
The fictional mother in this video from 30+ years ago had the same current prophets as Camille Johnson did when she chose to have her law career, so that’s why it’s very relevant to the conversation.
And yes, many women do work at minimum wage jobs with little personal satisfaction, usually because they didn’t get the education, mentorship and job experience their male peers got in their twenties. That’s very significant to this conversation. The young woman in this video is actually quite typical in my experience, in that she traded her potential in the career world for domestic duties, believing she had no other choice in what to do with her life if she wanted to be a righteous woman.
Young women should be advised just to ignore Elder Oaks. He is notorious for talking out of both sides of his mouth. I wonder what advice he gave his own daughter, Jenny Oaks Baker? She has managed to pursue a successful career as a musician while presumably being a “traditional” LDS woman.
I wish simply ignoring the future prophet was that simple for girls growing up in the church right now. He’s the second highest leader in the church and the girls are directed to listen to him intently.
Years ago, I was finishing my undergraduate degree and had just been accepted to grad school. I ran into a former bishop on campus and his response to my excitement was “You know what else you could do for 18 months.” The obvious implication was if I wasn’t getting married, I should at least be going on a mission.
While that might’ve been the right choice for some folks, I knew it wasn’t for me and so I bucked every tradition I’d been taught in church lessons growing up (thankfully, I had incredibly encouraging parents) and embarked on a grand adventure that led me to living abroad, and eventually moving cross-country for further graduate studies.
When I finally married my husband, I was in my early 40s and decades into my teaching career. For some pretty devastating serious medical reasons, children are not in our future, but I can’t tell you the number of times people have said to my face that I waited too long and that is the reason why I don’t have children. It’s either that, or I chose a career over a family.
Even though most days I have come to terms with my infertility, the shame spiral comments like that initiate still surprises me sometimes. (Self-care Sunday this Mother’s Day weekend means going for a bike ride and avoiding the obligatory potted plant at church.)
I look at my nieces who I adore and think we — the Church — has to do better for them.
This!! My mental health is at a crisis point right now as I try to reconcile all these stupid messages that have drilled into my head from infancy. I am so sick of the back and forth messaging. Obey the prophets; seek your own revelation; revelation is only from God if it matches what the prophets say, if not it’s from Satan…How could I ever trust anything from my own brain when I was instructed on how to think and live my life and if I didn’t I would lose eternal salvation. That is such a steep price to pay, no wonder I am struggling. I am just so tired of all of this. I want to just leave but I have so much dogma and messaging floating through my brain I don’t think I can. It makes me so angry that the church just keeps carrying on like everything is just rosy.
I dropped out of BYU. I was messed up by the get a husband harping. I was messed up by the don’t take the spot of a bread winner philosophy. I have struggled with depression and have never felt fulfillment from scrapbooking. I am odd. It always killed me when I did what I was supposed to and the women really celebrated were the women who did what they wanted. I do what I want now and I’m happy and fulfilled.
I’m a little younger than the rest of the commenters, but I can attest that I got the same messaging and can think of many examples just off the top of my head. I graduated from high school in 2016 in Utah. As a kid, I was very sure that I wanted to work, but any goals I voiced about working was met with, “well, what about your kids??”, so I eventually decided I’d be an editor so that I could work flexible freelance jobs. This got some begrudging approval, but I had very few examples of women working. All I had was a lot of stories about women giving up work for kids.
Still, despite my determination, I remember that in my sophomore year of college, being shocked that I would actually graduate without having kids – something my mother, aunts, and female cousins had not done.
And it’s still hard in some ways. I’m several years into the workforce. When I started my first full-time job my father-in-law asked me when I’d have kids. On my 23rd birthday, my mom reminded me of my biological clock, and language from a lot of loved ones makes it clear they regard my work as a “for now” thing to keep me busy before I start doing my “real job” as a mother.
I still wrestle with if and when to have kids, and how it would make sense for my little family to balance those responsibilities with our resources. But I do wonder if a part of why I struggle so much with the idea of having kids is because of how all-or-nothing the scenario was presented to be. You either worked or didn’t. You either had a lot of kids or didn’t have enough faith. I see a lot more nuance than that in my day-to-day, and I wish I’d had messaging growing up that reflected that.
Hmmm…I have a different understanding of what happened in the movie and with Sister Johnson’s message–I actually had a lot of hurt feelings start to bubble up with Sister Johnson’s message too but I still don’t know her story, she refused to elaborate to the Tribune which is telling. If she’s having any regrets or what-ifs she might be suffering right now. It’s the female equivilent of a mission, whenever anyone adapts the church’s counsel to their own needs they have to live with the heavy burden of wondering if things would have been better or more blessed had they tried something different. My husband’s family was large and so was mine and they both stayed home but both moms had to have release valves (mine did a bunch of home businesses including in-home daycare before volunteering with the school and his was gone on charity trips that helped women and children) both got critiqued for that–maybe my husband wouldn’t have suffered sibling abuse and memory damage, maybe my little sister wouldn’t have become a victim of a horrid crime when she was a latch-key girl. I can’t imagine Sister Johnson perfectly escaped any unwanted consequences she wonders that she could have prevented–let’s pray for her, she’s probably feeling miserable right now with everyone attacking her (even though they’re probably really aiming for the church). I thought the video was pretty open-minded considering what had been taught in the church at the time but the execution of the video became confusing and depressing as it progressed. Before anyone starts typing their reponse let me explain…
At first the girl wants to do BOTH a career and motherhood when she was talking to her older woman, she says “and I want to have a family too” she also encourages her friend on with her dreams and says “your kids can call me Aunt Kelly,” but the friend finds that awkward because kids weren’t part of her plan. She says that if she has kids they will be delayed but it’s more just to be friendly. Both people aren’t interested in motherhood period. It wasn’t a SAHM vs. working mom debate, so I got the impression that the video would encourage Kelly in her dreams but talk about the importance of providing bodies in the plan of salvation. In fact the same thing was going on with Sister Johnson, she was pretty much just saying hey don’t forget to replenish the earth, your clock is ticking–she wasn’t wanting to get into the work-life balance fray anymore than she absolutely had to. The quality of eggs thing is real, a study found that living past 100 is far more likely if you were born before your mother reached age 23. I had to cope with some realities having my first birth in my late 20s, I wish someone told me that it would have been easier and more empowering to take advantage of younger eggs, then I could have retired once it was clear my eggs were deteriorating (it’ll take years to know for certain but it looks like I started too late) instead of all the don’t you dare have a baby yet warnings I got when I married as a teen. No one cared to warn me and my husband (my husband didn’t want to look uncool/weird having a baby right away).
There’s really an exception for everything, but I noticed these things aren’t very well advertised. They tend to be hidden in side comments, and careful implications if you look for them–Sister Johnson may have found the exemption or maybe she was tuning out counsel on it. The goal of counsel, whether it be inoculations or missions or youth programs seems to be to avoid a critical mass of whatever problems the church is trying to avoid to accomplish it’s objectives (I get it as someone who studies child development, a lot–but not all–of children have long term problems in low quality and inconsistent care, nannies and involved grandmas aren’t the rule for most two-parent working moms–the church is now dealing with 1/5 of the youth having anxiety, and that’s without very many having been raised in a chaotic daycare). I’ll admit that the video took a turn for the worse as the church-sponsored position was weakly endorsed (do it because God said so and no it’s not fun, that’s the best the script-writer could come up with? At least Relief Society bands together to try and make it fun and honorable). Why not discuss Kelly’s original plan to work/make a difference and be a mother and the feasibilty of it because her mentor and friend didn’t seem to think that was possible? The story was hi-jacked–it wasn’t a pursing your dreams is Satan’s plan message in my opinion. Here’s what the real message seemed to be–notice the whole focus on Hannah’s story who didn’t have her son stay at home to be raised but left him to be raised by others at an early age which could have been anywhere from 2 to only a few years older–that was an awkward tie-in and completely ommitted by this article. We then learn that God’s real plan for Kelly was to follow the counsel, if she got widowed she wouldn’t be cared for by the church and being a SAHM as an option would be taken from her. In this case that was viewed as a compensation–hey you might be able to do this after all, but other women see it as a punishment. Kelly’s mother never had to balance children and school and that wasn’t discussed, since there’s the whole counsel to not postpone children for schooling either. I do like that her mom admits she’s been privileged, and not I got this degree without any work-life balance conflict due to my righteousness. But too many young ladies were left hanging and with unanswered questions and that’s why it’s not my favorite discourse on the topic.
Aaaaaaamen. One of the reasons I began insisting I wanted to serve a mission was because I didn’t want to get married and have babies, and serving a mission was the only viable way to express this.
Also I hate that song. I hate it so so so so so much. I don’t think I ever saw the film, but I could probably sing you that whole song. The thing that I hate most is that it repeatedly refers to “woman’s role.” All women everywhere fulfill one role and one alone. Some other gems “My mother loves unselfishly” which is fine as far as it goes, except for the implication that a) ideally women self erase and b) any alternative route is selfish. And the classic “of all the things that she could choose, she chose the will of God to love and lead us back to Him.” So the will of God vis a vis women is singular — don’t be selfish, have children and raise them religiously. I’m not saying that ISN’T something God wants. But it isn’t “woman’s role.” I existed as woman before I had children. And I hope to continue to exist when mothering is no longer an active task that occupies much of every day. I have other roles, and they do not exist in contrast to the will of God. I choose to be a Mom AND…. a student, a reader, a teacher, a volunteer, a friend, a confidante, a custodian of the earth, a wife, a sister, a writer and much more. Of all the things that I could choose, I asked God to help me along in each of them.
But yeah, your point stands. It’s absolute balderdash to suggest that the 90s were some sort of haven for LDS girls to dream big. You go on a mission if you can’t snag a man by 21. You have a career if you can’t snag a man. Your education exists as a backup plan for being a widow. I was blessed to have leaders who modeled other things — who were return missionaries, or who had careers, or were different from the mold in other ways. But that doesn’t change the text of conference talks, media or manuals, which in turn informed sacrament meeting talks and lessons.
On the bright side what was once a complete rebellion on my part is now apparently proof of how great women in the church are. So I can but hope that in 20 years my approach and take on all kinds of church things, now termed rebellious, will suddenly be trumpeted as desirable.
One piece of this is the extremely strong teaching that one must marry within the church. When a woman is focused on building her career she may limit her options for marrying another member given the culture and teachings men within the church have been raised with. Can we let our young women know it is better to marry a good man outside of the church than to either remain unmarried if they wish to marry? Or better to marry outside of the church than to settle and marry someone who may not be a good match for them? When the young single women see that most of the men are marrying they sometimes feel pressure to marry seeing that many of the men within the church they will be interested in will be taken. This practice of endogamy, of meeting within an in group, may be detrimental to some women within the church.
The value of encouraging someone, telling them they’re good at something and can be anything they want to be was so important in my life. From parents, relatives, coaches, church leaders, teachers and other adults. It gave me confidence in years I would otherwise not have had it. They pushed me to dream and challenge myself. They viewed my potential and saw more in me than I did. They challenged me and pushed me to grow myself in every way. I now look back and realize that was one of the greatest gifts I received in my childhood. It’s painful to reflect back and see that not everyone got this and that most women were actively and repeatedly discouraged. I hope we all do better inspiring the next generation and that everyone damaged by this rhetoric finds peace and a way forward. Thanks Abby for shining a light on the pain that so many women are experiencing. Thanks to you and many other brave women for speaking out, the future is brighter for the next generation.
Just another perspective: I spent my high school years in Davis County (Northridge HS) and I do not remember this message. I have 4 sisters and my parents encouraged them to go to college to get a degree that would help them provide for themselves. Both my brother and I, and our 4 sisters all went to college to get a degree. That was the message I remember hearing, “Get an education/training.” My dad was military and traveled all over the United States. Utah was my parents least favorite place to live as they despised the mindset of many members who lived there.
I’m currently married and my wife was also encouraged to get an education/degree (she grew up in the Tri-Cites, Wa). She told me that she did not want to be a stay home at mom and she wanted to work. She has spent our whole married life (25+ years) working and both of us take care of the kids and home. It was our decision. We have no regrets and we are still active members of the church. After reading many comments, it makes me especially grateful for my parents and my in-laws.
I went to Clearfield High! We’re Davis County buddies! 🥳
I will say that when and girls are highly encouraged to get an education (yes), but to be prepared to immediately set it aside once married and having kids and to always, always put their husband’s career over their own.
This is a direct quote from Dallin H. Oaks from 2013:
“I think that as young women have been encouraged – properly, in my view, to get an education and make plans to support themselves, that many young men have seen the accomplishments of the women in such a way as to be frightened of them. And I think that a woman who has prepared herself properly needs to be careful that she can communicate to a young man the fact that she’s willing to put that career aside, to be a Latter-day Saint wife and mother, and she can take it up later. I’ve had many young men say, “I don’t think young women today are interested in being married. I can’t find anybody because they’re all committed to their careers, and that does stand in the way of marriage, and it frightens off shy young men, for whom we should feel so sorry.”
You can read more from that same interview and find the link to the original video on this blog post here:
https://exponentii.org/blog/meeting-dallin-and-kristen-oaks/
You aren’t wrong that girls were encouraged to educated, but I do think it’s wrong to assume we were told to use that education for anything other than to be better mothers one day.
Graduated HS in 1995 and a few years ago I realized that I had entered the YW program wanting to be an astronaut or president, but by the time that program was done with me my goals were realigned to teaching piano lessons and raising children. I fought my ambitions and drive for almost two decades- convinced if I just prayed hard enough the atonement would heal me of my professional aspirations. I’ve spent the last ten years healing from that loss annd cognitive dissonance to now embrace the talents and skills I use to succeed both personally and professionally.
But oh my gosh the gaslighting from my family and my friends over the idea that I had misunderstood the messaging. That the prophets never said that women working outside the home would be the collapse of civilization. Or that Sister Nadauld never said that the world had enough women who were tough and that I should be more tender. And that my need to distance myself from this organization that hurt me so deeply is a sign of my own weakness.
This post was healing because it’s the first time I’ve seen those teachings called out so blatantly. Thank you.
Did YW’s in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. You 💯 percent nailed it all in this article. It’s infuriating to think of the number of women who dropped their entire lives to have babies to please God and his prophets and then have the president of the women’s organization stand up there and basically present herself as the righteous of the righteous who didn’t do a fucking thing her prophets asked of her in her baby making days! Did she stay home? No! Did she work!? Yes! Full time! Big time job! Good money! So you’re telling me we all could have worked and had kids and not been so fricken strapped all the time for cash!? And God still would have been happy? So happy in fact that the prophet today has made a worldwide organizational leader out of her? Well. Color me shocked. Last I heard from the dear lord’s mouthpiece, as I sat my impressionable mind down in church, she should be filled with shame for leaving her 3 hooligans to be cared for by who knows who!? It’s a Mother’s job! How dare she blatantly defy God. That is not happiness! That’s Satan twisting up the rightful composition of a family!! Well she gone and done it. She went to school, she worked, she made big dollars and she let Satan run her freaking show and here she is. Guess Satan ain’t so bad in God’s books after all.