When I was about 9 or 10 years old I asked my mom why the church had a Boy Scouts program but not a Girl Scouts program. She told me, “Girl Scouts focuses on teaching girls to want careers. But the church wants girls to be moms.”
I wish she’d added something like, “but girls can be moms and have a career. Look at me, I’m your mom and I also do ______.”
But she didn’t add that second part, because in her world women, especially women with children, shouldn’t have careers.
I heard that message throughout my childhood and teenage years. The message came from my mom, both in word and deed. It was also heavily reinforced by the Young Women program.
In the Young Women program I often heard phrases like, “you’ll want an education, but only so you can fall back on it if your husband dies or you get a divorce.”
Death and divorce. Those were the only two reasons I was ever told a woman would actually need a career.
When I went to college I agonized over whether it would even be worth it. I was brilliant and could have studied anything, but I felt the weight of all those Young Women lessons and the expectations of my parents. Get an education, but don’t actually have any ambitions. You’re really supposed to be a stay at home mom in a few years anyway.
As I look back over the 20 years since I went to college, I realize how inadequate that advise was. Going to school just so I had something to fall back on “in case my husband died or we got divorced” hardly covered the many different life scenarios I’ve experienced. Here are a few things I wish my parents and Young Women leaders had added to the list of reasons why it was a good idea to have a career plan.
You might not get married – I didn’t meet my husband until I was nearly done with my Bachelors Degree. I was beginning to contemplate what my life would look like post-graduation if I was single. I’m sorry to say I’d never imagined that I’d make it through school without getting married. I was both excited and terrified of the possibility of being able to pick anywhere I wanted to live and work without considering a spouse’s needs.
You might need to work while your husband finishes school – I graduated before my husband did. I worked for two years while he finished his Bachelors Degree. I’ll admit this had been presented as a kind of a third option along with death and divorce as to why women could have jobs. But it wasn’t exactly framed as a career path when anyone talked about putting their husband through school. It was more as “it’s okay to have a small job for a little while so that you can help your husband through school. Then he’ll get a good paying job and you never have to work again.”
You might not have children – My husband and I went through a small degree of infertility. We were married for almost three years before I was able to get pregnant. I wanted children so those years of infertility were hard. I’m so glad I had meaningful work to do during those years. Why hadn’t my leaders brought up infertility as a possible reason to want a career? Infertility affects so many women. But the picture of my future that I was sold in the Young Women program completely ignored that.
You might have children close together and then be ready to re-enter the workforce withing a few years – When my body did figure out how to have babies it went ALL in. I had twin girls followed by a baby boy 17 months later, and then a baby girl 17 months after that. That’s four children in three years! I became a stay at home mom almost by default.
Those early baby years were intense. I couldn’t imagine working during those years. As time went on though I realized that because my children were so close in age they would all enter school within a few years of each other. The older three actually all started Pre-K together. When the twins were six I went back to work part time and have continued to work part time.
If my body had followed more traditional baby spacing I guess I’d still have younger children at home right now. Instead all my children have been in school for the past four years. I can’t even fathom what my life would look like without a job to keep me engaged while they are in school.
You might need to work while your husband goes back to school – When we talked about marriage in the Young Women program we always seemed to dream up husbands who had perfect jobs and never were out of work. That might have been because I grew up in the United States in the prosperous 1990s. But it was very short sighted. My husband graduated from college into one of the worst labor markets the US had seen in decades. He ended up joining the Army because that was the best career move he could make. When he got out of the Army he went back to school. I worked nearly full time while he was in school.
You might need to work while your husband is between jobs – Even after my husband graduated with his second degree he’s struggled to find long term employment. He’s a skilled worker, but life isn’t fair and things don’t always work out the way you plan. He’s worked for five different companies since graduating four years ago. He’s never out of work for very long so I’ve been able to stay with my part time job. It’s nice to know that I could get a full time job if he was unable to find work.
Your husband might be underemployed – Again, the imaginary husbands that we conjured up in class in Young Women always made a ton of money. We never talked about the fact that sometimes people aren’t paid what they are worth. There have been times that my husband hasn’t made as much money as is standard for his industry. That was frustrating, but thankfully we had my income to help offset his lower income.
You can make just as much money as your husband – Over the years, my husband and I often talked about flipping our roles. That maybe he would be the one who stayed home/worked part time while I went back to work full time. We even did that in the months between when he left the Army and started school. But it didn’t feel like a good long term plan. He could make more money than me in his industry than I could in mine – or so I thought. I was shocked when my boss gave me a raise to the amount that my husband was currently making per hour. Granted – this was during one of his periods of underemployment. Still, it was a wake up call to me. I could make as much money as my husband. This is actually one of the things that spurred me to get my second Bachelors Degree.
You might need to work for your mental health – This is a lesson I learned as a teenager. But I don’t think it was intentional. The story isn’t quite mine to share so I’ll be vague. Someone close to me had a mental breakdown when their youngest child went to school. This person hadn’t had any plan for what life looked like after raising all their little kids. Hours home alone every day took a toll on their already fragile mental state and this person ended up in the mental hospital. After completing time there, they needed to work in order to pay the medical bills. Maybe the treatment helped, but from my outside perspective it was the job that helped restore this person’s mental health.
The lesson I took away from that was stay at home mom = fragile mental health. While working mom = good mental health. Maybe it’s simplistic, but that’s what I observed. And that’s what spurred me to go to college and get a good degree in the first place. It’s what helped me to have a plan to go back to work when my kids were older. It’s what prompted me to get my first post-children job when I started to feel my mental health slipping as a stay at home mom.
The world needs your contributions – At church I was always told that my primary purpose in life was to raise good children. And yes that is very important. But guess what, I’m more than just a mother. I’m also an intelligent women who is very skilled. I’ve been at my current job for nearly four years. I’m integral to the success of the small company where I work. Because I’m good at my job, the people I work with are able to focus on their jobs. I find a lot of fulfillment and meaning in doing good work. Unlike my mom I can tell my children “Look at me. I’m your mom and I also do ______.”
What would you add to this list? I’ve presented things that I wish my parents and Young Women leaders had talked about when they gave reasons why a women should prepare for a career. But this is just my perspective as a married, straight, white women. I’m curious about your perspective. What do you wish the adults in your life told you as you contemplated a career? Did your mother give you good advise? Did your Young Women leaders talk to you about having a career only in case of death or divorce – or did they allow for more variation in life experience? Please share in the comments. I really want to know.
Edited to add: Thanks to all the fantastic feedback in the comments I felt inspired to write a Part Two to this post. You can read it here: https://exponentii.org/blog/the-lds-church-gave-me-inadequate-career-advice-part-two.
I didn’t grow up in the church, but I wish the adults in my life told me to respect and not judge families’ choices. I am very much a career woman and as a young girl didn’t even want a husband or children because I was worried they would interfere with my career goals. (Turns out, I was the first in my group of friends to get married and now have a wonderful, loving husband who supports my big career dreams and takes care of our son at home.) Many of my peers look down on stay-at-home parents and my husband has received many judgmental and negative comments about his choice to scale back his career, which was much more lucrative than mine, to let my career lead and to raise our son. Each family has complex calculations and decisions to make that cannot be reduced to education level vs salary vs location. And just because someone doesn’t have a full-time job doesn’t mean they’re not contributing something valuable to society. Our world places way too much emphasis on the prestige and elitism of work, and I say that as someone who is very passionate about her work. That’s something I hope to instill in my child.
You got close to this with the last couple on mental health and the world needing all of our contributions, but I wanted to throw this in–you might WANT to work. And that’s wonderful! It’s not selfish to want to be in the workforce, to make your own money, to use your skills outside of your home. You might just like leaving the house for a few hours. I’m reading a book, “Backlash” by Susan Faludi (published in the late 80s, shockingly/saddeningly still quite relevant today) and there are studies from the 70s and 80s that show women find greater fulfillment working outside of the home than they do as mothers. It’s not that they don’t want to be mothers or don’t love their children or don’t find motherhood fulfilling and valuable and important, it’s that work is something that is theirs. And it does not make a woman who wants to work a bad mother.
I often wonder how different (read: better, stronger) our families would be if our teaching on the family centered on creating a loving, encouraging, supportive home and what that looks like is going to be different for every family, and it’s going to look different in the same family at different times, and that there is not a checklist to build a happy family, and all of this is fine.
I think you do a good job of pointing out all these reasons why a woman who is planning only for stay-at-home motherhood might need to enter the workforce someday. What I think you miss here is that women don’t NEED a reason to work. That’s is also an important piece we need to teach. Young women and young men need to know that it is perfectly valid to work because you want to, irrespective of financial needs, infertility, marital status, etc…
Yes!
How about, you might be really good at it? You’ll use your talents and skill set and have a chance to excel. You might like it!
YES, YES, YES. This is the main reason I will continue working once I have kids. I built my career from scratch, without a college degree (due to some administrative things that got in the way), and I didn’t get married until I was 28, and supported myself for years before that. I was the sole provider while my husband finished his bachelor’s and masters. I am the reason that we can live with little luxuries and good savings now that he’s also working full time. I grew up believing that I’d be married by 20 and have five children by 30. I’m 32 and I have two cats and maybe will have a baby next year. My life is nothing like the life the church prepared me for and I’m SO grateful for that.
I was going to add wanting to work, but Heidi said it so well. Additionally, a woman might want to work because she is ambitious.
Ambition is viewed with suspicion in our culture. A woman is supposed to sacrifice and justify her wants, but really any person can be ambitious and that’s okay.
For me personally, working outside the home is definitely a mental health thing. Even if I hadn’t needed to for financial reasons, I’d want to, because I’ve been a SAHM and ended up very depressed. I need the outside structure and socialization.
I’ve found the church’s teachings about womanhood and motherhood incredibly reductive and confining. The real issue here is that the church can’t figure out what to do with a woman who isn’t a passive ‘helpmeet’, because it is an organization By and For Straight White Men.
I’ve always wanted a STEM career. Church culture made me wonder if I was a man born in a woman’s body when I was a kid. Turns out I am a woman, just not the kind that fits in the SAHM box. 12 weeks of maternity leave almost killed me, so I took 9 with the second one. Young kids stress me out. At work I feel like I can breathe. Now that my kids are 14 and 9, I’m finally starting to enjoy parenthood. I’m neurodivergent. Not everyone is a kid person.
I love this post. I was so strongly discouraged from working and because of those teachings made the decision to be a stay at home mom. Life is fine, I’m good …but if I could go back in time and tell my younger self something it would be to have a career! I know I could technically start now (in my forties), but I can never undo the damage done by not starting right after college.
The list is fine and good, but I feel like it still poses women working as a backup plan or as a plan second to motherhood and wifedom. As though working MUST be a second priority above children and family, and that feels like still building up patriarchal constructs. Women can be whatever they want… and this article seems to forget that it’s absolutely okay (and wonderful) to want to be a career woman more than you want to be a mom/wife.
Hoping and planning to be a SAHM? Good luck. That’s just not how society works any more. Women are valued beyond their contributions in the home now (or we’re at least getting closer). Women are not “fill-in-the-gaps” workers, they ARE the workforce. It’s not a situation of “IF” but “WHEN” you enter the workforce… for pretty much all American women. The life of the SAHM is all but gone. This is a list of “you might need…” but an alternate list could be compiled of “you’ll absolutely have to…” or “you might want…”. Let’s focus on what women WANT, too (not just filling in the gaps of what their husbands need from them).
We need to be teaching our young women to embrace their talents, skills, knowledge, passions, and abilities for more than just motherhood. And it’s great to find your passion and run with it! I like working. I like my job. I like that I’m good at it and I’m a strong contributor to my team, company, and industry. That’s what I looked for in life. Not just settling for something I could fall back on. I chased my passion.
In short, I’d say the reason to have a career plan is because you WILL have a career, you SHOULD plan for it. And make it good. And if you also choose to be a mom, that’s fine too.
Oh, I’ve got another one: You might have a great education for a possible career, but that degree or training doesn’t mean much if you’ve been out of the workforce for 20 years. (Speaking from personal experience here.)
When I returned to university in my mid 40s to further my education, a lot of people treated me like I was a joke because I had 5 kids. I felt like the church only valued me as a mom, and academia completely dismissed the experience I had gained.
The thing that saved me was a course about the history of First Nations in Canada – where I live – and all the ugliness of broken treaties, residential schools, the 60s scoop, and ongoing inequities. My professor was Native, and the half-dozen guest lecturers were all Native as well. These were accomplished, impressive men and women, top of their fields, and yet they all introduced themselves as “I’m a mother/father of 4/5/6 children and a grandparent of _____”
I finally had an example of what I longed for: people with great careers who proudly put family right up there beside their career accomplishments.
I wish we could do that in our church culture.
Interestingly, many of the female general auxiliary leaders in the church right now have had demanding careers. And they’re parents. I feel like this old attitude might be shifting in some areas of the church. I realize that I am speaking from my own narrow experience, but in my ward there are 6 nurses, 4 female doctors, multiple women who run their own successful businesses, 4 or 5 lawyers and many other professionals. We have some stay-at-home dads whose wives work. I feel like it’s important to celebrate these small, local victories when the church landscape seems bleak. Perhaps mine is an outlier’s experience, but in my corner of Phoenix, Mormon women (and men) seem comfortable with a hybrid life.
A man is not a plan!
One thing I resent is the church never laid out the opportunity costs of unpaid work in the home. Forgoing paid work means forgoing 401(k)s, building Social Security benefits and personal savings, taking job benefits, keeping education and job skills relevant, etc. Without that there is no informed choice. That, to me, is the problem. People should know both sides before choosing.
Yes! I wish Social Security work credits had been taught to me in high school. And basic personal finance.
The biggest benefit of me working was that we had far more major choices in life. He chose to teach public school instead of making more in business. He took a year off to work in a science museum. I chose to retire early. Two salaries in 2023 buys freedom.
Motherhood is hard, never-ending work, and all of us know it, whether we have children or not. The commenters here who speak of successes all cite reasons that are privileged with functioning support systems, cobbled together from individual circumstance, and many moms pick up whatever slack by girding up their attitude.
But the elephant in the room is the fact that any systemic support for mothers, children, and families, from all institutions is terrible to non-existent, lest those institutions lose the privileges of women’s unpaid labor on which they rely to have a rising generation. This is alluded to in some comments but not explicitly stated enough for me. Moms literally slave away in service to this very important societal need, and institutions take the benefit while turning a blind eye to the needs of their slaves.
Here are a few more explicitly stated items which, at this point, are only food for thought: Government supports for child care. Church supports for child care. Including financial support and policy support. Paying child-caregivers an honest living wage. Including school teachers. Maternity leave for both partners for at least 6 months or longer. Free health care for everyone, especially birth control. Normalizing careers for all women. Some of y’all are sputtering and choking. Stop that.
Even if we lived in a fully supportive society, some women may not want children, and that’s a viable option. Choosing to have a child is a completely personal decision that no one should be coerced into. And a decision to not have them becomes even more viable if we supported women who actually do want children.
As a man in the LDS church, I didn’t get career advice. My parents didn’t give it to me either. I was expected to work and provide. There was no option to stay home with kids.
It’s completely NORMAL for women to work. There has only ever been a very short time in western history (post World War II—early 2000s) where it was even feasible for middle and class families to have a stay at home parent at ALL. Having a wife who didn’t “need” to work was a symbol of “success” for middle class men. It’s a luxury. Not the default. Women have essentially ALWAYS worked. The difference now is that we’re doing it without the support of a village. It could be argued that stay at home mothers negated the need for intergenerational families, and are actually the CAUSE of the breakdown of the village.