She gives some general examples of topics for a first Sunday lesson, which aren’t quite what we’ve been envisioning here, but those are just examples. Earlier in the article she outlines ways to develop lessons on any topic without a specific manual or talk on the subject.

If I were currently serving with an RS calling in my ward I’d jump on this as another way to help increase parenting skills.

I wish I’d done this a few years ago before I adopted my son, but it took a year before I realized I was not actually a very good mother, and undertook to correct that situation. I thought all you had to do was love them a whole lot, and feed and educate them, make sure they got good medical care, and had decent clothes and shoes to wear.

I realize now that I need to teach my son self-government (and learn a bit more myself as well), how to build a happy full life for himself, how to make and keep friends, how to deal with adversity, how to love and respect himself and treat himself well, how to be good to himself and others, and all this when he feels he’s already all grown up and doesn’t have anything to learn from me. So the more I can study and learn, the better!

On the Homemaking Skills thing… I’m constantly amazed at what the women around me don’t know. Not that I’m a paragon or something, but my mom let us participate in the homekeeping stuff, so we all left home with skills. I had a fun, but slightly bewildering chat with a near neighbor a few weeks ago, wherein I got to introduce her to the miracle that is Bulk Cooking. She’s in her late 20s, parenting a small child, and had no idea that she could portion and freeze foods from a regular recipe. That sort of information should be freely shared in RS (and YM/YW!)

I’m excited to see what changes may be coming to the RS program in the near future, actually.

GOOD point.

Why not an occasional RS meeting that invites spouses?

church run classes would be a train wreck

Personal choice cannot be given that kind of authority. So in that sense, we’d need a curriculum that was consistent, or very, very clear guidelines if there was something that dealt with parenting tips.

OR at a local level (if nothing ever happened at the general level beyond the LDS Family Services course), at least provide multiple points of view…say, a panel or something…so that one voice, one choice, one point of view does not dominate. The ‘council system’ in presentations, etc. I think is as wise as in decision-making meetings.

Either way count me as one who would love to have a venue to learn about parenting principles but fears that church run classes would be a train wreck with a thin veneer of doctrinal authority.
I’m reminded of elderly women chastising a young wife struggling with infertility, she claimed that when the young wife corrected her feelings on corporal punishment (she was against it) then the Lord would open her womb. I don’t think we want to give someone like that a sanctioned venue.
Hopefully the local leadership would be wise enough to avoid putting *that person* in charge of the class, but you never know, and perhaps in this case the risks outweigh the potential benefit.

I guess I’m spoiled; we have great gospel classes where I live…lots of good discussion, etc.

And I really think that RS meetings are still being under-utilized.

That said, I think it’s one thing to have RS meetings that help facilitate homemaking and such, but I agree with those who express concern about approaching certain parental philosophies, etc. I think our emphasis on revelation means that it would be essential to focus on basic skills and basic principles, not necessarily on specific approaches and philosophies.

And now that I am a mother, I really like the idea of the Church staying out of parenting other than the basic spiritual principles that we are already taught. There are so many ways to parent, so many philosophies and ideas out there. My parenting style is quite different from a lot of the people around me, both those my age and those beyond me on the path. I’m quite sure I would have a hard time sitting in such a class listening to so many ideas with which I would strongly disagree. I’m extremely picky about where, or to whom, I go for parenting advice and ideas. I think offering a Church class on the topic could seemingly make it appear that what was being taught was the “right” or “best” way to do things. I hear stories of fundmentalist Protestant churches sponsoring parenting classes and the problems it creates for those who disagree, and I’ve always been very grateful for a Church with enough sense to leave it to the personal revelation of each parent to decide how to nurture and teach their own children.

Lynnette, good points about the pros and cons of segregation. I share your ambivalence. On the one hand, I like the idea of breakout groups in which more specific needs and interests and phases of life could be addressed, so that we’re not always stuck at the level vague generalities. (You and Enna and others make a good point about the limitations staying general imposes on our church discussions.) On the other, the description Ardis gives of an RS divided into mothers and non-mothers chills me. I think I would have found such a split unendurable during my childless years–trudging off to the goat class for the genealogical dead-ends, as she puts it, while most of the other women my age went off to learn about how to raise their kids. The social dynamics that would inevitable attend such a scenario give me great pause.

I like ESO’s points about parenting for adolescents. I often think that I’m at the easy end of my parenting, the phase in which I have the power to console my daughter, solve her problems, and make her happy. When she’s seven, that will be much less the case, and it won’t be the case at all by the time she’s seventeen. I may need far more help as a mother then than I do now.

The point about including fathers, and other observations about the logistics of a class, get at the practical difficulties. The great advantage of a church-time class is that, as Katya says, with a little arranging both parents could attend without the need for babysitting. Enrichment nights are great as far as they go, but of course they’re for mothers only, which is a significant limitation.

Thanks JrL, mb, Emily U., Ziff, and others for your suggestions about the Family Services class (which I don’t think exists in my stake, but I’ll investigate), and for the suggestion about establishing your own parenting discussion-group or network. It’s an excellent idea, and as Emily U. observes, that’s basically what many of us do anyway–we ask our family and friends for suggestions and advice. It would be great to set something up, either through the church or outside of it, where we could regularly read and talk about parenting issues and benefit from each other’s experience and wisdom. You’ve inspired me to investigate the possibilities.

m&m, I can see the case both for more practical hands-on instructions one hour and the case against the segregation such instruction would probably require. I’m not opposed to general gospel instruction so much as I’m opposed to brain-searing boredom (and thus I’m in favor of anything that might alleviate it). I recently attended a really excellent Marriage and Family Relations class–the best church class I’ve gone to in years!–so I may be suffering some sort of recency bias that Ziff and Lynnette and others with a social science background could identify.

At this point, I’d be thrilled to attend a good second- or third-hour class on Gospel-Centered Zoookeeping.

LRC said,

Chances are they’d make the same no-nursery mistake again (since even the RS can’t get its act together to organize childcare for the-meetings-formerly-known-as-enrichment). This despite the fact that there are a good number of (essentially) single parents because spouses are medical residents/interns.

I’ve been on the committee-formerly-known-as-enrichment for over a year now, and in my experience that problem isn’t that the RS simply can’t get its act together. Arranging nurseries for enrichment is often that hardest part of our planning, because who’s going to staff them? Essentially we have to ask someone to spend a night away from her family, or her other pursuits, to watch someone else’s kids. It’s like pulling teeth (and I don’t blame people for not wanting to). The same two or three willing people often end up doing it, but I don’t want to abuse their generosity and put them in perennial isolation from the rest of the ward.

If you have a large number of medical-student spouses in your stake, that would only make staffing the nursery all the more difficult. And if the existence of a well-staffed nursery for enrichment nights is of particular concern to you, perhaps you could volunteer to staff and coordinate it. I assure you, your enrichment committee would be absolutely delighted!

Ardis, Lynnette, and moshka, I’m glad to hear my observations about fitting (and not fitting) into a family-oriented church culture have been validating. My recent experience in suddenly having more of a place at church has made me wonder to what degree my social angst has been a function of my situation rather than of my strange ideas or my even stranger personality. (In all fairness, I must give both their due –but it does make one wonder.)

I found Ardis’s link to the old mother-education curriculum fascinating. I’m particularly struck by how practical and hands-on some of the curriculum was–the review of first-aid procedures, for instance. I’ve thought some lately about the issue of practical instruction in homemaking–which, like practical instruction in parenting, I could certainly use. Although I can learn a certain amount from books, I suspect I’m not alone in mastering skills best hands-on, by watching someone do something and then, ideally, by having that someone watch and correct me as I attempt it. Ideally I suppose that’s the sort of instruction the meeting formerly known as enrichment would provide. Although I’ve seen enrichment meetings move away from crafts (hallelujah!) and although they often provide good information on other topics, I’ve seen relatively little instruction in homemaking–cooking, canning, gardening, sewing, and childrearing.