My Brief, Hideous Encounter with Mormon Single Life

A couple of months ago I was in the throes of a personal bread-making craze which has since spent itself, partly because the bread I made wasn’t very good. (I really need to get some pointers from those domestic goddesses over at FMH.) One bread-baking afternoon I took my wedding ring off to knead the dough, and I neglected to put it on again before attending a church meeting that evening. Read More

Demoted to Mrs.

Marriage is at once the most public and the most private of institutions. On the private side, although we can both be incredibly stubborn, my husband has never treated me with the slightest hint of condescension or domineering. Even in the early days of our marriage when he was still a believer, it would never have so much as crossed his mind to pull priesthood rank, which is of course one of the reasons I married him. But as ECS’s excellent post about the cultural blind spots in which women reside recently reminded me, whatever private arrangements husband and wife make, for women, marriage can mean social invisibility. Read More

Fun With Models: Thinking More About Divorce

In his General Conference talk, Elder Oaks discussed divorce, expressing his concern that Church members are often too hasty to divorce. I agree with his general conclusion; there probably are couples who divorce who would be better off not divorcing and whose children would be better off if they did not divorce. But I’m concerned that the model of marriage and divorce he assumes is incomplete, and that following it could induce people to stay in genuinely bad marriages. Read More

Solving the Mormon Man Shortage

There has been an interesting discussion at Feminist Mormon Housewives in response to a guest poster’s request for advice on how she, as a single Mormon woman, should deal with her strong sex drive. Tangentially, I was interested by a comment made by David on that thread:

Let me just state the obvious that no one seems to want to say:

There are more decent, inteligent, active, spiritual single women in the church than there are men.

I dont know how it all balances out in the end, but right now, thats just the way it is

Read More