Connection or Control?

In her book, You’re Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, the linguist Deborah Tannen points out a common issue in mother/daughter dialogue that becomes more prominent as the daughters age to adulthood: Mothers raise topics of conversation in order to maintain connection with their daughters, but daughters interpret them as trying to maintain control over them. The possible topics are many: who are you dating, where are you living, what are you driving, where are you going to school, where are you working, and on and on. Either party could be right. Mothers might in fact be trying to maintain some control in their daughters’ lives when daughters are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Or daughters may be defensively pushing back when all mothers are hoping to accomplish is to know how their daughters’ lives are going. Or, most likely, something in between is true, with mothers being a little more controlling than they need to be (even unconsciously) and daughters being a little more defensive than they need to be. It makes sense that this connection or control question could be a fraught one especially for mothers and daughters (or any parents and offspring), given that parents are necessarily completely controlling of their kids’ entire lives when they’re younger, and in most cases, the kids’ entire lives are taking steps away from the parents.

Johann Hari also mentions this connection/control dilemma in his book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions. As part of writing the book, he spends some time in an Amish community. His conclusion is that social ties there are so tight that it’s unlikely that members will suffer from depression, but the tradeoff is having to submit to elders who are typically controlling and often even outright abusive.

The Mormon application here is probably obvious. One way it strikes me is in the opening line to the children’s song “The Church of Jesus Christ”: “I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Belong can be read in two ways. The way it’s intended to be read is that the singer is part of the Church community. You fit in. You have a place. But you could also belong in the sense of being owned by the Church. You’re an asset of the Church, like a building or a copyrighted image.

As a member on the fringe of the Church, I see this connection/control dilemma with the Church highlighted most often when people leave. Escaping Church control is often a motivator for people to go, but when they do, they often find the loss of community difficult to deal with. Church community is definitely flawed in so many ways. If you’re out of the core group (straight married parents), it’s unlikely you’ll fit in as well in the first place. If you’re single, or married but with no children, if you’re disabled, or gay, or trans, the community was probably iffy for you to begin with. But sometimes I wonder if some community, however imperfect, is better than no community. It makes sense to me that prominent post-Mormons have in some cases put effort into creating community among people who have left.

I don’t want to sound like I’m sitting outside this dilemma, looking down my nose at people trying to figure it out. I’m very much in the midst of it too. I feel somewhat at home in the Church (which is made easier by the fact that I am part of the core group), but I’m also deeply uncomfortable with so many Mormon things. I also feel very connected to fringe and post-Mormons, but these groups are unfortunately often ephemeral, with constantly shifting membership as people transition from fringe to post to post-post, where they’re no longer interested in Mormon stuff at all.

Really, like the example I used at the beginning of the post, the connection/control dilemma isn’t a Mormon or a church thing. It’s a human relationships thing. In any relationship we enter, from a friendship or a marriage all the way up to being a citizen of a nation, we’re going to cede some control when we gain some connection. I’m not sure how helpful an observation that is, but I do find it a little comforting to realize that this is a question that all of us are navigating constantly.