In Parenting

Vaccinations: My Choice for My Children

Author VadaPosted on 18 Comments

Jana has a great post up over at Exponent about an experience she had with her son as a baby. At the end she asks these questions:

I am curious what experiences have contributed to your parenting styles/philosophies? Are there incidents that dramatically shaped your approach to nurturing or caregiving?

I wanted to answer these questions, but I didn’t really want to start a vaccine debate (which can get ugly) on someone else’s site, so I decided to post my response here.

The biggest thing that has contributed to and changed my parenting style and philosophies has been my oldest son’s autism. The biggest thing that it has taught me is to be aware of what is going on with my children and with their bodies. It has also taught me that things that are good for many kids are not necessarily good for my kids. Read More

In Doctrine

Excessive Road Signs and Arbitrary Detailed Commandments

Author ZiffPosted on 21 Comments

Do traffic signs make us safer? A couple of months ago in The Atlantic, John Staddon argued that, on the whole, they may not:

I began to think that the American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents. Paradoxically, almost every new sign put up in the U.S. probably makes drivers a little safer on the stretch of road it guards. But collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite deadly.

. . . [W]hat is the limited resource . . . in the case of driving? It’s attention. Attending to a sign competes with attending to the road. The more you look for signs, for police, and at your speedometer, the less attentive you will be to traffic conditions. The limits on attention are much more severe than most people imagine.

This problem–where well-intended safety measures multiply and ultimately make us less safe–reminds me of a similar issue that I think sometimes arises in the Church. The problem occurs when we receive commandments that are arbitrary and detailed.

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In Misc

There’s a Fly in My Room…

Author VadaPosted on 9 Comments

…and I want it to leave. I can think of two possible ways to get rid of it.

A) Turn off the light.

B) Kill it.

A is problematic because I would feel guilty about turning the light back on, since my husband is in bed asleep next to me. And I can’t actually go to bed yet because I have to switch the wash so my son can have a clean shirt for pictures at preschool tomorrow.

B is problematic because, well, my fly-killing skills are just not that good. I’d definitely have to go downstairs and get the flyswatter (and then I’d have to go back down and put it away, and who really wants to run the stairs a couple of extra times, especially in the middle of the night?). Even then, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to kill it.

So instead of doing anything productive I’m going to write a blog post complaining about the fly buzzing around my bedroom. That’s all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a real post. But then again, maybe not.

In Politics

They said, “Let us win.”

Author ZiffPosted on 14 Comments

John McCain in Friday night’s debate:

I’d like to tell you, two Fourths of July ago I was in Baghdad. General Petraeus invited Senator Lindsey Graham and me to attend a ceremony where 688 brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, were reenlisting to stay and fight for Iraqi freedom and American freedom.

I was honored to be there. I was honored to speak to those troops. And you know, afterwards, we spent a lot of time with them. And you know what they said to us? They said, let us win. They said, let us win. We don’t want our kids coming back here.

And this strategy, and this general, they are winning.

Read More

In Abortion

The Tragedy of Aborted Geniuses

Author EvePosted on 29 Comments

I can’t believe I’m wading into the abortion debate, but Steve’s and Jay‘s recent posts on the topic at BCC and Elder Nelson’s October Ensign article (not yet available online) have inspired me to tackle an anti-abortion argument that’s long bothered me. In this post I’ll confine my comments to a particular story I’ve seen in arguments against abortion. (And, let there be no mistake, the omnipotent if site-specific Bouncer will also confine your comments to that issue. If you want to discuss the narrative and implicit arguments I examine here, to favor or oppose or express your utter indifference to them, I will read with great interest. If you want to discuss various ways we value life based on assessments of intelligence, beauty, or other such factors, I will read with equally great interest. But please refrain from rehashing familiar pro-life and/or pro-choice arguments, knocking down straw or actual men and women, and making blanket generalizations about pro-lifers and/or pro-choicers, and engaging in the abortion or culture wars more generally. If this thread disintegrates into yet another debate over the legalities of abortion, I–ahem, that is to say, of course, the Bouncer–will shut it down.) Read More

In Gender Issues

Cruelty to Boys

Author EvePosted on 26 Comments

For most of my life I’ve found Mormon-girl and Mormon-woman culture infuriating and alienating. I despise passive-aggressive triangulation and insincere niceness and gossipy backstabbing, in others and especially in myself. I’m all for greater assertiveness and directness and less apology for one’s existence and neurotic hand-wringing over one’s perceived sins, chief among them the sin for which no woman can be forgiven in this life or in the life to come, failure to be nice. Read More

In Personal Narratives, Singles

How Do I Change Who I Am for Myself?

Author SeraphinePosted on 13 Comments

When your life is tightly entwined with the lives of others, you adjust who you are to meet their needs and expectations.  For example, spouses make small, daily adjustments so that they don’t push their partners’ buttons.  Parents postpone their desires in order to tend to those of their children.  When not taken to an extreme, this is a good thing.

The past couple years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about to what extent we should bend who we are to make our relationships with others work.  While I still have a lot of unanswered questions about the outer limits of sacrifice, I’ve learned to embrace the ways that relationships can refine us and transform us into better versions of ourselves.  But now my life circumstances have changed, and because I want to continue a process of transformation, now I’m wondering: how do I change who I am for myself? Read More

In Gender Issues, Statistics

Documenting Changing Church Rhetoric on Gender Roles

Author ZiffPosted on 18 Comments

My impression is that Church rhetoric defines women by their roles more often than it does men. Women are wives and mothers. Even if they aren’t technically mothers, women are mothers, because that’s just who they are. Men, on the other hand, sure we’re admonished to be good husbands and fathers, but those roles are discussed as being much less central to who we are. I would be shocked, for example, if someone gave a talk titled “Are We Not All Fathers?” in General Conference.

When this difference in the centrality of women’s and men’s gender roles is discussed, one hope that is often held out is that the Church is changing. Women are coming to be defined less by their roles and more as people of worth even if they don’t take on those roles, and men are being reminded more often that our roles as husband and father should be central to our lives.

It occurred to me recently that I could easily test for whether such a change is actually occurring by looking at how often different words are used in articles archived at LDS.org. Read More

In Callings

The Inspired Call: Overstating the Case?

Author EvePosted on 27 Comments

A couple of months ago, I received a new calling. I’d sufficiently recovered from certain previous callings to feel that I could yet again give church a chance and make my availability known. In many respects, I was extremely fortunate in the way that process played out. A woman I know and like had recently been called as RS president, and one Sunday I happened upon her in the foyer and explained both my willingness to serve and the limitations of my current situation. Because of circumstances involving my own health and my husband’s inactivity, I can’t fulfill a Primary or weekly teaching calling right now and probably won’t be able to for the next couple of years. So I suggested that a Relief Society committee might be appropriate. Read More

In Callings, Church Life, Moral Dilemmas

On Asking to Be Released

Author VadaPosted on 39 Comments

I know we’ve talked about this subject before, but since I’m currently debating with myself over it, I decided to bring it up again and let the rest of you debate with me.

I’m currently the leader of the wolf den in cub scouts (with another woman) and the teacher of the 6-7yo primary class (with my husband). I hate it. I’ve been doing them both about 9 months, and I’ve hated them pretty much the whole time. I guess the primary class was okay for two or three weeks, but that’s about it. I knew I wouldn’t like the callings when I accepted them, but I’m a big believer in accepting any and all callings, so I did. Read More

In Belief

Crises of Faith

Author LynnettePosted on 37 Comments

A topic that came up several times at Sunstone this year, and generated some thought-provoking discussion, was that of crises of faith.  This got me thinking about the kind of standard “crisis of faith” narrative.  Such a crisis might be set off by any number of things–disturbing information about Church history, prayers that remain unanswered or blessings that go unfulfilled, troubling experiences in sacred spaces, negative encounters with Church leaders, and so forth.  Whatever the catalyst, it causes a person to re-evaluate and question her or his previous beliefs.  She or he wrestles with these demons until finally reaching a resolution of some kind.  Some find a way to stay in the Church as believers; others find a way to stay in the Church despite their doubts; others opt to leave altogether. Read More

In Personal Narratives, Psychology

Self-Motivation

Author VadaPosted on 9 Comments

Like all of my family, and most people I know, I get easily addicted to computer games (currently it’s various word games on facebook, but it changes). I can also get very into TV shows, a few video games, and all sorts of books. All of this combines, at times, to make me incredibly unproductive. And then I have to think of creative ways to get myself to do something other than play stupid computer games. I’m kind of like a little kid that way. Here are some of the things I do (or have done): Read More

In Blogging, Fun, Polls

Know Your Naccle I: Match the Comment to the Commenter

Author The BouncerPosted on 45 Comments

By our reckoning, it’s time for a well-earned break from aggregator politics, Proposition 8, and the finer points of topless-male-missionary-calendar excommunication. Following are nine excerpts from posts and comments–some quite recent, some positively antique–made by nine well-known denizens of the Bloggernacle. Can you identify the blogger who said each of the following? (Hint: each blogger listed is represented by exactly one comment. That is, no blogger on the list appears more–or less–than once.) Read More

In Moral Dilemmas

Abraham and Milgram

Author LynnettePosted on 17 Comments

(Disclaimer: I’m not really attempting in this post to give a plausible read of Genesis 22, as I realize that my speculations about Abraham have little basis in the scriptural text. Rather, I’m hoping to use the story as a way of raising general questions about the potential consequences of obedience vs. integrity situations. And, of course, what’s the fun of blogging if not to engage in a bit of wild speculation?)

In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a study on obedience that has since become legendary. Participants were told to administer electric shocks to people, ostensibly as part of an experiment on learning. What was fascinating–and disturbing–was how willing participants were to continue inflicting higher and higher levels of shocks, despite cries of acute distress from those apparently receiving them (though this was of course faked; the “learners” were confederates in the study). The participants expressed discomfort, but ordered by the experimenter to continue, the majority of them did so–65 percent went up to the highest setting of 450 volts.

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In Gender Issues, Presiding, Priesthood

Women and the Priesthood, Fifteen Years Later

Author EvePosted on 34 Comments

Maxine Hanks’s 1992 anthology Women and Authority includes a chapter by D. Michael Quinn, provocatively entitled “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843.” Quinn makes it clear that he’s not arguing simply for what I’ll here call “soft” claims about women’s priesthood status, for example, that women hold the priesthood only “through temple marriage or through the second anointing” (368). On the contrary, he’s arguing a “harder” claim, that women actually held–and therefore, by the successive conferral of authority that authenticates Mormon ordinances, continue to hold–the Melchizedek priesthood completely independent of marriage, on the basis of temple endowment alone. Read More