- Tori on An Ode to Large Families: “Thank you @Leslie May for the thoughtful response. One of my ode’s to large families, in addition to how they can, if we choose, keep us invested in community and building up everyone around us Is that I appreciate how kids can learn a lot from mixing with family members of various ages. The middle kids are in a position to benefit the most but it can be hugely helpful to have role models older than you and also to see how far you’ve come and the various stages you’ve been through by watching younger siblings grow up. @Stephen C: I didn’t do a good job explaining my issue above so I’ll try one last time because I think it’s at the heart of why so many comments seem defensive. In the gospel and in life, most people have a variety of priorities and while it is possible to force rank them, at the end of the day, most people are more comfortable ranking their priorities into tiers with a top tier filled with a few priorities that are integral to one’s moral and religious values. The values in the top tier are usually nonnegotiable for a person. Your original defense seemed to place large families not just in the top tier. But as a stand alone value, relegating everything else to lower tiers. Not only that, but the sweeping idea was suggested that the gospel justifies placing large families above all else. While I can agree with you on placing families in a top tier, I personally also add building community/building Zion into that top tier. For me it is how the atonement (something I hold dear) manifests itself in my life. Everyone has their own strongly held experience with their own priorities. I think that is beautiful and wonderful and what makes knowing a wider range of people (and seeing a large number of children you love grown up and have their own experiences with Christ) so valuable. Obviously there are other tiers in all of our priority lists. But that is irrelevant. And defending large families over lower tier priorities makes for straw man arguments. To summarize, the point I want to make is that placing large families in a tier of their own is not scripturally or doctrinally supported because the scriptures and doctrine don’t force rank our priorities. I don’t mean to take anything away from valuing large families or to suggest they shouldn’t be a top tier priority. Just that most people have at least one other value they add to the top tier. Somewhere the post changed from an ode to large families to an insistence that they are the gospel ideal and the one and only source of true joy in life. The off topic and defensive comments naturally followed.” May 27, 09:45
- on An Ode to Large Families: “Stephen C, I appreciate this post and wish I had time this week to respond to it in more depth. I agree with a lot of it, but am just not sure about the main point. When Church leadership decides something that was taught in the past doesn’t really qualify as “doctrine” they generally don’t come out and say so. They just stop teaching it. Elder Haynie nodded at this last conference when he said “prophetic teachings do not become more valuable with age.” Some related examples might be “Mothers should not work outside the home” or “Birth control is bad.” You’ve given some good reasons why Church leaders might not want to come out and say “In general, the Lord wants members to have large families rather than small ones” even if they believe it’s true, but it’s hard for members to distinguish between that and “We definitely believe members should marry and have children if at all possible, but we no longer think what past leaders said about the Lord preferring large families was doctrine.” Fortunately, individual members don’t need to decipher the general doctrine–they just need to know what the Lord wants them to do. And I know the Lord answers prayers about that. I mentioned in the previous post that my parents planned to have two children but ended up with eight because the Lord kept prompting them to have one more. My wife and I only have two due to health problems, but I’m grateful the Lord prompted us to start our family right away rather than waiting until we had settled into our marriage like we had planned, or we might not have those two. And I know that in our case two children is the size the Lord intended for our family. So if any young couples are reading this and wondering how many children to have, don’t worry too much about the abstract discussions. Go to the Lord and find out what he wants you to do. You may end up with a big family like Stephen C or my parents, or a small one like mine, but whatever it is it will be right.” May 26, 11:07
- on An Ode to Large Families: ““I would love and cherish and derive benefit from the existence of a child that I knew and love as my child, and that function is additive” Are you arguing that you have a sum total higher love/happiness/satisfaction by having more children? So a parent with six is Y times happier than a parent with two? Trying to tie quality parenting to 60 minutes reading vs 20 minutes reading doesn’t work for me. Limiting parenting to time spent with the child doesn’t either, although of course it’s important. Parenting is complex, and each child’s needs are different. Seems like efforts to figure out a kid’s individual need and fulfill it would be a good measure. I also agree that not all middle kids are lost-in-the-shuffle. Each family is different. But I do see these kids and feel so badly for them. I can’t go so far as to say it would be better that they didn’t exist, because that would be cruel. But I do believe in couples making conscious choices based on their abilities and resources rather than just popping out as many kids as possible.” May 25, 22:08
- on An Ode to Large Families: “I think looking for reasons inside the church is error — this is not a church problem — I am not sure it is a problem at all, but if it is, it is a societal problem. Latter-day Saints are members of larger societies, and are affected by the same matters that affect non-Latter-day Saints. Think back to the 1950s and 1960s, seen by many as the best days for the church. The dating patterns of teenage Mormon Utah, seen as holy by today’s General Authorities, were common in all of the other states in the union — there was nothing holy about Mormon dating practices in those days, and those practices weren’t instituted by church leaders — those practices were common across the country, and are remembered fondly by old people everywhere, both Mormon and non-Mormon.” May 25, 19:35
- on An Ode to Large Families: “@ ReTx: As the middle child of a rather larger family, I’m going to push back a little on the implicit premises involved in invoking a quantity/quality tradeoff, and with the implied correspondence between lackadaisical parenting and family size. If the sum total of the child benefit is derived from your personal moments with them, then yes, there is only so much time in the day, and reading to one child for one hour is perfectly equivalent to reading to three children for 20 minutes each, but even if I was in jail I would love and cherish and derive benefit from the existence of a child that I knew and love as my child, and that function is additive and is in no way derivative of how much time I was able to spend drilling them on their times tables. And sorry to go all John Rawls here, and I know what I’m about to invoke has all sorts of implications that we don’t have time to unpack, but would a hypothetical child rather not exist or have 20 fewer minutes of reading with a parent per day? So you don’t think that slightly awkward middle child in your ward should exist? Now, this sort of Rawlsian logic, when taken to an extreme, can have all sorts of arguably bad implications further along the Malthusian continuum, but when we’re just talking about the slightly awkward middle child I think it’s sound. There’s also a lot of other things to say here about the cult of high intensity parenting and its attendant expectations, and how the higher parent-to-child ratio doesn’t seem to be doing wonders for the current crop of youth, but that’s a whole other discussion. ” May 25, 16:52
- on An Ode to Large Families: “What creates a satisfying, healthy, loving, happy life as a parent isn’t quantity but quality. It’s the relationships themselves that strengthen us, change us. The number count of those relationships is irrelevant. A parent with six kids is not going to be three times happier/satisfied than a person with two kids. A parent who works hard at parenting and developing strong relationships with their kids will absolutely be happier and more satisfied than a parent that takes a distant or lackadaisical approach. The flip-side of that is that the middle children in some of the huge LDS families in my ward seem really, really lost. I can kind of pick them out, and it’s sad. I wouldn’t say it’s because the Moms and Dads aren’t good people and trying. There’s just not enough of them to go around. I’m sure some families do better than others, and some family situations can be really hard on siblings. My spouse and I stopped when we realized we couldn’t handle more, that we were at 100% (each) with the kids we had. I wish more parents thought that way.” May 25, 15:21
- on An Ode to Large Families: “PWS: No normal person thinks the scenarios that you shared/experienced are good. Clearly these RM’s didn’t learn social norms of dating before their missions and were “one offs” and that’s always going to happen. They should have learned this from age 16 to 19 so they had it figured out when it counted IMO. I would never advocate unhealthy actions like you described but I sure wouldn’t stop telling missionaries to focus on marriage when they got home because some are clueless regarding the proper way to do it. How did that RM cycle through all the girls in the same ward without getting a reputation to stay away from? I thought girls talked to each other…” May 25, 10:38
- on An Ode to Large Families: “REC911: As a woman who attended BYU in the days when mission presidents told missionaries to go home and get married, I’m delighted if those days are actually gone. I had a high school classmate who returned late spring. The first time I saw him that summer, he told me he was getting married on a specific day in October. He didn’t have a woman in mind, and he definitely meant 4 months in the future. He had been told that he should get married, and he was going to follow that instruction no matter what. He did get married on that day, but I simply cannot imagine what it would do to me if I were a wife chosen with that kind of impersonal disregard. My student ward at BYU had a newly returned RM who cycled through all the women in the ward, dating each of us 3 or 4 times, asking each to marry him, then going on to the next one when he was turned down. Honestly, we were interchangeable bodies to him. I and many others could share a lot more stories. This is not a point in our history that I remember fondly. It was not healthy, either for those returned missionaries or the women they dated.” May 25, 08:13
- on Mercy, kindness, and caring – a Sunday Sermon: “I have this secret goal to incorporate Tolkien quotes in every sacrament meeting talk I give. I haven’t always lived up to it, but it’s fun to sneak in when I can.” May 24, 22:07