The ongoing discussion under Elisabeth’s post on Harvard Stay-at-home-moms has taken an interesting turn. The recent comments parsing the meaning of the Proclamation on the Family reminded me of a post I wrote just over a year ago. Here it is. The original post, found at the unpronouncable blog, here, also had lots of worthwhile comments.
From the Proclamation on the Family: “By divine design, fathers are to preside over their famlies in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help ach other as equal partners.”
The proclamation sets up an interesting symmetry here that, if examined, is likely to cause difficulty for some of the more conservative-minded members of the church.
The problem is illustrated in the words of a speaker I heard last week. He stated that in marriage, the woman is primarily responsible for the nurture and care of the children. Of course he included the obvious and necessary caveats that the righteous husband will share this burden, working alongside his wife to care for the brood. He then stated that the man is primarily responsible for providing life’s necessities, providing security and tangible goods. His next statement poses the problem: “and the wife is not to help the husband in carrying out his duties. The man must provide for the family, so the wife can focus on caring for their emotional needs.”
The asymmetry of these comments is glaring. But in a less explicit way, I suppose I’d always bought into the same reasonining without examining it. Everyone knows the basic roles set up for the sexes in the Proclamation. And then we read the final sentence, where both partners ought to help equally, sharing in each others’ burdens. What did you think that sentence meant? I admit my mind just converted it automatically into the normal P.C. boilerplate, meant to make sure no men out there take the express gender roles as an excuse to get out of changing diapers and wiping down high chairs.
But it doesn’t say men should help their wives and wives shouldn’t help their husbands. To the contrary, whatever level of help the proclamation dictates men should give their wives in their capacities as mothers, it dictates the same level of help be given by wives to their husbands in their role as provider.
We should ask two questions. First, what do we, the church, the ward, the individual, think the statement about helping means? Second, what does it really mean? My answers to those two questions are different. I think most of us think it means that men need to help out around the house. But what seems more probable from a plain reading of the text is that spouses should help each other in their duties. So just as the man isn’t walled off from assisting in the home, it seems that the Proclamation lends credence to the claim, held in disdain by many in the church, that women ought not be walled off from assisting in the financial and physical provisioning of the family.
How can women ‘help’ their husbands provide for their families? We don’t really think this just means that they ought to clip coupons and darn socks, do we? Can’t the Proclamation be read as an official statement of the church giving at least tacit acknowledgement, and at most authoritative encouragement, to mothers being gainfully employed? To many readers this is a non-controversial point, but I suspect that to the bulk of the conservative Church base, that would be a hard pill to swallow.
Have I misread?
Ryan, I think “equal partners” means “equal partners”. Fathers can be primarily responsible for finances and mothers can be primarily responsible for children, but they are “equal partners” in the family relationship. The family unit is a unit. Both mother and father should be equally committed to making sure that the children are well cared for and the family has sufficient financial resources.
A strict division of labor may be helpful for some couples, but this division of labor along gender lines is not required under the Proclamation.
And, by the way, I have to express my frustration with the word “helping” each other in this context. Is the father “helping” the mother when the father “babysits” his own children? Is the mother “helping” the father if she works outside the home? I guess I don’t like how the word “helping” implies that it’s someone else’s responsibility that you’re helping with, and that you’re just lending a helping hand out of the goodness of your heart.
P.S. Great post by the way, and comments.
Well, since we’re reprinting your post, I’ll just reprint the comment I made to it:
A few things come to mind as far as women ‘helping’ their husbands provide for the family:
1) The wife not spending obscene amounts of money on non-necessities thereby putting more pressure on the husband to earn more money to meet demand.
(I’m not suggesting that women are more likely to be big spenders than men, only that ‘not spending’ is as big a part of a household budget as ‘earning’ is in terms of ‘providing for the family’)
2) The wife not placing too many household demands on the husband after work since he’s probably already very tired. (He should still help with the housework of course, especially the children, but the optimal ratio may not be an exact 50/50 split…)
3) The wife being flexible in household scheduling to accomodate the husband’s possible job requirements (outside training sessions and/or homework, longer hours, business trips, etc…) Again, this isn’t cut-and-dried either, since gospel principles don’t support the husband having 80-hour work weeks to ‘get ahead’ in his career at the expense of family time. Only that the husband should have the option to take the extra time needed to do his job effectively and possibly provide a better financially stable home life for his family in the future.
There are fine lines to be tread in all of these, but I think there are a lot of ways where the wife can ‘help’ with the husband’s primary job as provider which don’t involve getting an outside job on her own.
Kevin – your #2 seems to imply that, by the time the husband comes home from work, the mother isn’t already exhausted after running around with the kids all day! When does the mother get to rest after her hard day of work? After cooking dinner for the family and putting the kids to bed so the husband can relax?
Anyway, I think it’s important that if something needs to be done (i.e., diaper change or finding a way to save for a child’s college education), then both the father and the mother should feel responsible for getting it done. How they get it done, of course, is another matter.
I remember thinking, Ryan Bell, when I read this the first time, that what you had to say seemed remarkably disconnnected with the text. It gives a reading of the ‘equal partners’ line that totally ignores the ‘primary responsibility’ line that accompanies it.
I’m with Adam, sorry Ryan. There is a reason you “bought” into it; its the plain meaning of the text. The text says Fathers _are_ responsible re: preside & provide. Nothing about “help” there; whereas the text says mothers are “primarily” responsible; i.e. there is plenty of textual room for the men to help out with the raising, but zero in the other direction.
Perhaps we should call this God’s ratcheting theory of parenting/gender roles? i.e. it only works in 1 direction?
Now, it could be, Ryan Bell, that you think the two lines are incompatible. Maybe the church realizes its membership is too split and passionate about this, and clarity one way or the other too unlikely to do any good, so what we get is two apparently contradictory sentences, as a prod to thought. Is something like that your view? I’m open to the idea.
Very interesting, Lyle. I remembered the proclamation talking about the father’s primary responsibility and the mother’s primary responsibility. I was shocked to go back and see that you were right.
I think a hint about how we might interpret this can be found here:
This is Genesis 3:16-17: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;”
There’s lots we can talk about here, but what I want to focus on is that the woman should be having/rearing children and Adam should be out sweating.
Now here’s Moses 5:1 and 12: “AND it came to pass that after I, the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him.
• • •
12 And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters.”
In other words, Eve did some of Adam’s assignment and Adam did some of Eve’s. I think this is a model to follow. It is applying it to one’s circumstances that gets tricky, of course.
To help with your interpretation, here is a quote from Pres Hinckley in the Oct 1996 conference, page 67:
I agree with Lyle. I think that minor distinction gives just the little twist of the knife that men need–both, in not losing their grip on their responsibilities *plus* in being better helpers to their wives.
But that’s the point… A husband coming home to take care of the kids while his wife ‘rests’ doesn’t get any break himself after HIS hard day of work. Something’s got to give… There’s usually no way to compare who’s working ‘harder’ between the two–but I don’t think you can automatically say the evening housework split should be 50/50, or else you have an oppressive relationship. There’s a big difference not only between types of day jobs, but also between families with one kid versus families with six. In different cases, the split may go from 60/40 or higher in the direction of one spouse or the other…and also change through time. I’m sure we can find situations where the optimum situation has the husband doing more at home…and others where the optimum is for him to do less.
I think I know what you mean, Kevin, but for many men, coming home, walking in the door, having the kids jump all over him and getting to take a few minutes to play with his kids, is fun, relaxing. And it diffuses that level of tension that rises in a home all day.
I used to look at my husband as the cavalry coming in to rescue me.
I didn’t expect him to come in and take care of the kids and clean the house. I did expect him to help. When you take care of kids all day, there are often NO opportunities to rest.
But if the house was reasonably neat, and dinner is on the table, I don’t think it’s asking too much for my husband to spend time with the kids while I take a bubble bath. My husband enjoyed it, it was restful for him.
Well…not that the bubble bath part ever really happened.
Elisabeth, I agree with your #1 to some extent. I don’t think a strict division of labor is required. On the other hand some division of labor seems to be encouraged by the text. Wouldn’t you agree?
You are correct about the awkwardness of our language here. Helping is not exactly the right word. But it’s also not my word– it’s right there in the Proclamation. Still, it adds some difficulty, as you note. I guarantee you that when I’m putting my kids to bed, there’s no thought in my head that I’m ‘helping’ my wife. (although when I’m cleaning the shower, a job that I don’t think ever needs to be done, and that she thinks needs to be done every week, that feels a bit more like helping!). But when viewed in light of the proclamation, there is some foundation for thinking that we are assisting each other in our respective roles. I certainly don’t mean this in the sense of the woman having total charge of the kids and any assistance from the husband being pure charity, just that each role has an ultimate responsible party. It’s certainly a very delicate balance to draw.
Adam, I don’t think I had in mind that the First Presidency was purposely introducing ambiguity. On the other hand, there’s no question that they prefer to avoid specificity, so some ambiguity is inevitable. This post was inspired by my hearing that speaker (referred to in the post) stating that men are to help women in their role as caretaker, but women should NOT help me in their role as provider. If you ask me, that language seemed remarkably disconnected with the text.
Now, though, Lyle’s attentive reading has far surpassed my own. Observing that unique use of ‘primarily’ before the mother’s responsibilities is both shocking and significant. That definitely provides at least a plausible support for the position taken by the speaker I heard. Wow, very interesting to see that. Thanks for pointing that out, Lyle.
So Adam, are you saying that you think that the final clause about helping each other as equal partners is meant to be divorced from the previous language setting up the specific roles? If not, I’m not sure I understand how my little thesis is disconnected from the language of the proclamation (with the exception of the Stamps Corollary (TM) )
Julie, thanks for that very helpful scriptural reference. It’s always nice to remember how our modern gospel are built on a scriptural foundation.
And Steve, thanks for that helpful quote.
Anne, I agree with you. No better relaxation than coming home and rolling around with the rugrats.
The absence of “primarily” from the husband’s responsibilities does not mean that the husband is the ONLY person responsible for the financial welfare of the family. That’s going too far.
Taking the language of the section as a whole, the Proclamation gives plenty of room for the husband to be responsible for the financial welfare of the family with the wife as an equal partner. Reading some of these comments here and on the other thread, I see a distinct tendency to discount the words “equal partners”. Why?
Look at the entire sentence:
The sentence says that the mother and father are equal partners “[I]n these sacred responsibilities”. Does the word “these” refer only to the mother’s sacred responsibility of nurturing the children? I don’t think so. The plural word “responsibilities” instead of “responsibility” means ALL the responsibilities of providing for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the family.
I understand how one could construe this paragraph as placing the entire financial responsibility burden on the father, but I just don’t see how you can reconcile this view with the last sentence about the husband and the wife as “equal partners” in performing their sacred duties. What does “equal partners” mean, then?
If I start a company with my sister, and I’m in charge of the finances and she’s in charge of personnel, but we’re each a 50% shareholder and we each ultimately suffer if either one of us does a bad job (and if one of us is having problems, it thus behooves us to help them out) that would fit the language used above exactly. We’re “equal partners” and I have responsibility over finances AND she has primary responsibility over personnel. I can tell her what makes a good accountant to help me, and I can tell her what sort of HR decisions will force us into bankruptcy, and she can remind me that I can’t whip my employees when the numbers don’t match and that I can’t badger them about their marital status. She knows her sphere and understands how it relates to mine; I understand my sphere and how it relates to hers.
What on earth is the correlation between “equal partners” and “everyone does all the jobs available, just because we don’t want feelings to be hurt”?
Elisabeth, you must admit that your reading of equal partners runs into trouble when read in context of the explicit separation of roles. I think the “equal partners” phrase means something much like Sarah says, but with a greater emphasis on each person assisting in both roles. But whatever you read “equal partners” to mean, it can’t mean that individual members don’t hold ultimate accountability over a single area of specialization, because the preceeding sentences explicitly provide for just such a structure.
Thus, if you’re saying, as you appear to be, that the equal partners language acts as a de facto nullification of defined gender roles, I wonder you how account for the fact that those roles were specifically divvied up just previous to the equal partners phrase. (My guess is that you and I think all of this stuff means roughly the same thing, even if we are currently choosing to emphasize different parts of it).
Ryan, I liked Sarah’s analogy, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that both mothers and fathers each have skills so that they could be (and are) both breadwinners and nurturers. Just because you’re the HR director, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t develop your accounting skills and take over as the Accountant where necessary.
I think the problem is that we’re not looking at the roles within the context of the family unit as a whole. What is the most important goal of the family unit? It is to love and educate children. How each family unit decides which person is responsible for what as they love and educate their children is something that I don’t think we need to worry about too much.
I feel like I’m repeating myself here, and getting a bit frustrated. I guess we’re all just coming at this from many different perspectives. My main concern is that the “ideal” of the father as the sole breadwinner and the mother as the sole caretaker of the children is overly formulaic, and does not allow for developing the father’s nurturing skills and developing the mother’s breadwinning skills that may well increase the happiness and welfare of the family unit as a whole.
People read into the Proclamation what they wish, but you have to find a way to reconcile the “preside” and “primarily nurture” language with the “equal partner” language. Some people reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements by focusing on the language of traditional gender roles. Others see the “equal partner” language as encouragement for women and men to work together to protect and sustain the welfare of the family unit in arrangements that best suit the needs of their own family.
Could it be read to mean that we are each supposed to help each other in with our different primary responsibilities, and that one role is not superior to the other? Each spouse should be valued equally?
Andrea – I think that’s right. I’d like to go a bit further and say that the family should be looked at as a unit, with each individual contributing to the temporal and spiritual welfare of the family unit, so that their individual talents, abilities, and efforts are rewarded with the most “efficient” allocation of resources and responsibilities.
I’d like to know what the parents think about the practical application of the Proclamation to their own families. Are you going to teach your sons differently than your daughters about the importance of preparing for a career and financial self-sufficiency?
By the way, tonight is the 10th anniversary of the issuance of the Proclamation on the Family, which was read on September 23, 1995 in the General Relief Society Meeting.
Why do you think it was read at the womens’ R.S. meeting for the first time, and not at General Conference, just a week later?
Elisabeth, I’m really not to dogmatic about this issue. I think there are a few justifiable ways to interpret the proclamation language. The reason I’ve engaged you on this, though, is that rather than finding a workable balance between the two clauses in tension, you seem to elevate “equal partners” to the point that the division of roles has pretty much disappeared. As long as an interpretation balances both of the dynamics of equality with specialization, one can plausibly back it up based on Proclamation language. But I guess I haven’t read you to be engaging the specialization language at all. Sorry if I’ve misread this whole conversation.
As to your question about how we’ll teach our children, and whether we’ll teach boys differently from girls, that’s a very good question– something I’ll have to think about. I don’t think there’ll be much difference at all, but I’ll have to consider it a bit more.
Ryan – I acknowledge the value of specialization of roles and division of labor, but I don’t think role specialization trumps the value of equality between the partners working together to serve the best interests of the family.
Anyway, I’m comfortable with my interpretation of the Proclamation, even though it may differ from many people reading these posts. The Proclamation is an important statement from our leaders, but ultimately, we are each responsible to make wise choices and serve our own family – whether we choose to take on the traditional gender roles or not.
Well I’m certainly not here to tell you you’re wrong about how families ought to be run. I’m sorry if it’s come off that way. This is obviously a very broad topic that can have literally hundreds of answers for good people. I’m not opining on the various merits of different family configurations– only trying to find the most logical interpretation of the Prophets’ official words on the subject. In other words, I’m not even saying I have a strong independent belief in specialization. Only that it seems to me that the prophets are saying that they do, so each of us should do with that what we will. If I’ve come off judgmental or harsh here, I apologize sincerely.
Ryan – no apologies necessary! There is room for interpretation in the Proclamation, as you yourself have noted. I get frustrated sometimes because I just don’t understand the tendency to lionize traditional gender roles hearkening back to the 1950’s. If you look at the early days of the Church, LDS women worked outside the home and quite frequently were responsible for the temporal and spiritual welfare of their entire families.
Today, the workforce is changing dramatically – workers are becoming much more protective of their personal time with their families, and employers are becoming more flexible with work schedules (not to mention the technological advances in communication). These are all good developments for both men and women, and I think we as members of the Church should take advantage of these opportunities, and pitch in to help create a more “family friendly” corporate culture.
Elisabeth–
I agree in general with the gist of #25, but I don’t like the suggestion that the Church is just ‘stuck in the 1950s.’ I used to believe that, actually, until I read _The Feminine Mystique_ and I was struck by how very, very different the 1950s cultural pressure for mothers to be at home was from what the Church teaches now. I think this matters because pulling the ‘1950s’ card alienates those who disagree with us, so there’s no point in doing it anyway.
I agree with Julie. Plus, although there are some in the church who may still want the 50’s, I certainly don’t think that’s the message or intention of the specialization language in the Proclamation.
Again, I’m not sure if you’re arguing against the Proclamation itself, or some peoples’ interpretations of it. But I can’t see how one can read the document and not conclude that some degree of specialization or compartmentalization is endorsed by the Brethren, even if you take it to suggest only the loosest kind. But no, that doesn’t mean we need to bring back “Fascinating Women” as the Relief Society Manual.
I wonder if this whole discussion should have been mentioned in our predictions of issues that might get some play at General Conference. Something like “How Fathers and Mothers can be equal partners in talking about Eating Disorders?” 🙂
Sarah,
Your analogy was illuminating. Thanks. I get the Proclamation more now.
Elisabeth, not to get all tinfoil hatty on you, but I strongly suspect that the introduction of the Proclamation in the RS Meeting was tied to the timing of hearings in the Hawaii gay marriage case, in which the Church was trying to get itself named as co-defendant with the state of Hawaii. They needed to show that gender roles and gender as an essential characteristic were important elements of church doctrine, and there isn’t much in the D&C or Book of Mormon to point to. You’d have to go back and look at the dates of the relevant documents, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Church’s brief was filed in the week between RS meeting and General Conference.
So Lyle’s point about fathers’ and mothers’ “primary” responsibilities is also illuminating, as are the response’s to it. Lyle pointed out that the the Prophet and the Apostles just proclaimed that fathers were “responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families” but they proclaimed that mothers were “primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” He interpreted the difference to mean that, generally, fathers bore all the responsibility for providing for the family but that mothers only bore primary responsibility for nurture, fathers having a secondary responsibility.
Let me suggest another meaning of the difference. Perhaps nurture is mothers’ “primary” responsibility in that it is their highest and best responsibility. While fathers’ are responsible for providing and protecting, this is by no means their highest or best work. Since fathers “preside over their families,” fathers are accountable in some degree for everything about the family, and one can’t single out one particular aspect of family life and say, do this and you’ve done your job.
I think they’d need to show only that we believe marriage is only between men and women. The other stuff about sex roles and our sex as an essential characteristic helps explain why we have that belief, but isn’t necessary to standing.
P.S. I’ve been thinking about the relevance of whether or not the Proclamation was prepared for litigation. Seems to me there isn’t any. I’ll elaborate after dinner.
P.P.S. Back from dinner. Knowing the Proclamation was prepared for litigation might make it suspect if we thought the Church had some other reason for wanting to intervene other than believing that legalizing ‘marriages’ between men and men and women and women was abominable. But the Church doesn’t have any other reason.
I think Gordon B. Hinckley is truly a genius, disguised as a funny wise old guy. The proclamation is so necessary in many ways that I don’t understand, but I think–understand, guys, my lack of education–it was preemptive against the inevitable decline of society in the last days.
I don’t think husbands working or not, is the issue. I think the basic structure of MAN and wife, caring for children, will save the world. Regadless of who kills the rattlesnakes or rocks the cradle.
I think that ones int. of the proclamation depends on a a variety of factors. Some of them are:
Are you orthodox on gender roles or liberal?
Are you a two career family or a SAHM family?
Did your mom work or stay home? How did you feel about either choice?
What does your spouse think about gender roles?
personal politics
Do you have children? How many?
Do orthodox SAHM families bother you and do two career families bother you.
How did your father treat your mother?
Then one can use the text and some of its apparent contradictions (I actually take a orthodox gendor role view and see no contradictions) and apply it to how one sees the world and go either way on the Proclamation.
It’s not online yet, so I couldn’t link to it, but did anyone notice that the October Ensign singles out this exact same text and provides all kinds of scriptural and prophetic messages related to it. It’s a very good article, though I don’t think it will change anyone’s interpretation. I agree that most people will tend to interpret the text the way they want to interpret it, depending on what they already believe.
“Do orthodox SAHM families bother you and do two career families bother you.”
This question bothers me. Not the fact that you asked it, but rather the idea that “orthodox” SAHMs would be “bothered” by two-career families or vice versa. Also, I have a problem with the use of the term “orthodox SAHM families.” This is a loaded phrase. The most common use of “orthodox” means adhering to correct teachings. Those who are not orthodox are heterodox, or not in keeping with accepted beliefs or doctrines. Now, SAHMs may be more traditional but use of the term orthodox as a modifier for SAHMs implies that two-career families are not only not traditional but actually heretical. This I find offensive.
Breathe deep. Deathe breep. One sense of orthodox–the sense most consistent with Bob Bell’s mild tone–is conventional.
In fact, that’s the sense of orthodox that Mormons most often use. When they mean the other, they usually use faithful/apostate.
I’m not hyperventilating, dude. Chill. I don’t know that most Mormons ever think about the term “orthodox” or what it means. We tend not to divide along orthodox/heterodox lines, which is one reason why I thought the use of the term in Bob’ post was odd. I do wonder, though, why anyone in the church would be “bothered” by the choices of other members in this regard one way or another. I can think of some things about other members’ choices that I might find bothersome; this is not one of them.
Members might be bothered by other members’ choices if they think there’s a right and wrong to the choice; or if they have had a bad experience with one of the choices; or if they feel judged for making one choice by people who make the other. Indifference is the high road to tolerance.
Adam–I’m fascinated by the ambiguous nature of the word ‘primarily’ that you point to. Do you think this is deliberate (and, of so, why)? Accidental? Meant to read both ways? One way? Which?
(By the way, it is at times like these when I feel really sorry for the GAs–every word they write and utter gets subjected to debate worthy of a medieval monastery.)
I am often burdened by my own ignorance. Please lighten my load and explain what this means. Thanks.
Here’s a fun exercise. Look up talks on the proclamation by those who issued it ten years ago. Then search for the word “primarily.” The first one to come up for me was Elder Eyring
Adam– I am glad you pointed to this aspect of the word “primarily,” although I admit I was getting all geared up to point to it myself and now find the wind has been taken from my prideful sails just a bit. 😉
I always wonder why discussions of these sections of the Proclamation don’t (usually) take this interpretion into account. After all, it seems to me that the usage of the phrase “primarily responsible for” as “mainly responsible for A, although also responsible for B-F” is the usual one in every day speech.
Doesn’t this raise the question of what the mother’s other responsibilities (ie, non-primary) might be? Could it be that the other responsibilities might sometimes include participation in procuring financial support?
Julie in A.,
I just don’t know. Probably not deliberate but I don’t know.
Eric S.,
Can’t help you lighten your burden. If the blind lead the blind and all that. 🙂
I believe that studies have shown that married men whose wives stay at home are more likely to be financially successful than single men or men married to working women. By staying home and taking care of the children, my wife allows me to work awful hours and make a decent living.
My paycheck then helps “support” my wife’s duties to care and nuture our children by paying for food, a weekly housekeeper, and a once or twice per week babysitter.
As an accountant, I am reminded daily of the simple equation that income – expenses = profit (loss). Although some managers like to see specific targets hit in a given catagory, it is the bottom line that is most important. Raise your income or lower you expenses and your profit is larger (or loss is smaller). Which one is more important? Neither, they are both equally important, but expenses is usually the one that can be impacted by a manager the easiest. Which does the husband impact? Primarily (there’s that word again), it is the income. In our *orthadox lds home, my wife is constantly working on our budget ensuring that we don’t spend more than we need for food and she is big at clipping coupons to save our expenses. I don’t see why that should not be considered a part of helping our physical necessities. Managers are always looking at finding discounts for the things that they need for their business. In the home business, we too should look to coupons or other discounts that can help our bottom line. My wifes favorite was a $300 coupon she found for her crown she needed recently. That is $300 right back into our pocket. Seems like she is very good at helping our bottom line, and in fact, with my measly income, she is the one that manages to help us have enough to make ends meet at the end of the month. The fact remains that yes, primarily I am out of the home during the day to bring in income which is needed, but together we take care of the physical needs and wants of our life.
I find it funny that when we discuss this proclamation we infer or assume that nurturing children means cleaning, taking care of the house, and cooking up a fine meal. It doesn’t say anything about that. My guess that those household chores should be an equal responsibility for both spouses. Maybe not 50/50, but some weeks it could be 60/40 and other weeks 30/70. Too often the assumption is that the SAHM has time to take care of the home and might be argued that to nurture children that the cleaning and cooking must be done. However, it should noted that if the father is responsible for necessities of life that it might include ensuring that the home is clean and that not only is food provided but perhaps boughten and cooked as well. My Saturday was spent cleaning and organizing the pantry, doing the grocery shopping, taking care of my kids and my sister-in-laws kids during the RS meeting, cooking dinner for said kids, vacuming, doing the laundry, enjoying a football game (hey, there needs to be a little fun in life), and doing the dishes. I see it as my part of taking care of the family business and taking care of the necessities of life for my family. I play with my kids and discipline them, but no matter what I do, my wife has the upper hand at loving and teaching them.
But maybe I am wrong in my definition of nurturing. Maybe it does include the cooking and cleaning.
Hello Ryan, I’m Gary. I’ve found this discussion about gender roles in the Proclamation to be interesting and informative even though I strongly disagree with your claim that
Because of the length of my comment, I’ve posted it here so that those who don’t want to read the entire thing won’t have to scroll down past it.
Thanks, Mr. Gary. Illuminating.
Thanks for the quotes Gary. My conservative OX is not gored….
Gary, thank you for your thoughts. Your quotes were very good. I especially like the way the law of witnesses has been used here.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. If I’ve appeared to say that the Proclamation cancels out anything the prophets have said, I want to make it clear that that has not been my intention. I think the Proclamation is perfect harmony with everything we’ve heard from prophets for the last fifty years.
In other words, I do not personally think the Proclamation provides justification to women who wish to opt out of their primary caregiver responsibility. I do think it allows for more flexibility than many in the church think it does. For example, a woman who gets a two-hour job in the morning, or who takes work into the home on two days a week, or who finds any of a thousand other ways to help produce an income for her family without compromising her commitment to be the major source of nurturing her children receive.
In other words, I’m strongly in favor of a reading of the Proclamation that urges women to stay in the home. What I don’t think is necessary is the idea that women should not help their husbands in the male role of providing for the family. In the million documented instances in which it is possible for a woman to both give the large majority of care for her family and assist her husband in providing therefor, I don’t see anything in the Proclamation that speaks against that.
The Proclamation doesn’t tell anyone NOT to do anything (as the speaker I referred to in the post does). It says for men to x and for women to do y, and if a woman can do y well, and also get some of x done, there’s simply no prophet or proclamation that has ever denied her that.
By the way, thanks for speaking up here, because you’ve given me a chance to clarify my views, which I think have been similarly (and inoccently) misconstrued by many others here.
Perhaps I can reframe the conversation to show how closely I think most of us agree about the central topic of my post:
The Proclamation says a man should help a woman with her duty to care for the family, but that a woman SHOULD NOT help a man with his duty to provide for the family.
True or false?
Can’t we agree that that statement takes it too far?
I agree that the statement is false. It is equally false, however, that
We do not “take care of the exception first. We … take care of the rule first…. When you state a rule and include the exception in the same sentence, the exception is accepted first.” (Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, May 1998, 73).
And the rule set forth in the Proclamation is this: fathers provide, mothers nurture.
Gary, I have to say, nicely, that you’re beating up a straw man. Perhaps others on this thread have said the things you’re arguing against, but I haven’t.
It seems clear that you don’t disagree with the substance of what I’ve said. That makes me wonder if you’re arguing with me because you’re afraid that others will take my nuanced position as justification for their own abuses. That’s fine, I guess. But I wish people could accept a nuanced position for what it is, instead of forcing people to be all the way on one side or the other.
Source? Could be that you are confusing correlation with causation. It may be that families with higher incomes are more likely to have stay-at-home moms. It may be that as a man’s income increases, the pressure on the wife to work outside the home diminishes and so she stays home. So married men with high incomes have wives who stay at home but it does not necessarily follow that women who stay home help their husbands achieve higher incomes.
Ryan Bell,
Your original post was a little stronger than that
Your clarification has been welcomed.
Ryan in #52, you are probably correct. Before deciding to comment, I read carefully your article and all of the comments up to and including #31. I also read many of them out loud to my wife. After working on my comment #46, I saw nothing in #32-#45 to change my opinion that the discussion needed some input. I was responding to the group of comments as a whole. Let me say again that I’ve found this discussion about gender roles in the Proclamation to be interesting and informative. If I have misunderstood your own article and your personal comments, I apologize.
No apology needed. I’m sensitive because a few people have spoken to me as if I was the great defender of executive moms. You’ve been more than civil.
Adam, while the text you quote is certainly vague enough to support multiple interpretations, I don’t think it’s true that I stated anything more strongly than my recent restatements. But I do regret the ambiguity. I truly have never intended to say it’s great for women to toss the kids in daycare and work full-time (although we all know there are circumstances warranting just such a structure). When I said gainfully employed, I thought it would be clear from context that I meant that a woman could help out in many ways that don’t require derogation of her primary duty.
That’s my point– that there’s no negative phrasing here, in which prophets have told women DON’t help out financially. It’s that they need to fulfill their primary duty well, and if they can still put a little bread on the table through a creative arrangement that still allows them to care for the kids, then more power to them.
Check out this example of such a creative arrangement (from Mormon Mommy Wars).
exactly what I had in mind.
Actually, Ryan, re: #56, apologies are in order. After re-reading your article and comments, it appears I indeed was thrown off your trail by other comments. For example:
Elisabeth, #1, said: “A strict division of labor may be helpful for some couples, but this division of labor along gender lines is not required under the Proclamation…. I don’t like how the word ‘helping’ implies that it’s someone else’s responsibility.”
Elisabeth, #15, said: “The absence of ‘primarily’ from the husband’s responsibilities does not mean that the husband is the ONLY person responsible for the financial welfare of the family. That’s going too far…. I understand how one could construe this paragraph as placing the entire financial responsibility burden on the father, but I just don’t see how you can reconcile this view with the last sentence about the husband and the wife as ‘equal partners’ in performing their sacred duties.”
Elisabeth, #18, said: “The ‘ideal’ of the father as the sole breadwinner and the mother as the sole caretaker of the children is overly formulaic, and does not allow for developing the father’s nurturing skills and developing the mother’s breadwinning skills that may well increase the happiness and welfare of the family unit as a whole…. Some people reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements by focusing on the language of traditional gender roles. Others see the ‘equal partner’ language as encouragement for women and men to work together to protect and sustain the welfare of the family unit in arrangements that best suit the needs of their own family.”
Elisabeth, #20, said: “I’d like to go a bit further and say that the family should be looked at as a unit, with each individual contributing to the temporal and spiritual welfare of the family unit, so that their individual talents, abilities, and efforts are rewarded with the most ‘efficient’ allocation of resources and responsibilities.”
Elisabeth, #23, said: “The Proclamation is an important statement from our leaders, but ultimately, we are each responsible to make wise choices and serve our own family – whether we choose to take on the traditional gender roles or not.”
Elisabeth, #25, said: “I just don’t understand the tendency to lionize traditional gender roles.”
Ryan, I believe Elisabeth is clearly entitled to her own view of traditional gender roles, but I do not believe she is entitled to suggest that the Proclamation promotes, or even supports, that view. I appears that my lengthy response to this discussion should be taken as being more specifically directed at comments like those quoted above. And again, I apologize for misreading your own perspective.
Eric S.
I can’t cite a specific study. This is just my memory of a study that I heard about in a labor economics course I took as an undergraduate.
You make a good point about confusing correlation with causation. But if we assume that men married to stay at home moms tend to make more money than men with children whose wives work, the question becomes why that is so.
It has been my experience that men who have child care obligations do not do as well at work. Of course I am speaking in generalities here, but its logical that any man who must drop of his child at daycare every morning before coming into work, is not going able to get to work as early as a man who does not have that obligation. Likewise, if a child is sick and cannot go to school or daycare, and the father is therefore required to stay home with the child, that father is going to tend to be absent from work more than a man whose wife stays home.
Increased absenteeism and inability to work extra hours will likely affect how a man’s supervisor views his performance. There is a high premium on workers who can put “the job first.” Having a stay at home wife makes it easier for a man to put his job first, or at least be more available than a man with child care obligations.
Obviously, an unusually competent man can overcome these problems. But all things being equal, a man with children with a stay at home wife will likely have more physical and mental energy and time to devote to his job than a man with a working wife. That should translate into more income for that man over a lifetime.
I think its pretty hard to argue that a man with children whose wife works can devote as much time to his work as a husband with a stay at home wife.
Eric (#53) and Jason (#44 & #60), I have a question about confusing correlation with causation. Elder Richard G. Scott once said in general conference,
After reading 15 such examples, he continued,
I realize this isn’t what you’ve been talking about, but it is about stay-at-home-moms. My question is this: Do you think Elder Scott is also confusing correlation with causation? Do you think the correlation he found can be explained in some other way?
Gary,
I think Elder Scott is using the term correlation correctly. I can’t think of any other explanation for the correlation he found other than the explanation he gave.
**You in these unusual circumstances qualify for additional inspiration and strength from the Lord. Those who leave the home for lesser reasons will not.**
Does anyone have any insight it why monetary exigency is considered the ONLY valid reason for a mother to work outside the home? What about using one’s talents, sharing gifts that simply don’t get used as a SAHM? I’m never so utterly depressed as when I get the *Ensign* in the mail, what with its repeated hammering of the Proclamation which implies that my 8 years of graduate school should be thrown out in interest of something I had excellent skills for after just a BA. I’m not saying being a SAHM is easy, but it does require a different skill set than my “job job.” And I think God have me that other skill set for a reason.
Not trying to threadjack–just quite depressed about this discussion since I doubt the more flexible interpretations of the Proclamation really match up to prophetic council. My “lesser reason” of working in order to NOT go utterly crazy remains a necessary choice.
#63
Your comment reminds me of my student ward days. Our bishop invited a couple, who were not members of our ward, but who were active members of the church, to speak about the challenges discussed in your comment. The wife was a professional opera singer, and I guess she was good enough to support her family. The couple had two children and the husband stayed home to care for them. The couple discussed their children and how they put the children first. The husband admitted that his skills and his area of expertice (I can’t remember what he was educated in) were not as valuable to the “world” as his wife’s skills. I think he said something like “if my wife stayed home to take care of the kids, the world would lose out on a true tallent. If I stay home, it just not a big deal. My children need me more than the world does.” He went on to explain how difficult it was to come to that conclusion and how it challenged is ego and pride to finally admit it.
I think that one underlying principle of the Proclamation is that children are more important than professional accomplishment and self satisfaction that comes with working outside the home. Children therefore come before the vocations of either husband or wife.
It takes two things to raise children: 1)money and 2)direct care for the children. An underlying assumption of the Proclamation is that all things being equal, women are better suited for some eternal reason for the direct care and nurture of children. So in most cases men should earn the money, according to the Proclamation, and women should focus on the direct care. But both husband and wife should put their children first before their own needs and wants. The man’s motivation for earning money should be the same as the woman’s motivation for staying home with the kids–the support and well being of the family as a unit.
You can either agree or disagree with the Proclamation’s assumptions, but clearly, as demonstrated by the opera singer, the assumptions are not true in every case. There are probably exceptions to every rule and every commandment.