This is such a great conversation. I really loved your observations about why tradwife content is so appealing -- there is no "having it all" and lots of commentary about the ways that balancing paid work and having kids is totally under-supported by our systems.
more seriously, though—a super fascinating look at the culture of motherhood within Mormonism. I had a friend (frenemy?) in grad school who was doing a dissertation on motherhood and writing, and she started out interviewing a community of Mormon mothers—and ended up converting!!!
This actually makes sense to me! Mothers can find community in churches like this that’s really hard to find in our culture. When I was growing up it felt like we had a village.
As someone who left the Mormon church while in grad school in my 20s, I am fascinated (and a little mystified) by people who have the opposite trajectory.
Having been raised Catholic, I feel the same about people who convert and/or choose to raise their kids in the church. Like, you know you don't have to, right? (In my specific case, the church was a source of community and meaning especially when I was a teenager, but I just can't reconcile that with all the broader abuses and evils and just regular sidelining of women etc etc etc.)
It is so wild and so healing to see the Mormon woman experience talked about in this way. Up until very recently I was a very devout Mormon influencer with my own temple dress company. There are so many good Mormon women trying to navigate being true to their faith while also addressing the very clear issues it has all while trying to sort out what are their own thoughts vs those they have been conditioned to think.
Hi Rosie! Thx so much and this really means a lot coming from you. I really tried to represent the full experience as much as I could. I know your content and I know you try to do the same! ❤️
Really really interesting. I knew very little about Mormon culture until I was in grad school. I knew a woman in grad school who was a Morman. I didn't realize though until I had attended a few events she hosted (she tried to get me to attend her church, I did not). Anyway, won an NSF fellowship in engineering (almost impossible to get), very smart. Got married exactly 1 year after starting grad school to another grad student she had met through her church, starting having kids during grad school. Fortunately, she graduated but now is a stay at home mom.
Former Mormon here. Why oh why do these women get away with not dressing modestly? Where do the garments go under the gowns? Perhaps I’ve been out too long to understand shifting cultural norms. But when I was in the women who dared wear a sleeveless shirt on a sweltering day didn’t get prime callings.
I long for bigger table feminism, I do, even in spite of my misgivings about the movement's claim of inclusion. but it seems like it's not possible in this current climate and much of the style of some writing regarding trad wives doesn't help.
I'm a a stay at home mom with four children (and newly expecting a 5th), Black Biracial and living in the midwest. I have always wanted to be a wife and mom, spending my twenties as a photographer and nanny. A year ago apartment therapy did a piece on the historic house my family and I are making a home. It was an exciting and fun opportunity for me, as someone who has always loved interior design. Within minutes people (mostly women, almost all people who gave away their political beliefs) started writing frankly very mean and hurtful comments, not about our house or the tour, but instead calling me a trad wife. I was so insulted and deeply hurt.
In 2017 I marched for Philando Castile, the man who was shot and killed minutes from my then apartment in St. Paul. I'd had the courage to forgo working at a corporate job and did nannying and photography instead. I wasn't even married until I was 32. After Trump was elected in 2016 I went to DC with my mom and attended the women's march. Surely, we all contain multitudes.
To be reduced to an insult like "trad wife," because I like being a mom, or decor, or marriage-- it just really hurt. I don't feel like feminism embraces or even cares to get to know people who don't tow a line. I don't know the perfect way forward, but I don't think this way is it.
Very well written I feel so seen by the part of the piece that says we feel frustration with patriarchy and liberal feminism and isolated. (Although I do consider myself quite liberal at least for a Mormon and also a feminist) I’m a 40 yo SAHM of 5….its hard to feel like there is a real place for me in either world. I attempt to send “bat signals” to likeminded friends and that helps but it’s not enough.
Thank you for mentioning those of us who have been unable to have children (for a wide variety of reasons), and how extremely painful this can be in a pronatalist culture. Mormonism is a hyper-pronatalist culture, of course, but our culture generally is very focused on motherhood (if only in a rhetorical/lip-service kind of way...!). (Reading Laura Carroll's book "The Baby Matrix" was a real eye-opener for me... once you learn about pronatalism and what it is, you see it EVERYWHERE.) Those of us who aren't able to be mothers (or don't want to be) are often ignored, penalized and sometimes downright villified in popular culture, politics and elsewhere -- e.g., snarky comments about "childless cat ladies." I find the whole momfluencer thing (and blogs like yours and Sara's) fascinating -- but I do often wish the coverage would go one step further and consider the impacts this glorification of motherhood has on those of us who are not mothers.
I would recommend looking up the work of Jody Day (Gateway Women) and Katy Seppi (Childless Collective), who have both written and spoken about pronatalism from a childless-not-by-choice angle. (Katy is also ex-Mormon!)
Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing, Lori. I have written a few times about my experience of being a woman without kids (I had a child at 40) and it can't really be emphasized how much women without kids are sidelined everywhere, all the time. So thank you for this. And thank you for these good recs!
This is such a great conversation. I really loved your observations about why tradwife content is so appealing -- there is no "having it all" and lots of commentary about the ways that balancing paid work and having kids is totally under-supported by our systems.
I really just can't get over baby #11! at 46!! I'm 42 and I'm tempted to take to my bed just thinking about another baby.
As someone who was pregnant in her 40’s, I agree with you 😅
you did it! though maybe not 11 times! 😅😅😅
ONE time! 😅😅
more seriously, though—a super fascinating look at the culture of motherhood within Mormonism. I had a friend (frenemy?) in grad school who was doing a dissertation on motherhood and writing, and she started out interviewing a community of Mormon mothers—and ended up converting!!!
This actually makes sense to me! Mothers can find community in churches like this that’s really hard to find in our culture. When I was growing up it felt like we had a village.
As someone who left the Mormon church while in grad school in my 20s, I am fascinated (and a little mystified) by people who have the opposite trajectory.
Having been raised Catholic, I feel the same about people who convert and/or choose to raise their kids in the church. Like, you know you don't have to, right? (In my specific case, the church was a source of community and meaning especially when I was a teenager, but I just can't reconcile that with all the broader abuses and evils and just regular sidelining of women etc etc etc.)
It is so wild and so healing to see the Mormon woman experience talked about in this way. Up until very recently I was a very devout Mormon influencer with my own temple dress company. There are so many good Mormon women trying to navigate being true to their faith while also addressing the very clear issues it has all while trying to sort out what are their own thoughts vs those they have been conditioned to think.
Hi Rosie! Thx so much and this really means a lot coming from you. I really tried to represent the full experience as much as I could. I know your content and I know you try to do the same! ❤️
Really really interesting. I knew very little about Mormon culture until I was in grad school. I knew a woman in grad school who was a Morman. I didn't realize though until I had attended a few events she hosted (she tried to get me to attend her church, I did not). Anyway, won an NSF fellowship in engineering (almost impossible to get), very smart. Got married exactly 1 year after starting grad school to another grad student she had met through her church, starting having kids during grad school. Fortunately, she graduated but now is a stay at home mom.
I definitely know women who have taken this path, and ones that have had full careers. But the push toward marriage and family is INTENSE.
Former Mormon here. Why oh why do these women get away with not dressing modestly? Where do the garments go under the gowns? Perhaps I’ve been out too long to understand shifting cultural norms. But when I was in the women who dared wear a sleeveless shirt on a sweltering day didn’t get prime callings.
I long for bigger table feminism, I do, even in spite of my misgivings about the movement's claim of inclusion. but it seems like it's not possible in this current climate and much of the style of some writing regarding trad wives doesn't help.
I'm a a stay at home mom with four children (and newly expecting a 5th), Black Biracial and living in the midwest. I have always wanted to be a wife and mom, spending my twenties as a photographer and nanny. A year ago apartment therapy did a piece on the historic house my family and I are making a home. It was an exciting and fun opportunity for me, as someone who has always loved interior design. Within minutes people (mostly women, almost all people who gave away their political beliefs) started writing frankly very mean and hurtful comments, not about our house or the tour, but instead calling me a trad wife. I was so insulted and deeply hurt.
In 2017 I marched for Philando Castile, the man who was shot and killed minutes from my then apartment in St. Paul. I'd had the courage to forgo working at a corporate job and did nannying and photography instead. I wasn't even married until I was 32. After Trump was elected in 2016 I went to DC with my mom and attended the women's march. Surely, we all contain multitudes.
To be reduced to an insult like "trad wife," because I like being a mom, or decor, or marriage-- it just really hurt. I don't feel like feminism embraces or even cares to get to know people who don't tow a line. I don't know the perfect way forward, but I don't think this way is it.
Very well written I feel so seen by the part of the piece that says we feel frustration with patriarchy and liberal feminism and isolated. (Although I do consider myself quite liberal at least for a Mormon and also a feminist) I’m a 40 yo SAHM of 5….its hard to feel like there is a real place for me in either world. I attempt to send “bat signals” to likeminded friends and that helps but it’s not enough.
Thank you for mentioning those of us who have been unable to have children (for a wide variety of reasons), and how extremely painful this can be in a pronatalist culture. Mormonism is a hyper-pronatalist culture, of course, but our culture generally is very focused on motherhood (if only in a rhetorical/lip-service kind of way...!). (Reading Laura Carroll's book "The Baby Matrix" was a real eye-opener for me... once you learn about pronatalism and what it is, you see it EVERYWHERE.) Those of us who aren't able to be mothers (or don't want to be) are often ignored, penalized and sometimes downright villified in popular culture, politics and elsewhere -- e.g., snarky comments about "childless cat ladies." I find the whole momfluencer thing (and blogs like yours and Sara's) fascinating -- but I do often wish the coverage would go one step further and consider the impacts this glorification of motherhood has on those of us who are not mothers.
I would recommend looking up the work of Jody Day (Gateway Women) and Katy Seppi (Childless Collective), who have both written and spoken about pronatalism from a childless-not-by-choice angle. (Katy is also ex-Mormon!)
Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing, Lori. I have written a few times about my experience of being a woman without kids (I had a child at 40) and it can't really be emphasized how much women without kids are sidelined everywhere, all the time. So thank you for this. And thank you for these good recs!