Today is one of the most significant and dreaded holidays on the Mormon liturgical calendar: Mother’s Day! Wheatmeister posted a poll about the best gift for Mother’s Day (but neglected to include women’s health care as an option). If anyone here doesn’t know what a Mormon Mothers Day service is like, read Steph’s experience or ...
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been out of Mormonism so long that I can hardly remember what it was like. Yet it’s in there — deep in the bowels of my brain — perhaps built into the foundation of my personality. Since my kids have gotten old enough to enjoy Legos (which I love!) — ...
A Dec 2011 APA study is making its way through the news suggesting that mothers who work part-time are happier and healthier than stay-at-homes and full-time mothers, and they make good parents. A good summary of the study can be found here. Regarding the “mommy wars” or the debate in white feminist circles between working ...
Recently, a reader wrote to Dan Savage with the following suggestion: I’ve decided to start saying “that’s Mormon” instead of “that’s gay” and encouraging my friends to do the same. It’s more accurate and plus it gives shit to a group of people who have extremely backward views about homosexuality. Dan replies: A Mormon kid ...
Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. There are so many things wrong with Bryan Caplan’s reasoning outlined in this article. I think the first and obvious is that ...
This now-infamous question (slightly paraphrased) posed by President Boyd K. Packer at this past October Conference will, I think, reverberate in the minds of many church members for years to come – and not just with respect to sexual orientation. I can’t help thinking that Elder Packer may for many members have, in a moment ...
In honor of this special day, Outer Blogness (and the Bloggernacle) are full of touching tributes to mothers and cute pictures of baby animals. And adventures in motherhood. (Also, let me plug my own mom’s cool history blog.) Naturally, this holiday leads us to reflect on Heavenly Mother, with some standard criticisms. On to women’s ...
Our revulsion at the cruelty of the Supreme Leader’s henchmen is a powerful refutation of the postmodernist credo that anything goes. After the enlightenment discredited the authority of tradition and religion, the notion that reason or civilization could provide an ersatz God has also collapsed. The efforts of analytical philosophy could neither remove the ambiguity ...
A real one this time!! (It’s not just me pretending to be a primatologist, as in my primatologist looks at the mathematical community post.) I was reading along in the book Parenting for Primates (which I discussed here and here), and I found that the author (Harriet J. Smith) devoted four full pages to the ...
For myheadhurts and Everyone Else Who Is Looking for Meaning Beyond the Confines of Fundamentalism Celebrating the resilience of children despite parental pathologies, Wir Sind Helden has recorded another song that asserts humanity while facing life’s nastiness. Kaputt‘s credo is reminiscent of a John Irving novel. Although parents are dented, broken, and borderline insane, the ...
My brother-in-law is now an ex-mo, but his mother (my mother-in-law) won’t stop pestering him about returning to Mormonism (he’s only been openly out for about 6 months now; he was in the closet for about 6 months before that). He called her yesterday for Mother’s Day and asked her what she wanted. She said, ...
Carolyn Jessop puts the protest of FLDS mothers into perspective: I had eight children in 15 years, but I did not know what a miracle it is to be a mother. I had no way of knowing the deep gladness mothering gives. I didn’t know because in the FLDS, great emphasis is put on breaking ...
OK, I know I probably shouldn’t be posting my own personal complaint about the talk that has already been deconstructed all over the Bloggernacle. But all this debate over career vs. getting your whites whiter than white seems to have missed what (to me) was the most disturbing thing in the entire talk. Views: 1624 ...
On occasion of ECS’s post on Feminist Mormon Housewives about the benefits of home economics, I remembered how my father had taught my brother and me how to maintain our wardrobes. My father was a career soldier. Of course, every soldier has to be able to maintain his gear in the field and to appear ...
A friend mentioned to me recently that he is no longer cruising since he can admit to himself that he is gay. I am sharing that because my friend’s case illustrates the benefits of a rational and open approach to sexuality. Views: 892 ...