BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Mormons

My mom just called to tell me about this book she read about in the Chicago Tribune, but I can't find the article online.

A woman who had been married to a polygamist in the Mormon faith decided to write her memoirs for her grandchildren. Now, I have nothing against the Mormon faith, and quite frankly, I don't know all that much about it. So I'm not making any judgments on a religion here.

My mom said, "guess how many grandchildren she has?" Being glib, I replied, "42." Nope, my mom said, "120. She has 13 children. Her husband has 58 children."

This disgusts me. Not because of polygamy or whatever, but why on earth do you need that many children? I just can't believe it. What quality of life do those children have? And they must each be having 9 kids for one woman to end up with 120 grandchildren.

If anyone runs across this book, let me know.

This is wrong on so many levels. Wrong wrong wrong.

I was told that the more children a woman has, the better her standing in their religion, I assume in the church as well as in heaven.

I used to work in an insurance company where we managed an insurance that only served Utah. Some of the sickest and saddest stories I heard came from that population, meth amphetamine, incest in families where there were so many children there wasn't enough parental supervision, then of course old fashioned child molestation, alcoholism then of course the strangest thing I ever heard was the guy who took collected dirty diapers from the trash and wore them to work. He worked in a childrens school.

We of course had the psychiatrist who was a drug addict who tried to kill himself by getting high and crashing his motorcycle. He was on the ward of a major hospital in Salt Lake at the same time he had patients there.

The company I worked for did studies and the level of disfunction in this Utah population was higher then even the population in South Florida we managed that was a Medicare population. That was a significant finding because of what the Medicare population is made up of, its not only Elderly people but people who are permanently disabled such as schizophrenics etc.

Keep in mind that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS (Mormons) no longer believes in plural marriage. However when I dealt with this population I found out that this insurance company actually covered the extra wives AND all the children. Even in the families where there was only one wife, there would often be 10 or more children in the family. I used to have to scroll to see all the children. There were times when the Husband would have 5-6 kids from his first marriage insured, the wife would have children from her first marriage and then they would have kids together. Often these kids would have primary, secondary and even at times thirciary coverage through the same insurance company. I don't know how they stayed in business frankly.

I found that part of my job very hard to deal with.

My in laws are Mormon, so I understand the whole HUGE family thing. Thank God dh doesn't want kids. I couldn't deal with that many.

The LDS church doesn't believe in plural marriages anymore. The RLDS still does though. The RLDS is the reorganized Latter Day Saints church and they still do plural marriages.

My in-laws are LDS. My husband was raised LDS and I was LDS for a short time in my life. Both my husband and I have left the church. For women the only purpose in life is to be a wife and mother. It says so in the "Proclamation of a family". I'm more than a brood mare....that's why I left the church.

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WOW!!!! I am the youngest of 82 grandkids and my grand mother had 14 kids 12 lived to be grown and only 8 of them had kids. I am an only child...my mom was the youngest in the family and half of them were grown and had kids by the time she came along. we are not lds but back then the more kids you had the best off you were because it was free labor....and the more boys the better and girls were married off quick so there husbands would work the farm and the girl could have more sons....

my grand mother would have been 107 this year and my grand father would have been 129 so....

Wow, the youngest of 82! My coworker's mom was one of 16 kids, and most of her brothers and sisters only had one or two because they didn't like being part of such a big family. My grandma was one of 9 on a farm, and it makes me wonder how many kids my grandma's siblings had (she was the youngest and moved to a different state so we never saw that family.)

I can understand that there was a need in that generation for lots of kids to work the farm. I think this woman with the book was only in her late fifties (yes, and with those grandchildren, too.)

Also, she and her sister had the same husband.

Surely it's about building up the power base of the religion...more power in numbers.
What a nightmare to be constantly pregnant...
Once the kids hit 5 or so it's hard for the parents to give each child individual attention - when you get to double digits you have to wonder whether it's still a family - I think you'd feel like you were one of a crowd.
I remember reading about the other side of this lifestyle some years ago - when women hit their 40s many continue to conceive but miscarry so sadly, many of these women end up in poor health having miscarriage after miscarriage. How could you put anyone you supposedly love through that sort of emotional and physical ordeal?
I sometimes wonder if the men in positions of power in these religions could get pregnant whether they would still feel the same way about reproduction and birth control - I think not!

Typically belief systems that believe this way are also patriarchal in nature AND what better way to keep control of your women then to have them pregnant all the time.

Look at the Catholic church and their stance on no birth control. While at the same time, you see no women filling the same shoes as men do in the church. YES they have Nuns but they are not in charge of anything. Cardinals, Monsignors, Archbishops, bishops AND yes the Pope are all men.

All of my dads side of the family is mormon (other than my dad..he was the rebel). And I am now living out in Idaho..where LDS is the predominant religion. From what I have gleaned over my life living in Idaho and having family that is LDS is that they really do believe that without the mass producing of offspring..their relgion will die off. And its true..more and more of these children are choosing other religions that are less restrictive. This is also a religion that was persecuted from one side of the country to the other in their founding days..then they settled on a barren desert that surounded undrinkable water (to me it seems like they picked the worst spot so they could be left alone). The belief in having to procreate their own religious continuance use to make sense..but it really is a bit "aged" in our current society.

Anyways I have discovered that trying to be CF surrounded by a society that believes mass producing children is the only goal of life is a bit disturbing. I feel more sorry for my wife..being around women who seem to think they are only their as brood mares doesn't take well with her..


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