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What is the impact of polygamy on children? In the past decades the critical role of fathers and the destructive impacts of fatherlessness have been studied in depth. What can this teach us about polygamy and its ongoing consequences? How is it still affecting us today?

Links

President Nelson first press conference question about women
Polygamy Interview Series (These interviews are all worth watching. This one in particular demonstrates the effects of polygamous fatherlessness)

Summary

In this episode, Michelle Stone explores the long-term psychological and social effects of growing up in polygamous families, particularly focusing on fatherlessness. She examines how the structure of polygamous households inherently limits paternal involvement, leading to a cycle of emotional detachment, identity struggles, and generational trauma.

Key Themes:

  1. The Impact of Fatherlessness in Polygamous Families
    • Many polygamous children grow up with limited father interaction, as fathers often struggle to divide their time among multiple families.
    • Some polygamist fathers reportedly forget their children’s names due to the sheer number of offspring, causing emotional detachment and insecurity.
    • The episode highlights scientific studies that reveal the importance of father involvement in building self-esteem, emotional resilience, and healthy social relationships.
  2. Comparison Between Monogamy and Polygamy in Parenting
    • Stone argues that monogamous fathers are better positioned to provide consistent emotional support and structure.
    • Polygamous families tend to have competitive dynamics among wives and children, reducing paternal bonding.
    • A psychologist specializing in polygamous families identified three factors necessary for successful polygamous households:
      1. Wives must be close friends.
      2. The husband must not show favoritism.
      3. The family must be financially stable.
    • The host critiques how few polygamous families meet these standards, leading to higher levels of neglect and dysfunction.
  3. The Psychological Toll on Children
    • The lack of fatherly attention can erode a child’s confidence, making them more vulnerable to manipulation and control in adulthood.
    • Girls in polygamous families often struggle with self-worth issues and are statistically more likely to become teen mothers.
    • Boys from polygamous households frequently experience identity crises and behavioral issues, with many being exiled from their communities.
  4. Historical & Modern Examples of Polygamous Fatherlessness
    • Stone reviews historical cases of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and John Taylor, all of whom had dozens of wives and children.
    • Many of their children struggled with neglect, reinforcing the generational cycle of emotional detachment.
    • She also references modern polygamous groups (e.g., FLDS under Warren Jeffs) to illustrate the continued pattern of neglect and control.
  5. Fatherhood and Spiritual Development
    • Stone suggests that a father’s role is deeply intertwined with a child’s ability to understand and receive divine love.
    • The absence of a strong father figure in polygamous settings may contribute to a cultural misunderstanding of grace and works within Mormonism.
    • The Book of Mormon (Jacob 2:35) condemns polygamy for “breaking the hearts of wives and losing the confidence of children”, which she argues directly correlates with modern psychological research.
  6. Conclusion: Breaking the Cycle
    • Stone encourages listeners to re-examine traditional LDS teachings on polygamy and its impact on family structures.
    • She urges current and former LDS members to prioritize healthy, involved fatherhood and seek personal spiritual validation rather than institutional validation.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. I always recommend listening to these episodes in order, starting from the beginning and continuing on. They are meant to um build on. Each other and they each cover different important topics. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 21, where we’ll look at some of the potential effects of growing up in polygamy and how harmful cycles can be perpetuated and still affect us today. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. I’m really excited about this episode, and I admit pretty surprised. This is not an episode I expected to do because these are brand new ideas that I have been thinking about this week. So I pushed back the other episodes to fit this one in here because these ideas have kind of blown my mind. So I’m hoping that they will be um insightful to you as well. First, I need, ah, see. I’m a crier these days. I need to thank my patrons and, um, donors, those who have donated to this podcast. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. It is, um, so encouraging and also I’m almost to where I can get a house help on an ongoing basis and, um, that will be magical. So thank you. So I need to thank Carrie and Terry and Cher. Early and Jan, and then my ongoing patrons, Kara, Tara, Rachel, Adam, and Nicole. And then I’ve also had some who have made one-time donations over Venmo and um Melissa, thank you and also Paul and Deborah, thank you. Your generosity is amazing and beautiful and so meaningful and helpful to me. So thank you, everyone that would like to the Patreon link is below if you um prefer Venmo, if you want to shoot me a Facebook message. I’m not really on anything else. Um, I will go ahead and give that to you. And so I just sincerely want to thank you. For the help and the encouragement and the love. It means a lot. So, OK, so now back to the topic. So, last Sunday, um, my husband and I went to a fireside. My steak is putting on, it’s actually, they’ve invited two other steaks. So it’s tri steak firesides that are called Seeking Truth devotionals, I believe. And they are covering, I’m actually thrilled that my steak is doing it. I think it’s wonderful. They are covering. Sort of the hard topics um that that people are discovering and that people are that are causing cracks in people’s um sandy foundations, I guess you can’t, that are shaking up people’s sandy foundations, shall we say, and um, which I don’t mean that too. I mean, they are shaking up people’s foundations, I think because people’s people have been taught to have their foundations founded on the sand. So anyway, So I was talking, um, we, we went to the fireside. It was,

[00:03:05] I will confess, a bit frustrating because when you have really invested a lot in understanding the scriptures and studying the history, when you go here an apologist that gives a very limited version and uh, you know, it could just be like. Um, it could be hard, but, um, but I really appreciated that she was willing to do the fireside. Maybe we’ll, maybe we’ll address that at a later point in some of the ways that we talk about polygamy, um, that I find not very helpful. But anyway, um, but on the upside, I met some new friends there, some people that were not in our. came to the fireside and we were able to connect up and actually they came to our house and we just had a long, long discussion. We talked all night and I’m so excited to have made some new, new wonderful friends. And so Whitney talking about you and Vern, and I’m excited to have um Whitney on a future episode. And so, um, anyway, while we were talking, I, um, they were sharing some stories of, we were kind of discussing many, many things, but in the moment we were talking about sort of The culture in many polygamist families, they were sharing some experiences that people had had of going um to visit with um some, you know, well-known polygamist leaders, and they were surrounded by their dozens of children, maybe one on each knee, and introducing their children and And couldn’t remember some of their children’s names, right? Had to ask what was your name? and and it just like kind of struck me how. Like how formative that would be for a child, right? And um and I have studied so much about the importance of fathers, well, mothers, and, but right now I’m talking about fathers. The importance of fathers is something that has been talked about quite a bit, has been studied a ton, especially in this new century. We have a lot of information about it and I couldn’t help but start making some connections that felt Deeply insightful, like they felt profound to me, this new thought process. And then of course as soon as I had thought about it, I started to think, oh, that’s everybody knows that. That’s not cause that’s what my brain does. But I still think that’s just what my brain does, and I think that these are um important insights. So they’re brand new to me, so they’re not, you know, as nailed down as I wish they could be, but I’m going to share them and I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Um, I’m not. A psychologist, I have just read a lot, right, and studied a lot. So I’m going to share my thoughts and my research and um and talk about

[00:05:40] these important topics, and then, you know, as as I’ve thought about it more and more and realized the way it still affects us, it became more and more profound to me. So I’m hoping that you find this topic interesting. So first of all, I think it is not a mystery that it can be very difficult for polygamist fathers to interact with their children and be involved in their lives the same way that monogamist fathers can, right? Um, they are. At at best sharing time between different homes or, you know, sometimes they live in the same home, but with the numbers of children and the different loyalties, sometimes they don’t know their children’s names, right? And um and so I want to talk about kind of, I think that I think that polygamists would very much push back on the ideas on this episode cause they’re saying, no, my children have a father, right? I am a father to my children. And I want to clarify the difference between the idea of a father and the daily interaction of a father because that’s where, um, that’s what the research shows is really important. It’s not just having a father in name that you look up to and know as your father, almost like, almost in a similar way to a heavenly father, you know, it’s a father that gets down and wrestles on the ground with you. And I also, before we get too far into this, I need to acknowledge very much that These the ideas shared here can be things that can be hard for people to hear, especially if they are struggling, you know, against not having, I mean, like a single mom or a divorced dad who doesn’t have as much access to his kids as he would like to, like, I really want to acknowledge that what I’m talking about here is sort of the idea, the ideal and the research. And I think that conscientious parents can do a lot to counteract the effects. I know that my sister, when she was divorced, she felt incredibly blessed to be able to have a father figure, a strong father figure in her son’s life, and um. And so I think, you know, we do the best we can, right? None of us are perfect and believe me, we’re all stumbling through this the best we can. So please, please don’t take any of this information personally or, you know, hard. I think that the Lord knows our circumstances, knows our hearts and desires, and none of us has a perfect scenario for our children to grow up in, cause that’s not the world, right? So we are just talking about the best and the best that we can do and and um and you know, and even having fathers involved, no father is perfect, right? Just like no mother is perfect. So anyway, we’re going to go on with this topic. I just want you to know I see you, I understand and um I want to protect your hearts. So, OK. So um with polygamous fathers, my understanding, and I know it can vary, we’re gonna talk about that.

[00:08:30] It can vary from family to family with family culture, I think. The bigger a polygamist family is, the more pronounced these problems can be. Um, and, and I also, I also with the previous things I was saying, I want to acknowledge that these are statistics, percentages, um, like greater risks, right? So if, if your mother has breast cancer, you’re at a greater risk for breast cancer, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get breast cancer. Right? So if you are raising children in circumstances that you deem to be less than ideal, it does not mean your children are going to suffer from these things. It just means they’re at increased risks, so it’s something to be aware of. And statistically, these are what the statistics are, and this is what the, um, the science shows. OK. So hopefully that all make sense. So anyway, we are going to, um, let’s see. OK, so we’re going to talk about this and go forward in preparing for this. I, I watched as much as I could of different episodes of um polygamist Families. I will confess I have, I’ve never gotten very into Sister Wives. I never watched Big Love, like some of the bigger shows, but there were series of Shows done with different polygamist families and different groups, and I haven’t been able to find those again. I don’t know if they’ve been pulled off, but I have been watching as much as I can for many, many years. So I’m not going to be able to share the links below. This is just years and years of study and investment, and I can’t find everything again. So I’m just sharing my experience, my impressions from interacting with polygamist families and also from what I have been able to watch and see. I wish I could remember the great show that was done by Oh, I can’t remember what group they were. They, they wore long sleeves, normal clothes, but long sleeves, they drink alcohol. The girls choose their husband. It was a beautiful show about a man and the two women that had. Married him. Anyway, if I could remember the name of that show, I would tell you. So if anyone knows what I’m talking about, it was just on YouTube that they put their episodes. If anyone remembers what that is, please tell me. That’s one of many different things that I have watched. So that’s where I’m sharing information from and also the reports that I’ve had when you listen to people who have less left polygamous families and you know, there’s a lot of available information if you’re looking for it. So, um. OK, so I did one of the things I watched was um some clips from um Sister Wives, which, wow, that’s a really real, like what’s happening to those families really real, right? And um and that’s that’s a good example if you want to see examples of fatherlessness, right? Um, but there was an episode where they had a doctor who worked,

[00:11:04] I think he was a psychologist or a marriage therapist, and he worked specifically with, um, polygamist families, and he said there were 3 necessities for polygamist families to do well, and I can only remember 2 of them right now, so someone’s gonna have to remind me of the 3rd. I know that one, the second one, I think, was that the father didn’t show favoritism between the wives that he can. Oh, the first one was that the wives are friends. The second one was that the husband never showed favoritism between the wives. And, um, the third one was that they were financially well off. And I think that that is very true because, um, the examples we Usually the the shows are made about people who are financially very well off, which I think is not the majority of families in general, and not the majority of polygamous families. And so all of the problems of fatherlessness, I want to like address the fact that they are all exacerbated when there is not. Prosperity when there is not like pretty great prosperity where there’s plenty for everyone, because in addition to having to sort of compete for the scarce resource of a father’s time and attention and affection, you’re also having to compete for scary scarce resources of even maintaining life and well-being. So, um, so I can think that we can look at our history and know that these effects we’re talking about were even more pronounced when people were literally in massive poverty like we cannot comprehend when people were starving to death, um, in the Utah frontier, right? And so, OK. Um, let’s see, I just wanted to, so, so when we’re talking about fatherlessness, for those who are going to say no, polygamist fathers are involved and, you know, I like, I don’t know every polygamist family, and I think the more involved that they are, the better that’s awesome. I really do have so much respect for a lot of these people. Um, who, who try so hard. Um, so, but, but I want to talk about historically at our, at our history, so Brigham Young had, it is reported, we don’t know the exact numbers because um we just don’t, but he had 56 wives and between 56 and 61 children. The children were born by 16 of his wives. He Here C. Kimball had 45 wives, 66 children by 17 of his wives, um. I, I have read stories. His, his wives and children had a particularly hard time. I know 1716 or 17 of his wives divorced him, and those children were very, very much suffering from fatherlessness. I, I would argue that all of these children are. John Taylor had at least 7 wives and 34 children. John W. Taylor had 6 wives and 36 children. Wilfred Woodruff, 10 wives, 34 children. Lorenzo Snow, 9 wives and 42 children, Joseph F.

[00:13:53] Smith, 6 wives and 45 children. We could go on. I’m not including John W. Taylor and yeah, you know, just we have like we could go through all the lists of all of the apostles and then the break off sets, which I know that the The Salt Lake based um LDS Church considers them not living our true religion, but they very much consider themselves living our true religion, and in many ways they have the better claim because they’re they’re following in the footsteps of our leaders, our leaders seem much more foreign to us than they do to them. So I think that it is fair to look at the modern day examples for comparisons to see. What the culture might have been like. And so, um, I think actually, I think actually in some of the modern day polygamists that I have seen, I think do it much better than our than the early Utah polygamists, like they’ve learned a lot of things to make it less destructive, less hurtful. I think some of the modern polygamists are worse than the early founders were, especially depending on who the leader is and what the leader does. So, so, um. Anyway, so that, so we can look at the the stories either way. But um, OK, so this is where I want to go with this though. I, I wanted to bring that up just to kind of paint a picture of what fatherhood might look like in polygamous families, and I realized this when I had this epiphany, we don’t talk about the effect of polygamy on children. As much, at least I don’t, I haven’t thought about it as much as about as the effects on women, and um we usually do focus on the women, and I think that that is a mistake. I’m starting to realize that’s actually a really big mistake. So, I reread, um, Jacob 2 in this context, and this verse just that this verse came to mind, and I went back and reread it, and it’s Jacob 2:35. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives and lost the confidence of your children because of your bad examples before them, and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the Word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds. Reading it, I first of all realized that the sobbing hearts apply to the children as well as the wives. It’s talking about both the wives and the children with with all that follows the pain and suffering and brokenheartedness applies to the children, but Something, um, well, along with that, I realized that one I think that one of the hardest things in polygamy that I was so naive about is the utter and complete powerlessness of the women, right? They, they can’t, they can’t at all be equally yoked. They can’t work things out because their husband isn’t. Equally motivated to work things out with them. So really their only tool is to keep sweet, that toxic phrase, which means bury your emotions.

[00:16:58] And smile and feel nothing and express nothing and have no opinions. Just keep sweet. That is just demonic, the more that you think of it. So but I realized that as powerless as the wives are, the children are even more powerless is that they’re less powerful, but they’re, it’s it’s a powerlessness and they’re even lower. They have No way to. Get their father’s attention or love or to request something from the father. They are really, really powerless and um that was, that was hard to realize, but the more important thing that really fascinated me is that reading this verse in this context, thinking about children and knowing what, knowing the effects of fatherlessness, which is what we’re going to talk about. And I want to express, fatherlessness does not just mean a completely absent father, it just means not enough of a father, a lack of fathering. There’s not enough fathering in the child’s life, right? And some, some people live in homes in monogamous homes where they experience some level of fatherlessness, right? And I know that there are lots of children growing up in divorced homes where they, their father is involved, but they still can struggle with fatherlessness, right? Especially we’re going to talk about some of those things. So, um, so just I it’s not a black and white. I have a father or I don’t. It’s, it’s a spectrum just like everything is a spectrum, right? And so, um. But anyway, when I reread this and I where it says you have lost the confidence of your children, I used to interpret that to mean That the children’s confidence in their fathers was what was destroyed, right? Like the, the, the lost confidence was the children thinking well of their fathers, but reading at this time, I, I mean, that might be part of it, but reading at this time, I think that there is a much deeper and more destructive thing that this scripture is teaching us, and I think that By practicing polygamy, fathers risk causing their children to lose confidence in themselves, because that is at the heart of what fatherlessness does. So when you have lost the confidence of your children, it means you have caused your children to lose their confidence, and it’s your fault. You know, like it’s polygamy’s fault because Jacob is saying, because you are following these evil practices and Misinterpreting what the scriptures say, you are doing this to your children. And that hit me really hard. So, um, that’s what I want to look into and that’s what I want to talk about. So, um, first of all, I just need to, this came up in this, um, fireside this week, and this is one of, I, I have a lot of least favorite arguments or apolo apologetic arguments,

[00:19:51] but one of my least favorite. is when people say, well, monogamy is not perfect. Like I’ve just encountered this and, you know, when I used to discuss polygamy a lot, I would just encounter it all the time when people would point out, well, it’s not like monogamous families are perfect and, you know, and it’s uh it’s so frustrating to me. I also encounter it in different areas I’ve talked about like. Like when people say, well, some women are taller than some men, it’s like, yes, I’m almost 5’10. I am taller than some, some men. The question is, Are tall women taller than tall men? No, right? We’re looking at like, so while that I am certain that there are some polygamous families that do better than some monogamous families, the question is what what are the percentages, what are the likelihoods? How do, how do strong um monogamous families compare to strong polygamous families and how do Um, struggling polygamous families compared to struggling monogamous families, and what are the percentages and what are, right, let’s look at it at a holi as a holistic picture rather than comparing the best of polygamy to the worst of monogamy and therefore saying, see, polygamy is fine, that is so. Dishonest and just not smart. It’s, I mean, it’s the same as saying, well, let’s compare tall women to short men, and then make the claim that women are taller than men or women can be as tall, uh, can, can be taller or like that it doesn’t matter. There’s no difference in the height of men and women. So I, I just want to set that argument aside and just kind of, OK, we’re done with that one because we need to be smarter than that and more intellectually honest than that. And that is really disappointing to me. So if anyone is inclined to bring up that argument. There you go. I already, I already told you my thoughts about it, so please don’t say, well, some monogamous families like, nope, not worthwhile. So anyway, OK. And I think that we, so, so anyway, yes, some monogamous families can monogamous families can struggle with the effects of fatherlessness. Is it more likely in polygamists or monogamous families? So we are going to talk now about some of the effects of fatherlessness, and I spent a lot of time. I wish that I had unlimited time so that I could have done basically a research paper with all of the links linking to all of the studies, and but that’s not what I did. What I did do was just spend a lot of time. Um, reading and gathering quotes that I’m just going to share the quotes. All of these, I did check that, you know, I’ve looked at the studies,

[00:22:19] but I’m not looking to them, and I didn’t read more than the abstracts of the studies, but still, that gets you quite a bit. And then what I’m quoting is not the studies, it’s the doctors and psychologists and other people talking about the studies, if that makes sense, giving presentations on fatherhood. So that’s on the of fatherhood. So that’s what I’m going to share. So here are just some quotes. Um, studies of children who grow up with absent fathers to, to varying degrees, like father absence to varying degrees, they consistently show, and here are some of the things. Both sons and daughters are desperate for the love and the approval of their father. It is from the father, more than any other person, where a child learns their worth. If the father loves them, they feel worthy of love. If their father spends time with them, they are worthy of being with. If their father listens to them, they are worthy of being listened to. If their father believes in them, they believe in themselves. While mothers are essential, they cannot fulfill the same role as fathers. It’s, it really is. I’ve I’ve just gonna fill this in a little here, maybe there’s more about it, but it is the interplay, the sort of. Um, sometimes the little bit of friction between a mother and father that is actually so important for children. We’re gonna get a little further into this, but Um, Jordan Peterson, he, those of you who know him know him. Those of you who don’t, he’s a psychologist who became very famous, and um, and I really liked a lot of what he said. I, I really thought it was insightful and profound, but one of the things he talks about is the importance of rough and tumble play for children, and he explains why that’s so important on so many levels developmentally in so many different ways and um. And it really, I, I was talking to my daughter about it cause my husband, you know, was definitely a rough and tumble play. I, you know, I’m always really physical too and throwing my kids up in the air and everything and throwing them on my bed, but my husband, there was just always a wrestling match going on and sometimes I was really hesitant. To stop, stop the fun, but there would be times they’d be like, honey, you know, like when one of my children was crying and wasn’t being released and was like crying, you know, so there were times that I would get in and be like, that’s too far. And as I was talking to my daughter about it, I actually was like, That is such a brilliant example or or that is such a good example of the brilliance of parenting because the dad is there loving the child, making the child feel loved because they’re being interacted with and pushing the child, and maybe sometimes erring on the side of pushing a little too far, right? But um,

[00:24:58] but then the mom is there saying, hey, I’m like I’m protecting my child in another way, saying, hey, that’s too far. So in that moment they are being so loved in the different important ways like I am being protected and seen and empathized with and cared about and protected by my mom, but I’m also being challenged and pushed by my dad who thinks I can take it, who thinks I’m Tough enough and strong enough to deal with it, right? So even in that little exchange, the interplay between a mom and a dad, even though there might be a little bit of conflict in that moment, that child is getting powerfully and profoundly loved on two sides in two ways that are extremely important. And so I think that that exchange, that interplay between moms and dads is really actually exactly how it’s supposed to be. I, um, listened, I’ve, I’ve heard Jordan. Peterson talked about this. He’s the one that talks about it. But if you want to be the most precise in your movement, like the machinery that does really precise movements, they have counter pressure, right? If you want, like, if you’re pushing this way and pushing this way, you can move the most precisely. And I think it’s brilliant that that’s how God established families. Like, I, there’s something about that that I really love. And I think it can definitely be there in different kinds of families, different types of families, different types of parenting. So please don’t think that I’m being Um, oblivious, um, but at the same time, I think it’s a mistake to ignore the standard way that most, um, children throughout the history of the world were raised. I think that there is a lot of beauty in that. And I think I want to also acknowledge it’s really important for children to feel pushed and challenged, so moms should be really hesitant to jump. In and shut down the wrestling too soon, right? It’s really important for children to feel protected and seen and empathized with and nurtured. So dads should be really hesitant to ignore a mom when she voices some concern, right? Both are important and both need to realize the value of the other. I think that that’s really a good thing to recognize. So anyway, sorry, I’ve gotten through one of the quotes. Let’s keep going. Um, countless studies have shown that fatherlessness has an extremely negative impact on daughters’ self-esteem. Her confidence in her own abilities and value as a human being can be greatly diminished if her father isn’t there. Though that just encapsulated it pretty well. A woman’s self-esteem is diminished in every setting if she did not form a healthy relationship with her father. Um. When fathers are present in their daughters’ lives, girls grow up with a healthy sense of who they are. They are more confident and self-assured and have a clearer understanding of what they want in life. Um, let’s see, I think one book I really like is, well,

[00:27:48] um, I really like the work of, I think his name is Warren Farrell, and he wrote The Boy Crisis, and I just think he’s actually a feminist, but he’s like, We should care about everyone. Like he’s, he was the type of feminist that was really trusting about that feminism was trying to make men and women both important. And um so he wrote a book called The Boy Crisis, and he talks about a lot of the things. I don’t know if I want I I made some notes, but um. Oh, he, another difference between men and women. Sorry, I’m this, I’m just going to talk about this a little bit because I think it’s really interesting and actually really important. And so, he talks about the difference between, um, boundary setting and boundary enforcement boundary setting and boundary enforcement, right? And, um, Sometimes moms can be pretty hard on dads because moms tend to set more strict rules like in with with couples that are divorced, right, the mom tends to have an earlier bedtime than the dad, and that can cause some frustration. But what the studies have shown is that dad, so moms maybe are a little bit more conservative with boundary setting, but dads are much more firm on boundary enforcement. So the example that he uses that I’ve always thought was just brilliant was So say a mom sets bedtime at 9 at 8:30 and dad sets bedtime at 9:30, and that might cause mom some frustration, right? And um but what happens, and again, not universal, there’s no, you know, just percentage wise in the studies, so it gets to be Time time comes to get start getting ready for bed on the in the mom’s home and she says, OK, OK kids, get ready for bed. And you know, her son says, Oh mom, I didn’t do my home I didn’t finish my homework. And so the mom’s like, uh, OK, sit down and finish your homework, right? And then And then that can, oh, I need a drink. Oh, I need, you know, and so it might be that the child gets to bed at 10, like, and I felt I very much relate to that. That’s, that’s me. That’s how I do it. Like I set a rule, but I’m like a softy about, oh but my child, right? And then a dad though might say, OK, beds at 9 bedtimes at 9:30 and the child might do the same thing and say, but dad, I didn’t finish the homework, my homework, and the dad’s like. Well, that wasn’t very smart. OK, go to bed. Tough,

[00:30:06] tough. Bedtime’s at 9:30 and the dad is much more firm. And so again, I think the interplay between that is important for children to, um, especially when the parents are still living together and they get to experience some negotiating between their parents, even when that’s happening, the child is feeling loved in two different ways that are. important, right? So I think it’s important to recognize, I just liked that boundary setting and boundary enforcing. And I know that, well, that’s something I will talk about a little later, but, you know, it’s really nice for me to be able to kind of invoke my husband as, I don’t want to say as a threat, but maybe as a threat, like, do I have to call your dad? You know, I love being able to say that when I am. Uh, when I am just overwhelmed with trying to enforce rules, right? I really like that. So anyway, that was a big thing that I thought was really important and um. OK, and again, it is helpful for children. They feel like moms are usually bigger on empathy and dads are usually bigger on, you’re capable of doing this, so do it, right? And and moms sometimes if it were, if it’s just a mom and there’s not a dad, moms can over coddle and this is another thing he talks about like moms can say, oh you can do anything, you can be successful at anything, right? And they Their encouragement is so big, but dads tend to be more like, well, you need to work, you need to go earn that. And so when they have both, they will maybe go dare try out for something, but also have the work ethic and the discipline to succeed at it. And um when they’re not getting both one side or the other of that can be lacking. And so um I think that that’s really cool. Moms are Um, like, like for moms, unconditional love can mean kind of unconditional approval, right? And for dads, unconditional love can mean conditional approval, and that’s not bad. That’s important cause dads tend to push a child forward and moms tend to be the safe landing place. And um I, I just, I anyway, sorry, it makes me cry cause I just think it’s so beautiful and so profound. I think that Parenting is so so divinely inspired and important, and it’s really cool to see how important it is, even in ways that maybe I thought, oh, we’re not doing it right because we’re having conflict over these issues. It’s been really good for me to see. This is exactly how it was supposed to be, and this is the best thing we could have done for our kids to let them see us working out these things regarding them as we’re trying to. Raise them. It’s a good thing. So, um, anyway, let’s see. OK, children without sufficient father involvement did worse in all 50 areas measured. Girls without sufficient father involvement are far more likely to become pregnant as teens,

[00:32:47] and, um, there are lots of different theories. I don’t know what studies have been done to show exactly why that is, but I know there are lots of Of, um, there’s a lot of thought of why that is. It could be many different things. I know one some studies that have done well, first of all, they are desperate for male love and acceptance, and they don’t. Always know how to obtain it other than sexually. Um, they don’t know as well how to be autonomous. They don’t know what they want. If um for girls, these things have been done in studies. If they don’t have brothers that are near the same age or older, they don’t necessarily know how to interact with boys and how to set boundaries with boys, right there, um, because they haven’t had a dad. That they’ve learned that from, or sometimes brothers can help with that. Um, they, they maybe put themselves in more dangerous situations cause risk risk taking in sort of unhealthy ways goes up with fatherlessness. So there are all different kinds of ways that girls are more likely to sexually active as teens, they are also fascinatingly more likely to be sexually assaulted, the victims of sexual assault as teens for all that variety variety of reasons. So it’s really interesting and um Let’s see. And again, it is really important to acknowledge to to again state that the benefits of fatherhood come from interaction with fathers, not from the idea of having a father. That does not, um, that does not substitute. So, um. Let’s see, going on, OK. Dads are the central figure in the identity formation of a child. Their identity is shaped by interacting with their fathers, similar to what we said before. Children tend to be deeply affected by how important they feel to their fathers. The best. Research shows that toddlers who are securely attached to securely attached to their dads are better at solving problems. The best research shows that the best way to boost a girl’s self-esteem is for her to receive physical affection from her dad. Um, when kids grow up with a dad in home, they are less likely to struggle struggle with depression, anxiety, learning disorders. They’re more likely to graduate from high school and go on to college and graduate school. They’re far less likely to be into drugs, alcohol, sex at an early age. In short, dads are phenomenal for children. That was what one presenter said, the number one factor keeping kids out of trouble on the straight and narrow was parent connectedness. Dads are the crucial component to healthy children. The identity of a child is formed by watching Dad, by watching dad’s face, because every child needs 3 questions answered by dad. I know a lot of this is repetitive, but it’s, it’s just important. So the first question is, what does my dad think about me? And that teaches the child, what should I think about myself and what should I expect others to think about me? The second question, how does my dad feel about me, which again, teaches the child, how should I feel about myself. And how should I expect others to feel about me? And the third is, what does my dad want hope and expect from me,

[00:35:51] which teaches the child, what am I capable of? What should I expect, want, and hope for myself, and what can I have the courage to believe I can accomplish. So, um, those, those are critically important effects that fathers have on children. And again, those questions are not answered at performances or special events that, that can matter and obviously help. But those questions are answered subtly day by day in the consistent ongoing interactions with their father, so, um. Bonding between father and child is based on interaction. This was a presentation talking about the difference between mothers, motherhood and fatherhood and how the motherhood bond is is created physically through 9 months and labor and um hormones. I just bumped my roses, hormones and oxytocin and all of those things that help a mother powerfully bond with her child, but a father bonds just as powerfully with their child in different ways. It’s through interaction and so um. Let’s see how important it is to have that that um. Interaction to help them get get attached. Intense father child attachment is most developed is developed most profoundly starting in infancy based on rough and tumble play. Fathers, you know, tossing their babies in the air, airplanes tickling, bouncing, wrestling. It’s with their interacting, even the, the really wild games of peek a boo where the child’s laughing hysterically and the dad is laughing hysterically and the mom’s laughing hysterically, right? Aren’t those like just the best like I know as a mom there was something. Like when I would watch my husband wrestling all my kids on the ground, there was something that was good for my soul. It’s almost like it energetically is just like this is good, you know, and so that is how fathers form attachment, um. Let’s see. Oh, attachment with fathers is different from others. It involves more challenge. It pushes children forward and helps them gain the ability and genuine confidence to be successful in their lives. Um, here are some more statistics. Girls are twice as likely to suffer from obesity without without a father present. They are 4 times more likely to get. Pregnant as teenagers, um, another thing is that fatherlessness causes aggression. That’s one thing Will Ferrell talks about, um, Warren Ferrell talks about is that, um, of the, oh, let me get it right, but I think of the six school shooters that that anyway. Pretty much they are suffering from fatherlessness. Um, it, it causes, um, I, I probably butchered that, but you can look up what Warren Farrell says about the school shooters school shooters and fatherlessness. Um, fatherlessness does cause aggression and interestingly, boys act out their aggression. is aimed outward and um girls implode, their aggression is aimed inward. Um, that’s,

[00:38:48] that’s really interesting, or at least that’s a more masculine approach and a more feminine approach. Some boys can also implode and some girls can also be aggressive. It’s just the likelihoods, right? Um, fathers generally have as much or more influence than mothers on the many aspects of their daughters’ lives. For example, the father has the greater impact on the daughter’s ability to trust, enjoy, and relate well to males in her life. Well father daughters are usually more self-confident, more self-reliant, and more successful in schools and in careers and relationships than poorly fathered daughters. Daughters with good relationships with their father. are also less likely to develop eating disorders. Um, fathers have an imperative role in girls’ development. Research is clear that the lack of a father can increase the likelihood of early sexual activity, higher rates in teen pregnancy, higher rates of child abuse, higher rates of abortion and poverty. um, it summed up a girl’s sexual vulnerability skyrockets when her father is absent. So if nothing else, um, I think we can all take this. I, I don’t know, I read through this having greater appreciation for my kid’s dad, you know, and, and for the way he interacts with them that sometimes has maybe seemed challenging to me. It’s I’ve, I’ve seen the value and and had appreciation. So, um, this can be good information for us, so. OK, now this last part about it that a girl’s sex sexual vulnerability skyrockets that really hit me. I, if those of you who have listened to the episode I did with my mom where I talked about my great great great grandmother Mariah, who her father died after they were expelled from Navvo and she crossed the plains that she drove a wagon across the plains as a 15 year old. She was, she’s like my hero, but um, she was unprotected because her father was gone, so she was. She was given away at 17 by Brigham Young to be. To be taken as a younger wife to a 40 year old couple and um her life was not good. And so anyway, I think that it is, it is important to recognize the ability and role of fathers to protect both physically by being there, but also. It just gave me a new understanding of the father’s role of a protector because he encourages and empowers his children as they’re growing up so that they are more able to protect themselves as well, right? They’re more able to stand up for themselves and I think that that’s really cool. So. Um, OK, and then I wanted to talk about the kind of different kinds of fatherlessness. The, the effects of fatherlessness are actually less severe when a father dies. When an involved father dies, the children obviously have to grieve and have to mourn. Um, it’s, it’s very upsetting to the family, you know, the, the their mother is also grieving and mourning, so it’s a great loss and a great grief, but it doesn’t necessarily have the same effects of fatherlessness because the children aren’t being rejected. Does that make sense? So, um, just, just in ways. Thinking about this,

[00:41:52] like if your father has passed away, if your father is dead, you can believe my father would be involved if he were here, right? My father would want to be involved with me if your father is just a deadbeat that, you know, that it still will affect you, obviously, but you can at least think, well, my father’s just a loser and you can, you can come to believe that it’s about him, not about you, with work, right? I think sometimes the hardest scenarios are when A child is feeling the effects of fatherlessness and sees their father establish a new family with children that they are really involved with. That’s really hard because your father isn’t dead, your father isn’t just a loser. Your father is capable of fathering, just not you, right? And that can be sometimes the most destructive, the the hardest for sons and daughters to work through and overcome. And in a way that’s the situation and polygamy is kind of the hardest kind of fatherlessness because you are seeing your father interacting with many other children, like, you know, those like those polygamist stories I talked about in the beginning when there was a child up on each knee. Those are the children that feel confident enough, loved enough, welcome enough to be willing and to dare to climb up on the child on the father’s knee. So when you see a child sitting up on your father’s knee being snuggled or And you’re sitting over there being introduced and your father can’t remember your name. What effect does that have on you? That kind of a situation sends a powerful message to a child that teaches them to believe that they are unlovable and unworthy of love and um I think that’s hard. I think that’s sad. Um. OK, so again I want to like, like, yes, I acknowledge that polygamist children can feel very proud of their dad and they can feel in awe of their dad and you know, like that you could be very proud that your dad was Brigham Young, but what is far more important is that you have a dad who’s a nobody, you know, who is coming home from work and Roughhousing with you and eating dinner with you and talking to you about you’re overhearing him talk about his day. He’s asking about your day, taking interest in your life, um, you know, nowadays maybe coaching your soccer team, coming to your games, driving you places where you can. Have a conversation, you know, he’s driving you to your activities. He’s checking up on your responsibilities. Did you mow the lawn today? Did you get your math done, you know, that kind of interaction with a dad is so important for children, and um I don’t know how that can happen. In the kind of polygamy that are. You know, our early church leaders were teaching us about. So, um, so yeah, it’s not the idea of a dad or the just existence of a dad, it’s the interaction with a dad that is important for children. So um I wanted, I, I know we’ve gone a long a long time already, but I really want to narrow this down into In our culture and um so, so again,

[00:44:57] you know, in our past just talking about like Hebrew Hebrews see Kimball’s wives and children, if you want an example of extreme fatherlessness, there were complaints about how Destructive and wild and harmful those kids were that were just, you know, the moms were just. Like working themselves to the bone, trying to survive, trying to keep their kids alive, and there was no dad, and it was a really, really hard situation. So, um, let’s see, I think, so the thing that really hit me, the epiphany I had was that, uh, and I see it took me that, I hope you’re still with me so you can hear this part. The effects of fatherlessness on children, right? If I had to sum it up, um, boys act out, girls feel worthless and are much more likely to act out sexually because they are so, you know, they, they want to feel loved by their father and that can get put onto older men and sexually is the only way they know to connect with them. So you think of a polygamous society. Where, and actually, you know, it does not take much for a boy to get kicked out, but um if, if he does any acting out, and that can even mean looking at a girl, definitely talking to a girl, listening to any non-church approved music, which if you know, if you knew the options and like the FLDS community, you’d be pretty depressed, right? And so those boys get kicked out, right? So maybe they act out at all, they get kicked out. And then those girls are perfectly primed because they have such little developed, such ill-developed sense of autonomy, sense of worth, sense of knowing what they want in life. No one’s asked them, what do you want to be when you grow up, right? What are you really interested in? What do you want to study? They are told to keep sweet, right? They are told that Ah, anyway, and so in their teens, they are perfectly ready to just be married off to older men, and it, uh, it’s just amazing. It almost made me feel like this system is as brilliant in its diabolical nature as like parenthood that we’ve been talking about is in its inspired godly nature. It is like perfectly designed. To perpetuate itself in the most toxic ways. The fatherlessness creates it to keep going, just just like we see the effects of fatherlessness and, you know, some of the hardest societies and cultures in our country,

[00:47:38] things that just self just keep perpetuating themselves. Fatherlessness perpetuates fatherlessness in these really toxic cycles, and I feel like we see the same thing in polygamy in a very different way, but we see the same thing and um. As I studied this a little bit more, I found that, well, so here’s, here’s kind of what I wrote up about my thoughts about it. Girls desperate for male notice and love with very little sense of personal worth or autonomy or no knowledge of possibilities, possible hopes or dreams, they are primed to be willing to enter an assigned marriage with no idea what is in store for them. In their complete naivety, expecting a happy romantic life where they finally will feel that male affection and love that they’ve not had, you know, they’re expecting this happy romantic life with no experience even holding a man’s hand and no idea how babies are even made until their wedding night. Their extreme innocence is not a blessing, so that is hard to think about, right? And um rebellious or headstrong girls, those who are not able or willing to keep sweet sufficiently often, you know, the boys are kicked out, the girls are married off extra young with the counsel to get them pregnant. Because once, um, you know, once you have a mother, you have a means of control. If you, you know, mothers love their children, so you can control a woman. Um, by turning her into a mother and using her child as a weapon against her. So I just think that that is incredibly, um, incredibly dangerous. And yes, I recognize this does not happen in all polygamist families, but it happens. It happens in enough. I have no idea what the percentages are, but I would like to know what are the What are the what are what are the preventative measures? If it does happen, what are the remedies, you know, what can fix it? Those who would argue this doesn’t, this doesn’t happen in my family, that’s great. What, what does, what prevents it from happening in another family, you know? And so, um, anyway, I think that it’s really interesting to see how this has perpetuated itself and as I thought about it, I was stunned. When I realized that the examples of this go way back, way earlier, practically from the beginning of the biblical polygamy, um, and I hope that you’ve listened to episode 12, that’s Jacob’s polygamy. I want to refer to that, but if you remember the story. The only daughter of Jacob, whose name we know is Dinah, and so I, I believe if I’m not incorrect, I think that Levi and Simeon and Dinah were all Leah’s children, I think, so they were the underfathered children, right? And um who, you know, we talked about the trouble that came from them watching. Their younger brothers beloved and um how they, how they acted out in that with selling Joseph or

[00:50:46] threatening trying wanting to kill Joseph and then selling him, but it was really interesting to recognize in this and to connect out. Girls are more sexually to are more likely to act out sexually when they are fatherlessness when they are fatherless. That is the only thing we know of Dinah, is that she acted out sexually. It’s often called the rape of Dinah. There’s no evidence in the scriptural story that it’s, that it was rape. In fact, her suitor um was willing to be circumcised and have his whole household and their entire kingdom circumcised in order to marry her. Doesn’t sound to me like the actions of a rapist. In any case, it doesn’t matter because girls are more likely to act out sexually and to experience sexual assault if they’re fatherless. I think Dinah was struggling with fatherlessness, and then Levi and Simeon after that entire Um, kingdom was circumcised when they were sore and unable to move. Levi and Simeon went in and slaughtered every man, woman, and child committed an extreme genocide, which Jacob was not, which Jacob got after them for, but I just thought, oh my gosh, look at that example of the boys acting out, the girls sexually acting out. Due to fatherlessness. I, I just think it’s interesting to connect those dots, right? And so, um, so just like I think, you know, we are told, ah sorry, bumped the microphone, we’re told all things testify of Christ, and I think that that’s true. What what that means to me is all things testify of truth and just like in episode, oh was it episode 41 of the earlier episodes, um, I think it’s called God’s stablishment of marriage, and I talk about that even the birth rate testifies of the truthfulness of God’s laws and what he’s given us and So I think this is also a profound testimony that I’ll talk about right here, the gospel of polygamy, which is what I am calling like how we’ve interpreted 132, the teachings of Brigham Young carried on by polygamists now when really exaltation becomes completely intertwined with polygamy and they are almost one and the same, right? Polygamy becomes the central feature of the gospel. Um, I think that Uh well, well, someone summed up, um, uh, in, in, I think, um, is it Netflix that’s doing a new show. I, I can’t promote Netflix, but I think they’re doing a new show on polygamy and I watched a promo for it, and the quote from one of the girls was, the more wives, the more children you have, the higher in heaven you’ll be, that’s how they interpret the gospel of polygamy, right? I was fascinated to realize that it has an actual inverse relationship with the health and well-being of children. The more wives and children a man has, the more godly he is, the more glorified by God he is considered to be. But the more his children will suffer and experience the effects of fatherlessness, which are major and dramatic. The fewer wives he has, ideally only one, the less worthy, godly,

[00:53:55] revered he is considered to be, but the better chance he has of being involved and invested enough with his children to avoid these these problems. I think that is amazing that actually like child development, human development, which is how God created us, right? And how God divinely instituted the family for us to be raised in. It actually testifies of the truthfulness of monogamy and the corruption of polygamy, of like, it it I I can’t think of a more clear testimony against against the truthfulness of polygamy than than that they’re actually inversely related, and I think that that is fascinating. And so, um. Let’s see, I think, yeah, monogamous fathers are infinitely better positioned to fulfill the unique emotional needs of their children that only a father can fulfill. A polygamist father maybe has a chance if he has two wives. You get much more than that. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you do it. I think that it disproves itself and so um I realized this was the next. Aha, I had that was massive for me. Um, well, I wanna say even let me, let me get to, I’m skipping, so I’ll come back to that. First, I want to say that even if a polygamist father is somehow able to be really invested and involved in his children’s lives, coaching teams asking about their accomplishments and their, you know, on a day to day basis, even if they manage that, which is wonderful. There is still a huge problem. This is, this is, I will admit, one of my favorite quotes. It was actually, I think, originally said by Father Theodore Hesburgh. Um, I think he was the, the priest at Notre Dame, the University of Notre Dame, but it was often repeated by David O McKay and then more of more recently quoted by Elaine Dalton, edited to apply to daughters. But the quote is, the most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. And I actually think that is profoundly true. It is just as I was talking about how it’s good on every single level to see your husband roughhousing with your kids, right? It also is good on every single level for children on a cellular cellular level, it is good for them to see their parents interacting with affection and intimacy. When they see their parents, um, hold hands, laugh together, converse about things, genuinely enjoy one another’s company, and hug and kiss each other, it does immeasurable good for them. Uh it’s as good for them as almost anything can be. And in fact, when kids do that, oh gross reaction, that is actually an incredibly good sign. Because it means that they are so confident in the security of their parents’ love that they can pretend to be grossed out by it. That was another thing I asked some of my kids about this week, like, you know, our dynamic has often been that my husband will give me a big kiss and my kids, ah,

[00:57:11] and so my husband will double down and give me a way bigger, more passionate kiss and get bigger screams from the kids, but um when I talked to my grown kids about that, every one of them. That I talked to just got a huge smile on their face. Those are really good memories for them to, um, to see that, you know, my parents did the same thing. My dad would dip my mom and give her a big old passionate kiss right in front of us, and that is a good thing for kids to experience. And that cannot happen in polygamist families. When you watch the women, they are so. Restrained and like you watch them all interacting and you know, the dad never walks past and pats the mom’s bum. He never has his arm around, oh, I’m knocking things over again like, like my, you know, there’s not that affectionate interaction because they have to keep that completely hidden so that everything can be fair and they like, like they just don’t show love and affection in that way because You’ll hurt feelings, you’ll, and so the damage that that does to children is also immeasurable. So even if fathers can interact with their children as fathers, they’re not doing the most important thing they can do, which is very Um, I, what’s the word I’m looking for? Well, just the expressing their love for their children’s mother, which is incredibly important for children. So that was another point. Now I’ll get to the thing that really, really knocked my socks off. So, um, fatherlessness creates people who are not secure in their own worth, right? We’ve established that people who have lost confidence, as Jacob 225 warns. It creates people. Maybe you’ll figure out where I’m going with this. It creates people who feel the need to work to earn or prove their worth and their worthiness of love. It creates people who are less able to comprehend and accept the idea of grace. One of the biggest, one of the big criticisms that, um, that is that Christians level against Mormons is that we are not a gospel of grace, we’re a gospel of works, right? And I think sadly. In large part, you know, they have, they have a point, they have an argument because of not because of what our gospel actually says, but because of what our culture teaches, because of how we’ve interpreted interpreted it. I realized that we have this polygamist heritage that is still far too present in our gospel and in how we many of us interpret the gospel where we feel this need. To earn God’s love, to earn our salvation, right? I think, I mean, if you listen to some of these polygamist wives talk about how Um, like some polygamists who have converted to Christianity, you can listen to their story and how they talk about how they could

[01:00:20] let go of the fear that they were constantly in and that and the exhaustion, the terror and the exhaustion of trying to be good enough, trying always to be good enough, and that is not. What the gospel of Jesus Christ ever was or ever will be, it was never meant to be something that adds to our burdens. It’s the good news of our good news of the gospel because it’s meant to lift our burdens. And if the gospel is ever feeling like an additional burden, we’re not understanding it correctly or we’re not applying it correctly, right? And I realized that I think that. I think that our polygamist heritage can explain our lack of sufficient focus on understanding of appreciation for grace. And so two scriptures that I want to read that I have been throughout my life, two of the main scriptures kind of putting grace in its place, you know, that, that I think, um, oh, who wrote Believing Christ? I think he swapped one of them to say, hey, it’s saying the opposite, and so. I’m going to read, was it James Farrell? Oh, I can’t remember. Anyway, it’s a good book. But, um, I want to read these two scriptures and talk about how we’ve interpreted them and how I think we should interpret them. I again, I think that God leaves us enough ambiguity to let us be our own judges in a way. So 2 Nephi 25, um, which, which verse is it specifically, sorry? Well, I’ll just read the whole, 00 yeah, it is verse 23. I thought it was coming later. So 25/23. I’ve, I’ve had that memorized forever, for we labor labor diligently to write to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God, for we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do. That I grew up, I grew up believing or being taught that that meant if you do all you can, then you will be saved by grace, which As I got older and thought about it, I realized it was ludicrous. Like, it doesn’t make any sense, but if you read it in context, it becomes so much more clear. It says we we labor diligently to persuade our children to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God, for we know that it is by grace that we are saved. And then it goes on to say how much they rely on grace. We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ. We preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ. We write according to our prophecies that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of of their sins, and it goes on and on from there talking about the. The effect of Jesus Christ, right? So it became so clear to me when I read it and it switched and it says, for we know that it is by grace that we can be saved, that we are saved after all we can do. It doesn’t mean if you do all you can,

[01:03:15] you can be saved by grace. It means no matter what you do. You, you will be saved by grace. Again, it goes along with King Benjamin’s beautiful sermon, sermon that you will always be an unprofitable servant, right? You are less than the dust of the earth, and you can never gain anything other than through the merits of Jesus Christ. That is what our scriptures are trying to teach us, and I think in part because of our Our fatherlessness, our heritage of fatherlessness, we misinterpreted that and then taught it that way. And uh I think it’s profound to recognize that. The other one that’s a little bit tougher is Moroni 10:32. Yeah, but listen to what what the scriptures saying. Yeah, come unto Christ and be perfected in Him and deny yourselves of all ungodliness. And if you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, then is His grace sufficient for you that by His grace you may be perfect and. Christ. And if by the grace of God you are perfect in Christ, you can no way no way deny the power of God. It goes on more and and again, it says, if you do this, then is His grace sufficient for you. So we can stumble on that and struggle, right? But I’ve, um, I confess that I don’t love the wording on that because of how much it sounds like if you do these things, then you qualify for grace. But I, I, you know, did a lot of keyword searches to compare it and it actually is not teaching anything different than what is taught throughout the Bible. And so as I You know, I went through and reread King Benjamin’s sermon, Mosiah 42 and 3. I, I, OK, let me, let me, let me restate it and then I’ll give the evidence. I think what it’s actually saying it’s when you see your heart is changed, that you have no more dis disposition to do evil, when you find that you want to deny yourself of all ungodliness and love God. Then you have the evidence you need to know that the grace of God is effective in your life. Does that make sense? I think that’s what it’s saying. It’s if you find that you are denying yourselves of all ungodliness and you find that you love God with all your heart, mind, mind, and strength, then you know that His grace. sufficient for you, cause you know you have been born born again, cause you have the fruits of that in your life, right? So that’s when I went back and looked at King Benjamin’s sermon because there we have a sermon and all of the people experiencing the second birth experiencing being born again in Christ in a commun in in a communal experience. And So Mosiah 42 and 3, and they viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth, and they all cried aloud with one voice, saying, Oh, have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, that we may forgive receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified, for we believe in Jesus Christ. The Son of God who created heaven and earth and all things who shall come down among the children of men, and it came to pass that after they had spoken these words, the spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy,

[01:06:19] having received a remission of their sins and having peace of conscience because of their exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come. Um, and then it goes on. Anyway, yeah, like that’s the fruit, right? When you experience the grace of God in your life, when you experience, especially when you experience that profound second birth experience or rebirth, being born again experience, then your heart is changed, and I think that that is what Mosiah is, I mean, Moroni10 is teaching us, but because of our Fatherlessness, we missed it. We missed, we failed to understand and we gave more emphasis to those parts that made us feel that that um confirmed our feelings of lack of worth that we need to earn our worth. We need to earn the love of God and we need to earn the grace of God, right? I think that we focused more on those because they spoke to something that was broken inside of us, whereas in throughout the Book of Mormon, it teaches us the opposite that it is. That it is the spirit of God that comes in and burns within us and changes our makeup, changes our hearts, gives us no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. And when we experience that we have experienced the grace of God, and we know that it is efficacious in our lives. Anyway, I’m going on too much about this, but I think that it is profound and incredibly deeply like. And indescribably important to recognize this, to recognize the importance of fatherhood, fatherhood, even to help us be able to receive the grace of God, to be able to comprehend and experience the grace of God. I think that’s amazing and I’m not going to go into all of these other scriptures I found to help us with those scriptures because this has already been way too long. But um there was there there were a lot more scriptures that I wanted to share on this topic, but I think that it would be good for all of us. I think it is good for all of us to re-investigate our feelings of worth and how that connects to the divine. And how that can um affects our understanding of our gospel, because I think it matters like immensely. And um one more thing that I wanted to quickly say because I know that our church today does not still participate in polygamy, right? So we can hope that these problems are mini minimized and yet I found another. Another relic of it. So when I was reading through these effects of fatherlessness on girls, I was actually surprised to feel, to feel like, oh, like I felt a couple of pricks because of how I felt like they related to me and um, you know, I was fortunate I didn’t act out sexually as a teenager and I, yeah, you know, I didn’t, but I did sometimes, oh, these are hard things to confess cause they’ve, you know, they’re embarrassing and brings shame, but I would sometimes be troubled that like Like my friend’s dad in high school who was our soccer coach, and I had these like weird crushes sometimes with dads who were really involved and it always bothered me. So I guess that kind of came back up and I was like, why? What was that? That was so weird. And, you know,

[01:09:24] and and some other things, the feeling unworthy of love and, you know, and and maybe all of us can relate to these things, but I started to think about it and wow, I had some more insights, so. My growing up, my dad was always my my dad throughout his whole marriage was the was in the bishopric and my whole growing up he was the bishop, um, he was the bishop all through my Um, elementary and early junior high years, and then he was in the high council, and that, you know, he just always, always was in big church colleagues and um. And I know that anytime my mom needed my dad, she would tell me to call my dad and my question was always, is he at the church or is he at the office? Like my dad wasn’t home, my dad was at the church or at the office every day. I have memories of him being home sometimes and, you know, of him interacting. I have memories of him, um, like, like, like I, I there were times that he would get us in that he would come home. Get us in the car with a frisbee and go up to the park and throw a frisbee with us, you know, I have those few memories of him doing that and and I was very aware that like my looking back on it now, my guess is that he probably had a training for bishops where they told them how important it was for them to spend time. With their children, you know, cause it felt very much like, I mean, oh, I, I just please don’t hear me saying anything critical about my dad. My dad was awesome and I loved my dad, but I recognized the effects of fatherlessness in my own life to some extent was really, I really had to work hard to overcome my feelings of not feeling worthy of love, right? And not liking to feel needy and not because I didn’t like how that felt when my dad. would take us to the park. It was fun, but I felt very much like a job that he needed to do to check off his list, right, like he needed to do this to be a good dad and um. Anyway, it’s really interesting, and I’m I’m only sharing that. Please don’t hear that in any way critical of my dad. I am, he really was a good man who strove with all his heart, my mind, and strength to, you know, but I know that he also dealt with some insecurities of his own that made him try extra hard, right? So I think he suffered from some of these same things. But what I realized is that The church in some ways still contributes to this because um I, as I’ve thought about this this week, and I never, you know, I realized that kind of growing up, I maybe looked at other dads that were sitting in the congregation cause my dad my dad was always on the stand. I don’t remember my dad ever sitting with us in church. And I kind of felt like um if I had to put it in words, maybe they were underachievers. Do you know what I mean? Like, like,

[01:12:05] oh, their dads are just sitting with them. Oh, I wonder. You know, that’s kind of weird, like, and I just thought their dads weren’t like as faithful as my dad was or as you know, and and I think that when I got married, since that had been my experience, I expected that to be my experience. I expected that my husband would be always in the bishopric and always, you know, and I had to adjust to not having my husband in the bishopric, but my husband has always sat by me with the bench, but I’ll tell you it didn’t take me long. In our parenting to be profoundly thankful for that. My dad, my husband has always coached. More than one team at all times, practically. He has been like he has been so deeply involved in his kids’ lives. Like I said, wrestling at the roughhousing on the ground, the going outside and playing soccer games that like my husband is deeply invested and involved in his children’s lives and um that has meant the world to me and I’ve thought back of like the idea of my dad coaching a team. I can’t even Or my dad roughhousing with like I can’t even. Get a picture of that. I always, you know, I thought that I like my parents didn’t come to my games and my, you know, and I always was like that doesn’t bother me. I know that they love me and you know, but I’m realizing that in a way the church still the more honored a man is in his callings, the more he’s taken out of the home, right? The less time he has to spend with his children. And I that really hit me. I was like, man, cause I have been profoundly thankful. My husband’s not the bishop, you know, and and I mean I honor those who are, but it made me think again that we need to really rethink this. I know that. There was, you know, I, I don’t, I’d like the church. I don’t know if this is still the case, but for a very long time they would not allow mothers who had children at home to serve in the temple or to, you know, they were really conscientious about not taking mothers out of the home, which I know caused some scuttle but for some people, but it’s made me think that. You know, maybe we need to take this a step further and say, hey, if there are dads with children in the home, we don’t take the dads out of the home more than one night a week for their calling. I think that’ll be a good thing, and we like, if we’re going to take them out of the home one night a week for their calling, we don’t take them out of the home on Sundays and on weekends. And you know, we really need to prioritize father time and my daughter, when I was talking to her about this, she made a brilliant point that I have to include. I think in our church we have a tendency to overemphasize and overstate the importance of mothers. I, I, I mean, I think it’s hard to overstate the importance of mothers, but how we, I maybe I’ll link again the clip from the um first press conference where The the new first presidency was asked about women in the church and their response. It’s really quite remarkable. It’s astonishing in so many ways. It took me a long time to grapple with it and to have a place to put it where I was like,

[01:15:09] OK, that’s there, uh, that happened great, you know, and move on from it. But um but maybe I’ll link it because of this overstating of motherhood. My daughter pointed out that we do that so that we can understate fatherhood. Because so we can justify fathers not being involved with their families from the very beginning with polygamy and missions and all of those things till now when fathers are doing their callings and taking out of their homes all the time, and I really think we as a church culture need to bring that back into balance. We very much need to recognize the importance of motherhood. And fatherhood, because both, both are essential and critical, and both need to be there and both are based on time and interaction. And anyway, it made me really think like, hmm, let’s let’s have men call as bishops who don’t still have children in their home. That was a really interesting thought for me. Maybe you’ll disagree, maybe you’ll agree, but I think it’s good to at least consider. So anyway, thank you for sticking around for this very long episode and um I hope to see you next time. My name is Michelle Stone and this is 132 Problems.