Having a bunch of little kids running around kind of knocks the idealism out of you, and you have to get pragmatic about the marriage/family thing… ‘work it out’ and survive from breakfast to lunch.

I actually don’t think the ideal ‘Church’ family is the traditional, western family model. I believe that in the ideal LDS family the wife and mother has a much more prominent and supported role than in the traditional western family. I think the family actually revolves around her. That’s the way it is in my family, and in most of the solid ‘Church’ families that I’m acquainted with.

So, HER marriage sadly came unglued. Since when her own limited, unsatisfactory and painful experience equates to insights into universal truth? Since when a column in a syndicated publication is an attribute of prophesy or even merely common sense? People need to stop idolizing these self appointed “social pundits”.

I stopped reading Time, Newsweek and The NY Times long ago. I have not missed anything.

As one of the commentors mentioned, it may be more challenging and time-consuming to negotiate a customized set of responsibilities within the marriage and to manage adapting those responsibilities over the course of the marriage. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that isn’t the most ideal, and most mature, way to work out your marital relationship.

When we were just starting our family, we looked around at several couples we knew who choose the traditional breadwinner/stay-at-home roles for themselves. And we talked openly with our friends about their experiences and expectations. Many of the fathers felt they worked long hours and were away from home more than they wanted to be and were therefore less connected to their children than they wanted to be. And many of the mothers felt that so much of the household responsibilities fell to them. That with their husbands working 60+ hours to support the family, they were in many ways functioning as the primary parent most of the time. And many of the women felt that the were expected to sacrifice more and to put aside most of their personal interests unless they were directly related to the family (scrapbooking, cooking, etc.).

So we decided that our ideal scenario would be for both of us to work part time so that our children had close personal relationships with us and could get the benefit our different talents as people and our different parenting styles (many of which come from our gender differences). Because my husband is a government employee part-time turned out not to be possible unless he took a demotion. So he worked out a flexible schedule that gets him home by 4pm every day and will allow him to retire when our children are in junior high. Because I make more money I was able to chose a very part-time schedule so I’m home most days and when I am at work my husband is with our boys (when they aren’t in school).

It was a lot harder to figure out over the first few years than it would have been if I’d assumed the stay-at-home primary parent role. Sometimes I wished I could stay home and wished we’d picked the easier-to-define gender-based roles. But now it’s great and we both feel we have so much time with our children individually, as a family, and we have time to pursue our careers and our personal interests. Our children don’t have a regular babysitter and have never been in child care.

Many of our friends comment wistfully on how we’ve been able to work things out. Often our religious culture seems to dictate that the wife must not work outside the home and must do all of the standard generic-specific chores. I think that’s one of those “letter of the law vs. spirit of the law” sort of things. A suggested guildeline. But the higher order law is to work together as a couple to create the best possible arrangement for your family. To make sure that we’re building strong families, strong marital relationships, and teaching our children to follow Christ.

I am not a lessor Mormon nor a lessor women because we’ve chosen to modify our family responsibilities which includes me continuing my career part-time outside the home. It was not what I thought I’d do growing up, or even in the early pre-children years of our marriage. I didn’t plan on having a career per se. But through the serendipity of various career twists and turns that happened during the years we waited for children to finally join our family, things just worked out that way. And I feel lucky that they did, and lucky that I have a husband I could create a customized marriage with.

I really like everything you’ve said. I especially think you’ve understood what it means to preside, and what is means to help as an equal partner. My partner is an atheist, as well – which puts me in an entirely different position vis-a-vis presiding. (I take it that, in my circumstance, I have to “lead out” in making sure our home is spiritually open and loving. Olivia has responsibility to help me out in that as an equal partner – but the first line of responsibility falls to me.)

I think we seriously underestimate the implications of the phrasing about “equal partners” in the Proclamation, as well as the bit about ‘adapting to individual circumstances’ – possibly because we have so much anxiety that the whole thing is a violation of inviolable personal sensibility.

It seems to me that the family doesn’t behave exactly like the church. I think Elder Oaks talked about this recently in some ways that were not entirely clear to me. I’d like to go back revisit that talk now.

A Bishop presides in a ward. His counselors, the Ward Council and others are there to help him. But, finally, when there is a revelation to be received in behalf of the ward, he is the person to whom it will come, or at very least confirmed. So that his counselors and others are not equals in this function. The relation between husband and wife is NOT like this. This is why, it seems to me, important that we understand better the language in the PotF, and the increased talk of equality in general. The ‘council’ that the husband and wife form is a two-headed leader, not a leader with a counselor. They are truly equal partners. There is no hierarchy between them, no Priesthood leader. While there is a division of responsibility generally in line with gender differences that will generally be found, the reality of individual capabilities and circumstances makes those roles adaptable. Both are equally entitled to have deciding revelation on behalf of the family. Because there is only One Spirit, while both parties are equally receptive this shared entitlement can lead to tremendous unity – as it also does in the hierarchies of the church. ~

Now, as a married woman of a few years, I still think back to that experience. There are not very many things I can think of in our family that we do according to traditional gender roles–the ones my parents based their marriage on–but there are things we have each taken on as part of our role in our marriage. It works for us, and I firmly believe that some of the abilities each of us brings to our marriage are based in our understanding of gender in an eternal perspective.

I know some people claim that gender doesn’t matter, and I agree that in some things, it doesn’t or at least shouldn’t. But I also don’t think there’s any escaping the fact that gender exists for a reason and trying to ignore it or remove it entirely from the definition of what it means to be human is an error with eternal consequences.

Same here. I’ve also liked much of her stuff, but found this one really distressing. I’m frankly shocked that an editor didn’t suggest waiting awhile before publishing it–so excruciatingly raw.

However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of weekly “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures the messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that “spark” again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.

These seems like something of a straw-man argument, and she is making fidelity seem impossible, perhaps to justify her own adultery.

I don’t know anyone who tries to keep a new bride’s dream. Rather, those of us who have multi-decade sexually satisfying relationships go from one phase into another, abandoning the newlywed spark in favor of a fire that burns hot and enduring. Keeping that flame alive generally involves at least one weekend a year without the kids (at least, I’ve traded babysitting with others, which makes me think it is common) and making sex a priority in their busy lives. For years, my husband and I had lunch every Thursday, at home while the kids were in school. Sure, a lot of people would find that boring but we always liked having that time that we could count on, and amused ourselves by planning. We have on rare occasions skipped Sunday School to race home while the kids were in Primary.

In our mid-50s, we’ve practiced, and so it is better than it has ever been.

And as far as our non-bedroom friendship, we regularly have lunches where we are forbidden to talk about work or kids…Try it, it can be challenging at first, but ends up fun. We also share movies with each other and read the same books to discuss.

But then, I’ve never had to rekindle a romance, just keep it going, and that may be easier.