- RL on Richard Bushman Reflects on Rough Stone Rolling: “I’ve been rereading RSR this year and comparing it to Turners book which I read the month it came in. RSR is a treasure because of the contextualization of time period that Turner cannot or chose not to do. RSR just feels more thought out. As an adherent member I also appreciated Bushman’s apologetics and attempts to expand how to think of Joseph. To me Bushman and Brodie are still tops for books on JS. Remini is a good quick one for general interest. Turners was hard to read but found its legs in 1838 and did the Nauvoo period better than more recent attempts by other authors. Thanks for his thoughts 20 years later. Bushman is one of our greats and is irreplaceable.” Sep 17, 15:15
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “Links https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr74/nvsr74-09.pdf https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/schweizer-guzzo-distribution-age-first-birth-fp-20-11.html” Sep 17, 14:15
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “It is an interesting exercise to work from questions demographers asked toward answers to other related questions. This CES gives information about the fraction of adult women 45 or younger currently with children under their care, which is an interesting piece of information regarding life in America. The related question that appears to be the focus of this web post is what fraction of women give birth at some point in their lives. (The aside about first-time mothers older than 45 is one aspect of that direction of thought.) It seems that the desired poll sample and question would be to ask a group of 45-year-olds if they ever gave birth. That would be a larger fraction than 55% or 45% since those numbers came from including in the denominator women under 25 who are not yet mothers but will become such within a decade. In 2023, 12.5% of first-time mothers were 35 or older, so not including women whose first birth came past age 45 misses very few. What excludes an order of magnitude more mothers is missing those who gave birth when they were young, more than 18 years before being asked by a survey. (In 2023 2.51% of first-time mothers were 20-24, and 8.7% were under 20.) (I will place a couple of URL links in a subsequent comment.)” Sep 17, 14:14
- on Book Review: Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration, by Robert A. Rees: “I couldn’t have asked for a better review than this one. It captures the essence of what I hoped to accomplish!” Sep 17, 12:51
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “RLD: You would say that as a childless democrat who dresses immodestly…but seriously that’s actually a really interesting finding. RL: I can’t remember the direction of relationship on income and fertility, but I do know that the declines in fertility have been across the board socioeconomically speaking. So while housing affordability and the like aren’t irrelevant, I don’t get the sense they’re the big explanatory factor here. And yes, polygamy did increase average family size because there were hardly any unmarried women: https://mormonr.org/qnas/fX8STb/polygamy_and_population_growth.” Sep 17, 08:21
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “I think I remember seeing fertility increases with salary/ net worth. Not sure how to crack the nut of fertility in the West but the answer is not what Elon is doing probably. Did polygamy actually increase fertility back in the day?” Sep 16, 22:02
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “Not judging is the key. It’s possible to look at population data and make a strong case that much of the decline in fertility over time is due to changes in values the Lord does not approve of (though I think the modern economy is responsible for another big chunk of it). But individuals have the number of children they do, including zero, for a wide variety of reasons: physical health, mental health, economic circumstances, you name it. To assume an individual doesn’t have children, or has few children, because of selfishness or other negative values doesn’t just go against Jesus’s unambiguous commandment to “judge not,” it’s very likely to be inaccurate. And yet many women in the Church, and a fair number of men, have had the experience of being judged for their marital status or family size. That’s what makes fertility a sensitive topic in a way that education is not. (In fact, we frequently valorize “humble” uneducated people.) There’s a reason the Handbook takes the time to say “The decision about how many children to have and when to have them is extremely personal and private. It should be left between the couple and the Lord. Church members should not judge one another in this matter.” This is not a criticism of Stephen’s post, which does not do any judging. But I get the responses to it. We can and should talk about fertility, and we should be sensitive when we do. (I got curious: The Handbook’s “Church Policies and Guidelines” chapter discusses dozens of topics, and just four of them include a warning against judgement. The other three are suicide, dress and appearance, and politics.)” Sep 16, 14:39
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “I’m very open to the idea that there are some people whose divinely appointed mission in life does not involve marriage or having or rearing children. But since we’re speaking in general trends we can speak generally. We shouldn’t judge anybody’s particular circumstances, but we can make judgement about societal movements in general. And on average I think a decline in people having children is a bad thing. Now, there are some individual cases like the ones where you alluded to where the decline is a good thing (e.g. people less likely to coercively have children or enter into poor marriages), but I suspect that at the TFRs we’re looking at that the decline is more of a symptom of bad things (for example, people not making family a life priority; I’m not saying any readers are guilty of that, but surveys show a lot of people are: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-gen-zs-gender-divide-reaches-politics-views-marriage-children-suc-rcna229255) on the net than it is of good things, although both are happening at the same time. Some might bristle at us even identifying having a family as a “good” thing because it could cause distress and pain to those who unfortunately do not have the opportunity in this life (hence my graphic at the top), but we don’t do this with anything else; for example, we are fine seeing education as a good thing even though not everybody has the chance to get an education. ” Sep 16, 11:20
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “As a single woman who has begged and begged the Lord for the blessings of a temple marriage and children in this life (and been told “not yet”), I am sure I am on the path the Lord wants. I refuse to marry a man and can’t respect or love just to fit into socities expectations and I refuse to marry outside the temple. I don’t think the Lord wants that for any of his daughters. I appreciate jt’s comment about the short sightedness of “just getting married”. I don’t think the Lord cares about societal trends. He doesn’t want his daughters in crappy marriages. This is just another sign to me that the Lord’s ways are higher than ours.” Sep 16, 10:07
- on Childless Church Members and the LDS Fertility Advantage: “I like looking at numbers and curated displays of numbers, although I am not a statistician. I accept your statements that childlessness is increasing among us, both within the religion and also within society as a while. I also understand marriage rates are down, marriage age is getting higher, and so forth. I try not to make value judgments on matters like this. I cannot say that any of these trends are bad, because I do not want to condemn any individual for being childless, unmarried, married at an older age, or so forth. I believe God can still accomplish his work despite these societal trends, that God saves individuals wherever they are, and that conformance to a previous generation’s standards is not necessary for salvation. I am also concerned that a fundamentalist call to change those trends for the better could be short-sighted. For example, yes, I hope every woman can have the opportunity to bear children, and yes, I rejoice in young love. But I would not want us to insist on returning to a previous generation’s “good” outcomes if doing so also resulted in returning to that generation’s “bad” outcomes. For example, I wouldn’t want a fundamentalist focus on increasing birth rates if that also meant abandoning progress we have made in fair treatment of women in society. Many (or maybe even all?) societal changes are driven by realities of the economy and so forth. Few (or maybe none?) are driven by purposeful desire to be sinful and societal or individual abandonment of godly principles. I know we sometimes tend to look at these matters through moralistic eyes, and I am saddened by some trends, but I tend to think that most societal trends are economic and that other things like religion that along and adapt. People have to make a living and live within the economic construct that they find themselves. I use the word “economic” very broadly to mean the reality of living, in contrast I suppose to religion. Reality is real, and that is where people have to live — religion is supposed to help people live in reality but cannot supersede reality. So I fear fundamentalism, because it puts religion as more important that economics or reality, and condemns people for doing the best they can to live within their reality. I acknowledge that the OP has not advocated fundamentalism, but is only sharing numbers. I am glad for his effort and his posting. But I know from sad experience that some people will use those numbers to think less of their fellow Saints and fellow citizens and fellow sojourners for allegedly not living the appropriate standard, and this sadness prompted my comment here.” Sep 16, 08:33
