I would add that we too often conflate responsibility with assignment. The Church teaches that fathers have a responsibility to provide for instance, which means that come judgment the father will answer for whether the providing was done. If the father didn’t have a job and the mother brought home the bacon, the responsibility is still filled. Likewise, the mother has responsibility to nurture the children, and as any single mom could tell you it’s easier to holistically nurture children when the father is involved. Dad is free to do the nurturing just as Mom is free to do the providing, but each has a defined responsibility that they will answer for. Note the word ‘respond’ within ‘responsibility’.

OP gives a couple theories on the ‘why’ of how responsibilities are divvied out, and they are actually pretty decent. I think few would argue that on average fathers are more likely to detach from parenting, and that the responsibility to preside in the family helps some to remedy that. I also think few would argue that any group functions better when it’s clear which members perform or delegate the key functions.

Maybe the best example to put a cap on this idea is the one in which we most often hear the word ‘preside’- our church meetings. Generally the program, if there is one, will list who is presiding and the person conducting the meeting will also usually mention it. It’s generally understood that the person presiding is the one who will partake of the sacrament first (thus assenting that it was prepared and blessed satisfactorily) and who will step in to correct any blatantly false doctrine taught during the meeting (if desired). Those tasks are meted out to whomever happens to be ‘presiding’. However, there is almost always delegation- the presiding person is ultimately responsible for making sure things happen, but might not personally make those things happen.

We need to get less caught up in ‘who has the most desirable job?’ and more caught up in ‘how can I best contribute to the success of my family or ward?’; when we do, feigned offense and encouraging animosity rarely remain. We do what we’re asked to do and answer for the things we’re assigned, which will inevitably involve seeking help and delegating to spread things around.

And that is what I mean by it being impossible to be equal. How would you measure “equality” in something that can never be equal? (And with the effect childbirth has on women, I’m talking emotionally as well as physically.)

Physical differences are very real. That is part of mortal life. Pretending otherwise is idealistic. Trying to minimize the impact of physical differences further disadvantages those who are already physically disadvantaged. That’s even without factoring in social and cultural disadvantages like sexual assault statistics, or single parenthood ratios. It’s like saying we should get rid of handicapped parking because we want to be equal.

Equality is a fickle theology. It doesn’t often restrict itself to performing according to expectation. Acknowledging general differences while still allowing for exceptions, in my mind, is a much more reasonable approach.

Kind of….No, EXACTLY like the Proclamation.

As for the time off question, I’m a big proponent of stay-at-home dads, both because I feel men should be able to be free to be who they want to be, just like women should, and because I feel their acceptance is a key step to women and men gaining true equality in the workplace. I feel like equal time off for child-related events will help that path become a viable option for more men who want to start families. A gateway drug, as it were. I believe fathers should have time to develop connections to their children, just as mothers should. If it becomes the norm that either parent can stay home to raise children, then couples can have more open conversations about who, if anyone, will take time off from their respective career when they want to have children, and for how long. Plus, while newborn babies are dependent on their physical connection to their mothers, they also benefit from physical and emotional closeness, and that’s something that can, and should be, provided by both parents.

Even if you believe women should stay home and nurture fulltime if possible (I think it’s pretty clear that I don’t, but I respect that as a valid opinion), this way it’s a choice each woman is making, and not something culture or society is forcing on her.

Life might not always be fair, but sometimes it can be, and I think it’s a goal worth working for, even if our best efforts come up short of perfection. There are also a lot of problems with politics, but that doesn’t cause me to stop voting as, for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses do. I can see how unfulfilled goals can make it seem like it’s not worth trying anymore, and I don’t fault anyone who chooses that path, but that’s just not my way.

But generally, there are definitely men and women out there who are tyrannical in their marriages, and I have heard a lot of terrible stories about what men in the church can do to their wives and families because they think they’re in charge. My own father isn’t a Latter-day Saint, but he was very controlling growing up naturally, and if he thought God had made him steward over his family, I think it would have had a very negative effect. Frank and you have talked about the positive result of giving extra say and responsibility to someone who doesn’t naturally want it, but I think it’s important to consider the negative effects that can happen by giving it to someone who does crave that kind of thing.

For me, it’s not whether presiding over children is split: I think most families are like yours. But if a husband presides over a wife even some of the time, but a wife never presides over a husband, I feel that is deeply unfair and flawed. Bishops preside over an entire ward, but rotate out. Why not the same thing in marriage, where husband or wife presides in alternating years, if having someone preside is really necessary? The answer, of course, culturally hearkens back to priesthood. Since culturally only men hold the priesthood, and that is the main rationale I have heard for why men should preside in their families and elsewhere, I believe that makes my professional clergy analogy appropriate.

Silver Rain, we definitely have a fundamental difference of belief about the first matter, which would probably be too much to go into here. I will just restate that for me, there is a major difference between when a person holds any other calling and when that person is called to be president of the church. I hope we can value one another’s unique opinions on the matter, even as we disagree about them.

It seems we likewise disagree on the nature of General Conference.

For the rest of your post, I’m saddened to hear about your experience; I think it is one many women suffer, and I don’t think it’s right or fair.

But for me, that makes me want to change things. Talking about our mortal world with its mortal expectations, I think society has the potential to overcome all of those things, and by focusing on and finding ways to overcome inequalities, I think everyone benefits. I think things like companies having to provide leave for new births for both women and men is a wonderful thing, and while some jobs by their nature have to have set schedules and limits, I think most can allow for greater flexibility without losing anything. And for me, I think gender equality helps with this. We have a couple of men where I work who once or twice a week come in a couple hours late because they need to watch their kids, or once or twice a month bring their kids into the office for a few hours, and I think that’s awesome. If both men and women accept those kinds of obligations more universally, I think the stigma around those obligations starts to disappear.

We live in a fallen world, but working together, I feel we can work past that. Personally, I don’t know very many men anymore who do have to eat their bread for the sweat of their brow: most make a living in a nicely air conditioned building. If many of the consequences of mortality can be ameliorated for men, why not just as much for women? The end goal of our Heavenly Parent’s plan is that everyone wins.

That’s how I feel, anyway.

Thomas S. Monson was sustained as a prophet when he signed the Proclamation to the World, as were the others. That’s not really arguable. Don’t mistake lack of evidence that he still ratifies that document as evidence of lack. I assure you, the topic would not be brought into Conference at all if your assumptions were accurate. But that’s neither here nor there. I understand your urge to discount the Proclamation, and I don’t really care to argue it beyond making that one point.

In one job, there was a very strong culture of expectation to work late and fill in where necessary. That expectation was no less for me (though I wasn’t aware of it when I agreed to work there.) But because my circumstances are different (due in large part but not completely to things relating to childbirth,) having equal expectations ended up creating an unequal dynamic in the workplace. I could not meet those expectations created for a male-dominated culture, so I was often looked over for participation in projects. There was nothing explicit in that (which makes it hard to objectively quantify,) but it had a very un-equalizing effect because of equal expectations in a naturally unequal situation.

It’s more simply explained this way: we are in a mortal world, with mortal expectations. As women, one fourth of our prime life is often spent in pain even if we don’t have children. We are not as strong, generally. We tend to deal with things socially/holistically rather than with a narrow focus. We are different, in general, than men. And when we are held to the exact same assumptions that are used to address men, we are at a disadvantage.

Don’t get me wrong. I think equality is a good thing to strive for, to a point. But when it is elevated to an essentially religious status, we end up betraying the very goal we pretend to strive for. I would rather see men and women valued for their differeces. Of course there are exceptions, but those can also be accepted and appreciated.

If it had been recognized I had different responsibilities and better allowances were made to complete projects at home, or flex my schedule in other ways, both I and my male counterparts could have benefited.

There are other ways I see the banner of equality robbing us of a richness of experience. In dating, marriage, and family. In media. In community dynamics. And most especially in the Church. I celebrate our differences. Rather than wanting them to be made equal in fact, I’d like to see them become valued.

I get the feeling you don’t think women preside at all. I know this isn’t the case in my house. My wife and I interact and make decisions together; sometimes she is the final say and sometimes I am. She probably defers to me more when neither of us have really strong feelings about something. But she presides all the time. Rather than saying I preside and she doesn’t, I think we both preside over the kids. It’s not an either/or – it’s mutual.

While I was off playing Army for long periods she presided non-stop. She presides and makes decisions while I’m away or working. Sometimes she consults me, other times she just makes the decisions and implements them. When we leave together we give authority to our oldest, a daughter, and she presides in our place, and the others know that when she makes a decision on food/movies/computer use/etc. that they need to treat her decision and say-so the same as if my wife or I had said it.

I don’t know if my family is abnormal, but I think women and children preside all the time in some manner. I know that some men are very controlling and think they are the be-all end-all, but I believe that most are not and that presiding is a shared activity, even if the men do it most often when the entire family is together (but even then it’s maybe a 70/30 or 60/40 between my wife and I).

So I don’t see the “send one person to school and study” scenario as valid. I think everyone should know how and be comfortable being in charge, even if they only rarely or never get to do so.

I agree that, with your sincere belief or mine, we’re still left with the question of presiding and how it can help or hurt in solving real, practical issues. For you, since you believe God has said men and fathers are to preside, it’s a question of understanding God’s will. For me, since I don’t have that same foundation assumption, it’s a question of practical politics.

From that view, let me alter the scenario just a little, and see if you still see the benefits of having a predetermined person to preside in the same light. Instead of a family, let’s shift it to a religious congregation. In a ward, we need someone to clean the building, assign prayers and talks, give blessings, help people with repentance through confession, read and understand the scriptures, administer the weekly sacrament, etc. These are all small things, and it’s very possible that, if left to a group as a whole, some of them might not get done because no one wants to take the initiative and do them.

So, to make sure these small but important things aren’t overlooked, one person is appointed in the congregation to hold the priesthood. Instead of using only genetics, though, we’ll go even one step farther: we’ll only choose a person who cares about his ward so much that he wants to dedicate his life to it, and we’ll send him to college. And we’ll make sure he’s male, to boot, so no worries there. By focusing on just this one person, we can make sure we get someone who actually knows what the scriptures mean, who will exercise his priesthood righteously, who will be available all throughout the week to help with repentance and cleaning and everything else that needs doing, and who will provide long-term help and consistency.

And, because we want to keep our focus clear, this person is really the only one who needs to read the scriptures or hold the priesthood.

This is how Christianity decided to do things midway through the Roman Empire, and it uses all the same logic, and in some ways makes a lot of sense. Was Joseph Smith right or wrong to discard all of that in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Now, with your foundation of what you believe God has told you, these scenarios, family patriarchy versus professional clergy, probably seem entirely different. But for me, without that foundation belief, I have a hard time seeing the difference. In my eyes, the fruits of discarding the latter, which I feel I have experienced in the church, commend the adaptation of the former.

Silver Rain, to respond briefly: to me, if the examples are about people trying to create equality, but failing, then, without knowing your specific examples, I would probably see that as the source of the negative effects. Failed consecration ends up as communism, as it were, and trying unsuccessfully to do something in the incorrect way, I feel, can often turn out worse than not trying to do it. But I would be interested in hearing your experiences, I’d be interested in them, especially as they illustrate how you came to believe equality is impossible.

As for Thomas Monson signing The Family document, he did that before he was prophet. I don’t consider what Joseph Smith said before God appeared to him and subsequently made him the means of restoring important parts of His gospel to carry comparable weight to what he said after. Or, for a more extreme example to illustrate my point, before Alma became prophet and was trying to get people to leave the church, I don’t consider his words to reflect his later call as the High Priest of God’s church. President Thomas’s office started in April 2008, so for me, to have said it as prophet, it has to come after then. If you feel differently, then we have a fundamental difference of belief on the matter.

Looking at post-prophetic-appointment material, we just had a new edition of the scriptures released: if he wanted to make The Family document scripture, he had an ideal opportunity to do so then. If he didn’t want it to become scripture, but wanted to renew its relevance for us today and endorse it as prophet, he could simply have quoted from or referenced it in a General Conference address. But to the best of my knowledge (and I have specifically looked for it), he has never done either, while he has made a point of restating other teachings of his predecessors that aren’t in the scriptures, like the injunction for all young men to serve full-time missions, and to update others, such as allowing men and women to serve missions at younger ages. I don’t know how President Thomas feels about the proclamation today; I do know that he hasn’t felt inspired, or decided on his own, to make it a part of his teachings to the whole church over the last 7 1/2 years and the more than 30 talks he has given.

What he has emphasized are things like reaching out to those who have left the church, the importance of temples, the power and reality of personal revelation, of being faithful to marriage, of never judging others, and the necessity to follow Christ’s footsteps, both the happy and the painful ones.

If that’s his focus, it seems discordant to me that there is more emphasis put on a document written by a man now deceased, even if he is a former prophet. The Family was written twenty years ago, and was a direct response to the fact that a lot of people from other religions were holding a conference in Salt Lake City. Some teachings are eternal, but others are cultural, and I believe are best allowed to be forgotten. We have made it to the moon, and gay marriage is legal. Whether those things are good or bad, they’re big events, and alter the world a lot from when former prophets first talked about them.

(sorry if the first reference is a bit obscure to anyone: Joseph Fielding Smith once said people will never go to the moon; it’s a flawed comparison, since he wasn’t prophet when he said it, but rhetorically it seemed to fit in nicely)

Sorry, Silver Rain, I guess that wasn’t so brief after all.

Frank, I enjoy your posts and will continue to enjoy engaging intellectually with you through them. Thank you for the gift of writing out your thoughts, which enriches my life and thought a great deal. I deeply appreciate that you folks are willing to put yourself out there for people like me to engage with, even when my thoughts are half-formed and not nearly as cleanly written as yours.

But, with due respect, I really think you’re dodging your own argument here, which is unfortunate. Gender differences is actually the CENTER of the point you’re making, unless I misread the part of the post where you suggested that it might be good for men, who are (according to the argument) differently engaged in family life, to be forced into a presiding role. Is that not a gender difference discussion?

And if so, does the discussion matter? Or is this more like Jax’s and Silver’s positions, where the “reasons” for the gender difference don’t matter because a higher argument (in this case, God’s opinion) overrides any interesting observations we may make about the situation?

Put differently, I wish these conversations would begin with this question: if the proposed argument is proved false, would I change my views on the subject? If the answer is no, then why discuss details?

I continue this line of reasoning out of a selfish desire to get at the heart of the matter, not from a belief that I necessarily deserve a response. I excuse anyone who is, at this point, tired of me. ;)

That’s not what I mean. I mean that by trying to treat me “equally,” inequality was created.

and because we aren’t better than each other, we get the “whose going to decide” factor the OP talks about, and which makes the point of the OP that having someone designated as “presiding” is sometimes convenient.

I’ve never looked at one of my Bishops/SP’s/GA’s and thought, “they are innately better than I am.” It’s not about being better, that isn’t why they preside! I think they preside simply because God chose them. And same with fathers.

Jax, I applaud your honesty and sincerity. It’s hard to argue with sincere testimony, so I won’t try.

I will just express my belief, too: I believe that the current prophet, President Thomas Monson, has not told us that men should preside, and that no other living person has authority to make a definitive statement to that end, since there is no scripture to explicitly back it up. I believe past prophets and others taught many things in their times, many of which, like injunctions in the 1920s for women not to wear makeup, we no longer follow, and which were likely products of their time and culture. The scriptures are full of examples of prophets making mistakes; that’s part of their calling, and only one person was ever perfect.

I believe suffering for the mistakes of the current prophet is part of his learning experience and ours, teaching all of us humility, compassion, and love, as the example of David shows more than once. However, I feel we have no obligation to continue to suffer for the mistakes of dead ones, nor do we have to remain silent when someone in authority over us does something we believe in our hearts to be wrong. The scriptures contain many examples of this, too, and in Luke 18 God tells us to cry unto him continually, as if he were an unjust judge. If that’s the pattern of how we should talk to God, doesn’t it make sense to use a similar pattern with His servants? I believe submitting to God in all things is a scriptural teaching, and core to my faith and the religion I love.

I don’t believe suffering cultural abuses in silence the same thing at all. Going back to to Frank’s initial analogy and applying it to the church, I don’t believe God appointing a prophet means He wants the rest of the group not to ever speak or provide input. Nor does the prophet stand in the place of a parent: we have one Father, Who is in heaven, and one Master, Christ, as Jesus taught us in Matthew 23. The rest of us are sisters and brothers: some are older and some younger, but we’re all on the same path, and no one is innately better than any other.

Good. I think men should preside. Why? Because prophets tell us they should and therefore I believe God expects men to do so. Not because of something inherent in the Y chromosone, not because we’re better, magical, in need, but simply because He said so. I think this post gave a reasonable account of one possible benefit from following that prophetic message.

Here’s another possible benefit/drawback: God has someone to hold accountable. The thing about events that DON’T happen is that EVERYONE is to blame. For example, if the garbage isn’t taken out, it is because I didn’t do it, but my wife also didn’t do it, the kids didn’t do it, the neighbor didn’t do it, my Congressman didn’t take it out… etc. I could accurately say that everyone failed to do it. Everyone could be held accountable for things don’t happen. Same for scripture study, prayer times, and other “sins of omission”. By assigning those tasks to one person, who is supposed to make sure that they DO happen, the LORD has made it possible for Him to be Just in dealing punishment for those omissions. Somebody is now responsible for them, the father.

I don’t think HE selected men to preside because we’re better or He loves us more, or any such thing, I think He needs someone to hold accountable for the omissions/oversights and He has chosen to put that on the men.