{"id":3822,"date":"2007-04-19T16:31:50","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T20:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=3822"},"modified":"2007-04-19T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2007-04-19T20:36:06","slug":"what-women-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2007\/04\/what-women-need\/","title":{"rendered":"What Women Need"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the article<\/a> announcing the new Relief Society Presidency, the reporter writes that President Beck’s “primary concerns are the lack of self-worth and sense of identity that plague too many women, she said, adding that Relief Society functions under inspired leadership and can help counter such feelings.”<\/p>\n

Some thoughts on this:<\/p>\n

(1) I wonder how many of you think that the primary concerns among LDS women involve self-worth and identity. (These are two things that are not on my radar, but then again, I don’t think I’m normal.)<\/p>\n

(2) If lack of self-worth is a problem, what’s the best way to fix it? <\/p>\n

(3) Is the self-worth problem related to the identity problem? If so, how do they interact?<\/p>\n

(4) What is the solution to the identity problem (if there is one)? What is the identity of LDS women? Is the solution as simple as telling them what their identity is?<\/p>\n

My take on this: I grant that I may not entirely understand Sister Beck’s concerns (and\/or they may have been lost in translation by the reporter). But I think that the last 15 years of official pronouncements to LDS women have consisted almost entirely of “You’re great! You’re a daughter of God with infinite worth!” My sense is that this annoys women (including me) who don’t struggle with these issues and simply doesn’t help those who do. (If they’ve heard it for 15 years and haven’t gotten the message, why would one more iteration change things? I’m not convinced this is a message that can be conveyed over a pulpit.) What would help? I’m not entirely sure since I haven’t personally been down that road. But I suspect that the same thing that works for children would work for adult women–and it isn’t gold stars. It is giving them significant, important, challenging tasks and allowing them to enjoy the sense of self-worth that comes from the successful completion of those tasks. What would that look like in practice? Beats me.<\/p>\n

The identity issue is trickier. So tricky that I don’t even know how to begin talking about it, except to say that I think we need to hold the fort against the demise of the SAHM while at the same time (1) not encouraging poor marriages and\/or marriages to nonmembers to reach that goal, (2) not encouraging SAHMs to give up everything else in their lives, and (3) not rubbing salt into the wounds of those who can’t be SAHMs. And I’ll put a gold star on your<\/em> forehead if you can figure out how to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the article announcing the new Relief Society Presidency, the reporter writes that President Beck’s “primary concerns are the lack of self-worth and sense of identity that plague too many women, she said, adding that Relief Society functions under inspired leadership and can help counter such feelings.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}