Love One, Hate the Other?
[A blog comment of mine from nine years ago. It came to mind this morning, reading a Mormon globe-trotter lauding her un-Mormon economic choices.]
Riding in trains across Pennsylvania these past months [first half of 2004], I became interested in learning a little more about the Amish. Farming is their main occupation, and many of them use older, horse-powered methods. An interesting point for what follows is that at the beginning of the 20th Century their agricultural practices and lack of financial opulence were not nearly as distinctive as they are now. They stayed as they were and the surrounding world changed.
In many American communities, it is the common practice for husband and wife to both be employed. It wasn’t that way forty years ago, but it is now. Among Latter-day Saints, though, generally only the husband is employed, in keeping with the guide of church leaders. This will have the result of Latter-day Saint families having less money than they would otherwise and being overall a poorer people.
It may be objected that there are costs associated with having both spouses work that take away from the gains. True, but the offsets only offset a portion of the gains generally. The women and men in question are rational actors able to figure out what is in their own best interest financially.
It may also be said that those choosing to have both spouses employed may be better off financially, but worse off in other ways. This seems like the Amish attitude that there is peace found in plowing with a horse that is worth the loss of productivity. I agree with this concept as it applies to the Latter-day Saints. I think there is a financial sacrifice involved that “pays off” in ways that don’t mean that we get back that which we have sacrificed.
Supposing that the ideas above are correct, what do you think of the losses involved? If as with the Amish, the financial lives of Latter-day Saints and other Americans are separating, how do you feel about being part of a poorer people? Poorer in terms of smaller, older houses on less desirable streets, cheaper cars, fewer luxuries compared with your peers. Peers are those who have the same earning capacity that you do. This will even carry over to the opportunities to “obtain as much education as possible,” and result in your children’s financial peers being a poorer class than your own.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Vader
August 21, 2013
If having one spouse stay at home was the only separation between the Church and the world, then, yes, we would expect the Church to end up poorer.
However, having one spouse stay home is part of a whole constellation of distinctive behaviors that potentially affect economic outcomes.
In addition, one should look beyond the immediate generation. How well will children who have a stay-at-home mom fare later in life compared with latchkey children?
Of course, we’re talking about general trends rather than individual cases. My son was raised by a stay-at-home mom on a relatively poor farm and ended up becoming a Rebel scum and traitor, so you never know.
Man SL
August 21, 2013
I am actually not all that surprised that a middle-upper class white professional woman has adopted an ideology (feminism) that promotes the advancement of middle-upper clas white professional women at the expense of society and their own children. I am only pleasant surprised that among the Saints it happens so little.
MC
August 21, 2013
Here’s a quote from a few years ago from Claudia Bushman:
“Large families, large houses, traditional role models, and single incomes have led to some painful economic realities in current Mormon lives: bankruptcy, foreclosure, welfare. That’s not what anyone had in mind. We need some creative new models.”
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/All-Else-Will-Follow?offset=1&max=1
She’s almost certainly overstating the case; I’ve seen no evidence that Mormons have foreclosures at a higher rate than the population at large, they have been shown to be far less likely to be on welfare, and Frank McIntyre showed that the higher bankruptcy rates in Utah are mostly an artifact of state law. And of course her preferred solution is to stop having distinctive social patterns among the LDS, which is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Nonetheless, she’s identifying something real here. Young Mormon men increasingly feel they MUST go to dental/law/business/medical/accounting school just to have the possibility of the traditional fecund LDS family. With most non-LDS families having two incomes or getting subsidies from the state, the choices for a Mormon man on the left half of the bell curve, at least income-wise, are increasingly stark.
If I were poorer, I might go the “Amish” route and choose to have lots of kids but raise them in extreme simplicity. Or I could go the same route as the ultra-orthodox Jews in Kiryas Joel, NY, and sponge as much government money as I could because I’m only exploiting the Other. As the Mormons, due to stubborn adherence to traditional values, begin to look more and more like the Other to the rest of the country, it’s not implausible that Mormons could take the same attitude and decide to work the system.
Massive third-world immigration may also break down the conservative Mormon taboo on receiving welfare. Why be the chump who holds up the system when you can “get your share” of the spoils and have a bunch of great kids who build the Kingdom?
Vader
August 21, 2013
I sometimes have genuine spasms for guilt over the fact that I had so few children, and their mother worked.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine being able to handle even more children as difficult as the ones I have.
Scott W. Clark
August 23, 2013
Education is primed for disruption though. It’s too expensive and the outcomes are pretty miserable these days. If the focus becomes certification rather than degrees (there are some indications now that it’s moving in this direction) then education will get pretty cheap pretty fast. And it will get flexible and likely will preference those kids with a parent around. (It will also bring merit back into the education fold rather than money but that’s a different matter.) So things may not be so dire on the education front in the future for us.
Cheers.