LDS women's thoughts wanted!!! (men's thoughts are also welcomed)

Background: Me: 25F, married, one child, professional school graduate working only a few hours a month from home, living in the continental US, lifelong Church member.

  • Do you guys feel fulfilled as women?

I feel pretty fulfilled as a person. I think in my case maybe asking if I feel fulfilled as a woman specifically brings some of the areas of my life that I don't fully understand/love more to the front, which is kind of odd.

  • Do you feel respected and/or equal to men?

Respected: yeah, generally. I think most people try to be pretty respectful. There are certainly some culture or age differences that can impact what respectful means to different people, and I might not always like that, but I think that in general people are trying in the modern world.

  • What are your thoughts on the fact that we still believe in polygamy in the eternities? (Ex: a man whose wife died can be sealed to a new spouse, but if a woman wants to get sealed to a new spouse they have to have an annulment on the previous sealing)

I think equating a man being sealed to multiple women with the certainty of "believ[ing] in polygamy in the eternities" is jumping the gun somewhat. It may well be that that's how those relationships work out, but I think there's a LOT of room for further learning on this subject because there's just a ton of stuff that we don't know,

I'll confess that I personally dislike the idea of my husband being sealed to anybody else, and I think feeling that way is rational.

At the end of the day, I think this is where some advice I got from a religion professor comes in handy. She commented that if there's something about the Gospel that makes us feel sick, we probably don't understand it. I'm willing to stay with the Church because we believe in an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-wise God and that means that he has solutions for the problems I think about and the ones that haven't even occurred to me, too.

  • Does your ward/family address controversial topics?

My ward: not a ton, I actually occasionally wish they'd be even a bit more boring since I attend Gospel Principles, which is supposed to be investigator/new/returning member oriented (I'm a ward missionary) and it's always uncomfortable in there if things go off too far towards the Journal of Discourses or what have you.

My family: I'm super blessed to have a very educated and literate family. Being able to talk to my older brother during a time of faith struggle was really helpful. We can talk about stuff. My husband and I talk about things sometimes, and he's happy to talk, he's just less of a bookworm/theologian than my dad and some of my siblings.

  • Is it uncomfortable to be a Mormon and have a career?

I can't fully answer this question, since I only work a few hours a month, from home, while my baby naps. As a woman who went to professional school and who is Mormon, I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I chose to stay home with my son, and I feel very blessed that our financial situation is such that this is possible and doesn't prevent us from having a comfortable life. I personally prefer to be a stay-at-home mom right now, and don't really want to be working full-time, so that's great. At the same time, I think there's some pressure (even for Mormon women) to be working, and I find myself over-explaining my job to people who probably don't care that much because it's like "Yeah, look! I have a job, too, I'm not 'just' a mom!" This is kind of terrible, since there's absolutely nothing wrong with not working outside the home as a mom, but I still have some sort of guild about it.

  • Has the choice of following traditional female roles been an empowering experience overall or do you feel like you would have liked to do something else with your life?

This is similar to the above, I guess. I have some mild wistfulness for the "ahh, I could have been so much more of a financial contributor," "aahh, I would have been probably quite good at a full-time career in the thing I studied," etc. I don't know if I consider my "role" empowering, but maybe that's because I don't personally think that's the point of gender roles.

Extra thoughts:

I do think it's hard to be a Mormon woman. (I'm sure there are specific things that make it hard to be a Mormon man, too.) There's definitely a lot of conflict that can make you feel guilty no matter WHAT you're doing/not doing with regards to careers/family/etc. Further, there are areas/situations in the Church where women and men are treated differently, some of which are doctrinal and some of which are policy and some of which are only culture, and I think that trying to figure out which is which (and the fact that people disagree which is which) can make trying to sort out your feelings about things even more complicated (and once again sometimes the best answer before having a full understanding is just to fall back on trusting that God is good and knows what He's doing even if I don't understand everything). Finally, I think sometimes people who mean well make things worse by using non-doctrinal arguments or falling back on inappropriate cultural beliefs regarding the role/position of women in the Church. (e.g. men:priesthood::women:motherhood)

And to u/KJ6BWB's addendum: I don't care, haha. I think "guys" has been largely de-gendered when speaking to groups.

/r/latterdaysaints Thread