Grandparent Cry

Young White LDS women have been handed a raw deal by the church, and it's largely responsible for the single and confused trajectory increasingly present among them. This isn't contrary to what I've said about young men, declines in trust and traditional behavior hurt both parties, young men don't benefit from the shortfalls of young women and vice versa. These young women hold higher standards than everyone but the Amish, especially in terms of sexual purity, vulgarity, modesty, and service in the forms of missions, callings, etc. While it is true that many young women leave the church, or remain in the church and disregard modesty standards for attention on social media(promiscuity is still present, but seems to be far less pervasive than the desire for attention), I would argue the underdiscussed factor is women's needs not being properly addressed by our culture or the church, and that much of the disreputable behavior of young women is just a coping mechanism to distract themselves from not being able to get what they need. Let's start off by establishing that most of these women are obedient by large and by nature, but obeying the dictates of the modern church just isn't handing them a traditional life or giving them an enticing alternative. These women want to be married to a traditional man and have large families, but the church is telling them to become a girlboss. The emphasis leadership has placed on sisters serving missions(they're not commanded to but they might as well be as so many are serving missions now), getting as much education as possible, having a voice in the church(increasingly in positions of teaching doctrine and even informing the change in the endowment to remove Eve's submission to Adam), alongside the promotion of careers above having children(this is more secular in origin but the church has not sufficiently attacked this message) has materially and behaviorally led women in the exact opposite direction of the life they want and need. The result is a lot of devoted, beautiful, high character women going on missions, getting a CES school degree(and often a masters from a more prestigious school), landing the job they were told they should want, and they wind up being miserable and alone despite doing everything they were told to. The major disconnect here exists because young members hold traditional standards without traditional behavior, because the church doesn't preach traditional behavior. What is traditional behavior? The man leads and the woman submits. Being traditional in behavior when your spouse isn't is a terrible deal. The man leading with a woman that won't submit will be frustrated and feel disrespected, the woman who submits without a man leading will feel unprotected and will be unable to become comfortable in her femininity. The church doesn't produce men comfortable leading and holding authority over women(the men who do so within the church learned somewhere else, usually family), so it does not give women the containment they need to feel truly safe and happy in their roles as wives and mothers. And this applies to the girlbossiest girlboss you'll find in the church. I thought surely in talking to these women they would have a different preference for sexual dynamics than tradition, but every time one of them has opened up to me they express their desire for a truly traditional relationship. Yet the woman is put in a position where she has extreme psychological difficulty in submitting especially because she followed the counsel of leadership. She served a mission so she's equal to the missionaries, she graduated from college so she's equal with men that graduated, and she landed that prestigious office job so the men who made it that far are her equals too. But she doesn't want equal, her biology demands that she submit to a superior man(and while they are still responsible for their own lives, you can't meaningfully criticize them for feeling this way). The church elevates the social status of young women so much that it makes a behaviorally traditional relationship in the church exceptionally rare, even(and especially) among the many faithfully devout couples. If a young woman is to be happy and have her needs met, she has to avoid the counsel of the church(or reconcile with the consequences with having followed it), and choose a man upon how traditional his behavior is. If any women are worth saving from the quagmire of modernity, it is our women. Not just because they are beautiful beyond compare, but they have shown a willingness to be devoted, even if it is that devotion to the church which has led them astray. I guess that I should count myself lucky, to have been given a people so thoroughly worth saving. In case it wasn't clear in my last post, yes I am a pagan. Why do I care what the church does then? My people are those of pioneer ancestry(White people, specifically English, Scandinavians, and Swiss), and their struggles and experiences map closely with the culture and teachings upheld by LDS leadership. The survival and wellbeing of my people is a religious responsibility for me, so if the church threatens that I must do my best to mitigate the damage.