Mormon Depression...why?

[_ktallamigo]

By whom? This isn't church doctrine, counsel, or an accepted attitude among its members.

"Be ye therefore perfect"

[_Boaz & Lidia]

"Coggins7
As I looked over this again, I realized that it was nothing but the spleen venting of an adolescent mentality looking for a shoulder to cry on because something's wrong inside and the Church is an easy scapegoat that allows displacement of anger and frustration onto an external and relives one of the need to do serious work on one's own life.

Sorry to have misunderstood.

About 90% of the above is raw, unvarnished nonsense, but don't let that stop a good Church bashing session.

Nice ad hominem attack. You're a fine one to talk about "adolescent mentality."

Look - you don't know me personally and are therefore unqualified to make judgments about what's "wrong inside" with me.

These are simply my experiences and perceptions about Mormon society and why so many women are depressed and on antidepressant drugs - which is the topic of this thread. I have attended a lifetime's worth of Relief Society and other church meetings in the heart of the Salt Lake Valley. This subject (of depression, guilt, and expectations of perfectionism) has even been discussed in Sunday Relief Society meetings among the sisters I know, who concurred that these were their experiences - and their perceptions of the expectations that are placed on them. Obviously I can't speak for every woman in the church, only the ones I come into contact with.

ktall

Ignore him, he is all talk and very little action... and this late, it is probably the bottle speaking..

He has been inactive most of his life, did not serve a mission, and is a 20+ year recovering alcoholic.. yeah not your typical TBM.

[_ktallamigo]

Ignore him, he is all talk and very little action... and this late, it is probably the bottle speaking..

He has been inactive most of his life, did not serve a mission, and is a 20+ year recovering alcoholic.. yeah not your typical TBM.

Hmmmm - clearly not qualified to speak for TBM women.

[_Yoda]

As a Mormon woman I am expected to be perfect

By whom? This isn't church doctrine, counsel, or an accepted attitude among its members. The First Presidency, I recall, attacked this problem in the seventies, as some members then, especially woman, were having problems with it. If anyone is expecting you to be "perfect" in some all encompassing senses, you should tell them to blow off and learn the Gospel.

Perfectionism, it should be noted, is a problem inherent in our highly competitive, materialist culture in a general sense, so its no surprise it makes its appearance among the Saints, who are embedded within that culture. The Church, however, does not support any such attitudes among its members.

Nor do all members, and probably a majority, struggle under such illusions.

Coggins---I agree with you that kt's examples are not Church doctrine. And, yes, some of her examples have been exaggerated for effect. However, that does not discount that the Mormon culture, particularly the female Mormon culture, promotes these things. Surely, if you have been a member of the Church all your life, your wife has mentioned some of these expectations to you? Or you have, perhaps, heard them yourself? If not, then I definitely want to attend your Ward! :)

I've been a member of the Church all my life (almost 44 years), and I completely understand what kt is referring to.

She is giving the woman's perspective. Frankly, I don't think that it is any less hectic than the culture's standard for men.

Men are expected to be the sole provider for their family; be ultra-successful financially; make lots of money so that they can afford the music lessons, the sports camps, etc. while the wife stays home, takes care of, and births as many children as possible. He must be a good father, spending quality time with wife and kids, while, at the same time, balancing career and callings which take him out of the home 70-95% of the week. As the Priesthood holder, he is ultimately responsible for any major family failure that occurs, such as a child becoming inactive, etc.

You're right, Coggins. The gospel doesn't preach these things. But the culture of the Church has interpreted these things. I agree with you. We need to make things more simple, and get back to more of the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[_Yoda]

As I looked over this again, I realized that it was nothing but the spleen venting of an adolescent mentality looking for a shoulder to cry on because something's wrong inside and the Church is an easy scapegoat that allows displacement of anger and frustration onto an external and relives one of the need to do serious work on one's own life.

Sorry to have misunderstood.

About 90% of the above is raw, unvarnished nonsense, but don't let that stop a good Church bashing session.

Why do you always have to be such an ass? She wasn't Church bashing. She was expressing her perception of what the Church culture promotes.

See my serious responses to the issues in my post above. You should have stopped with your first response, Cogs. You made some good points. Too bad you poisoned your own reasoning with ad hom attacks that were far from necessary.

[_Coggins7]

He has been inactive most of his life,

OK, that's big fat Greek lie number one. Care to let us know where you got that one and try for strike two? You two have already lost any and all moral and intellectual credibility from your first post, so this is nothing but fulfilling expectations.

did not serve a mission,

So?


and is a 20+ year recovering alcoholic.. yeah not your typical TBM.


So? (and any idea what "recovery" means with the addiction community?)


Care to expand on just what your point may be? Paul held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen. Peter denied he knew Christ three times to save his own hide.


So?


believe me B&L, we've all seen how adolescent, vulgar, and immature you are, from your first post to the present. You should both probably be in therapy, not venting your own internal psychological and emotional problems in public here.

[_Coggins7]

Coggins---I agree with you that kt's examples are not Church doctrine. And, yes, some of her examples have been exaggerated for effect. However, that does not discount that the Mormon culture, particularly the female Mormon culture, promotes these things.

OK, it...the culture...promotes what things, precisely, less the embellishments and exaggerations?

Surely, if you have been a member of the Church all your life, your wife has mentioned some of these expectations to you? Or you have, perhaps, heard them yourself? If not, then I definitely want to attend your Ward! :)

That we have sex every night, after a long day raising kids and keeping house, or working outside the home, and raising kids, and keeping house. That she look like a hot babe every day, never gain weight, never age? Have perfect kids with perfect grades and with no personal psychological or emotional problem problems? Every one an Eagle Scout, every one brght and beaming each and every day. Wealthy?

Well Liz, I plead guilty to never really having come into contact with these attitudes among the woman I have known...or their husbands. The depression issue re the idea of seeking perfection, however, I have been aware of.

She is giving the woman's perspective. Frankly, I don't think that it is any less hectic than the culture's standard for men.

The culture's standard for men contains a number of negatives as well as that for woman, but the Church has been traditionally openly hostile to those standards as well. Men, as well as woman, are supposed to dress modestly, and not strut around the beach like a peacock showing of their abs. Men, according to GBH's pamphlet Father, Consider Thy Ways, are to be home centered, as is the woman, not career and ambition centered. Woman and men both have it rough in the post sixties, feminist world of having it all. But the Church is against all of this, which is why I think the depression phenomena is more a seeping of the surrounding culture into the Church, which distorts actual Church teachings, then something inherently wrong with Church culture itself, and nobody is saying that Church culture can be hermetically sealed from the popular culture. It can't.

Men are expected to be the sole provider for their family; be ultra-successful financially; make lots of money so that they can afford the music lessons, the sports camps, etc. while the wife stays home, takes care of, and births as many children as possible. He must be a good father, spending quality time with wife and kids, while, at the same time, balancing career and callings which take him out of the home 70-95% of the week. As the Priesthood holder, he is ultimately responsible for any major family failure that occurs, such as a child becoming inactive, etc.

OK, you're being intellectually serious (hello Scratch, you wanted a definition, so observe Liz here...) now, so skip the nursemaid and Ba Ba comment above. You have my interest.

First, men are expected to be the sole provider. This is a gospel principle, and mountains of social science evidence suggest that this traditional division of labor is the best, both for a marriage and for children; having a mom at home on a continual basis, and a father who provides economically. Ideology aside, the primary reason this has become so difficult is the impact of high taxes and inflation on the ability of a single earner to keep up. By the end of the nineties, the second earner was working almost solely to pay taxes, and inflation has eaten up much of what a single earner would have brought home and used within the family. I'm not making a strictly economic argument here. Its also true that Mormons have bought into the materialism of western culture to some degree, and too many live beyond theit means as needs become confused with wants. This is all true. However, its also true that middle class affluence does buy things that the poor, and my grandparents, could never have done for their children: piano lessons, dance, martial arts, sports etc. Nice things, and before the Industrial Revolution, most simply struggled to survive.

Feminism (radical) also has had an effect, transferring to woman many of the worst aspects of the American male psych (self worth is bound up with financial success and corporate careerism over family).

Keep in mind too that the Church has never had a doctrine or official counsel on the size of families. That's always been understood to be between the Lord and the married couple. Pres. Kimball had a modest sized family, and he was clear that childbirth is conditioned by consideration for the woman's health and psychological state (this was in the early seventies). Large families are not an official Church position, and I'm aware of no stigma attached to small ones. Most LDS I know have a modes family size, perhaps three to five (and some with only one or two), which are far more than the standard Yuppie 1.3, but hardly the eight, ten, and twelve of past generations, when much of the population was on the farm and mortality rates were higher. I support large families in general, especially as we are heading for serious economic problems within the next few of decades due to our preoccupation with small families that became all the rage after the sixties and was itself a feature of our galloping materialism.

It seems then, that we are faced with a complex of external conditions and internal priorities that must be balanced, and any such balancing act is going to have to include the leaving of some unnecessary luggage behind.

You're right, Coggins. The gospel doesn't preach these things. But the culture of the Church has interpreted these things. I agree with you. We need to make things more simple, and get back to more of the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Again, I would say its not the culture of the Church so much as a mutant intermingling between Church culture and the secular culture, and some inability to disentangle the two, that is producing much of the problem.

[_bcspace]

Ignore him, he is all talk and very little action... and this late, it is probably the bottle speaking..

He has been inactive most of his life, did not serve a mission, and is a 20+ year recovering alcoholic.. yeah not your typical TBM.

Well, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy......

A profound wizard!

[_Yoda]

Why do you always have to be such a gullible, bleeding heart nursemaid ready with a Ba Ba for every whining apostate with a fakakta sob story, half of which is composed of bald exaggerations and half truths that distort and mutilate the actual conditions for the purpose, not of dealing in an intellectually mature manner with the situation, of bashing the Church?

I'll take being compassionate over being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole any day of the week! What the hell is the matter with you? Your first response was civil, and more than sufficient in addressing the issues of her post. Then, you went off on some hell-bent tirade after supposedly "thinking about it" longer. WTF?

And about half of her claims are pure fantasy, as anyone who's been in the Church all of their lives, and been married for 23 years to another Mormon woman, and who has known many other married Mormon woman, knows. I know there has been a historic problem of depression among Mormon woman. I admitted as much. But probably half the claims she makes in her OP are either gross exaggerations or outright fabrications of attitudes that simply do not exist in LDS culture generally and have never been promoted by the Church.

Go back and read my prior post. I admitted that there were exaggerations in her post. And, I am glad that you at least see that there is a problem with depression among LDS women. Maybe there are some solutions we can discuss to help address the problem, rather than bicker.

Much of what she is talking about is the Cosmopolitan, Madison Avenue perception of the Supermom and the Superwoman who can have it all; she has conflated attitudes and nostrums of seventies feminism, for which the Church has no love lost, with some Church doctrines she clearly does not understand.

Please, please, please stop your one-note rhetoric. It is really boring. We all know that you are conservative. But to throw the whole femi-Nazi argument out at every turn is really boring. Stick to the issues of the post.

Sorry Liz, I guess I"m just too sensitized to provocateur such as this looking for a place to bash and vent their own personal problems on the convenient scapegoat, which is always the Church, and never the self, where ultimate responsibility resides.

I didn't view it this way. Maybe we're just reading things differently. As I stated in my previous post, I think she was referring to more of the culture or attitude of her LDS peers than the actual gospel. I viewed her comments as more frustration of not feeling like she measures up rather than her using the Church as a scapegoat, so I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.

"Be ye perfect"? Come come now, give me a break. Have we not been paying attention since Blazer B? Everyone knows that this idea does not have reference to this life in an overall or overarching sense. We are to "be" perfect: that is, we are to become. Its about becoming, and that's what the Church has always taught. We can be perfect in some things, of course. If we don't smoke or drink, we are, for all intents, "perfect" in that principle. If we do all our home teaching, we are "perfect" in that. But all this othert stuff? Where is she getting this from?

Again, please re-read my post. I clearly stated that the gospel does not teach these things. But I don't discount her possible experiences within her own stake or ward as far as attitudes.

And what Liz, is all this crap about looking beautiful all the time, hot sex every night, never gaining weight, perfect grades for the kids, never aging...what the??? Sources, teachings, Church counsel?

I agree. These were exaggerations. I stated as much.

And please, no more of the old hoary feminist "are you a woman, huh, huh?" cop out. I've been in the Church all of my life, and, despite the well poisoning from B&L, I've actually been active for most of it. I've been married for 23 years, and I've known many other active LDS females, married with children.

Show me where I discounted your Church service, or used that argument. The fact is, I AM a woman, a female member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints...have been a member all my life, married for 20+ years, and HAVE experienced some of the feelings of frustration that kt expressed. You need to honor others' experiences, just as they should honor yours. Coggins, you have to admit that with as many things that you and I have disagreed upon, I have been your most forceful advocate when Scratch, Boaz, or Merc have attacked you particularly regarding your alcoholism and/or when they have mentioned your participation in Church courts. I have stated repeatedly, throughout various threads on this board that these tactics are low, underhanded, and that I don't approve of them. You KNOW this!

I respect the fact that you are fighting an addiction, that you are a good husband and father, and that you struggle to live the gospel to the best of your abilities. I see that, and have acknowledged it on multiple occasions on this board, in spite of our debates. So please, grant me the same respect. I believe I have earned it.

So then, let's deal with the actual problem

I agree. What are some ways that you see that women, and men, frankly, can fight the feelings of discouragement that are so prevalent in modern society, both inside and outside the LDS culture?

[_Coggins7]

As I've driven Liz to profanity (only I get called on this kind of thing though...), I've deleted the post she's responding to, and I'm not going to go back and continue that fight. My follow-up post, in which I said "skip it", is the only one I'll be responding to, for the sake of peace keeping operations.