Fascinating article on time.com today, and well worth the read.

The focus is the gender demographic disparity in TSCC.

Here's the link:

http://time.com/dateonomics/


A few of the most interesting bits:

"Due to men’s generally higher rates of apostasy, it makes sense that the modern LDS church, like most religions, would have slightly more women than men. The Utah LDS church was in fact 52 percent female as recently as 1990. Since 1990, however, the Mormon gender gap in Utah has widened dramatically—from a gender ratio of 52:48 female to male in 1990 to 60:40 female to male in 2008, according to a study coauthored by ARIS researchers Rick Phillips, Ryan Cragun, and Barry Kosmin. In other words, the LDS church in Utah now has three women for every two men.

"The sex ratio is especially lopsided among Mormon singles. Many individual LDS churches—known as “wards”—are organized by marital status, with families attending different Sunday services from single people. Parley’s Seventh, one of Salt Lake City’s singles wards, had 429 women on its rolls in 2013 versus only 264 men, according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper.

"So why are there so many more Mormon women than Mormon men? The simple answer is that over the past twenty-five years, Utah men have been quitting the LDS church in unusually large numbers. ARIS’s Cragun, a sociology professor at the University of Tampa who is ex-LDS himself, said the growing exodus of men from the LDS church is an unexpected by-product of the growing importance of the mission in Mormon life. Serving a mission used to be elective; now it’s a prerequisite for leadership."

Interesting, but I'm not sure that I buy that this as the reason for Male/Female apostasy imbalance:

"...the growing exodus of men from the LDS church is an unexpected by-product of the growing importance of the mission in Mormon life. Serving a mission used to be elective; now it’s a prerequisite for leadership."

Does this sound right to anyone else?

I think it is far more complicated than that.

I think a good chunk of those men leaving the church do so because men tend to be more independent, less socially attached and less willing to put up with demeaning crap. But I could be wrong.

I agree. Women tend to feel the need to belong more than men. I know it's this way with my wife. I don't care if I never see another church "friend" again, but my wife needs her built in social circle. I also think that all honest men recognize that the priesthood is BS, an advantage that the women don't have.

These are generalizations, of course. I know many women here figured it out before their TBM husbands.

I think it has something to do with it but is not the whole picture. No it doesn't sound quite right.

I do think the extreme pressure put on young men nowadays forces the issue. You would really actually have to have one of those elusive testimonies in order to hold to the rod now.

I think what they are missing is Mormon men today don't live in a bubble anymore like we used to. The information age has changed too much. I don't mean just that we know the "anti" stuff now, I mean we have a good picture of what real life and real people are and it looks pretty good being a "natural man."

No. Makes no sense.

Didn't Holland comment on this topic in GC a while back? He said something to the effect of women being more spiritual or committed than men. Don't quote me but it was something along those lines.

I think it's strange how the LDS church leadership doesn't think twice about smacking down the spirituality of an entire gender. So if women really ARE more spiritual than men, why aren't THEY leading the church?

BTW, I don't think the LDS church even knows what spirituality IS. They think it's obedience, believing all sorts of weird stuff and saying you KNOW it's true.

I think what that can be chalked up to is women having more 'romantic' ideals... "Families are forever", marriage for eternity... And the motivation of keeping their men not drinking, out of bars and strip clubs, and at home with 'the family'.

Men have more pressure... If their wife wants to stay home, if they are a good Mormon, they have to be ok with it. If the wife wants more kids, they should be ok with it. And the pressure is all on them to 'provide', which is extremely hard in this day.

Time to reinstate polygamy!
Too many women for the "worthy" men!

:)

Didn't some GA counsel women to be willing to remain single in this life because of the lack of worthy TBM men? Yep, stay single rather than marry a non-Mormon!!

Dallin H. Oaks said something like that in his talk on divorce in GC.

Here'so the first hypothesis that comes to mind: The gender oriented roles defined in the church drive the men to be the bread winners and the women to be mothers. The result being that the men have less control over who and what they are exposed to, you know, because they have to go out into the world and earn a living and stuff, while the women can insulate themselves more, with their mommy groups and whatnot. Also, the men have to learn to think straight, you know, because they have to deal with normal people in the world and stuff, while the stay at homes can bounce the mormon crazy stuff off of one another and still feel good about themselves. So the guys realize a little more often how kooky they are and leave, while the women remain surrounded by the kooky and it remains their norm. Not all men and not all women of course, but just enough to shift the data.

This sounds far more plausible to me than the mission hypothesis.

That's an interesting theory for the married women/married men (the women can insulate themselves, the men are in the world) but it doesn't hold true for the singles.

Yet the article specifically talks about the imbalance in the singles.

If the missions being required is the means for which men leave...and more women are serving missions, might we see equal percentages leaving soon?

That's a good point, and my first thought was that perhaps men, due to cultural expectations, gravitate towards more logically oriented fields that promote critical thinking, while the women tend toward the service oriented carreers, but my personal experiences tell me that it's wrong. I work with a lot of engineers, a lot of them Mormons, but only 3 exmos. So logical or not, TBMs keep on TBMing. So shoot, I don't know.

Some really good points above.

To a degree the church leadership preferred life for mormon women can can almost be devoid of anything non-mormon. My mother exists in a constant mormon fantasy where everything she reads, watchs and intereacts with is mormon.

Same here. At my recent family reunion, I got to see just how heavily the adults are sheltering their female children. These are grown up 20 somethings, but they were being treated like early teens, being checked on, shepherded around, and cause for alarm when found alone...
I got a lot of shocked looks for simple things like driving the pickup, carrying large objects, running around by myself, and preferring to stay with my husband rather than be herded off with the other wimmin-folk.

My family goes for extremism in their expression of mormonism, I'll absolutely admit that, but they all come from several states now, and have a norm of restrictive behavior that their female children are obviously very accustomed to.

I think it is entirely possible that many can keep their female offspring utterly deluded in a mormon parallel reality.
The guys(boys and adults), were all expected to uphold this mormon fantasy for the sake of the women and also to capably deal with gentiles.

so Time didn't interview any exmos ?

This will be a race to the bottom (younger and younger LDS girls getting married). They will be punished for focusing on their education instead of husband hunting, before the "good ones" are gone! Panic! Don't get trampled!

(Is this why more girls are going on missions?) Do they think they might have an edge with the leadership bound guys? Or they might find a guy in the mission field? This delays graduating for some of them... My niece (very beautiful) is going in the fall. I felt sick when I was told the news. She should be finishing school.

I always thought the smartest guys found a girl finishing up her master's program, in order to put him through school. Creepy dynamics.

Today, men don't get a career that can support a wife and family at age 21 especially if they've spent 2 years on a mission. A reality the top 15 no nothing about. Plus, men can marry younger women and don't have a biological clock ticking. Also, not all men today really want the added callings of the church along with a family and career. How much of church "leadership" is really meaningless busy work and meetings, or trying to deal with problems the church hasn't given you the tools to solve?

There are many countries such as China and India where the male to female ratio is skewed in the opposite direct. Maybe the mormon church should get busy in those countries and ship off their excess women?

Might I propose that if 40 to 50 percent of missionaries become inactive, that a larger percentage of men would therefore become unactive over the time period studied.

I'd like to see the study after thd current wave of sister missionaries are figured in and if the ratio of female missionaries leaving is on par with male missionaries leaving.

Just thinking freely, I think you (and Time) are right about the mission being a significant factor. But with due respect, I think you're right for the wrong reasons.

Missionary activity is bringing in fewer and fewer converts, for so many reasons discussed on so many threads. Thus, you have these young men coming back to the cute "Welcome Home" banners and balloons, but deep down they know that things aren't working quite right...the church is not prospering...and this undercuts "the church is true" mentality.

So they are more vulnerable to apostasy.

After that, I think Humberto (tip of the hat to hopefulhusband also) in that once secure in marriage, the mollymormons tend to reinforce their nests (or fences?) by limiting their non-LDS activities and exposures and stay loyal to what they know and love.

I think it's due to a variety of factors, including:

1. Women as a general rule tend to be a bit more spiritual/religious than men, statistically speaking. So it makes sense that within a given religion, there would be a few more women than men.

2. Yes, the missionary mandatory thing gives someone an ultimatum--are you ALL IN or ALL OUT? You have to choose, and choose fast. So I do think that's one factor, while women could skate along being confused and floundering much longer.

3. Mormon men are encouraged to get jobs and educations; women aren't, especially not jobs. No influence from the outside world, no financial power/potential for independence, no job skills, no hope if they leave, no outside friends or coworkers to see as surprisingly non-heathen=guess I'll stay a stay-at-home Mormon mommy. Not a lot of prospects if they decide to leave at, say, 35 with several kids.

4. Women tend to identify themselves according to their social and familial roles more rather than independently. So a Mormon daughter is going to have more guilt put on her, and feel guiltier herself, in general than a Mormon son who leaves. Also, a Mormon mom is going to feel more pressured to stay in the church 'for her kids' than a dad will, again a vast generalization, but true for some nonetheless. A dad could leave, even move, and just worry about child support without a lot of cultural shaming; a woman never could. This is cultural within LDS circles but also in the world at large; women are expecting to 'carry the moral torch' more than men are, and are defined by themselves and others by their domestic success or failure far more than men are.

5. Because LDS women don't really 'lead' anything, they don't see the nuts and bolts of what is really going on as much. They don't ever see how the sausage is made because they are purposely kept in the dark. They aren't told they have priesthood powers only to realize...whoops, I don't. So again, their LACK of power in the church actually keeps them there.

Potentially true, all that. I guess the one that has always been questionable to me is that first one. It seems to me that I run into religious people, male and female, in about equal amounts. Makes me wonder if someone has done a study. I think I shall ask my god, the great and powerful Google, and see what it says.

Google search done, and according to Gallup, there is a "mountain" of data in support of number one above. So there ya go.

Oh, and number 5 is quite insightful. One thing I always knew, deep down, was that when they put their hands on me at 12 years old, I received a whole lot of nothin'.

I was a single Mormon female in the 70's and part of the 80's. There weren't enough mormon men to go around. Where I lived, in the PNW, there were about 4 women to every male, and the men were NOT husband material. They were single for a reason. It made me sick to see exceptional and beautiful women marry some of these guys. They were creepy, dysfunctional, and would have never landed women like that in the real world.


Back then my impression was that marriageable men weren't staying mormon for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost was the ban on sex. The single men in their 20's were NOT willing to give up sex. It was as simple as that.

The next reason I saw was the ban against having a social life of any kind outside of mormonism. This meant no cocktails or social drinking of any kind. This was a huge problem for many men who were beginning to build their financial future. If you didn't participate in the business social world you were left behind.

Then there was the pressure to be married if you were ready or not. There were many men who were nowhere near ready to take on marriage and family. The only way they could get out of that was to leave mormonism. If they stayed and didn't marry, they were the target of the gossip mill. What was wrong with them? Were they gay? Selfish? etc. etc.

I divorced a RM when I was 20. That immediately black listed me in the mormon world. I realized right away that if I ever wanted to be married and have a family I had to date nevermos. That's exactly what I did. I was 28 before I remarried. I married a nevermo which put me on the double blacklist. My so called mormon friends dropped me so fast it made my head spin.

Not that it mattered. I was immediately ex'd by a bunch of men whom i'd never met. I suppose it was because I moved in with my fiancee a couple of weeks before our wedding. The church has never come clean to me about why they ex'd me. I assume it's because even they know it was a load of BS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2015 01:28AM by madalice.

Odd that the author of the article includes a nation-wide map of gender ratios and then focuses on two demographically insignificant groups to discuss the issue. The numbers of active LDS people and hyperconservative Jews in the U.S. combined do not describe even 2% of the population. Strange he didn't acknowledge that. You can't describe a nationwide trend by selecting to tiny populations to study.

As a former Mormon male, who left the LDS Church in my mid-20's and single, I'll offer a few personal reflections.

1. Mission: I think the mission had a profound impact for several reasons. First, the doctrine of the LDS Church was important. I saw the truth of the doctrine as the reason to be a member of LDS, Inc.--not the social ties. It was something we had to study and understand, and of course, many aspects of it did not make sense much less comport with what you learn in a HS or college science class. Women who aren't preparing for, and are less likely to serve missions are probably generally less sensitive to all the doctrinal flubs. Second, I saw that there were many good, spiritually centered, and functional people outside the Mormon world--like the Lutherans running the hospital for severely disabled people that we sometimes volunteered at. If those folks were not going to the Celestial Kingdom as is--Lord Elohim was a dick. Third, things didn't pan out as promised. The MP's, AP's, and ZL's would constantly say if you were obedient to the rules, worked hard, etc. we would succeed. And month after month of doing that didn't work. They'd set another unrealistic set of goals, and you'd work hard again. Same result. Do that over the course of 12-24 zone conferences and it can induce extreme guilt, and/or thoughts that maybe the leaders are empty suits. Fourth, doing a mission came with a personal opportunity cost. Something that became more evident afterward than before. My nevermo friends were nearly done with college, and I was still stuck at the beginning.

The missionary experience contributed to my decision to leave the LDS Church. It did not encourage me to stay on.

2. Marriage Pressure: Upon returning home from a mission, I found the nagging comments to be annoying--bordering on invasive. The whole experience was confusing. I was not dating or really even forming friendships with women close to my age for 2 years on a mission, and before the mission because of LDS purity obsession not much either. Furthermore, the no sex before marriage commandments made dating feel even more awkward. Sex is an important (not sole) component of these intimate relationships, and keeping it out of the equation before marriage made things more complicated than necessary. Something that I didn't fully understand at the time BTW. This didn't really impact my testimony, but it made me feel uncomfortable in the LDS social environment. In short, I was not comfortable with my natural maleness in that culture.

The mission put life back home on pause. I came back behind in my career development process, and spent two years not dating, and not much before that. I didn't have the emotional maturity for dating or understanding women, because it was forbidden for two years, and not really encouraged before that lest we "sin." The social awkwardness of growing up LDS, and financial unpreparedness need to be considered more carefully.

So, I think those things are challenges for Mormon men as well. I think that the Time article is a bit too focused on LDS men being choosy. That may be what the frustrated LDS women they interviewed think, but it probably only accounts for part of the demographic imbalance.

3. Doctrine and Leadership: In the student wards I had several callings that made Sundays into affairs of 5+ hours of church activities. That is really a drag. I always had questions about various aspects of doctrine, so I eventually decided that they are asking for a lot of time and effort, and I owed it to myself figure out if this is something I wanted to keep doing.

4. Exposure to Ideas: I agree with the points that Mormon men are expected to prepare to engage the wider world, and pursue careers that require it. Consequently, one is exposed to new ideas and different people. That makes it more difficult (not impossible) to maintain a narrow Mormon worldview. Even BYU opened my mind to new ways of thinking that didn't fit into the narrow, orthodox LDS viewpoint. I bet we would find that women who study something outside their Mormon gender role expectations probably leave LDS Inc in higher numbers as well.

This is great. To the Top!

Also see the Trib article using Time as a source:

http://www.sltrib.com/home/2875998-155/mormonisms-dating-dilemma-is-a-guy