My family and I are never-mos. My step-daughter is in high school, and one of her friends is from a mormon family. We live in Canada, in an area which has a mormon minority.
This friend, whom I'll call S, from what I've been able to pick up, comes from quite a strong mormon background. They are regular church attendees, I believe her older brother has been on a mission, they've driven to SLC for the general conference at least once that I know of, etc.
Anyway, S told my daughter yesterday that her parents are getting divorced. S is understandably devastated. My daughter is the one that all her friends go to with their problems, and as a result, my wife and I hear about all these things too, especially when DD is trying to figure out what to say (if anything) when her friends are pouring out their troubles.
In order to help my daughter out, I'm wondering if there's anything your collective expertise can tell me about how the divorce is likely to affect S, from a mormon stand point. I realize this is a broad question - what I'm thinking is along lines of - is S likely to experience any negative effects from other mormons, for example.
It all depends on the "REASON FOR DIVORCE" If it is because of adultery or crimes (of a minor nature) there is a probably chance of reconcillation . However if one of them has lost their testimony of "The Church" or has major doctrinal issues and the other is "UBER TBM"..It will be bitter and could get ugly. It could get into a spiritual tug of war for the soul of "S"
As much as the LDS church teaches the importance of "forever families," their divorce rates are about the same as the general population from what I understand. My husband's extended family especially has a lot of divorce, and they are very TBM. On his dad's side of the family, there are five children and four have either been divorced or married someone who had been divorced. There are a couple divorces on his mom's side, too. There is also a cousin who has a child but isn't married to the baby's mother (although I think they've been engaged a couple years now). What I'm trying to say is that it's unlikely she'll be the only child with divorced parents in her ward.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2010 03:45PM by emadee.
My parents divorced when I was three. The ward treated my family (my sister, my mom, and me) like we were some sort of pariah and could infect normal families. I also had to deal with a lot of lessons in YW's that were targeted at "normal" families.
The best example I can give is the lesson on temple marriages. The teacher was talking about how special and wonderful they are. She then said that temple marriage was so much better than civil marriage that anyone who gets a temple marriage would never even "consider divorce." She basically implied that anyone who gets a divorce after marrying in the temple must have been breaking temple commandments left and right, are inferior, and are crazy. My sister and I just stared at her. She turned bright red and moved on quickly.
It's likewise hard for me to distinguish between ubiquitous effects and mormon-specific effects, but I think both were very formative.
It hit me harder later in life after my mission, when I had developed a sense of "gospel purpose" and saw the church as the purpose of my life.
Getting married myself was VERY traumatic. On one hand I saw it as my duty and that God had given me the chance. On the other hand I thought how dare I presume to be more capable than my parents and show them up by succeeding.
The church and it's teachings were constantly streaming inuendo. You start making what you think are logical conclusions based on "gospel" premises. It all boils down to guilt. Divorce kids feel guilty anyway, and the church just amplifies it.
Admittedly I didn't give a lot of information to start with, but what I seem to be getting from the responses is that the major *possible* difference to look for is members of S's congregation turning on the family for not being "perfect". Would that be a fair summary?