I work in the medical device industry and today a customer from SLC is auditing us. When he said he was from SCL I knew he was mormon, looked like he should be sitting up on the stand during sacrament meeting.

He went to BYU and finished a year later than me with the same degree. I'm sure we had classes together and we chatted about the teachers we had.

No biggie at this point, but as we went around the table and introduced ourselves, his mormon conditioning kicked in. Most of us on the audit team are married with kids. One guy is married with no kids (by choice) and is in his forties.

After the kid less guy's intro, the auditor mentioned that they get a lot of interns working at his company in SLC and they always remind them to not make their career the only thing in life...don't forget to get married and start your family!

That felt weird, and very mormon!

I went to several universities and mostly had small classes (20-25 student-professor ratio). I consider my collegiate experience to be excellent as I felt most professors to be approachable. I had a basic computer technology course that had 50-60 students and it was taught by a rotating panel of student teachers (I don't think the professor could be bothered to show up).

So I'm asking if most classes at the Y are auditorium style?

If so, that would have been a big disappointment, if not a turnoff for my learning style.

I only recall the more general classes in big auditoriums....American Heritage, Biology, Economics, etc. My major classes (engineering) were typically smaller.

Ok, that makes sense.

In general, it's not just Mormons that find childless married couples to be strange. I don't have children, and some of coworkers find it odd. However, none of them make any comments about being obsessed with a career.

I had a RM coworker, but he suddenly quit. I rarely run into mormons at work. It's a good thing!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2019 03:37PM by messygoop.

I have 2 kids. if I could do it all over again, I think I would probably not have any.

Same here...

The post is so typical of a pretentious "holier than thou" mormon, who thinks his value system and religion is what everyone should adhere.

To bad the OP couldn't have responded,

"Omg..did you just say that? I feel so sorry for you. For you to be in a private industry like this, and not a religious setting, and to spout your tenets like that here ..wow. I got news for ya Brigham, you're dorky way of life is not shared outside mormonism...keep Mormonism to yourself. We don't want to hear it."

messygoop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ok, that makes sense.
>
> In general, it's not just Mormons that find
> childless married couples to be strange. I don't
> have children, and some of coworkers find it odd.
> However, none of them make any comments about
> being obsessed with a career.

I'm in CA, most of which is considerably more liberal than is middle America, though the Central Valley, where I DON'T live, is almost like a chunk of the Midwest transplanted into the rest of California. It would be pretty irregular here in a professional setting for anyone to make a comment about the necessity or even advisability of anyone else starting a family, even if the comment was general as opposed to having been directed at any specific person. Well over half of those with whom I work have children, and some of those who don't have them will eventually have them, but it wouldn't be considered proper in a professional setting here for anyone to make suggestions about anyone else's state of reproduction.

Perhaps people with children even in more liberal parts of the U.S. possibly do find it odd that others make conscious choices not to have children, but there seems to be something about the boundaries among the LDS that would make many of them feel emboldened to make comments in settings in which the comments wouldn't be appropriate. Most of us can agree that a person's career shouldn't be the sole focus of his or her life, but a new employee can be reminded of the importance of having something besides work in his or her life without being told in essence to multiply and replenish the Earth.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2019 12:09PM by scmd1.

My never-mo therapist shared today that her parents happen to have a long-term timeshare with the Marriott hotel company. She said that although it suited them all to go there as it was so family-friendly it was also blatantly obvious that they were selling their own brand of (mormon) family values, with their ‘perfect’ family pictures up on the walls. She said that she could imagine someone who was less conventional would feel uncomfortable and looked down upon by these people.
Interesting perspective from someone who doesn’t yet know that much about the mormons.

I can promise you, no one outside of Mormonism feels "looked down upon" by "perfect" Mormon families--especially as depicted in pictures on the wall. That the pictures are intended to convey "perfection" doesn't even cross the minds of Non-Mormons.

People immersed in a culture are blind to the fabrications, the willing suspension of disbelief, required for the cultural conventions. For example, having grown up in a time that rejected false eyelashes as unnatural-looking, I find it impossible to believe that the women with eye-lash extensions today can actually think those lashes look good, and not perfectly ridiculous. When I came of age, no one willingly looked like Minnie Mouse, unless it was a costume. I can't shake that.

Non-Mormons do not relate to the "perfection" of the "perfect" family photos because they're already too hung up on the ridiculous conventions. What's with the decrepit, falling-down barn? Why is this piece of junk in this picture? Non-Mormons don't get the nostalgia for pioneers and old-timey agriculture. They're not reminded of the historic struggle to establish Mormonism in Utah; they're just reminded of the rural poverty their ancestors escaped, and they wonder what that sad structure's doing there.

What's with the children kissing? Are they siblings? That's kind of creepy. The conventional arrangement with dad taller, mom next, then working their way down, is smarmy. The non-Mormon wonders, "Why is the photographer making these people look like a stock photo? They should have hired someone else."

Non-Mormons who know something about Mormons think the photos are of Mormons performing for each other. If they don't know anything about Mormons, they wonder what's up with these weird pictures; but they don't feel inferior, just perplexed.

Oh, I see that you said your non-Mormon therapist wondered if people felt looked down upon. I was wrong. I guess some non-Mormons might feel criticized by the superior families staring down at them from the walls. I just haven't met any of those people.

To get the perspective I'm most familiar with, take a Never-Mo to Deseret Book, especially a non-American. The self-referential Jesuses (Jesi?) on the walls, who all look like typical Utahans, cracks them up. That the artists and the consumers make Jesus in their own image, literally, they find hilarious.