From stay-at-home-mom to breadwinner — help for LDS women if the marriage ends | Episode 390

In 1981, then-apostle Ezra Taft Benson rose to the pulpit during a General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and told women: “You were elected by God to be wives and mothers in Zion. Exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom is predicated on faithfulness to that calling. Since the beginning, a woman’s first and most important role has been ushering into mortality spirit sons and daughters of our Father in Heaven.”

Even when another eventual church president, apostle Gordon B. Hinckley, encouraged women in 1989 to “get all the education you can,” he paired it with a wish for his female audience that none of them would ever have to work for pay.

In other words, get an education and, if you absolutely must, a job.

Such messaging from the faith has since changed, but, for decades, this was the counsel faith leaders gave Latter-day Saint women, many of whom came to see their degrees, if they had them, as a backup plan.

Susan Madsen is a Utah State University professor and founding director of the Utah Women & Leadership Project. Tiffany Sowby is the founder of the nonprofit Rising Violet, which gives cash gifts to single mothers.

Both have witnessed — again and again — the downstream effects of the advice encouraging Latter-day Saint women to dedicate themselves to the role of stay-at-home mom.

On this week’s show, they talk about their observations and what women and the church can do to prevent mothers and their children from falling into poverty if marriages end.