Posted on 05/15/2009 9:33:15 AM PDT by Colofornian
From a Washington Times article "Marriage as a Mormon value"
According to [the] Pew [Forum], Mormons have one of the most lopsided gender ratios of any religion: 44 percent men and 56 percent women.
You can't argue with the gender gap -- that's what the data is. The question is why such a disproportional gender gap emerges in the LDS Church. [And let's just take it for granted it's not because the researchers just forgot to factor in all those absent 19-to-21-year-old men off serving missions.]
One set of possible explanations centers on the men. It could be that the high-and-getting-higher expectations focused on young LDS men drives some of them away. It could be that the LDS cultural focus on family and responsibility and work is unappealing to the slacker male twenty-somethings we're hearing so much about these days. It could be that the current feelings-based approach to LDS worship just doesn't work for some LDS guys. And just where have all these missing LDS men gone?
A second set of possible explanations centers on the women. What is it they like so much about LDS church activity? One obvious item is how sin has increasingly been redefined as applying almost exclusively to men. Who wouldn't be happy with a church that tells you sin is some other gender's problem, not yours? Recall the explosive reaction to Julie B. Beck's Women Who Know talk: how dare she suggest that saintly LDS women might have flaws? Another would be the fact that the burdens of local church administration fall largely on the men, while declining family size has eased domestic burdens on LDS women.
I suspect some people don't like these possible explanations. Do you have alternative explanations for the unusually large Mormon gender gap?
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.beliefnet.com ...
(Well, isn't one of those "high-and-getting-higher expectations" among men the supposed "reality" that they'll become gods of their own stars? Could it be it's finally dawning on people that they, "I'm not perfect enough and I'll never be perfect enough to become a god"?)
Nah, women just have an easier time giving up drinking and smokes.
I personally know a few men whose wives converted to LDS but who did not themselves convert. If that’s a trend it would go a long way towards explaining the gap.
If observations from Free Republic can be admitted as evidence, I suspect that appeals to emotion probably have a lot to do with it.
I think you’re on to something. I think women stand a much better chance of passing the Bishop’s interview which focuses upon outward obedience such as abstaining from porn, liquor, smokes, swearing etc. etc.....
Also, in the early history of that organization it attracted vast numbers of "surplus women" ~ I call them that because they were women without any apparant options ~ e.g. marriage elsewhere, employment, etc. It was one of the reasons polygamy was so readily accepted once the core group made settlement in Salt Lake.
I've never seen a scientific study done on the matter but it's possible the greater number of those ladies were coming from families with a history of excess female births (above the 1 to 1 ratio).
If this is an hereditary condition, the old Mormon core group would continue to produce excess numbers of females and could account for that gap.
It's probably worthwhile finding out if the surplus is being produced through conversion (as has been assumed since earliest times) or is simply the expression of a biological fact of life with the people who made up the early church.
LOL...
Oh, you weren’t trying to be funny?
Toronto - The rapidly growing Seventh-day Adventist Church added 1,090,848 new members in 1999, an increase of nearly 11 percent, and now has a following of more than 11 million, according to a report delivered at the faith's international meeting.
Compare those figures to the 1999 total membership of the Mormon church: 10,752,986, including 306,171 converts, for a growth rate of 2.5 percent. Adventists: 11% growth; Mormons: 2.5% growth. Which is God's church, then? Remember that the Mormons have sixty thousand full-time missionaries in the field, whereas the Adventists have nothing like that. Adventism is also not as old as Mormonism, so its growth is more impressive compared with Mormonism.
In fact, according to the church's own accounts, the growth rate is declining! In 1996 the church reported a growth rate of 4.24%. In 1999, the growth rate had fallen by 44%, to 2.37%, as reported in the December 1999 issue of the official church magazine Ensign.
2. Also, in the early history of that organization it attracted vast numbers of "surplus women" ~
The U.S. census from 1850 to 1940 and all available records of the Utah church show that men outnumbered women in the church and in Utah. (Joseph Smith: The First Mormon, 1977, p360 and Utah Census and Polygamy)
According to Orson Hyde, original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:
“A Lecture by President Orson Hyde, delivered at the General Conference, in the Tabernacle Great Salt Lake City, October 6, 1854.
...They may break us up, and rout us from place to another, but by and bye we shall come to a point where we shall have all the women, and they will have none. You may think I am joking about this, but I can bring you the truth of God to demonstrate it to you I have not advanced anything I have not got an abundance of backing for. There is more truth than poetry in this as sure as you live.” — Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 83 (1854)
Partial extracts were made. They are not adequate to show the early state of the Mormons AFTER they'd arrived in Salt Lake and before statehood. Regarding Utah statehood, that's 1896. The Mormons arrived in 1847. Lots of stuff happened in between.
ROTFL....You make my sides hurt!
I think the explanation is fairly simple.
Polygamy is still practiced openly or covertly in many places in the US. Young boys and men are encouraged to leave their communities at a fairly early age because it will not be possible for them to find wives.
Essentially the boys who show the lowest potential are shown the door.
Check the sex ratio among babies born to Mormon women to see if this is a correct hypothesis.
Regarding SDA conversions, I suppose that's possible ~ historically speaking the Mormons have been "growing" while, for example, the Methodists (at least since the surge in the 1950s) have been "declining in numbers". The SDA have been up, they've been down, and in 1999 they were up.
They excommunicated a large number of Mormons on their way West ~ it's right there in the Covenants and Doctrines ~ and today they'll tell you they didn't keep a record of who they excommunicated, but that wouldn't matter anyway since everybody gets put in their family files whethe they were excommunicated or not.
To put it politely, in the early period of settlement around Salt Lake they were rather busy.
Regarding men and women in Utah, there were non-Mormon miners, traders and trappers who were all picked up by the census. The tended to not bring their women with them.
Partial extracts were made. They are not adequate to show the early state of the Mormons AFTER they'd arrived in Salt Lake and before statehood. Regarding Utah statehood, that's 1896. The Mormons arrived in 1847. Lots of stuff happened in between. [muawiyah]
According to the Changing World of Mormonism, pp. 224-225: [LDS} "Apostle John A. Widtsoe stated: ’We do not understand why the Lord commanded the practice of plural marriage.’ (Evidences and Reconciliations, 1960, p.393). One of the most popular explanations is that the church practiced polygamy because there was a surplus of women. The truth is, however, that there were less women than men. Apostle Widtsoe admitted that there was no surplus of women”: The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more female than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seems always to have been more males than females in the Church.’.. The United States census records from 1850 to 1940, and all available Church records, uniformly show a preponderance of males in Utah, and in the Church. Indeed, the excess in Utah has usually been larger than for the whole United States, ... there was no surplus of women'” (Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, 1960, pp.390-92," as cited in Changing World, pp. 224-225).
Notice, Muawiyah, that lds apostle Widtsoe not only points to the census records, but to "all available church records" as well. (So what? You're going to say those church records are "partial extracts," too?)
I mean think it through...in the 1840s and 1850s especially, the overwhelming number of pioneers moving west were men -- not women. (These were pre-railroad times). Now it's true, as converts started coming West in greater numbers in the 1860s and following, primarily via the railroad -- many more single women started arriving. But it was never enough to make up the earlier ratios, and in fact, more men than women were still coming west.
I hear it gets worse the smaller the group.
Bill Clinton did not invent that manner of speaking.
I'll go with that for Mormons and others. The churches are chock full of rainbow wearing, acoustical guitar playing, gay, metro, female, wimp Preachers, Priests and Rabbi's. The few different religious events I go to are skin crawling, liberal, leftist, mewing pity fests. Not to mention dumbed down, undemanding, non intellectual, boring and slow.
No, many leaders like lds apostle Heber C. Kimball, who had some 45 wives, weren't "playing offense" to come to the defense of poor, helpless women lacking "apparant options" [but that's nice chauvinist revisionism]. Instead, we have evidence of a typical male leader operating outside of the Holy Spirit influenced life as he sensed the ability to exploit additional women who he added to his harem:
According to Changing World, p. 225, Mormon leaders were "evidently worried that the missionaries would take the best women." Heber C. Kimball, a member of the First Presidency, admonished: "I say to those who are elected to go on missions, ... remember they are not your sheep: they belong to Him that sends you. Then do not make a choice of any of those sheep; do not make selections before they are brought home and put into the fold. You under stand that. Amen" (Original source: Journal of Discourses, vol. 6, p.256).
Author Stanley P. Hirshon wrote: Kimball always kept an eye out for romance. "Brethren," he instructed some departing missionaries, "I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake" (The Lion of the Lord, New York, 1969, pp.129-30).
No, many leaders like lds apostle Heber C. Kimball, who had some 45 wives, weren't "playing offense" to come to the defense of poor, helpless women lacking "apparant options" [but that's nice chauvinist revisionism]. Instead, we have evidence of a typical male leader operating outside of the Holy Spirit influenced life as he sensed the ability to exploit additional women who he added to his harem:
According to Changing World, p. 225, Mormon leaders were "evidently worried that the missionaries would take the best women." Heber C. Kimball, a member of the First Presidency, admonished: "I say to those who are elected to go on missions, ... remember they are not your sheep: they belong to Him that sends you. Then do not make a choice of any of those sheep; do not make selections before they are brought home and put into the fold. You under stand that. Amen" (Original source: Journal of Discourses, vol. 6, p.256).
Author Stanley P. Hirshon wrote: Kimball always kept an eye out for romance. "Brethren," he instructed some departing missionaries, "I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake" (The Lion of the Lord, New York, 1969, pp.129-30).
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