Are Latter-day Saint Women Done Having Babies?

Utah drops from #1 to #6 in fertility rate. Biggest decline in the US. Fertility rate has two consistent correlations; 1) Women's careers 2) Religiousness Do gender roles in the Family Proclamation matter?

 Raw Transcript:

Utah's fertility rate crashes, drops, collapses. Are Latter-day Saint women even having babies anymore?
Uh, the New York Times comes out with an article. We've actually talked about this before, but the New York Times comes out with an article talking more about this as they see certain
reasoning, certain reasons why the fertility rate has dropped. And there are a number of different reasons, but there's a an elephant in the room that
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I want to cover this article, but I want to go through a few different takes on this and and parse this out a little
bit. We've got all of the studies that have been over done over the last few years. And by the way, this is something that is
this will give you an idea of kind of where I'm going with this. A few years ago, I started reporting on this, talking about how women were leaving the
church and the fertility rate has been dropping. And I got push back from like
standard LDS influencers and podcasters about how this was being misogynistic.
And of course, Greg is talking about this. the women are leaving the church and uh I I did a whole episode on how
they're becoming the biggest name in uh ex Mormon the ex Mormon world as
influencers on Instagram and again push back complete push back like I mean women can't do anything wrong right so
it's it was now of course it's all confirmed all of the biggest views online in social media are with the
female ex Mormons and people anti- Mormons, people that are pushing back against the church. The fertility rate has continued to drop
through the basement floor and women are leaving the church as
confirmed again by a BYU study even last year that women are leaving the church at a much higher rate than men are as an example, especially the younger women.
But all the way up, you can go all the way up to about the age of late 70s, you've got more women leaving the church and having a a lower retention within
the church than you do men. It's a problem.
And but what people want to do whenever this topic of women comes up is they want to put their head in the sand.
They're defensive and they don't want to talk about it and you don't go there.
So, so now some of these things are are are coming up and and proving to be correct from, you know, valid sources as
I use my air quotes here. But even those sources are afraid to talk about some of the issues that are are driving these
problems the of family, marriage, fertility rate, leaving the church. they skirt around it
and and and I want to talk a little bit more about that, but we're going to go to the New York Times article here first.
We have here uh what does it say? Even in Utah, land of big love, families are getting smaller. Forget tradives. That's
a whole other podcast I want to talk I want to bring up. When it comes to plummeting fertility rates, Utah is leading the country,
right? Leading the country. What does that mean? It's it means as as far as the fertility rate is dropping
it is dropping more in Utah than it is anywhere else. And you're going to say, "Well, that's because so many people are moving into Utah, Greg." Well, that's something to do with it. But this
started way before the exodus from the west in California, Arizona, Washington,
etc. into into Utah. Started way before this. So, that needs to be addressed and nobody talks about it.
This is what it says here uh at the beginning here. Utah has long been famous for its large families. From the Osman singers, oh great, to the secret lives of Mormon wives.
Lots of young married people having lots of babies. It's now experiencing the biggest fertility rate drop in its
modern history. After a peak in 2007, Utah's rate has plummeted by more than 37%.
It is the largest decline of any state in the country.
Utah, which was number one in the nation for fertility rates for years, is now ranked six. And it's going to go over a
few different reasons why these columnists believe this is happening.
And then I want to talk about those that are running the studies on this and this BYU study as well which we've covered
before and just kind of parse this out a little bit. Take a look at why these things are happening. It answers so many questions.
There are so many questions about why people are leaving the church. What do you do about this? Why are women leaving the church, etc. We're going to get into that.
So this is a says Utah is a leading example of a demographic transformation that is sweeping the United States and other rich countries as young women
increasingly delay childbearing. Okay, first of all I want to bring this point up. This is not just a Utah problem. Now
we're going to focus in on this and a Latterday Saint problem, but it is a national problem in the US which is now
running at about 1.6 uh fertility rate of 1.6. Right? You have to have 2.1 to have replacement.
And it's an implosion. It's it's it's an absolute implosion.
In in in three generations at this pace, we're we're going to be almost nothing.
We're going to be skin and bones as a country and and as a complete civilization in the west and also beyond the west. It's happening everywhere in the world, but especially in the west.
So this is not just a problem here, but there is a reason behind this, right?
There is reasoning behind why this is happening and why it's happening with Latter-day Saints in in which is what we're focusing on.
For the first time, uh for the first time, about half of
30-year-old women are childless. So in Utah, about half of all women 30 years old, married or not, are childless.
Okay? And then they go on with an example of someone who is kind of glad, right? She doesn't want kids. She had a stressful life growing up. And of
course, they love to straw man these types of positive principles of family and having kids and women having children. God forbid that the New York
8 minutesTimes is going to, you know, start supporting that in some way. Of course, they're not.
uh she just decides that she doesn't want to have kids. Now he they say whether this is a profound transformation in American life or a temporary dip is still an open question.
It's not a temporary dip. They're going to answer that themselves here. I believe it's here. This is not the case.
This is this is a to even suggest that is ridiculous because the fertility rate has been dropping for decades.
Decades. It's not a dip and it's not a dip in Utah. The drop in the fertility rate captures women having fewer or no
children but also women simply waiting to have them. Right? So, one of the issues, one of the major issues in the
fertility rate of women not having children and and being brought into these studies and they ask if they have children is that though some of those
women are in the age area of delaying to have children, they still want to have children later on. to a lot of women in
their 20s and early 30s that in times past decades ago would have been having children,
but now they don't. And this is where we need to get to the elephant in the room a bit, right? We we believe as a people as a Latter-day Saints in education.
And so in our minds, the way we look at that is, okay, that means go get a college education. and how wow if you could go beyond that and get a master's
degree and a graduate degree a PhD amazing right we love to be a learned people
and boy do we love our women to be learned women very much so and so you
have those women that are in school learning growing intellectually
in a knowledge base and a skill base that are saying Hey, I don't want to have kids. I don't want to get married until maybe I'm done with my education.
And that education, by the way, has cost them in student loans or their parents have had to mortgage their home or their
401k, pull from their 401k in order to put their kids through college. And we have more and more, we're not quite to half
of all high school graduates going to college, but we're going to get there soon.
And so we have so many more people going off to college, more women going off to college. And by the way, there's about
1.5 roughly 1.5 women for every one man going into the university and going and getting graduate degrees,
which is I'm sorry, it's a major problem. It's a major problem for mating and dating because you you you've got a
mating structure that says women want to marry across and above, right? Someone with higher status, higher economic
capacity than what they have, higher education or equal education.
And men are typically the other way. Men are typically I'm going to I'm going to date across and down. they don't care as
much about how well how educated is my wife how much how many years of college has she gone through does she have a career path
right so the stat those type of status symbols that are more important to women are not as important to men and yet what we've done in our society is completely
flip that on its head where where where women have fewer men then to choose from w in a way that they
are naturally used to choosing And men have fewer women to choose from in a way that they are naturally used to
choosing. And we've talked about this before, the hypergamy that goes on in online dating uh because there are fewer men that fit those that criteria that
women are looking for. And so there is a lot more promiscuity with a few men and a lot of women.
a lot of promiscuity going on in those areas while while a lot of men are not even part of that in any way.
So that that's one issue. We'll get to that further. No, we're not going to get to that. I'm going to put that to the side. We've already talked about that.
But in the Latterday Saint culture, we want women to go and get educated.
Parents, especially moms, are saying like, "No, you go on, go get go get an education. Go get a career. Get yourself. I want you to be
selfpreserved. I want you to be in a position where you can take care of yourself no matter what.
You know, and this is I I I'm not going to say, well, this is helicopter parenting, but but is it a little bit?
Is it a little bit? I mean, we know from studies that men and women that get married young and have kids young are the happiest people on earth.
13 minutesCan there be problems? There can. You might marry the wrong person. Is your front lobe completely uh frontal lobe completely developed
before you're 25 years old? Probably not.
So, but but that what is the fruit of this? Well, those those that marry early
and have kids early stay together longer as as married couples and they're happier. That we know that.
So, why do we not push for that more? And I know some of you do, but as a later Latter Day Saint culture, we've completely stepped away from this.
And it it's it's part of it's part of this fertility rate issue. It's part of having smaller
families or having no children, delaying to have children is an education and career path.
And it it's one of the biggest what like it or not right I want women to have as much option and open
opportunity as possible but like it or not the result of that is fewer kids
smaller families and and and for the most part less happiness. Right? So take that for what it's worth.
Don't shoot the messenger. Okay.
The factors are many. The uh article says I want to cover a couple of these.
One reason Utah's decline is so sharp is that it is hard. It is it had so far to fall. Okay. So there are opportunities.
Well, what would bring that around?
Okay. Well, that's in part the influence. The reason it stays above it, it's still above, right? It's still up at number six. The church and Latter-day
Saint women have a much higher, we're talking about women because they're the ones that bear the children. has a much higher fertility rate than the rest of the country does, but it's going in the
exact same direction. It's just following the national average.
Uh part of the reason it's above everywhere else is because of the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It encourages
large families. Do we I'm going to highlight this. That's in part the influence of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, which encourages large families. I mean, this is a direct question. What do you really
think that that is true? It used to be, but I I don't know that the church encourages large families anymore.
And and there's this idea of okay, you know, well, that means that's a lot more responsibility. That's a lot more pressure. And man, we have backed off
backed off from demand a high demand religion in so many ways. And so, and it's not even that look, the church
should be the one that tells you how many kids you have. It shouldn't be.
But as far as its advocacy and teachings about do you have more kids or fewer kids,
I I I I don't know anybody that would probably be over 40 years old that would be able
to clearly say, "Yeah, that's always been it's always been the same." you know, the way that they used to teach about families and the way they teach
about families today is exactly the same. And I'm not talking about the family proclamation. We'll get to that in a minute.
I I don't know if that's true. I I'm just asking you, do you think it's true?
Do we teach do we uh the influence of the church, does it encourage large families today?
I think that's a really good question. Okay. There's an influx of new residents.
Okay, that definitely matters. people that have a uh cultural background that has lower fertility rates than those that are, you know, it used to be 70 80%
Latter-day Saint in the state of Utah back in the day. The decline also refle reflects the power of the broad social dynamics pushing down fertility rates.
What are the social dynamics?
Women in one of countries, the country's most socially conservative states are now making very different choices about childbearing.
So here's my question on this. Women in one
of the country's most socially conservative states, and I don't know that you can still,
it's certainly not as conservative as it used to be, are now making very different choices about childbearing.
Why? It's another question directly to you.
Why are they making very different decisions about childbearing? What are your reasons?
Why they are so many women they say interviewed in this article said they were waiting until they had finished their educations
and were financially stable. Okay, so that's a big one. That that's that's a big one. It's like I don't want to I
don't want to I don't want to rely on a man to do this. I've seen bad examples of this out there before. Maybe it was my own parents.
I I want to go out and and get an education myself. I want to live that college life. I want to be uh still be
young and have a good time with a little bit of money. Um yes, I'm going to be drowned in student loan debt, but um they're pushing off childirth.
They're pushing off marriage.
That that that's one reason why it's happening. You also have Utah, which is now the 10th most expensive house market in the country.
Seems so strange to me, but you've got so many people moving in there. The supply and demand takes effect and prices are going up. Then they're going to give an example here of a Mrs.
Spence, now 44, a financial director for a nonprofit in Salt Lake City. They have three children.
19 minutesUh after her second children, she she held off for a while. She after her second child, she said she began to yearn for more children and thought maybe I should have started this
earlier, but there were advantage to having children later. This is the New York Times says that. She says, "I'm really glad that my kids did not have to deal with me in an earlier, less mature,
and less stable time." Really? Well, maybe you should wait another 10 years.
For whatever reason, God did not place a biological clock between your 40s and your 60s. There there's a reason for that.
And and so yeah, they might not have to deal with you and that, but maybe it's good for them. Maybe it's also good for them. And you know what? Maybe it's good
for you. Maybe you grow up faster. Maybe your less mature and less stable time becomes more mature and more stable
because of the responsibility that is placed upon you. The downside is she says, "I'm going to spend less time with them in their lifetimes." Yeah, you're
going to spend less time with them and less time with your grandchildren in that time. They say change within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints is another driver of Utah's changing birth rate. So now they've got also the the church is changing. So this
is where they're going to refer to a 2025 comprehensive study that was done by researchers at Brigham Y Young University. This is mostly a uh a study
that is done on other polls, other surveys and studies that have been out there for some of them for several
years. And that same data is what I've been pulling from and talking about for several years now. Talking about women
leaving the church, talking about fertility rates, etc. that I was gettingounded
with those things that this report now confirms completely. But people just don't want to hear it.
They don't want to hear it. But what if you're a parent and you have a teenage girl
and you want to know this? Don't you think you should know this? But you have certain influencers and those that
provide the studies and social scientists that don't want you to know.
They don't want to hit the h the the nail on the head with this because they don't like the answers.
And so they they they twist it. they turn it and
don't talk about what what they think is an ugly truth, which is actually a beautiful truth. I'm
going to get to that. So, in this study in 2025, I want to pull this up.
It says in the New York Times paragraph here first that while a majority of older women stayed in the church, when they say older, they're going all the
way up toward your 80s. Less than 40% of 18-year-old women did.
Men, on the other hand, stayed in the church at high rates with little generational difference, said Justin Dyer, the lead researcher. He's one of
the there there's four or five researchers on this BYU study, including Jennet Ericson, who
I just had on the podcast last week talking about some of this. So, I I want to go to this and I want to show you this graph.
Here you have in blue female and green male.
And this is a process through timing.
The way to look at this graph is to go all the way to the right and then come down to the left. So if you go to the right here and you're right about at the
age 78, it it's pretty much 77 78 years old. The retention rate in the church is the same for males and male and female.
Okay. Now those 78 year olds were born in 1948.
Is that right? No. 1950 76. Yeah.
They were born in 1948.
So what kind of a world was that back then? How many of them had careers? Those women had careers.
Uh maybe some they're coming into the 60s and that at that time you've got the sexual liberation and revolution, the the divorce revolution in the 70s. Wow.
Do I remember that? Janet Ericson was talking about that as the divorce revolution. I hadn't really heard that term before, but I remember that's when
I was in elementary school. And I remember coming back summer after summer
and these teachers had all just gotten divorced. So many of them.
And that's when the term Miz, remember Miz MS, was became very popular. They didn't want to be Miss anymore, but they
weren't Ms. So, the children would call them Ms. Johnson or who whatever their
last name is, their their their previous name, uh, their family name, right? So, that
was true. That was a big huge change, not surprisingly, coming after
after the 60s. Okay, just a massive upheaval in the family.
Um, but look at these numbers here.
78 you have about equal. Now going to the left, you're getting to younger and younger individuals. You start seeing the
difference. And there's there is a an almost exact drop. It's not a massive curve.
So this whole idea, well, it's just Gen Z. Well, Gen Z is getting worse. It's true. And and now alpha, right? Gen
alpha. But it's there there isn't some drastic change as we're going through this graph. For the most
part, it's just through the decades, from the 70s on, you have lower and lower and lower retention from women.
Now, that doesn't mean that at age 18 or 25 or 35 or 45 that they left the church. Maybe they didn't leave the church until they were in their 50s.
Maybe they didn't leave until they were in their 60s.
But you'd see that as pulled here in 2025 and they're using numbers that uh see the retention rate
on this one. Okay, they're saying that this is from 2025 spiritual seismology survey data um in 2025. You you see where this is.
And so you've got the women dropping further and further and further and further and nobody addresses it. Nobody
addresses it. And if they do address it, you know what they say? They say, "Well, they just talk about the specifics about the environment." And which is all true.
I'm a practical guy. I want to hear practical things. You've got men and women that were together before in in in
the 19th century, both working at home. One out on the land, usually man out on the land, the women in the home and around the home doing very very important things, right?
Working hard to survive, making the food, preserving the food, cleaning things. These were like survival things,
preserving the food. You had to work in tandem in order to make it in a tiny
little house, freezing your rear off in the winters. and and you know that's what you did.
You divided that up. So eventually an industrialization comes along and you've got the men that are pulled out of the home and now the women are there.
They're they're not getting as much support on on the kids. They're they're
doing the the uh the work at home and the domestic chores and they're watching over the kids as well while the man's
off in the town working and then coming back and paying for their life. And that develops up in through the 50s
where you've got Leave it to Beaver and the Trad uh idea, you know, the memes that you
see coming from the 50s, the woman bending down and grabbing the the the roast out of the oven is the man sits
with his pipe at the kitchen table and the kids are there at the kitchen table and he's opened up a newspaper and the
wife has got a big huge smile on her face because she's serving her family, Right.
Well, that changes quite a bit when the pill comes around. And more and more domestic
responsibilities that women have are reduced through technology. Everything from washing machines to microwaves to I
mean, you name it. Everything. It lowers the the responsibility that she has at home, the time consumption that she has.
Grocery stores, refrigeration, freezers, all of these things change life
drastically for for women at home now. And so that changes now. They've got more freedom.
They've got more ability to move around for eventually. You've got enough uh uh money. Americans have got enough money where they're buying a second car going
into like maybe their 60s into the 60s and 70s and you know mobility now for for all of the women and you know great
great more opportunities more options and and that's all wonderful but then it moves to fewer jobs require
a lot of brawn and labor and women start moving into jobs where it's just using your mind sitting behind a desk and a
computer and now men and women are competing for jobs. They're they're in college competing to get into colleges, into
universities and everything changes, right? And so women become much more independent and with that independence
they choose education and they choose career and that changes everything.
There are two major correlations between the fertility rate that that go along with the fertility
rate and it both has to do with women not entirely but it's both women right and that is number one careerism
number one it is the most consistent correlation with the fertility rate the dropping
fertility rate the more women are in a career mode In other words, they're not working full-time and then taking a
couple of years off to watch their toddler, their kid, their their baby, their toddler, etc., or out of the out of the workforce for a few years, and
they go back and find another some other full-time job. That's not a career, right? But but those that are focused on a career, they're taking their education, the skills they've gotten in
in in college, they're moving on, and they're moving into a career mode to advance that career, those women have
fewer and fewer or no children. And so that's that's a major the major issue number one, you know, number I think
it's number two, but it's one of the major ones is religiosity or religiousness.
And so the more you have women that are out of religion, they don't want the dependency of to be
dependent on a man. They don't want to be dependent upon for children. I'm talking about some women, right? They
want less responsibility because they want liberation. They want to be freed.
They want to, you know, not be they don't let's call it what what it used to be called the other way
31 minutesaround. They don't want the ball and chain, right? They don't want the ball and chain.
And so careerism and relig religiousness are are the two major factors and biggest correlators with the fertility
rate. So, if you're more religious, you're going to have more kids. And if you're less religious, you're going to have fewer kids. Well, again, if we come back here with Latter-day Saints and we
look at that blue line coming down, well, now you're mixing, okay, education
and career, full-time work with less religiosity, with less attendance, less activity in
the church, bigger short, smaller retention rates until you get down to uh
18 years old. Now, last year 2000, at 18 years old, you have women that are down.
I don't know the exact number here, but it's it's it's looks like it's 37 or 38% retention rate.
37 or 38% retention rate. Look at the men. That's at 18 years old. So, they're off.
Well, where are they off to? Well, they're off to out of the house or they decide for themselves they don't want to still go to church.
um they're off to college men in the church. So they're dropping down here and this looks like about 57%
more or less within one I would say. So they are roughly 20% higher in retention than women.
But people don't want to say it.
They would rather put their head in the sand and think, "No, this can't be true.
I don't want to think of it this way." Um Why? And that's what we need to be
focusing on. And again, mostly what is discussed here are are are just the scenarios what I just went over about that evolution over the last 120 years,
130 years of industrialization, the pill, technology, education, more
job opportunities for women. These things have all changed. And and so that is the result. But my question then is
why do we not teach something that is opposite?
We used to you can find it in all of the general conference talks before this is interesting before 1995.
Everything changed then. Everything changed in the messaging messaging to women and everything changed in the
messaging to men in the exact opposite way that it is stated with the gender roles in the family proclamation.
I I would ask any of you if you want to go look at it. Look at the easiest one is men because you can look at at uh
priesthood session and go back and look the change in in the language and what what happened after 1995.
It's like we've put this out here. Here are the gender roles and no one wants that's the elephant, right? That's the elephant nobody wants to talk about.
Even people that support the family proclamation, they're really into that.
They're all going to want to drop down to the end of that paragraph.
And the the end of that paragraph, I'm going to bring this up here. And people are going to say, "Greg, you're so old school. You're such a traditionalist.
You're so um Look, again, don't shoot the messenger. This is this is just where we
are right now. This is there there's no way to get around this.
There's no way to get around it. All of the data shows this as as the issue. But if you look at the family proclamation
and and what it states here, the family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to his eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth
within the bonds of matrimony and to be reared by a father and mother who honor marital laws with complete fidelity.
Happiness and family is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Successful marriages and families are established and these are the principles right these are key established and maintained on principles of faith prayer
repentance forgiveness respect love compassion work and wholesome recreational activities then you get this and this is not a recommendation by
a prophet this is not a suggestion okay by divine design by divine design this is the order of
God and and This is why everything changed after this because of this statement.
And people afraid of it. They're afraid of it. By divine design, fathers are to preside
over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and
protection for their families. So preside, provide, and protect. We don't ever talk about that.
We won't talk about it because that that preside part bothers
those in our culture. When I say our culture, I mean in the west, not just the church.
But that's by divine design. And and so what people will say instead is they'll come oh then let's give the mother's part here. The women mothers are
primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.
Okay? So those are the divi those are the divisions. Those that's the divine design.
Okay. Now now primarily responsible doesn't mean it's they do it by themselves. Everyone's always got to throw the caveat in there. Well yeah men
preside but you can't be a tyrant. And it's like whatever. Okay. It's men preside provide and protect.
37 minutesAnd women are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.
And then it comes down and says, 'In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. And that's
what everybody brings up. We're equal partners. Well, does the man preside yet? Well, we're equal partners. We both
preside the same. We both provide the same. We both protect the same. And and then, of course, what do we want? We
want to see men that are nurturing. But we, you know, some some would love to see men at staying at home or working from home and and taking care of all the
kids and the women are off to work providing for the family. It it's it's we don't want to talk about it. It's uncomfortable, right? It's
uncomfortable. We've come so far in this direction that nobody wants to talk about these things
by divine design. So regardless of what culture has brought us and technology um this is the divine design right here.
Now that doesn't mean that you know women shouldn't be working. I'm all for women working. Um but the equal partners
part that means that women help support men as they preside in the family as they
provide for the family and as they protect the family. That's how they are equal partners. I'm going to support you
in your roles. Those are your roles and the men should be reciprocating that
and saying, "I'm going to help you in the nurturing of the children. You're primarily responsible for that, but I'm going to help nurture here." That's the
the divine design based on the family proclamation.
But we won't do it. We don't talk about it. Nobody talks about it. and and and if they do it is just off to the side or
it's with massive caveats everywhere. Um but you know we're equal partners. It's like yeah we're equal
partners but we have a division of of labor. We have a division of responsibilities. And this is one of the problems with, for example,
masculinity today is in every sense, and this is outside of the church more so probably than than within the church,
but it's all of these responsibilities where men felt this mantle of purpose
to to help those around them and help those that they love the most.
And not all men take this on. I I get it, right? I understand. But that's all being removed from them. And so they're like, "What do I do?
Why why do universities why why why are why are high schools propping up young women, teenage girls more than they are
teenage men? Why why do they get all the academic awards? Why are they getting why why are we designing school all day
long in public school for for women and not for boys, right? For girls and not for boys. Why is there,
you know, expecting we've got a problem. I mean, Christina Hoff Summers wrote about this back in
2000, right? The war on boys and and it's everything she said back then, 26 years ago, has come to fruition and and and getting worse.
So, masculinity struggles because it it has to have identity and purpose, and that's all being encroached on.
Uh, and that happens in the church.
So, and what happens when we move away from this? Well, women are more anxious.
They're more depressed. They're less happy than they've ever been in history. Why?
Because someone told them they can do it all or because they're moving outside of family life and they want to stick with the corporate life, with the career life.
And men are lost. Why? Well, well, because they're not given this responsibility or able to pull on this
responsibility. They can't garner respect.
Men need respect and and it's hard to garner respect when you don't have these responsibilities
and you're able to fulfill them. Of course, you have to fulfill them.
So, that's an issue. And and that all ties into the fertility rate. It's all the same problem that we have. Okay.
Now, I want to just finish up here in in covering a few more stats
about uh Latter-day Saints and also the culture more broadly, right? What does the evidence show then overall with Latter-day Saint women?
Well, there's not a ton of data, but it definitely shows that the LDS, the Latterday Saint fertility rate has fallen substantially over the years, over the decades, right?
Routinely, women had more than three children on average.
Routinely, they had over three children by the time they were in their four, they were 40 years old.
Now, it's fallen very very strongly, right? It's down around a little bit above two. We're at
about Oh, it's hard to say. Let me back that up.
The fertility rate has dropped significantly. And when did the sharp change happen?
Not when everybody started moving to Utah. I know that's a part of this, but when it happened, it started in 1980.
It started in 1980 after the sexual revolution and the divorce revolution of the 60s and the 70s. That is when the
the decline really took off was starting in the 1980s. Okay, so consider that it has been almost 40 40 to 50 years since
we've seen this this huge decline in things. And we can see the same chart in that BYU study. That's right about the same chart. Those women that are 78 50
years ago were 28 50 years ago.
The fertility advantage for Latter-day Saint women has has still got we're doing better than most everybody else.
We're still doing better than everyone else, but we're going in the same direction that that the world is going in. And I'm pretty sure we usually don't want to do that.
Parenthood also becomes less common among younger LDS women, right? An analysis of the cooperative election
study, the CES data, estimated that the percentage of Latterday Saint women ages 18 to 45 living with a child under 18
declined from just under 70% in 2008 to just under 60% in 2024. Right? So that
number continues to drop for Latterday Saint women.
And I've seen this brought up by Latter-day Saint influencers and some that are running studies as well on this and and they try to say that well this
data doesn't quite make sense why women are leaving the church so much more and what because it shows that women that
are college educated get married more than those that are not college educated. That's true.
That is true.
their their marriage is a is is at at a socioeconomic level because that's really what we're talking about when
sending kids to college. At a socioeconomic level, at a higher socioeconomic level, women get married
more than those that are do not go to college.
But but when you throw in the career and the
amount of hours worked per week, you get the correlation to children.
And so even though there are more marriages that happen with with college educated
women, there are fewer children, right? Fewer children.
As an example, starting in 2014, this is ages 20 to 29, what used to be the prime age of
fertility, which has now become 30 to 39. But in 2014, if you did not have a bachelor's
degree, you had.78 children per woman at at ages 20 to 29. Now, part
of the reason maybe why there is not a bachelor's degree, and this is the argument against going out and getting married and having kids, is because the woman has to stay home and take care of
the baby. So, she's not going to college anymore. Okay? So, that's your trade-off.
That could very well be your trade-off.
Doesn't have to be, but but for some people, that becomes their trade-off. So 78 in 2014 if you don't have a
bachelor's degree in 2024 it drops to 0.53.
Childlessness at ages 20 to 29 for no bachelor's degree is at 57% in 2014 and
at 68% in 2024.
Okay, that's just the overall fertility weight drop uh rate dropping. Now let's compare to someone who has a bachelor's degree or higher
where it was 78 kids in 2014 per per woman. It is now down to.32
with a bachelor's degree or higher. So it is less than half much less than half the amount of kids in 2014.
2024 no bachelor's degree 0.53 kids bachelor's degree or higher 23. Now part of this you know again less than half.
Now part of this is obviously is obvious right it is you're going out and you're you're getting a degree and so these are
people that are pushing off marriage usually and pushing off having kids.
They're trying to get their degree which shortens their time in in in trying to have a baby. Right. Um, now if you're
finishing at 22, 23 years old, you've still got six, seven years there. So, you're probably putting pushing off marriage and then pushing off a kid even further.
But that gives you the idea, right? It's it's you if you have a bachelor's degree, then you're less than half as likely to
have a kid in your 20s, uh, going all the way back to 2014 and up into 2014. How about in ages 30 to
39, now the new prime decade for having kids. Um, no bachelor's degree, two kids
in 2014, down to 1.8 in 2024. Childlessness was 17%.
48 minutesIt is now 24%. This is in 2024. I know that number is over 25% now in their
most recent uh um polls. Right. So that's 30 to 39 childless. So we one out
of every four women, one out of every four women
uh without a bachelor's degree has no kids all the way up to age 39. And and it gets worse.
Now, if you have a bachelor's degree, ages 30 to 39, and you go back to 2014, where it was
1.99 or two for no bachelor's degree, it is now 1.28 if you have a bachelor's degree.
Children born in 2024 was 1.8 8 for no bachelor's degree,
1.13 if you have a bachelor's degree or higher.
Childlessness, this is incredible. Childlessness in 2014 is 17%.
No bachelor's degree.
Bachelor's degree or higher in 2014, 34%. double.
If you go get college educated, the chances of being childish up through age 39 doubles in 2014.
It's not quite as big in 2024, but the numbers are all higher. In 2024, no bachelor's degree.
24% as we said, which is now 25% but 24% as of 2024
are childless with no bachelor's degree and bachelor's degree or higher 40.4%.
This is where we get the the projection that by 2030 half of all women ages 30 up to age 40 I believe it is will be childless.
Half of all women will be childless. I've seen that projection before. I don't know the how to substantiate that. But
that gives you an idea of overall what's happening. And the church is just going right along with it. I I don't mean Salt Lake. I mean, the members of the church are just going right along with us. So,
again, we're we're we're following through on this. So, you've got this dilemma. You've got this again, don't shoot the messenger.
You You've got a family proclamation that lays out by divine design how this should operate to the best of your ability. And you can't always do that. I
get it. You've got costs. You've got, you know, but you know, you also maybe need to go through the solid days to
begin. My wife and I did. most everybody in my generation did.
You you you have to make big sacrifices early on and not drive a nice car and and not
live in a nice place and and budget really tightly all of your money and figure out, you know, maybe maybe uh the
wife can figure out how, you know, how can I bring in a few extra dollars?
Maybe there's a part-time thing I can do at home or or whatever it is. I remember once my my wife used to sell vinegar.
She there was amazing. She had these these vinegars and they were flavored vinegar. They were delicious and she had
a brand that went with it and um and she would go and and sell these. She did really well with it. She always does
really well with these things. And so she she would go out to trade shows and uh I think it was right at the time when we started to put something actually
online at that time. that might have been in the late 90s, mid late 90s. And uh so you she would do
that and you know so does so many of you have done this and gone through this and tried to do something on the side to make a little bit of extra money. Um
but I think you know what I I just I my I always say get married early and have
kids early. Get married early and have kids early.
And how many of you are kind of like uh wincing when I say that? And maybe you've had a bad experience.
Maybe you don't want your kids to do that.
You need to think about that. I I really believe you need to think about that. I that is my position. Doesn't have to be yours, but all the studies show that that's the right thing.
Stronger marriages, happier marriages, you go through tough times together. You learn resiliency together. You learn to
work with each other in harder times and you're young.
You've got the energy, you know, you you're you're making things work and you have a plan together and and then you grow
through it. That's seems that used to be pretty common sensical.
So anyway, just, you know, things to to chew on here is is it by divine design that men are supposed to preside?
I'm not talking about equally preside. I'm talking about being a servant king.
I'm talking about doing it through, as the proclamation says, through love and righteousness. Leading your family.
Leading your family and taking on the responsibility for that. That is actually a priesthood responsibility in the patriarchal priesthood.
And and and it's being removed. It's not being talked about. We're afraid to say it.
and and these outside forces that are changing the culture so much.
Um this is again everybody's got their options, everybody's got their choices.
You can uh my both of my daughters work full-time. One owns a business. One is uh uh has got her master's degree and
they're both college uh graduates and but and my wife works full-time now that there's no one in the house. were empty
nesters but and does extremely well but what are we advocating for?
What are we advocating for? How far are we going to change? How far do we go down the road of pushing careerism for
women and removing responsibility from men? That's my question.
And and I know people call it misogynistic or people call it old-fashioned or, you know, whatever it is. You know, somehow you're you're
you're creating some kind of hierarchy where you have power, which is ridiculous.
I I I think we need to really think about what
we're doing and and understand what is happening in the world.
more broadly and and and follow the family proclamation as an ideal at a minimum.
Even if you can't do it right now, even if there's no way around it right now, I think it's the ideal.
And that doesn't mean that there aren't women with just immense capacity. My wife's got huge, you know, she's her capacity level is really high.
And she could be doing everything. She could have been working full-time. She could have a a power job. uh uh while she's raising kids, she she probably
could have done that, but that's not what either of us wanted. And I'm not saying we're some great people or anything. I'm just saying that that
thought process has changed an awful lot in the generations since.
So anyway, thanks for listening.