The Collapse of LDS Marriage Culture And The Loss of Taught Doctrine

Retention is falling, birth rates are collapsing, and dating culture is disappearing Apps, social media, pornography, and cultural confusion are reshaping the Church Young men and women no longer want the same kind of marriage A generation was never taught how to date, marry, or build strong families We Quietly Stopped Teaching The Doctrine And The Worldview

 Raw Transcript:

Are we in a marriage crisis in the church? Numbers have shown very positively for the church in terms of conversions and growth and seminary and
institute attendance. But the numbers for retention, the numbers for family size, the number for marriages are all
dropping in the United States. What is the reason for this? And and what can we do to change it? Is it social media? Is
it time on the internet? Is it dating apps? Is it hookup culture, gaming? All
of these things probably have a role in a crisis that we're having in the family, the fertility rate, the birth rate. But there's one thing above all
pointed out in an article by Alex, who goes by Alexander on Substack, that should really be considered as both a
solution and a practice within the church. Something we are definitely missing. Now, this episode is brought to
you by the Alaskan Frontier Cruise. This cruise starts on September 5th through September 12th, 2026. It is with myself, my wife, and Steve and Elaine Dalton.
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Go to trips and events at the top, and scroll down to Alaskan Frontier. Here we go.
So, an article was put up on Substack by Alexander. It's something I think you should all read. I think you should go to this Substack. This is Alexander.
It's called Send Me on Substack who happens to be a listener of the show.
And I want to go over some of the points that are being made here along with some data. While the conversion numbers and and attendance numbers in things like
institute and seminary have risen, the retention level is dropping and the
family size and children of record numbers are all dropping. The marriage numbers are all dropping. And so we're getting this
real, as we call it, a wheat and tears type of a moment in the church. really strong members in the church and others
that are falling away. But let's take a look at this article. So, Alex titles this the LDS marriage recession is here
as subtitle. 60% of young LDS men still want traditional marriage.
54% of young LDS women want an ealitarian marriage. Okay, so again, egalitarian marriage basically says we share all the same responsibilities.
A lot of people are going to argue that that's what's said in the family proclamation. It is not what is said in the family proclamation. We're going to
get to that in a minute. It is an equal partnership with different roles, different inputs, different strengths.
But 60% of the LDS men still want a traditional marriage. And you can see this number rising right now in
throughout the US. The numbers are going higher for men that want more of a traditional wife. Now many will say well
yeah they want this is misogyny this is a practice of I I want a subservient woman
it's preposterous but that's the narrative that is put out there while many young women are saying they want to share all of the responsibilities have
an equal an equal gender roles across the board the problem is that's not what has been taught in the church previously
that is not what is in the family proclamation And yet that is where our society is moving toward. Now you can say a number
of different things. For example, on the positive side, more men are spending more time with their children's children today. That that's a great thing. And
this goes back to the to the well to the 20th century. And we've got to remember that the development of gender roles going into the 20th century did change a
lot. And the traditional family, the Leave it to Beaver family, is something of a 20th century makeup to some degree.
It really is. Previous to that, you had something very different. You would have women who were working as much as men, but in the home, in and around the home.
And men were working out on the land or even hunting, going back even further, or doing what they had to do to provide
for the family. The women were not typically out providing for the family.
Certainly not in a primary role, but they were working very hard. And this is something that's brought up we're going to do in a different broadcast that is
is being twisted. The definition of a traditional wife and the definition of gender roles is being twisted out there saying that women have always worked.
Not it's it's not not the same thing. It is not the same thing at all. But let's dig down into this article a little bit
and see what it has to say on several different numbers that we're going to draw on. Okay. Two facts most members are not putting next to each other. All
right. Number one, in July 2024, the church quietly raised the young single adult age range from 18 to 30 to 18 to 35.
All right. Why? Well, well, because there are more single people for a longer period of time. And that could
have re be a result of a a a generation that's not growing up as fast, quite frankly. But there are different several
different factors that are involved here and I think it was the right move. Without question, it was the right move.
The author here, Alex, says, "Five extra years tacked onto our singles adolescence." I do think that this is a response that
had to be made. Personally, I it's just it it's unfortunate that we're in that situation, but I think that that that
did have to be changed. That same year, the church educational system publicly committed to actively promoting dating
on its campuses with leaders calling dating an endangered species inside the church. Now, this is an about face to
some degree. Uh it it wasn't that long ago when I was bringing up my kids, we didn't follow this, but a lot of the
other families did, and so my children were more involved with this. But what happened in the 2000s and 2010s is that
the church started saying, "Well, don't date until you're 16, and when you do date, go in group dates." Now, we
understand why, right? It's it's the law of chastity. It's you might get yourself into trouble. That all makes sense. But that has consequences. The consequences
are men, young men and young women don't learn to interact by themselves.
What does a young man How does a young man treat a young woman? How does he talk to her? How does he learn to do that one-on-one when there's nobody else
around and it's all on him? And the same goes for the girl. Those are skills that are lost today because we have moved
into this hangout crowd where everybody hangs out and there is very little opportunity for chivalry. for example,
there's very little opportunity for responsibility of of and skills gained by being one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
So, I I honestly do believe that those policies and those words affected the church members, the youth, in a way that
was not all positive and in an effort in a righteous effort to help them be
careful. Now, Alex says here, "The institution is acknowledging gently but unmistakably that
something has gone wrong with marriage formation among Latter-day Saints. The calamities the family proclamation warned about are arriving inside our own walls.
This is true and and and you should be worried about this.
You should be very concerned about this because it's not just a matter of your kids and your grandkids, your brothers and your sisters. It it it is a matter
of society as the family continues to slide down a a mud hill and and how do
you turn it around? What is the solution for this? And if there is a solution, are you able to implement it at least
within the boundaries of the church? We could. I don't. But I'm skeptical. I'm very skeptical that we're we're going to
be able to do this. I I'll tell you why here in a minute. So looking at the world's numbers uh and why they are not just the world's
numbers. In other words, they're the church's numbers. Alex quotes a study that was done by the Will Wheatley
Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. I saw this when it came out. I think that Brad Wilcox, not that Brad
Wilcox, but the Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies, I remember when he tweeted this out. All right.
Released a 2026 report called State of Our Unions. The dating recession of unmarried young adults aged 22 to 35 in
the United States, only 31% are actively dating. That's once a month or more. Among women, just 26%.
Among men, 36%.
74% of women and 64% of men dated rarely or not at all in the last year.
What is going on? This is we're going to get down more to a fundamental level here. Yes, I understand there's distractions. There's
social media. You're getting your kudos and your positive feedback from the likes of your social media accounts and your communication done digitally.
That's part of it. Certainly, uh, just one in three young adults says they have any real confidence in their dating skills. Again, this is going back
to something that we did not do a very good job of in helping to produce a
dating culture within the church. And and I and we're paying for it.
For years, we comforted ourselves by thinking that this was happening out there in secular society in the swipe left culture, not in our own wards.
Okay. I I'm going to say just as somebody who's a little bit older that I I would not agree with that. I saw this
very early on. I I it was and so did my peers, right? We could see that this was happening and I I don't think that it
was just a a secular issue, although that's what drives this. The the outside secular culture seeps into the church, right? The culture seeps into the church.
But let's take a look at the calamities that are outlined. Well, the calamities are outlined in the family proclamation.
And you can see this through data.
According to researcher Jana Ree or Rice, I think it's Ree. Jana, I'm sorry.
I should know that by now. In the Next Mormon's data set, this is from a few years ago, Latter-day Saint marriage
rates have dropped from 71% in 2007 to the mid60s today. And the share of never
married LDS adults has grown from 12% in 2017 2007 to 19%.
Elder M. Russell Ballard told us in April 2021 that more than half of adult church members today are widowed, divorced, or have never married. Right?
He says half of us. Okay? I want you to look again here. That is April 2021.
That is 5 years ago. Are we pushing 60% by this time? Now consider this. If you look at the messaging then from the
church and and what are you messaging to? What changes because of that? You have more messaging for single adults. You have
fewer messaging for families. That changes you from a familyoriented organization to more of a single uh uh
single uh membership organization, right? That that is different and that's kind of a spiral that every organization
goes to when they are looking at their audience on their membership. It's interesting because there if you look around the Jehovah's Witnesses now are out there everywhere on the streets.
Have you seen them with their signs?
Guess what their number one sales pitch is for the Jehovah's Witnesses? It's family, right? Remember when we used to be that?
Is it going to continue to peel back away from that messaging?
if our numbers grow larger and larger as with with single adults within the church, divorced adults, never married adults.
Um, I think so.
I mean, you've got a message to your to your group, right? It's that that's that's a spiral and a
phenomena that happens in not just in the church, but in every organization.
Back to the article, the fertility numbers tell the same story. NPR reported in October 2025 that
the share of Latterday Saint women aged 18 to 45 with at least one child at home dropped from 70% in 2008 to 59% in 2012.
That's 14 years, right? An 11% drop in 14 years. President Don H. Oaks,
remember this, recently acknowledged at general conference that LDS birth rates, while still higher than the national average, I think he did this in I want
to say October, have declined significantly.
We're just a number of years behind the the the culture. We're going in the same direction. How can that be? We're slightly more traditional,
but on the same path as the rest of the culture. See, that's not right. We should be going against the culture,
counterculture in on this. And we're not we're we're not we're the messaging is
not there. We are not putting the message out about men being responsible
and providing and leading their families and preparing for those those roles and responsibilities.
and for women to be mothers and wives.
It's not even in the young women's theme anymore. They took it out.
So, it's it's is is that happening at that level? Are are are teachers in Sunday school, in young men's, in young
women's, are we solidifying this idea of this vision of a family, of being a father and a husband, of being a wife and a mother? I I I don't know.
doesn't seem like it to me. What are your thoughts on that? Have we changed in the messaging on this all the way around, all the way through? Are are we
culturally lacking now in this messaging about family and responsibility and gender roles? I mean, honestly, gender
roles. I want to I want to hit right to the fundamental part of this here shortly. Retention.
The share of childhood Latter-day Saints who remained Latter-day Saints as adults has fallen from 70% in 2007 to 64% in
2014, right? That's 7 years later, to 54% in 2023 to 2024. Okay. Now, there is
another poll out there. I believe it is the uh the GSS, General Survey Studies, right? Is that what it is? The GSS. It's
a big one. Uh, it has it at 38%.
38% retention rate.
Imagine 70% and even higher 75% I think on the GSS that that had us in the 70s
and 80s at 75% retention rate. I lived during that time. I grew up in that period of time. It was a lot rare to see people leave the church.
It happened of course, but it wasn't the same thing as it is today. And as soon as you move up into that millennial generation, whatever it was, social
media, phones, the internet, whatever it is, uh, cultural shifts, that millennial generation just went off a cliff.
Honestly, a big portion of the millennials and Generation Z seems to be bucking the trend on that to some degree, right?
They're they're bucking the trend in generation alpha. They're bucking the trend to some degree, which is nice to see. But again, I mean, you're talking
about you've got these larger numbers of conversions and and attendance at institutes and seminary and fabulous
stuff mostly internationally, although also here in the US numbers have been up in in those areas, but the total membership is at is flat.
It's flat. We haven't gained anything.
And then children of record numbers are dropping. they're consistently dropping.
So there are fewer and fewer kids getting baptized because there are fewer and fewer kids and there period in
existence within the church and there are fewer families that have stayed in the church.
So, so we we've got these it's like we're healthy on the surface if you want to look at it that way with the conversions and the growth and the
attendance rates in certain parts of the institution but there is a call it a cancer call it a virus call it something
going on down in the bottom levels here where you've got a number of people leaving the church and these numbers coincide
right the numbers coincide the numbers of the the the graphs that you'll see of numbers of people leaving the church,
the number of marriages dropping, the number of kids dropping, all of these things all correlate.
They all correlate.
So we we should understand that stronger families, stronger testimonies, stronger doctrine means those numbers all move
up. And instead of watering things down to a point where we don't offend anyone, can't offend anybody.
Instead of watering those things down, if we taught these things as truths, which they are,
and and brought that messaging to the youth and others consistently,
19 minutesthen then maybe we can turn things around a little bit. But culture is a strong thing, man.
Culture is a strong thing.
And it's it's kind of like the frog in boiling water, right? I mean, it's just little by little that water warms up and
heats up and we're all comfortable with it.
And that's what we're living through right now, I believe. All right.
I want to look at this, too. And this is important to see with the family proclamation here. the calamities. We are living through this right now. The
actual destruction of things hasn't happened yet, but the numbers are all trending toward this.
Now, declining marriage rates and fall falling birth rates, right? We are dropping like crazy on birth rates give rise to the level of calamity. That is
what that is truth. And understand that strong families create strong societies. Strong families create a strong church.
20 minutesWeaker families, smaller families create a weaker church and a weaker society. That's just the fact.
That's the fact. Okay. So, fewer marriages, fewer children, all of these things bring calamity. The proclamation
names the mechanism by which the calamities come, the disintegration of the family. It's very simple. All of the
numbers show disintegration within the church.
If we stop getting married and we stop rearing children, families don't simply shrink. They cease to exist and that is disintegration in slow motion. Okay, I
fully agree with that, Alex. That is absolutely true and that is what is happening here. Half the adult members are single. That could be pushing 60% by
now, especially through the early 20, you know, the last five years and the changes that have happened there with with apps being at at their full level
of use. And I'm talking about dating apps, skills being lost,
uh other other distractions, pornography, etc. This is what Alex says here. There are not five separate
problems here. There are there are one problem with five faces. So what is the problem? Okay, so I want to confirm what
he's saying here. I fully agree with what he's saying here, but I need to add something to this. I believe it's all too easy to blame counterculture, social
media, screen time, but those are surface level factors. It's not just that. We need to add in pornography, gaming, and other vices, right? Other vices that come in to to play here.
Focusing on those things will keep us diverted from seeing the core of the issue, which appears to be that younger Latter- Day Saints no longer hold the values
that a doctrinal understanding and testimony would instill. I want to highlight this right here. a doctrinal understanding
when you don't see it as much. When you're not taught this, when it is not brought up because people are too afraid
to talk about it, too afraid to talk about forming families and becoming a father and a
mother. God forbid that in young women's in a young woman's advisor starts talking about how it's important to
become a mother instead of reaching your highest potential. In other words, in terms of
of of a career and you know what is the messaging that we're getting? Do you think that has shifted in the last 25 years at the ground level?
Yeah, it's it's definitely shifted. It's definitely shifted. I mean, I want what's best for my daughters. Does that
mean more opportunity? I think that's true. Does it mean pushing for careerism? We're going to reap the
consequences of falling away from a a an organization of the family, a patriarchal order. We will reap the
consequences of this. This is where the calamities come in.
All right. Here's where Next Mormons, this is uh Next Mormons is the the book that was put out by Janet Ree and and
yes, she has an agenda, but but I when I I bought this pretty close to when it came out and the data I believe, this is
just me, I believe was pretty spot on on a number of things. And I've used that data several times.
But uh being academic and it's uh data stops being academic and starts being doctrally diagnostic.
I think what he means by this is the numbers all show the calamities because of a lack of the doctrine of gender
roles, husband, father responsibility, right? And and motherhood and being a wife.
Okay. nurturing, you know, careful, careful. What if you say that in a group? Someone going to get angry? Is someone going to think
that you're old-fashioned? Kind of frumpy.
48% of LDS women ages 18 to 35 prefer an egalitarian marriage. Divide all of the responsibilities.
There is no difference between the two.
Okay. uh among LDS women ages 18 to 26 that climbs to a majority 54%.
That's what they're looking for.
Meanwhile, men, 60% of LDS men 18 to 16 still prefer the traditional arrangement.
So, he's got a point here, right? Before ever anybody starts dating or getting into the dating pool, you've already got
an understanding of a different worldview and a disparity, a disparity between the sexes on what they're looking for.
So if a man wants a traditional family, a young man wants a traditional family.
And again, what I mean by that does not mean leave it to Beaver.
It means that he wants to be the primary bread winner and he wants his wife to be the primary nurturer. That's all it is.
Those those those can fluctuate to some degree. There are balances that have to be made and and adaptions that have to
be uh put in place, right? But but if if a a a young man wants that in his world, he's going to have a lot fewer choices to choose from.
And and if a woman wants an egalitarian marriage where the man is as high on the
domestic side as he is on the breadwinning side and he wants his wife to be as much of a bread winner as he is,
he she's going to have fewer options in what she she's looking for. So you're shrinking the data pool and and those
two level those two numbers are are growing apart as we speak. Now, here's
where it it gets interesting and and is, you know, where the rubber hits the road
on this and and I fully believe that this is where we're at.
He says, "We, the cultural church, the cultural church, the wards, the parents, the institute teachers, the Sunday school adults, the LDScoded social media
voices, I I like that term, have spent 20 years quietly softening the doctrine of marriage to make it palatable in mixed
company." In other words, you you've got a lot of women who have said, "We want something different." some men that want the same
thing in an egalitarian type of role and want to change what the family proclamation states in terms of gender
roles. Again, there is flexibility in that. It is not rigid.
But to throw it all out, you're going to bring in the destruction of the family. I'm sorry. as a whole.
That doesn't mean that here and there you don't have places where you have to make that work where the woman has to be the primary bread winner and and and the
man has to be a little bit more on the nurturing side with the kids. I I understand that everyone's situation is different. But when you teach and
advocate an ideal that is different and and that is puts men with a lower
responsibility to provide for their family and puts women with a lower responsibility of nurturing the children, then you're in you're in trouble.
It's very clear if you believe in the inspiration of the family proclamation.
It's very clear. Now maybe you are someone that just thinks it's oldfashioned. We get that all the time.
That's for a different world. That's a 20th century makeup of things. It's actually the order of God and that's how
a family can function and and grow and flourish etc. Different
situations, adaptions are made. Uh not everybody has to follow the same thing.
28 minutesBut when you change that ideal, then then everything goes away. When you get rid of exaltation
as the ideal and and and a a a celestial outlook and thinking celestially as the ideal, then
you've thrown everything away. It's the same idea. You take the ideal and and you crush it. That's the adversar's
plan strategically to have us all drop down here, right? We don't need exaltation. We don't need to fight for
exaltation. We don't need to move toward exaltation. God loves us so much that that can he can make up the rest by
himself and and we don't need to move toward exaltation.
Have Have you heard something similar to that? Because I hear it a lot. All right. So, getting right into this here and and these are the words that I think
are very important that nobody wants to talk about. So, I'm glad he brought this up. We stopped saying preside with
confidence. Remember that's in in the family proclamation for men. Men are meant to preside in their families. Oh,
but wait a minute. It says that we're supposed to be equal partners. Yes, it does. Of course, we're equal partners.
But there are divided roles. And the men are supposed to lead.
The men are supposed to preside as the priesthood holder.
That is their job. That is their responsibility. It's not their God-given right. It's their God-given duty.
And it's what gives them purpose. and we're stripping it away and we're making men more feminine and we're making women more masculine.
It's kind of like masculinity becomes toxic if it's if it's instilled into men, even with parameters,
but it's glorious if it's instilled into women.
That's the culture that we live in right now. Some have even started apologizing for the clarity of the proclamation. We
taught equal partnership in a way that quietly erased the uniquely different roles of men and women that follows God's family model. It is God's family
model. We trained our daughters to look for an egalitarian husband without telling them that the doctrine isn't
actually symmetrical. And we trained our sons to want to preside without ever showing them what that looked like at a
kitchen table on a Tuesday night. Okay, that is spoton. Sorry, that that is spoton.
Coming then finally to the solution, and I agree with this 100%. I'm going to add a little on to this uh that I think
gives it a little bit more oomph, but he he's spot on with this.
The solution is the doctrine, right? Say it out loud. The solution is the doctrine.
We have to teach the doctrine. That means the doctrine isn't just, oh, I see it. I know I I know it's there. It's is
31 minutesit messaged to me? Is it messaged to the youth? Is it messaged to the single adults?
Because if we don't message it, the world's message will overtake it. Right?
It's going to overtake it. It's going to overpower it. Even if they've seen it here and there, they've read the final proclamation before. Yeah. But it
doesn't really mean much unless there's some strength behind it.
The contrarian energy belongs aimed at us, the cultural church, the muted teachers, the parents who let it go quiet. We soften the foundation, but we can put it back.
We can individually and maybe in some words. I I I hate to be a Debbie Downer on this, but
uh I I am skeptical that we are willing to do this. We don't like being shamed.
We don't like to offend anymore. We don't like to put out a microaggression anywhere.
And I if we don't change something at least soon on this, if we aren't able to
change it, I I what what is the point of no return to some degree for a large portion of the church? The family
proclamation lays it out in language plainer than we have been brave enough to teach lately.
All right, let's go over this paragraph again.
By divine design, fathers are to preside.
that is not what do we want to call it a misogynist.
Most women I know that are beyond 30 years old and have some life experience especially in a
family are wanting their husbands to preside to lead them more as a family than where
they are now. And some of those men have been beaten down from maybe it's their wives or maybe it's their culture or maybe it's messaging throughout social
media and the internet where they're like, "Oh, I guess I'm not supposed to have this purpose. I'm not supposed to lead." But they are they need that
purpose. They need to lead it. It is what they are called to do. They're to preside over their families in love and
righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.
Mothers are primarily responsible primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. That doesn't mean they can't work. That doesn't mean they don't
have other responsibilities. They've got callings. They've got involvement other places. But they're the primary nurturers of the children. In these
sacred responsibilities, it says fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Now, do you
see how that gets twisted? In those different roles, they need support and help from the other partner, from the other spouse.
I support you in providing for this family. I help support you in whatever I need to do to help you be the primary
nurturer of this. I support you with the kids.
I I help with other things when I can, but those are the primary functions in a patriarchal order and in the order of
God and what is outlined in the family proclamation.
And some people I I think just want to scream when they hear this.
All right. He finishes up here with the vision. A generation has lost the doctrine of marriage and family because we got quiet about it while the world
raged on. screaming ever louder their perversion of the concept. The world's data is bad. Ours is bad. Just five
years behind. Doesn't matter that we're five years behind. That is not a win.
That's not a win. We're going in the same direction to the same destiny.
Every one of those facts is also an invitation to a different kind of cultural church in which we say the doctrine out loud again with confidence
and joy. If we put the foundation back, the youth will find their footing. If they find their footing, they will find each other. Right? Talking about the
dating scene. And I think that that is all true. Opposites attract. Egalitarians don't.
It is it is uh you know, we we are we are living in a
time when when all of the numbers are the same. Who are the religious people?
They're the family people, right? Overwhelmingly, it's those that are married and have kids. And the more
a group has family and kids, the more religious they are as a whole. That doesn't mean it's it's, you know, it's a
it's a matter of numbers. It always is, but as a whole, they're more religious.
And and and so you can't pull those things apart.
You can't pull them apart. And as religiosity drops and secularism rises and the culture becomes more and more secular,
what we should be doing is separating ourselves from that culture and and actually getting ourselves out of the valley up onto the hill as a
bright city, right? The bright light up on the city so that they can people can see a distinction. People would flock
to that light if they saw more of a difference. They would flock to it. And it's I'm not saying there isn't a difference. There
is. There is a difference there. But it's shrinking and and we're sliding down the hill to the valley, too. And and we should be turning the other way.
We should be moving in the opposite direction as the culture or certainly holding our own in the current that's going right now.
Before we end, I want to put out prayers to Mara Gail and her family.
Tragedy struck her family. And I I know there are so many people right now that are praying for her and for her family
and and healing and support and love for them. So, I I I hope you can join me in offering prayers for her and her family.
Thanks for listening.