I’m glad I’m a woman. I’m glad I’m a wife. I’m glad I’m a mother. I’m glad I’m a Mormon. In fact, my Mormon-woman-wife-and-motherness is the core of my personal identity, and I recognize it as the source of my greatest blessings and opportunities for growth in this life. I am not, however, a perfect Mormon-wife-and-mother (gasp!). And any Mormon-wives-and-mothers out there reading this post? Neither are you (double gasp!).
Seriously, we’ve got issues, don’t we? We’re lazy and whiny and angry and lustful and controlling and jealous and aggressive and mean and petty and occasionally even faithless. We yell at our kids. We choose going to the movies over going to the temple. We give our husbands the silent treatment. We walk out of the grocery store in the rain with three kinds clinging to the cart, and when we realize that we forgot to have the cashier scan the 12-pack of Diet Coke, we don’t go back inside and pay for it.
And these examples are just the small things.
I don’t mention all this because I want to revel in our faults or air our dirty laundry. I’m saying it because it’s true, and as the old saying goes, the truth will set you free.
As Mormon women, we’re all familiar with the lady I like to call the Angel Mother Straight from Heaven (HT Coventry Patmore and Virginia Woolf). When I was a younger mom, the mythology of the Angel Mother filled me with a kind of numb despair. Mormon women are “naturally” inclined to want to stay home and nurture their children (so who’s this mother of two children under two sitting at the window sobbing jealous tears as her husband goes off to grad school?). Mormon women are “naturally” patient (so who’s this lady rampaging through the house when her son can’t find his soccer shoes?). Mormon women are “naturally” spiritual (so who’s this woman lying in bed reading Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale while her husband reads his scriptures?).
Thankfully, as time has passed, this mythology has held less and less sway over the way I see myself, for the simple reason that I’ve lived long enough now, and known enough Mormon women, to realize that none of us is the Angel Mother. Sure, some of us are closer than others, but each and every one of us will be stumbling along on the path to perfection until the day we die. No woman is immune.
Still, the paradigm of female perfection still troubles me. One reason is because it can lead to feelings of guilt and inferiority that remain problematic for so many among us. Many women have convinced themselves that they are alone in their struggles and transgressions. Some even see themselves as affront to the idea of womanhood. And while it’s one thing to be a sinner, it’s another thing entirely to be a sinner and an aberration. Sometimes, in fact, I think it would be helpful if we could turn to a scripture like Mosiah 3:19 and read: “For the natural woman is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Eve, and will be, forever and ever, unless she yields to the enticing of the Holy Spirit . . .” At least then we’d know we have company.
“Wait a sec,” some might say. “You think it would be helpful to call women sinners? Doesn’t it make women happy when we laud them for their better natures?” Well, maybe it makes some Mormon women happy, but for me and many women I know, this idealization has resulted in more harm than good. I realize that many people who tell tales of the Angel Mother think they’re simply complimenting and appreciating the women in their lives. I’m not one who believes that those (both male and female) who perpetuate this stereotype have some kind of nefarious, sexist purpose in mind. Well, maybe a handful do, but I honestly believe most don’t.
I’m also not saying that women and men are no different from one another. We all know that men are more likely to commit violent crime and less likely to go to church than women, for example. But just because something is true across the board doesn’t mean it applies to each of us as individuals. And we live our lives as individuals. In my individual life, as a matter of fact, I can think of couple after couple where the husband is just as likely—or even more likely—to be the one driving certain church-centered behaviors like scripture reading (see above) or temple attendance, and not just out of a grim sense of patriarchal duty. It’s because he’s created a real desire within himself to grow closer to the spirit. But while our rhetoric might lead us to see these religious behaviors in a woman as natural, we’re more likely to see these behaviors in a man as the product of his good choices, of mastery of his fallen self, of hard work and discipline exercised in the direction of righteousness.
Which brings me to another reason I believe the myth of the naturally righteous woman or naturally nurturing mother is problematic: it strips women of the power that comes when individual agency triumphs over weakness or sin. If we’re naturally inclined to do good, to serve, to sacrifice, to eschew transgression, to nurture children, then we’re not really choosing these behaviors after all. We’re simply acting in the way we’re programmed to act. And where’s the power or hard-won wisdom in that?
As an illustration, a little switcheroo. What if a woman stood up in front of a group of men and said, “I’m so grateful that it’s in a man’s nature to want to work long hours [filing tax returns, framing houses, teaching 10th graders European history, etc etc] in order to provide for his family.” I’m guessing the statement might make some men feel a little squirmy, because most men I know don’t necessarily want to spend the bulk of their waking hours toiling away for a paycheck. They do it, even though it’s hard, because it’s their responsibility.
I like the wording of the Proclamation on the Family in this respect. For both men and women, the respective roles as provider and nurturer are their divine responsibilities. I love my kids fiercely, and I’m very grateful that I have the option to choose to stay home and parent them. But my staying home was a mindful decision on my part, a fulfilling of what I saw as my responsibility. There were times, especially when my children were younger, that my decision to give up my career and stay home with colicky babies and demanding toddlers felt like the most unnatural thing I’d ever done in my life.
I do recognize that, as a woman, I am endowed with certain qualities specific to my female-ness. Much of what makes me me is tied up in the eternal nature of my gender. But I’m also an individual spirit who’s had specific pre-mortal and mortal experiences. I’m the proud possessor of a human body, with its attendant proclivities, weaknesses, and gifts, as well. In other words, what might come naturally to one woman might not come naturally to me. This pronouncement seems supremely obvious as I type it out on the page, but I remember a time when I didn’t fully understand it, and that misunderstanding led to unnecessary suffering and self-condemnation.
I’m also (strangely?) grateful that I’m capable of sin. This is the capacity Eve knew we must be possessed of, and struggle against, in order to progress. This is the capacity that enables me to stand side-by-side with my husband as an equal, as we help each other understand the pain that comes from transgression and the life-changing power of the atonement. This is the capacity that allows me the empathy necessary to lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees of my fellow brothers and sisters. And, finally, this is the capacity that will fill me with gratitude when I someday stand before my Savior, certain in the knowledge that he suffered and died for me.
I am a natural woman. And for this, I’m glad.
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