Fellas, before you bend the knee, make sure she’s the marrying kind. If she plans a better career than you, she’s going to be hard put to stick around. Although priesthood may be a counterfactor for Mormons–feminists who want Mormon women to make careers and marriages both should be the last ones agitating for a unisex priesthood.

There are four factors that statistically predict for divorce. If the hubby is better looking than the wife, if the wife makes more than the hubby, the number of sexual partners before marriage, and cohabiting before marriage. Mormon ethics actually account for these pretty well, directly or indirectly (the looks thing nature takes care of). For instance, women who have children are more likely to stay home or make less than their husbands. Women who stay home or make less than their husbands are more satisfied with their marriages.

In turn, marriage and children makes people more religious. It’s Mary Eberstadt’s and Steve Sailer’s world, we’re just living in it. (And Jonathan Haidt’s world too—marriage and children make you more conservative, which Haidt has shown means more attuned to hierarchy, sexual purity, and loyalty to institutions. For Mormons, check, check, and check.). Mormonism is not a random assortment of beliefs and practices. The pieces fit in surprising ways.

Sometimes Mormons get criticized for being too much a down-to-earth prosaic religion. Yet it is down somewhere in the dirty diapers and paycheck budgeting, it turns out, that men and women have their hearts most opened to the transcendent God.


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