“Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey…” Gets It All Wrong

READER POST: I teach my children to honor our ancestors and to respect all those with whom we share our world–which includes honoring our polygamous Mormon ancestors and respecting those who continue the practice today. Just this week, I listened proudly as my four year old explained to someone else that some types of Mormons practice polygamy and some types of Mormons don’t. While we don’t believe it was ever commanded by God, polygamy (both historical and modern) is a topic which comes up at our dinner table regularly. We aren’t afraid to discuss it. 

But I think the cartoon story “Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey a Law from the Lord Even When It’s Hard,” located in the Doctrine and Covenants Stories for Children, is shockingly age-inappropriate. In fact, I found it quite upsetting. One doesn’t have to be an overprotective parent or a supporter of the “Joseph was a monogamist” minority viewpoint to take issue with this story. 

Families come in many configurations. My young children understand families from the perspective of young children: families are people committed to each other who (often) live together and (often) raise children together. 

In my experience, children’s stories which explain non-traditional family structures center the child’s perspective. A book about having two fathers might explain “Papa takes me to the park; Dad helps me brush my teeth. My dads love each other and they love me, so we have a loving family.” 

In contrast, “Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey” takes an adult-centric (and more than that, an extremely male-centric) look at the internal thought process men undergo as they decide to open their marriage. It strongly hyperfocuses on the initial decision making process. It also makes light of the force and pain inherent when men make that decision and their wives are, at most, questionably invested in the idea. But even if it didn’t make light of that, the complex decision making process of opening a marriage isn’t an age-appropriate way to teach little kids about polygamy. 

A child-centered introduction would highlight that a particular family has a man and 2+ women, that each woman is raising (or hopes to raise) the children of the man, that they are committed to each other and love each other, and they love their children. It would present polygamy as a kind of family. Apologetic material for young children might say “people who lived in the United States back then didn’t know there are many kinds of families. They didn’t like Billy’s family because they didn’t want any families to be different. Sometimes they were mean to Billy’s family. Eventually, Papa took Mama and Aunt Desmodena to Utah so they would not be bullied about their family any more.” It might say “church leaders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young also had families like Billy’s. One day at the store with Mama, Billy met a beautiful woman named Eliza. Her husband was the prophet himself! She slipped a candy into Billy’s pocket as she walked by. Billy sucked on it as he thought about how wonderful it is for God to put children in families. He loved his Mama, his Papa, both his Aunties, and all his brothers and sisters. He especially loved knowing they would be together forever.” (The last line is anachronistic, but I’m presenting this as an apologetic inoculation for little children, which is what the LDS church seemed to intend. Anachronisms tend to abound in apologetics.)

I would not read my preschooler a book about how Sarah’s first mommy decided to pursue her personal and sexual fulfillment by ending her sexual relationship to Sarah’s father and instead marrying Sarah’s new mommy. My kids know gay people both married and single, but they are too young to grasp the idea of finding psychosexual fulfillment, let alone a psychosexual threat, in the idea of changing a family’s configuration. The decision-making process surrounding changing an existing family structure would confuse them. The idea that the decision-making process would be very painful would be both confusing and frightening. (They aren’t even interested in how monogamous people decide to get married or form a family. For them, time started when they were born. How parents formed an initial relationship is outside their scope of interest and certainly outside their scope of personal investment in a story.) The very strange idea of God forcing people to change their family configurations in an unwanted way would absolutely terrify them. Kids need to feel secure in their families and this story would take away from the sense of security I have carefully built. 

Nor do I think “Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey” is spiritually age-appropriate. It educates children not about plural families so much as it educates them about terrifying, painful, unanticipatable new decrees from God. I am teaching my young children that we can learn what God wants for us, I’m not teaching them stories about God surprising people with new and horrifying rules no one could ever have guessed in advance. This is not spiritually appropriate for little children. What children need to know about God is that God loves them and God wants everyone to treat others with respect and kindness. The idea of God issuing a new rule which horrifies the recipients and threatens existing families isn’t an idea any young children need to be processing, and I certainly won’t be reading it to mine. 

Further, these are new decrees which change everything a child knows. But that story doesn’t present a single sentence or picture about how this affected the children involved or whether the children were supported during this terribly difficult time in their family. There is not a single crumb here about the children being taken care of while their parents make these new choices. Absolutely nothing.

Even if this weren’t a terrifying story, it would be a story which leaves young children with many unanswered questions. When Joseph took a new wife, did his kids have to call her Mommy? Did they have to give their bedroom to her, like when Grandma visits? Did they still get to see their other mommy? Were the new mommy’s children their brothers and sisters? These are natural questions for children to have, but the story puts absolutely zero effort into addressing the children who are supposedly the audience. Fundamentally, this is a story for adult English language learners or for those with limited literacy. It isn’t a story directed at children. Stories actually written for children show at least a little bit of author awareness of the audience. 

I’m not reading this story to my little children because I would never read them a story about God ordering someone’s father to upend his marriage with new adult psychosexual decisions, and the mommy of the family being very upset about it. That is in no way, shape, or form an age-appropriate discussion of families. Nor would it help them learn to trust God. I am appalled that anyone thinks this is something little children would benefit from hearing. 

This particular story would not even help them understand polygamous families, because it wasn’t written with any awareness of a young child’s perspective. But even if it were written for children, the subject matter is stunningly inappropriate.
~Liz~

Liz is a Mormon mother who loves some of the traditions of her ancestors. Hexagons and honeybee imagery speak to her soul. She stays up late reading academic journals and the Bible. She is troubled by the existence of black holes and the looming heat death of the universe. While not particularly superstitious, she does sometimes find coincidences hard to explain, and she hopes for a resurrection. There are always little strands of hair out of place above her ears. Her ancestors look down with mixed emotions and hopefully a sense of humor.

Sisters Quorum would appreciate hearing your stories. Feel free to leave a comment or see our Submissions page to send in your story.

Please like and follow Sisters Quorum on Facebook and follow us on Instagram. Shares on any platform are appreciated.