Explaining polygamy to children

[UtahJakey]

Judging history by today's standards is not only wrong, it really is very foolish - you do not have the perspective the people involved did which makes you reach poor conclusions. I can think of a number of what we refer to as 'May-Dec marriages' today that actually work for the people involved.

Is it really a big leap to think a 15 year old girl might not want a sexual relationship with a man 42 years older than her? Would you have been interested in such a relationship when you were 15 years old?

[Finrock]

Is it really a big leap to think a 15 year old girl might not want a sexual relationship with a man 42 years older than her? Would you have been interested in such a relationship when you were 15 years old?

You are changing the goal post now. Initially you asked for help in explaining this issue to your daughter. There has been provided multiple rational and perfectly good explanations that provide plenty of room for one's faith to grow.

So what is your purpose now? Are you asserting a point, and if so will you please make this point explicitly clear? Do you feel that you have sufficiently refuted the explanations given and are therefore demanding we provide a better explanation? Are is it something altogether different?

By the way, I hope you are doing well. Please excuse any errors as I am typing on tablet and that makes me lazy.

Respectfully,

Finrock

[UtahJakey]

You are changing the goal post now. Initially you asked for help in explaining this issue to your daughter. There has been provided multiple rational and perfectly good explanations that provide plenty of room for one's faith to grow.

Finrock

I didn't realize there were goal posts involved here. I was responding to mnn727's comment that some how presentism is influencing our view of the situation. I can't find a rationale to believe that a teenage girl 100 years ago would find the situation somehow less "icky" as my teenage daughter calls it now.

Even with your link to the fair post on the subject matter we see that a marriage of someone so young was rare back then and a 42 year age gap was staggeringly rare. The combination of the two means that this wasn't a typical everyday frontier marriage.

UJ

[Just_A_Guy]

We all keep looking at this from the female's point of view. But can I just say that, as a thirty-three-year-old male, I'm not particularly enamored of the idea of having to cohabit with a teenager, either? And frankly, with every passing year, the idea repulses me more.

For all the protestations of equality, it's an interesting insight into our modern-day culture that we automatically assume that a nontraditional relationship equals unadulterated enjoyment for the male and unmitigated oppression for the female.

[mnn727]

Is it really a big leap to think a 15 year old girl might not want a sexual relationship with a man 42 years older than her? Would you have been interested in such a relationship when you were 15 years old?

A few Modern cases of May-December romances

Doug Hutchinson (51) and Courtney Stodden (16)

Anna Nicole Smith (26) and J Howard Marshall (89)

Adriana Ferreyr (27) and George Soros (80)

Wendy Ding (44) and Rupert Murdoch (82)

Is it a big leap to think a 15 year old in those times might have wanted the security of being married to a powerful, influential man?

Do you have any of this relatives journals? if not you have no way of knowing what her mindset was.

Edited June 26, 2013 by mnn727

[Leah]

We all keep looking at this from the female's point of view. But can I just say that, as a thirty-three-year-old male, I'm not particularly enamored of the idea of having to cohabit with a teenager, either? And frankly, with every passing year, the idea repulses me more.

For all the protestations of equality, it's an interesting insight into our modern-day culture that we automatically assume that a nontraditional relationship equals unadulterated enjoyment for the male and unmitigated oppression for the female.

I once in all sincerity (before I was a member, and was asking this of a non-member) asked a friend in his 50s why he was not trying to date 20 year olds as most of his contemporaries were. He replied "What in the world would we talk about?".

I will admit that I am not at all enamored of the idea of polygamy, but I do not think we can sit here and pretend to know how the young woman in question felt or what the relationship was truly like. We are looking at it from our perspective, not hers.

[mrmarklin]

One other thing should be noted in this discussion. Sometimes the parents of these young girls may have pushed them to be married to church "royalty".

Reading between the lines on some of Joseph Smith's marraiges to teenagers was the idea that the families wanted this more than the young ladies. But the young women did consent. Not sure whether all those marraiges were consummated.

FWIW Wendy Deng and Rupert Murdoch are getting a divorce.

Edited June 27, 2013 by mrmarklin

[talisyn]

(Sometimes I think the best way for the Mormons to keep something a secret, is to put it in their scriptures. )

Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I am so totally stealing your sentence. I will give you credit for it, though!

[Finrock]

This article corroborates a lot of what has already been said but it also adds some more information. Clearly our notion of marriage today is different from what it was in the past.

To persist in judging past relatives by a modern (often distorted) view of marriage is not sensible or fair.

History of Marriage: 13 Suprising Facts

Some highlights:

"Marriage is a truly ancient institution that predates recorded history. But early marriage was seen as a strategic alliance between families, with the youngsters often having no say in the matter. In some cultures, parents even married one child to the spirit of a deceased child in order to strengthen familial bonds, Coontz said."

"By about 250 years ago, the notion of love matches gained traction, Coontz said, meaning marriage was based on love and possibly sexual desire. But mutual attraction in marriage wasn't important until about a century ago. In fact, in Victorian England, many held that women didn't have strong sexual urges at all, Coontz said."

Regards,

Finrock

Edited June 28, 2013 by Finrock
Grammar

[Maureen]

It's not a "site" but our family genealogy. We're related to Sarah Minnie Ephramina Jensen. She married him in 1871, when she was 15 years and 8 months old. They had 5 children together one of which is a relative of ours...

I don't know if UtahJakey is still around but I thought I would add this tidbit of information regarding Minnie Jensen Snow. This information is from the BYU Harold B. Lee Library Digital Collection.

"Minnie Jensen Snow was born in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah October 10, 1854, five days after the arrival of her parents from their foreign home.

Her father, H. P. Jensen, a native of Denmark... Her mother was a German woman whose great-grandmother was a Jewess...

In June, 1871, she accepted the principle of plural marriage, and became the wife of Apostle Lorenzo Snow. For one so young, she seemed to have been possessed of much strength of character, earnestness of purpose, and implicit faith in the principle of the Gospel.

Notwithstanding the disparity of age between herself and her distinguished husband she declared after thirty years of married life that it would have been impossible for her to find another so congenial, so devoted, so nearly an ideal husband and father....

The conditions prevailing at the time of her marriage made it of necessity a very quiet event...and in consideration of her youth, her studies were pursued without interruption... During this entire period Sister Snow remained in her father's household and it was not until, November, 1873, after her husband's notable visit to the Holy Land, that she entered his home to assume the practical responsibilities of married life..."

(Biographical, May Booth Talmage, The Young Woman's Journal Vol. 19 Feb 1908)

This whole article was written after Minnie Snow's death in Jan. 1908, so I would say it is a written eulogy celebrating her life. It appears the year of her birth on her gravestone is incorrect and she was really born in 1854 not 1855. So she was actually almost 17 when she married Lorenzo Snow but did not enter into married life until after she turned 19. He was still 41 years older than her, but at least she was not 15 when this huge responsibility occurred in her life.

M.

Edited July 1, 2013 by Maureen

[garryw]

Although unofficial, many suppose that Mary was 14 when she married Joseph because 13 was the traditional age to get engaged and 14 to get married. She could have given birth at Bethlehem at age 15.

[Dr T]

There was a time when that kind of age difference wasn't all that uncommon. Times have changed.

Really? When and where? References? Which cultures?

[bytebear]

Really? When and where? References? Which cultures?

Having read the posts, I think that's been answered a number of times. Perhaps you should re-read this thread.

[Dr T]

Yes, I only read the first one or two and questioned the veracity of the claim.

[Guest Shu1ma3ker]

My first question would be to ask your daughter where she discovered this information and in what light they share this information.

Edited July 5, 2013 by Shu1ma3ker

[MormonMama]

I guess I don't understand the whole brou-ha-ha. Unless either party was forced or coerced into the marriage, I just see it as something that was practiced in the past and isn't anymore (in our culture at least).

I also have no problem accepting that it was a commandment of God. I don't pretend to always understand His reasons for things, but I do trust Him and accept His will.

[Pioneer47]

I think the biggest problem comes when we can't look beyond our cultural upbringing. It makes us feel icky because it runs contrary to our upbringing rather than being actually wrong.

[LilyBelle00]

I've always felt a little ashamed over the whole polygamy thing. I didn't really understand it and never really had a chance to since it's not really talked about. If someone asked me about it, I would just kind of mumble something about how it was practiced a long time ago but not anymore.

My feelings changed just a few weeks ago. I found out that my poor husband, after being a member of the church for 10 years, for some reason was under the impression that the men married multiple wives just to help them out financially and around the house. He seriously believed this whole time that the marriages were in name only and never consummated. He didn't realize how many wives some of them had and he never knew that any children had come out of these marriages. To be fair, he had been a member for 10 years but we had been inactive for about as long.

When I broke the news to him, he was upset. He's very moral when it comes to marriage and he couldn't get it out of his head that it was somehow "cheating" and wrong.

In the process of trying to explain it to him and defend it, I feel like it suddenly became more clear to me.

There's no way that our church would be what it is today without polygamy. A woman can only have so many children, but a man can father hundreds. Polygamy built up our church's numbers better than anything else could. I feel like maybe that was God's helping hand and after we had our numbers, He decided to let us build on missionary work alone. I really feel like polygamy built our foundation and after it was no longer needed, it was taken away.

I'm very thankful for our early polygamy!

As for the age thing.... Meh. It doesn't matter to me. It was done back then. We might shudder at the thought but apparently she didn't. It's a mistake to try to put our thoughts and feelings into something that happened so long ago.

[bytor2112]

It is not completely improbable that men such as President Snow viewed love and relationships with an Eternal view and may have viewed sexual activity beyond consummation as primarily for procreation. It seems highly unlikely that a man blessed to see the Savior in the Temple would also be a man seeking to satisfy his sexual appetites with very young women. Also, I would add that male testosterone levels are greatly diminished by age 57 and with that comes a bit more subdued desire for sex.