Do Mormon Parents Have High Expectations Of Their Children?
Exploring expectations and pressures for marriage, school, and family
Introduction
The title will likely elicit thoughts and reflections for many of my readers. Presumably, many of you have connections to Mormonism subscribing to “Mormon Metrics.“ Maybe you are Mormon, grew up in a Mormon family, or married a Mormon; or, maybe you're just interested in the study of Mormonism. Thinking of pressures, if you were raised Mormon, you may think of pressures you felt from your parents. If you are a parent, perhaps you consider what expectations you have of your children and if they are too high or low.
In this post, the expectations we’ll look at are around adult life events: marriage, college education, and having children. But, I argue that these expectations are set in a family setting long before a child turns 18. So let’s look at some data. Hope you learn something new 😁
Charts
Expectations for Marriage
When asked whether they feel society pressures them to get married, those raised Mormon were more likely to say they felt pressure.
Do note we have to be cautious in interpretation. Our N = 95! The confidence intervals will be decently large here. More statistical power is needed to be confident in statistical differences. A phenomenon that often plagues studiers of Mormonism 😔
There is a 13 point “pressure“ gap between the average US person and a person raised Mormon. Nearly twice as many people raised Mormon said they feel a “great deal of pressure“ from society to get married. It would be interesting to ask how respondents defined their society. If they defined society as people they regularly interact with, since Mormonism is quite insular they may be referring to other Mormons. However, if they view society as the media or popular culture or something else, that would change how we interpret this data.
Interestingly, the survey designers asked half of the sample the previous question and half the sample the same question, but changing “society“ to “your family.“ This is a much more straight forward interpretation for the survey respondent.
The US overall and those raised Mormon reported lower pressure from their own family vs. society, but we still see the same ~15 point gap. More people raised Mormon felt pressure to get married.
When we look at this compared to people raised in other religions, we see that Jews and Mormons have the most familial pressure to get married. The levels between the two religions are similar with Jews saying they feel a bit more pressure. Between Mormons and Protestants - the religion with the next most familial pressure, there is a 15 point drop in pressure.
Expectations for Education
There was one question on this survey that asked about parents expectations for education.
When we compare Raised Mormons to the US overall, there is an 8 - point gap where Mormon families were more likely to expect going to a 4 year college. This gap drew from the other categories more or less equally compared to the US overall numbers.
Let’s look at this break by religion now…
Where Mormon and Jewish expectations had similar familial pressure for marriage, those raised Jewish clearly had much more pressure to attend a 4 year college. Even, so Mormons have the second highest reported expectation to attend a 4 year college - being above Catholics by 8 points.
Expectations for Children
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a question in the survey about pressure to have children. But, there was a question about consideration of children.
This question was asked of those with children. We see that Mormons are nearly twice as likely to say they considered having kids.
We can’t say that this consideration was due to familial or communal pressure, but I hypothesize that Mormon expectations of larger families likely contributed to this gap.
Conclusion
So what have we seen…
Those raised Mormon said they felt more pressure from society and from their family to get married.
Those raised Mormon were more likely to report a familial expectation of attending a 4 year college.
While we didn’t have a specific question probing child birth pressure, it is a well known fact that Mormons have more children and we did see data about Mormons more likely to consider having more children (despite having more children already at baseline). And, I hypothesize that this is, at least in part, due to communal and familial expectations for a larger family.
From this perspective, it seems Mormon families have higher expectations for their children and among the highest of all religions we saw - at least in these areas we looked at. Whether these expectations are good or bad for Mormons, I cannot say. I can see arguments both ways. One one hand, things like attending 4 year college have strong benefits for graduates - though some have doubted this more in recent years. On the other hand, high expectations could create an unhealthy mental environment for a child or young adult feeling pressure of marriage or college when life is going a different way.
I’m curious on other’s opinions. If you were raised Mormon, what was your experience like? Do you see the data play out in your own life? Did you feel like you had high expectations from your parents?
If you are Mormon and raising kids, what expectations do/did you have for your kids?
What would you like to see more of in understanding this question?