Interesting. Your point about John Adams assumes that there was actual failure in his home. Did his wife, Abigail go off to work leaving the children alone to loiter around and get into drugs and other bad things? or was she at home raising them up right?

You seem to be going from one extreme to the other in your rant here. I’m sure President McKay was not saying that you fail in your home if you go working 100 hours a week. I think he was saying that you do need to go work, but if your priority soon turns work into the greater, at a loss for your children, well, then you’ve failed, and no success outside of your home will compensate.

Back to the case of John Adams. He truly showed that he cared about his children, even taking them on some of his trips abroad. He DID spend quality time with them, without cutting from his important job as diplomat.

DKL - I could not agree more with you on this one. I know a lot of very successful people (LDS and not) who have had to sacrifice time from the family to do something great in the world. So are they failures? I owuld say no. I think the thing that really bothers me about the quote is what is a failure? I know a lot of parents who have done so much for their kids and they turn out terrible - have they failed? I don’t think so. I also know kids who are amazing but were raised in horrible circumstances - are those parents successes? I think all this quote does is give parents a tremendous amount of guilt for something in the end, they have very little control over - their kids free agency.

One does not exclude the other, Julie. Almost every woman in our ward works–it’s a huge problem, no denying. But these women must work, they are not working to buy a fur coat. Most also manage that delicate juggling act between nurturing fine children and helping to provide. In most cases, it’s the women themselves who sacrifice their health.

But David, I totally agree with your repudiation of David O. McKay’s statement. If he knows, and I assume he does, how often that statement is used to beat ourselves up, he would probably retract it on the Today show, were it possible. I just don’t think God’s mind works that way.

Marian D. Hanks quotes a woman in his book “Bridge Across the Waters” as saying, “I’ve made many mistakes for which I will surely have to pay, but most were made in anguish, while I was trying to do the right thing.”

Good post.

I think DKL touches on a point that is often overlooked, especially in the guilt ridden situations that the quote is own used in. That is that success in the home is not a stand alone concept. In many ways success in the home is inextricably tied to various forms of success that we would consider to be outside the home.

I think that there are a lot of people that misused or misinterpreted President McKay’s advice over the years and perhaps didn’t get the results that they thought they would.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with the tone or the logic here … I’m just not strongly opinionated enough on the topic of work to care all that much about the arguments.

My real concern is when someone bores down on the words of a President of the Church and says he is wrong or that what he is saying is trivial. That’s dangerous business.

I suppose if someone completely sacrifices all forms off work to be at home 100% of the time and as a result, the entire family starves … well, then you would have a point. I just don’t know too many situations where that is actually happening. In the Church, at least here in New York City, the problem I see is exactly what DKL seems to be praising here - there are a lot of people who work eighty hour work weeks or more. Yes, they accomplish a lot. Some of them save lives every day or change lives for the better every day. But I do think it is often at the expense of family life and relationships outside of work.

I thought there was a saying out there somewhere where Brigham Young said to work eight hours, play eight hours and sleep eight hours. Is that an actual quote somewhere?

annegb, if you read my comment closely, you’ll see that it has absolutely nothing to say about people who *have* to work.

As I recall it, Pres. McKay wasn’t talking about long hours on the job. He was criticizing extensive after-hours socializing, something about a failure of manhood if hanging out at the club is more appealing than going home. I wish I could find the extended quote.

There is also a story I recall about the newlywed Emma Ray McKay crying over her young husband being gone so much, then deciding she had to knock it off and let him get to work. That would be a good one to find too. Justin Butterfield, are you there?

I enjoy your posts DKL, but this one strikes me as off-base. I don’t have your flair with language, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with your verbal gymnastics is this becomes an open debate. As such, I’ll try to keep my arguments as simple as possible.

To begin with, I think your literal interpretation of the McKay quote skews the issue. I understand that you may dislike his choice of words, but is the idea that there is a real risk in ignoring your family by working too much really so repugnant?

Perhaps some people take President McKay’s counsel as a directive to mediocrity, but I doubt it. I have no problem with the idea of hard work. I’ve worked many 100+ and 120+ hour weeks over my career. On the other hand, I can see what happens in my home when I’m not around. The phenomenon President McKay describes is real. And I agree with him that my accomplishments on the job are less important than my accomplishments as a parent. This isn’t to trivialize professional accomplishments, but the decision to put family first doesn’t imply professional negligence.

People who make choices to spend time with family are not lazy. I think we do them a disservice with this characterization. My wife was at the top of her profession when she left it behind to become a full-time mother. I did not ask her to do this; it was her choice. She feels mocked by her former colleagues for her decision. I think we do women who struggle with these decisions a disservice to trivialize the importance of parenting.

“But in a Church where those people are rare but parents work long hours out of something other than barest financial necessity, your post takes us in the wrong direction.”

I don’t know, Julie. I think that sounds like a ward-specific thing to me. I know a lot of parents who work as much as their careers require and no more, and who would easily work less if they thought they could get away with it. On the whole, my experience is that people in the Church tend to work less, and spend more time with their families, than people outside the Church. (Feel free to correct me if I’m misinterpreting you.)

DKL, my inner slacker refuses to accept your interpretation of Deuteronomy Chapter 5. My interpretation, which I think is the conventional interpretation, is that verse 13 was never meant to stand on its own, but is informed by the context of 14. In other words, we’re not commanded to work for 144 hours out of the week, we are commanded not to work for 24 hours out of the week, and to get all of our work done in the remaining 144 hours.

My issue with the statement is that success in life, or work, or what have you is not usually mutually exclusive to success in the home. And, conversely, failure in the home is often caused by things other than trying to succeed in life. Parenting and home life are pretty fraught with perils. Success in life is hardly one of the biggest threats to domestic bliss.

It’s worth mentioning somewhere in this thread that David O. McKay didn’t originate his most famous quotation. He “borrowed” it from someone else. (I need to look up who originally said it, as I don’t have that information handy at the moment.) Maybe if more people realized McKay wasn’t the person who came up with this statement, they’d be more willing to look at it critically.

I wish I could find the book this quote comes from but I think it’s at my mother’s.

The man came home from work and wanted to read his newspaper but was constantly interuppted by his young son. Finally he took scissors to a picture of a globe and made a puzzle for the boy, figuring to buy himself some quiet reading time. To the father’s surprise, the boy was done in moments. He asked his son how he had finished so quickly. Cheerfuly the boy replied. “There was a man on the back of the picture. If you put the man together, the world comes out right!”

There is something to be said for working beyond the simple put-food-on-the-table value. It does do the soul good to accomplish or create something. What people need to be careful of is accomplishing great things in the world but accomplishing little in the home. That’s what I think the quote DKL dislikes so much is speaking to.

As for whether success elsewhere can compensate for failure at home, while I think that’s up to God to judge, I also think that your family was given to you as a stewardship from Him. Those spirits are given to you as a sacred trust. It’s your responsibility to help your children meet their divine potential. I would be very careful about what I placed above that. I’m not saying nothing can be– sometimes humanity as a whole has a greater need, like the gospel truth restored or a people freed from tyranny– but you don’t find those jobs in the classifieds or in office buildings.

I couldn’t agree with this more. My colleagues at work think my wife and I are crazy for having such a LARGE (tongue-in-cheek) family with three rug-rats already littering the house and one on the way. None of the two-dozen people in my department have more than two and most only have a single child. They use the excuse of the time-commitment required by our jobs to justify not having any more children. After all, they barely have enough time for the one or two children they already have. But when I hear this excuse I always counter with the example of my two oldest (ages 10 & 8). Even though they are not the same gender they are the best of friends. When push comes to shove they would rather play with each other than the myriad of friends they have outside the home. If I asked them whether or not they would trade time with me for time with each other I have little doubt how they would respond. If I asked them if they would trade time with me for their baby brother I know they’d rather see me at work. Siblings are a blessing to each other and the more the merrier.

I think a lot of parents overestimate how much their children value their companionship on a day to day basis. My children love me and cherish our fishing trips and other outings but during the week and on regular weekend days they’d rather be playing army or tea party or getting stuck in trees with their siblings and other friends. Getting their weekly dose of mom and dad on Sunday afternoon and evening seems to be all the reinforcement they need– a little mom and dad goes a long way.

My wife and I have differing ideas regarding children’s responsibilities around the home. I am the oldest of seven and by the time I was nine I had to do my own laundry, clean the entire kitchen after meals, clean bathrooms top to bottom (not the simple wipe down surfaces type job), among other chores which included cleaning poo off my younger siblings’ backsides. I think my own kids should be similarly responsible. My wife, the product of a household where she was the only child vociferously disagrees with me and thinks a childhood should be spent frolicking to the greatest extent possible. Needless to say our children truly rue those evenings when mom gets to escape the house and dad rules the home unfettered as a night of drudgery is sure to ensue.

Re #17: That wasn’t the point of my contrast–my point is that there are more over-workers than over-slackers in the Church, hence DKL’s post doesn’t send us in the right direction. I agree with you that there are many people in the church who work minimum-to-get-by, but I wasn’t talking about them.

I am greatly bothered by the misuse of the word “work” both in this thread and the topic from which it sprang. My dictionary defines “work” as “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.” Work for pay is techincally “employment” or self-employment.”

So even when I was at home fulltime, I considerd myself “working” even though the paycheck might not have my name on it. I took my responsibilities seriously. My paid work since the children got older is MUCH easier than the years of chasing after toddlers, without being able to go to the bathroom alone.

DKL wrote, “You don’t provide better for you family or leave more behind by spending less time at the office.”

Well, actually, some of us do.

My sister was a corporate wife. When they interviewed her husband for the job, they also interviewed her, and made sure she was available for entertaining clients, including jetting off to the condo in Florida or hunting lodge in Wisconsin. They were active in Jaycees and belonged to a country club, etc. As a result of her contributions, her husband had a higher-income job.

My husband is a scientist, and I support him in many ways. Our family has donated several spring breaks to field work, and spent a semester abroad, and I’ve edited manuscripts and taught graduate seminars for him (and even though I wasn’t paid anything, the grades counted for my students). As a result of my contributions to his career, our family is better off.

At a conference a few years ago, while my husband was flitting around being the superstar, I was sitting with a few of his less-stellar colleagues and they were drinking. They said that it was good we had such a solid marriage, because if it came to a divorce and I claimed half the pension or whatever, they would have to testify on my behalf, because they considered me the most supportive spouse they had ever met. Their spouses were all pursuing their own careers, which limited options. They couldn’t travel internationally the way my husband had, because their spouse expected them to do one-half the childcare and support them in their jobs. And their spouses would/could not take five months off to go traipsing off to another continent.

Ironically, many of these spouses take pride in “having always worked” and consider me a “kept woman” because I did not earn an income in my own name for some years. And yet my choices probably led to greater financial security for the family, etc.

The other way I feel I “provide better for my family by spending less time in the office” is that my earnings don’t push our income into a higher tax bracket. I prefer to work at a job that maxes out retirement contributions to my 403(b) and provides dental insurance and other benefits that complement my husband’s package, but not an excessive amount of net income. Ironically, we might be worse off if I earned worked fulltime, because of the tax bite.

My beef with the McKay quote in question, or more to the point, peoples attitudes or reaction to it, is that often people do choose mediocrity. There are very few young mormons (even single ones) willing to go after their dreams - chase that one thing they have always wanted to do, or are gifted at, because they don’t think it would be ‘conducive’ to family. How many of us reject our God given gifts when pursuing career options, because we believe those careers might take us too much from the home? Especially, how many women do this? How many youth actually shape their dreams around what you can “do with kids”? I know my sister regrets this, as she avoided chasing her dream, and yet now at 35 she is unmarried anyway and sees how silly this was, and she realizes she probably strayed from the path she should have followed, ignoring the gifts that she had. All because she didnt want to be found pursuing success outside of the home. Even for men, who are planning on being primary caretakers, they will not pursue talents or career paths that they think will require too much of them. Obviously, there are some that do, but I think this is far far too commen.

“….often people do choose mediocrity.”

I have also seen this, and it is sad. I know part of my motivation for supporting my husband in his career came from knowing people who did not particularly like their jobs but felt trapped.

I did not want that to happen to him.

I suppose that it is clear from some of my past comments that I am a live and let live type when people have personal decisions to make, insofar as the decision does not harm others. And I define harm in the real sense of harm–you actually hurt someone in a tangible way, no mushy emotional nonsense. I also believe that each family is different to the point that some might do just as well with everyone working and the kids in day care. Some may not. I suppose that if a child is struggling in day care–and by struggling I mean really emotionally screwed up, a wreck, etc.–and would do better by staying home with a parent, then a parent might have an obligation to stay home, at least until the kid is in school. Dave is right to say that the commandment is that children honor their parents and not the opposite. However, since I think contemporary society requires a more subtle understanding of human relations than the OT often provides, we should also understand that parents do have obligations to their children. Dave I think makes the statement no success in the world can compensate for a failure in the home overly simplistic. I think another way to interpret the statement is to say that if things are screwed up in the family, then everything else goes haywire. For example, I find it much easier to work when everyone is happy at home. Of course, I will admit that I am reading the statement as I see fit. I will agree with Dave in that most people read it the way that he delineated in his post. This leads to my biggest beef with any sort of simplistic sentiment that acts as a de facto commandment–it simply makes a complex world and various differences unimportant when really they are important. Even Dave appeals to a few things from the OT to refute the above sentiment about success in the world. However, I think even appealing to the OT about how a family ought to act is very problematic. There are so many things that we ignore, rightly so, and would never seriously consider using as an actual guide for acting that I don’t know if it really does any good to appeal to it at all. I suppose that I will have to make this argument, if any one was ever interested.

It may be DKLs intent to argue that the values of work and parenting have equal importance (I admit that it’s a little difficult to tell from his rhetoric) but I don’t think that’s how his post reads. Neither I nor my wife understood it that way.

Even if this is his intent, I think we have reason to think that that isn’t the correct hierarchy of values in our church.

Regardless, I’m sure he’ll show up soon enough to explain what he meant.

Sorry ’bout being absent here. Because I’m frequently too busy at work to spend a lot of time on blohs, I’ll likely be saved from the accusation that this post is ironical.

Dan, I didn’t comment on what David McKay meant by this statement that has been attributed to him (incidentally, I’d never seen a source for it before John Mansfield posted it. Thanks, John.) As John Mansfield point out, he’s talking about men who stay away from home for social reasons. I agree that cultivating a relationship with one’s family is more important than cultivating a relationship with co-workers.

“Failure” is a strong word, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to use it to refer to real-life situations in which (more or less) simple adjustments incrimentally improve things. Thus, even if we allow for arguments sake that people shouldn’t spend a ton of time at work, this quote wouldn’t really apply. I think that this is what Devyn is getting at when he asks, “What is a failure.”

I was explicitly refering to the sentiment that the McKay quote curently embodies, and I think that it’s obvious that it is used to cudgel people who spend a lot of time at work. (a a random john puts it more articulately than I do here, but that’s what I have in mind.)

Adams had the children join him in Europe at some point, but before and after that he was gone for years at a time. You can’t make up for many years of absenteeism by taking them a long once or twice.

Eric Nielson, that’s a very good point.

Devyn, you make an excellent point. You’re a geneticist by training, so you know that having your kids turn out OK takes a good deal of luck.

Jay and herodotus, I haven’t set up the false dichotomy, because I didn’t invent the ideas I’ attacking. Nor is I’m I simply setting fire to a straw man. I know people who actually do argue that if you spend a ton of time at work, and if it’s not economically necessary to do so, then the David McKay quote applies to you.

Jay, Work outside the home is not so recent an invention as you’re describing. What you describe is reflective of a rural, working class, agricultural community. Life in the city has always entailed some form of commute for a large portion of its residents. The industrial revolution has made agriculture an increasingly specialized sector of the economy, and auto-mobility has lengthened the practical distance of commutes, making work outside the home an all-pervasive phenomenon. But it’s always been there.

horodotus, I don’t think that people who opt for a 40 hour/week job over a 100 hour/week job are lazy. I’m not arguing that 40 hours is too little, just that 100 hours isn’t too much.

BTD Greg, I disagree with the traditional interpretation of that the labor commandment. The Old Testament doesn’t throw around thou-shalt’s with reckless abandon. The next verse does clarify that one shouldn’t work every day of the week, but the entire tenor of the verses affirms that one is to labor 6 days; c.f., the Exodus 20:9, which is followed up by pointing out (in Exodus 20:11) that “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” In this example, the Lord himself labors 6 days before resting.

Thanks for pointing out that David McKay was pressing someone else’s quote into service rather than writing scripture. Once such a statement becomes a mantra, it becomes a hammer in the hands of the faithful, who will search tirelessly for nails to hit it with.

pdoe, I think that you hit the nail on the head.

DKL, I don’t doubt that it is of recent invention but perhaps you should consider whether it is of recent necessity. Sure most parents 200 years ago didn’t have time for Monopoly, but they also lived in a culture that would (generally) back up their moral/ethical teachings AND wasn’t saturated with advertising promoting materialism. In other words, the parents’ example wasn’t as crucial then as it is now.

Well said, David.

Wow, what a bizarre interpretation. I’m with Dan and Julie. As for folks who truly HAVE to be dual income, I feel for them. I’m lucky enough to stay home with our kids, but it’s to the detriment of our consumer social status: old cars, good quality hand-me-downs, and no fancy house. I get sick of the families at church whose children are obviously suffering while the parents moan about how they just HAVE to be dual income to make ends meet, only to then drive off in their brand new BMW with the Louis Vuitton purse on the front seat. Gets old. If we can do it, they can. At least own it, you know?

herodotus, there’s no reason to get offended. I’m not saying that all women stay at home because of status, but some clearly do. I know at least a few (non-Mormons) who do treat “the stay at home” status like a status symbol, because it indicates that they don’t need the extra cash in order to get by quite nicely. Type these into Google: “stay at home” “status symbol” . I didn’t invent the idea.

Maybe not in the church, but almost universally outside of it, being a ’stay-at-home mom’ is seen as a privelage of the wealthy. At my work, all the women I work with view those that don’t work as coming from money. And really, there is some truth to it. In these conversations you always get the “I did it so, so can everyone else” thing, but to be able to afford to live off of one salary in most markets, you have to be in a certain income level. I mean, housing in most of the country is expensive, and most people can’t just pick up and move to wherever its cheap enough, moving is also sort of a privlege of having enough money to move. I think these debates in the bloggernacle always seem to be a little skewed towards the upper middle class. Anyway, I don’t know why it isn’t enough for people to make their own decisions, they have to think everyone has needs to make them too.

Well, you have to understand how rare your situation is. I mean, first of all, you could sew, can beans, had home grown food available, had university housing that allowed families (this rarely exists outside of utah, if ever). I mean, you worked hard but you had circumstances that allowed you to make it work. Those neighbors you had who needed two incomes prolly needed to pay for clothes and more of their food! And what did you do for health insurance? And how did you pay for tuition? Becuase today, grants very rarely if ever cover tuition and expenses, and the same goes for the dwindling number of scholorships that exist. And schools don’t offer health insurance, especially insurance that covers maternity or family.

In these debates I find that so many of the people ‘who did it on nothing’ like my parents, did it in the seventies and eighties and/or in Utah or at BYU, where they have programs in place to make it possible. I know very few people who have been able to successfully have kids while still students and on one income today.

Re #47: No, in my experience other conservative Christians view mom-at-home as really important and are willing to live in poverty to pull that off.

“In these conversations you always get the “I did it so, so can everyone else” thing, but to be able to afford to live off of one salary in most markets, you have to be in a certain income level.”

No, you have to be willing to do without things that other people regard as necessities. Knowing people who raised 8 kids on a teacher’s salary or 5 kids on a piano tuner’s salary or 8 kids on a CES employee’s salary or 8 kids on a mailman’s salary makes me a little unsympathetic to these claims.

“had university housing that allowed families (this rarely exists outside of utah, if ever)”

Whaaa? I’m only familiar with the three other cmapuses I have been on–UCDavis, UC Berkeley, and UTexas–and all three had student family housing.

“I know very few people who have been able to successfully have kids while still students and on one income today.”

We did the student family thing in the late 90s–in California. We made it work. This isn’t a 1950s pipe dream–if you are willing to live without paper towel and cheese(let alone things like cell phones), you can make it work. People do it all the time. We did it for three years and never had a full income in any year.

Veritas, I’m with Naismith that your facts are off-base here. If a mother prefers to work instead of living in poverty so she can be with her child, that’s her choice and her consequences to live with, but don’t pretend it is impossible. Naismith did it, I did it, I knows lots of people who are doing it.

Veritas,
I agree with Julie and Naismith. Our family did it too, and that was this decade. Poverty is not only relative, but an attitude. And we did it being self-sufficient, no government welfare. Many of our firends in grad school did the same thing. It is all a choice.

Eh, I’m with Julie and Naismith still. We’re a young family, doing it here and now. We live in Southern California, so it’s surely NOT the geographical ideal for being single income with three kids. My husband is a blue-collar worker and doesn’t have any sort of well-paying, fancy-schmancy job. And yet we seem to manage quite nicely. No one taught me any homemaking skills, but I’ve managed to figure out how to cook everything from scratch, garden, can, barter, shop wisely, and develop small and marketable skills. My sewing leaves a TON to be desired and I wish I could do more in that area. Our cars are both old, we don’t have a home that anyone would envy, we don’t eat out or take extravagant vacations, but hey! I get to be the one who raises my babies!

As a child, I always longed for parents who worked less and spent more time at home. No trip to Disneyland or in-ground swimming pool was worth a mom who couldn’t go on any field trips or a dad who couldn’t pick me up from school when I was sick. There will be time for fancy presents later. For now, we’re content to have a roof over our head (albeit a small one!) and to make ends meet. Not many people (at least not in America!) would envy our standard of living, but it’s interesting to meet so many who comment that they only wish they could also stay home.

“Still, all the women I know and have worked with think the women who stay at home must be rich. If they weren’t, they’d be working, because, you know, they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills.”

They are entitled to their opinion, but I’m not sure that logic is backed up by research. There is the book “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke” by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren.

There is the second-income calculator at MSN Money
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/calcs/n_spwk/main.asp

And there also some info on costs/tradeoffs at http://www.mommysavers.com/

None of those are LDS propoganda. All of them come to the conclusion that many families are better off financially with only one income. Most of my mom-at-home friends are neither LDS or conservative Christians. They just share my values in making parenting a priority.

“Do you really all not see how well off you are??”

Yes, I do. Do you really not see how much my work at home contributed to that financial well being?

“I do think you most of you guys would probably be working right now….”

I do work. I have always worked. I work hard. It’s just that for some years I worked at home, without a paycheck, when that was in my family’s best interest. I still choose to work part-time (and probably will for the rest of my life) because we think the work I do at home after school is so important.

I appreciate that every family gets to make these decisions for themselves, and I don’t judge others’ choices. Some of my best friends are employed full-time.

I don’t understand your dismissal of us as being “so few.” Do you have data to support that assertion, or is it just the sample of your co-workers?

Veritas, I’m sorry you are getting dogpiled here, but I also see it as the natural result of you taking an unsustainable position: most SAHM’s–especially LDS SAHMs–simply aren’t well-off; they are making a sacrifice because they believe that there is benefit in being home for their kids. I’m not sure how or why you got it in your head that this isn’t possible in this day and age, but it is: lots of people still feel that it is worth the sacrifice and so they make the sac