golfmom said:
I just don't get the sense that he was promoting Janet at all much less as a meal ticket. It's almost as if she is a non-entity, bit-player, or an after-thought in Raven's World. If he was using her to achieve the big-time, I would think that at least once through his web incarnations that she would have been truly featured. You can barely tell anything about her as a person through his sites.
I don't find it strange at all, considering the traditional teachings of the LDS church.
I don't know how much things have changed since my World Religions college courses, but the dates of publication of the textbook and related material are fairly recent.
Cognizant of copyright laws, and aware that anyone can pull up similar information on the Internet just as easily, I am not going to copy and paste a summary of the traditional family structure and teachings of the Prophets and also the current teachings of the LDS church.
This LDS couple married in college, at the age when they are encouraged to marry by their church. Maybe they did believe the larger scope of traditional LDS values, especially if their families brought them up in the LDS church. We know they " visited" the Salt Lake City Temple.. perhaps they had a temple recommendation and were sealed in the temple at that time. I don't know for certain how far they participated in their religion as a couple or if they planned to do this in the future.
Women are not put at the forefront except in the role of being a cherished wife and a beloved mother. Suffice it to say that I don't find it strange at all that Janet was NOT promoted separately from Raven, especially after she became pregnant. Mothers are encouraged to stay at home with their children until the children are in college or on a mission, if possible. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, because it used to be the norm for all of this country. Go back 40-50 years and a large percentage of women post- WWII were stay at home mothers and wives because they could do so economically, and because they wanted to stay home and cook, clean house and nurture their children.
I am not that old, but when I was a child, I didn't have any friends in daycare or with a mother who worked outside the home. I didn't know anyone with a single parent household until I was of high school age. ( I also never heard of the LDS church until I was in college, so religion was not a factor).
Women entered the workplace for many reasons, usually for self- fulfillment., and also because our country became a more materially-oriented society through the world of television and advertising, which escalated greatly in the 1070's and after.
If a person has a different set of values, then their self-fulfillment comes from following those values, not what society as a whole is doing.
The LDS church and their Prophet have held onto this value system of a woman being a wife and mother above all else.. It is tied into their belief of what eternal life will be, based upon their works as a family in this life.
I think it's an admirable goal... if financial stressors are not a disruptive factor.
Women are taught how to grow and can their own vegetables at a commercial cannery which the stakes ( areas of LDS churches) lease. The wards have free swap meets where clothing is exchanged among members, with an emphasis on growing children's clothing needs. Generally, the emphasis on how to stretch the household budget as far as possible is fostered by a program within the LDS church. It is a weekly ongoing women- only meeting called " Relief Society", and was started when Brigham Young settled in Utah.
