I always saw it the opposite. We have a lot of members who don't fit into the mould, including me. People join with all kinds of situations that don't fit the stereotype. We have people join who are covered in tattoos. We have people who are disabled. We have people who are artistic or sportsmen.Trucker wrote: ↑February 3rd, 2023, 6:16 am I can understand the church not wanting to be seen as "weird." But it wasn't just that. The church wanted to be seen as "cool" and in the process emboldened the members that used to be a little wordy to be proud that they were not the old-fashioned weirdos. Large families were weird. Small families, cool. Women at home, weird. Career women, good. This had a cultural effect throughout the church members.
Most of the sisters work because in this economy you have to work. It's expensive having children. Some of our sisters are widows with children, or single mothers or divorced or whatever. Some of the single mothers convert after all this happened or the man ran off. This may not be ideal but the idea that we are all nice happy families like the Osmonds' (former) public image is nonsense. I wish that was the case. Some people join when they're too old to have children as well. So there's that too.
There was an ugly side to that whole happy family thing. I know for a fact there are some men and women who can't have children for medical reasons. They will usually be private about it but I've seen them pestered in our ward about when they will have their first child. Then there are people like me who struggle with dating, let alone relationships and/or marriage.
They probably stole it from them.Also, it just so happened that shortly before the I'm a Mormon campaign, The Church of Scientology did a similar thing with "I'm a Scientologist" videos. They did it before us. And it kind of makes you pause to wonder why there aren't campaign about "I'm a Methodist" or "I'm a Baptist", but there are for Scientology....and....us. Not sure we want to be in the same camp as them.
There are other similar campaigns in mainstream churches. I've seen the Quakers do something similar.