I can feel the anxiety in the air this fall. My child is in fifth grade, and fifth grade means choices about topics like math placement and school instruments.
I no longer view these opportunities with the innocent enthusiasm I did as a child. I have become an adult whose instinct is to think about how these activities translate into resume lines. I know I must stop attempting to predict which choices will maximize opportunity, and instead allow my children to experience the joy of making choices and following their own intuitions. But it is hard to do.
I am sympathetic to myself and other parents struggling to put on hold their instincts to curate their children’s perfect paths. I recognize that — to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — this sounds like Satan’s plan. But most of us are understandably terrified because it is hard to parent when we are struggling to envision the future.
Ironically, I am feeling this pressure in the midst of writing a book about how to live with faith during a period in which the formulas for happiness with which I was raised are breaking down. We are living through a moment of rapid economic and social change in which, for example, technologies like artificial intelligence may upend our jobs, the universities we attended face unprecedented challenges, and large Latter-day Saints families are financially difficult for the next generation to replicate.
The truth is that I do not understand how to best educate my children for this moment. I do not know what we should tell our daughters and sons about how to live, work and worship. I wish I did.
A more skeletal church
I am also experiencing rapid change at church. Many of the activities I remember from my youth, such as Scouting, homemaking meetings, visiting and home teaching, and the regular instruction of the three-hour Sunday block have been replaced by more flexible and “home-centered” approaches. Guidance around women working and modest dress are shifting. To be sure, many of these changes are needed because what worked in the past is not meeting the needs of the moment. And, yet, this more skeletal church sometimes feels like a void in which we are casting around for a new direction.
My children are products of this transitional era at church, and it is increasingly clear that they have acquired neither the depth of knowledge about the scriptures and church history nor the sense of Latter-day Saint identity that I had at their age. I keep explaining that “they are not being indoctrinated, but they are also not being indoctrinated.” I’m unsure what to make of this.
As I have spoken to others about the challenges of parenting in uncertain times, it seems that many of us yearn for a clearer path. This desire, of course, is a fantasy because much of the teaching we provide cannot keep up with the pace of change. While I cannot identify with the freedom many younger Latter-day Saints feel to take more flexible approaches to subjects like the Word of Wisdom (nor do I want to alter my strict adherence to this health code, which I consider one of the best doctrines in our church), I appreciate that younger generations have needed to rely more on their own instincts because they sometimes have been failed by the rules for success we have taught them.
An scriptural example
As much as we may want to revert to the pathways that worked for us because they are all we know, our children must be prepared to navigate a less-stable world. As Latter-day Saints, this means we need to prioritize helping them cultivate a personal relationship with God and teaching them to rely on the Spirit because the formulas we may offer might not work in the contexts they will encounter. Thankfully, this approach is, in fact, consistent with the gospel and the Book of Mormon, even if it has been less emphasized during periods in which following formulas often worked.
Lehi’s family members, for example, reject the conventional wisdom that would seem to say that they should remain in their original land of inheritance and instead rely on the Spirit to guide them to an unknown promised land. To borrow a phrase from Nephi, they are “led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which [they] should do” (1 Nephi 4:6). Nephi later explains that he chooses not to pass on much of his education to his people (2 Nephi 25:2). Unlike Laman and Lemuel, who cannot let go of their desires to return home, Nephi accepts that accomplishing the Lord’s will requires him to follow the Spirit into uncharted territory and leave behind some of his own upbringing.
There’s a lesson here for me: As much as I wish my children could come of age in the world I knew, I need to let the Spirit lead them into the world they will know.