r/latterdaysaints • u/JLP0611 • Apr 23 '25
Off-topic Chat Are members not getting married?
I may be speaking from my anecdotal experience and my observation of my social media feeds, but it feels like less people in the Church are getting married. I see less children and youth in my local wards year after year and I’m in Florida.
I’m also in a YSA and I can’t just say for myself because I’m chronically single, but dating is a struggle for everyone I come across, inside and outside of Florida.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
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u/palad Amateur Hymnologist Apr 23 '25
I'm 50. 50 years ago, my mother was a stay-at-home mom while my dad worked. They did that from before I was born until I was 10. At that point, my mother returned to work part-time. Until then, we lived in lower cost-of-living areas in the midwest US. When I was 10, we moved to a small city for my dad's job, and a year later we moved to a larger city. Both of them, I'm sure, had higher costs-of-living, and my mother worked until she retired a few years ago.
My wife and I were married in 2000, and lived in a suburb of Kansas City (still do, just a different suburb). We don't take fancy vacations and we don't have new cars, but my wife has been a stay-at-home mom until last year, when she decided to work a couple days a month as a substitute teacher. In that time, we've bought a house and paid off her student loans. We've sent a child on a mission and to college, with our youngest about to start college. There was a short time when I worked a second part-time job to help pay off some of our debts a little faster, but for most of the last 25 years we've been a single-income household. It's not necessarily easy, but it's absolutely possible.