Two teachings about families that terrify me

If "no other success can compensate for failure in the home" terrifies you, join the club.

The Church has put a stake in the ground on families.

In 1972, the first “Homefront” ad ran on TV, cementing the Church for the next couple decades alongside the tagline: “Family. Isn't it about… time?” The Church doubled down in 1995 with the release of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” Even as the definition of family has evolved over the decades, and as conservative “traditional family” rhetoric has become coded with homophobia and intolerance, the Church has stayed committed to its “family” brand.

But that all aside, there are two things about families (and particularly parenting) that have been taught for decades, that cause me to wake up in a cold sweat. They’re familiar enough that we may repeat them without ever interrogating what they actually say. They are:

• “No other success can compensate for failure in the home,” attributed to David O. McKay, and

• “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

The first quote is undeniably dark. President McKay, quoting sociologist J.E. McCulloch, thrusts a knife into the back of every Latter-day Saint parent who's just trying to do a good job. He is talking explicitly about failing as a parent, and warning that this is the ultimate failure—there is literally nothing that can make up for it. If you fail as a parent, you fail at life. And if you fail at life, you’ve failed for eternity.

This statement is, I’m sure, well-intended. In a religion that believes that family structures will persist after this life you can expect an emphasis on caring for our earthly families. But I’m not sure President McKay envisioned the statement being weaponized in the way I’m describing.

The other quote is straight out of the Old Testament, and at first blush, it's more positive. But when you flip it around a little bit, you realize that it's essentially the same message:

“Train up a child in the way [they] should go: and… [they] will not depart from it.”

…is how it reads in the book of Proverbs. But it’s really just one hop, skip, and a jump away from:

“If your child leaves the church, it's because you didn't teach them well enough, and it's all your fault.”

…or at least, that’s how we tend to read it. I may have editorialized on that one.¹

What these quotes do not do is give any sort of indication of what success or failure means as a parent. What is “failure in the home”? What does it mean to “train up a child”? How do we know if we’ve done these things?

I can tell you for sure that we cannot measure our success as parents by the choices our children make. If you are measuring your success as a parent by whether your child is active in the Church, or by other decisions they have made, stop. Don’t do it. There’s only more heartache down that road.

We teach too often in the Church, either explicitly or implicitly, that parents are responsible for their children’s choices. There’s a clear cultural vibe that if a child leaves the Church, or otherwise varies from the parents’ path, that it’s because of a parenting failure. Conversely, when you have one of these families with 10 kids, all of them returned missionaries and married in the temple, it’s supposedly the result of perfect parenting.

But the reality is that kids, of any age, have agency and will forge their own path. They’ll make their own decisions regardless of how “good” or “bad” their parents were. I’m learning this as a parent now, but I speak from the same experience we all have: from being that child, raised by parents of any kind. And moreso, from seeing our friends and acquaintances over the years; some staying active in the Church, and others choosing other routes. All regardless of the faithfulness of their parents.

My oldest son, who is 15, is a lot like me. Same hair, same taste in music, and same sense of humor. We started him playing the piano when he was young, and when he got old enough to join the school band, he did—and chose to play the trumpet, just like I did. He even now plays my old instrument, in the high school band and jazz band just like I did. He’s like me in so many ways, including that he’s already almost my height. Sigh.

My second-oldest, a 12-year-old, is the athlete I never was. We started him on the piano when he was young, and while he excelled at it, it wasn’t the right fit for him. Instead, he took up ninja warrior training, which requires tremendous strength and agility. He goes to a ninja gym twice a week, and while I can’t relate at all to the incredible stuff he does there, I’m there to cheer him on. I’m glad he found the right path for him, even if it’s not what I did.

Of course, as a parent, I’d like my children to take the same spiritual path as me and be active in the Church. I’d love to see them serve missions and get married in the temple. Even if it has its challenges, that path has brought me close to my Heavenly Parents and is the reason I am who I am today. It’s the buoy keeping me afloat.

I’d also like them to be their true to their own selves, and bring their whole self to whatever they choose. What I’m left with is, together with my wife, teaching them what we think is best, setting what we think is a good example of that, and then trusting them to take it from there. Or, as I saw on Instagram recently, “Show them what to do, give them smooshy hugs & back off.”

We hear lots of cause -and-effect-style promises made to us about our families. We’re told great things will happen if we have family prayer, family scripture study, and Family Home Evening. For example, when Family Home Evening was introduced to the Church in 1915, the First Presidency (under President Joseph F. Smith) made these promises, as part of a larger statement (emphasis added):

If the Saints obey this counsel, we promise that great blessings will result. Love at home and obedience to parents will increase. Faith will be developed in the hearts of the youth of Israel, and they will gain power to combat the evil influences and temptations which beset them.

Sister Linda S. Reeves taught, in a talk about how the best protection against pornography is a Christ-centered home (emphasis added):

I must testify of the blessings of daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening. These are the very practices that help take away stress, give direction to our lives, and add protection to our homes.

Thomas S. Monson talked about clear blessings from family prayer (emphasis added):

Family prayer is the greatest deterrent to sin, and hence the most beneficent provider of joy and happiness.

And finally, beyond the words of General Authorities, these kinds of promises show up in curriculum materials throughout the Church’s history, such as this bit from a bygone Priesthood manual (emphasis added):

Great blessings will come to us as we hold family prayer. Love and understanding will increase, and Satan’s influence in the home will be diminished. A feeling of peace will fill our hearts as we realize that we are properly fulfilling a commandment.

I do believe that prayer, scripture study, and gospel discussions are beneficial to our families (and to ourselves). But if we view these things transactionally—if we do them, then our children will make the choices we want—then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. It just doesn’t work that way. We each made our own decisions, in spite of what our parents did (and sometimes to spite our parents). Our children have the same agency.

Elder Robert D. Hales gave these comforting words to any parent who’s struggling with this right now:

We too must have the faith to teach our children and bid them to keep the commandments. We should not let their choices weaken our faith. Our worthiness will not be measured according to their righteousness. Lehi did not lose the blessing of feasting at the tree of life because Laman and Lemuel refused to partake of its fruit. Sometimes as parents we feel we have failed when our children make mistakes or stray. Parents are never failures when they do their best to love, teach, pray, and care for their children.

That last sentence seems to stand in bold defiance of President McKay: As long as we do our best and love our children, then we will never be failures.

I talked to a friend at Church this week, who told me about the spiritual paths his grown children have taken, which are different from his own. He said that he’s struggled with this Church-borne stigma, assuming that he must have failed in something as a parent; maybe they needed to have Family Home Evening more often, or say more prayers together. He assumed—because it is so openly taught—that his children’s choices were his responsibility, and ultimately his failure.

But this brother also spoke with the wisdom of someone who has both suffered and learned from that suffering. He told me that he has overcome that mindset, at least somewhat, and that he no longer believes that good parenting is judged by the choices your children make. Instead, he told me that he believes the result of good parenting is that you know what God feels like.

This beautiful idea brings to mind the story from the book of Moses, where Enoch witnesses God weeping over His children. Enoch is surprised that even the Creator of all, the source of all mercy and kindness, He that is holy and from all eternity to eternity, can weep. But God explains that He is driven to sorrow and tears because of His children, and the choices they make.

Parenting is hard. I worry about my kids every day. And our Heavenly Parents seemingly experience parenthood in a similar way; one filled with pain when Their children feel pain. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland added, “That single, riveting scene does more to teach the true nature of God than any theological treatise could ever convey,” and, I’d add, more to teach the parental nature of our Father and Mother in Heaven than we could imagine. They experience those same emotions we feel as parents, watching us stumble and fall and rebel and change our minds and sometimes come back, sometimes not.

We’ve been taught consistently that our children’s choices are a barometer of success or failure as parents. We know our job is to love them, but we fall back into making it a cause-and-effect: Love them, and they’ll make the right choices. Love them, and they’ll stay in the church. Love them, and they’ll live up to your expectations for them.

But our children will make their choices. They’ll live their lives. They’ll be who they’re going to be. As parents, we probably don’t have as much control of those things as we think we do.

And maybe our job as parents is just to love them. That’s success. We don’t love them because we want or expect something from them, but just because we love them.

And that’s a success that can compensate for anything else we do.

1. I want to be very careful here, because it’s a fallacy in the Church that having a child step away from the Church is the worst thing that can happen to a parent. I only talk about it here in order to hold up a mirror to our culture. We’re riddled with devastating stories of parents who disown a child, or stop speaking to them, because their relationship with the Church has changed. I don’t think that’s what loving Heavenly Parents would want us to do.