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A recent study highlighted in the Deseret News last week made me feel both pleased and discouraged. The article pointed out that Utah women lag behind in higher education, much more so than women in other states. The study indicated that Mormon women in particular have a difficult time reconciling higher education with family. The article left me feeling pleased because women in this area, most of whom are of my faith, place high priority on family and child-rearing. It upset me for a few reasons. Before I go further, however, let me make it very clear that the purpose of this blog post is not to admonish all women, and especially Mormon women to pursue educational and career goals, whatever the cost. There are so many considerations to be made depending on the woman, her interests and her family, that I have absolutely no interest in making broad statements about women and what they should or should not do.

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That being said, the article did discourage me because so many women feel, rightly or wrongly, that pursuing an education and raising a family are mutually exclusive pursuits. That may be true of some women and their families, but certainly not all. One quote in particular resonated with me. Susan Madsen, business management professor leading the Utah Women and Education Project, stated: "LDS young women get that it's important to go to college. That's not the problem. . . They don't see options. They do not see that one evening a week they could go to class and their husband could watch the kids. It's all or nothing." As the article outlines, many Mormon women do begin college, and it's highly encouraged; but finishing is given less emphasis and consequently, many of those women don't graduate. Anecdotally, I know several women who've waited until their children leave home to finish their degrees. A woman in my Navajo class is 69 and finishing her degree in Political Science. Props to her! But it doesn't have to be that way.

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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Mormon woman and professor in Harvard's History Department had finished her bachelor's degree in English shortly after getting married and before having children. After moving to Boston for her husband's education and having several children she says:

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"By that time I realized that there was life after marriage. . . We were just getting started out. I had these little kids and not much money. It occurred to me that I could do a lot with small amounts of time if I was organized. It was very hard at first, but I became disciplined. The whole experience convinced me that I could handle taking a class or two, and eventually I started thinking about the long term. So Gael and I came up with the money for me to take one course. We thought that if I got a masters in English, at some point I could teach part-time. That seemed like it would be a nice outlet while my kids were growing up. It was a one-year masters program that took five years for me to do" (Kimball 94).

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Ulrich certainly is a success story for women who decide to abandon the "all or nothing" fallacy. She continued her education, won a Pulitzer, and landed the teaching position she now occupies while raising four children she describes as "terrific people. They can do anything" (98). And guess what? Her marriage even survived the transition she discusses above. In fact, her marriage became stronger and more interdependent. I'm confident that many women in Utah Valley who harbor regrets over not finishing their degrees could have equally happy stories to tell in a few years' time.

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Works Cited:

Kimball, James. Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations. Handcart Books, 2009.