The REAL Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
Editor’s Note: We know that our predominantly Latter-day Saint audience is already aware that what is being inferred about the Church by Hulu’s ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ is false, but we encourage you to share this article as a way to clarify to your friends and family that may not know just how misleading this show is.
We have a social media culture that rewards making things bite-sized and evocative. The truth is as complex as it has always been, but now it has to fit on a meme. Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to glancing at something that fleeting and taking for granted that it’s true. As such, though I don’t expect Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to be their next big hit, I have to refute what’s presented in the trailer because those who never end up watching the show will see the trailer or a reel and believe they now know what a “Mormon wife” experience looks like.
It could not be further from the truth.
The unfortunate thumbnail already sells the picture of Mormonism as so far from the truth that even those who have left the church have commented in droves that this does not resemble the church they knew. The leads of the series are pictured in heavy, powder blue trench coats holding hands in front of the former Provo Temple (it is currently undergoing a massive renovation). Their outfits stand at some concocted crossroads between the carefully controlled beauty of the Beauxbatons in Harry Potter and the traumatized oppression of the heavily cloaked women in The Handmaids Tale. The fact that all are wearing the identical color and design subtly implies that it was standard issue. I have been in the church all my life and never seen such an outfit.
The image is intentionally cult like, and choosing the backdrop of the temple exploits the fact that many do not know what happens there, implying that the activities inside are frightening and aim to wipe out the autonomy of the individual.
If only those glancing past this odd image knew that what happens in our temples is all about the individual. The promises we make to God there, called ordinances, are often done on behalf of departed loved ones and ancestors. The sorrow of centuries of Christian women who wept when their children died without baptism, believing this beautiful, innocent thing doomed to damnation, are answered by Latter-day Saint doctrine that says that someone can be baptized on another’s behalf when they are gone, and no one need be doomed. Marriages in the temple are not “til death do us part”, they are “for time and all eternity”. And all the work is done for each individual, by name.
Imagine my dismay then in hearing this claim, following that problematic image of the temple: “We’re raised to be these housewives for the men, serving their every desire”. If you show this trailer to a Latter-day Saint woman and see her blood start to boil by 10 seconds in, you’ll know why. Though the Church encourages marriage and family as central to the lives of its members, I have never once felt in all my life that I was being raised to be “serving the every desire” of my future husband. (Just ask him.)
Instead, The Family: A Proclamation to the World, which is a declaration of the Church’s doctrine on family released in October 1995, states that, “Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children” and goes on to say that successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of “faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion…in these responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”
But equal partners working together to get better at treating each other with compassion and forgiveness doesn’t make good fodder for reality TV.
“Have kids by the time you’re 21,” is the next unfounded assertion of what is required of a “Mormon wife”. “Or in my case, at 16,” adds another interviewee, turning up the picture of Latter-day Saint “requirements” from unusual to unfathomable. There is not one Latter-day Saint mother in the United States that dreams her daughter will be pregnant at 16, but this moment of the trailer will be the measure of just how much this show and its subjects aim to exploit the Church in their quest for money and a few more minutes of fame.
In this moment, the trailer is seeking attention based on the shock value of a child bride narrative. But I suspect that when this interview comes up in the actual episode, they will use it as a chance to criticize the Church and its members for shunning a girl because of her teen pregnancy and its sinful implications. To strip-mine this story from both angles will be proof positive of just how little the producers care about truth.
What follows in this trailer is the inference that these individuals created “MomTok”, a group of Mormon moms all dancing for TikTok, as a specific effort to “change the stigma of gender roles in the Mormon culture”. They show footage of the girls goading each other on about just how hard they should be twerking and we’re supposed to believe that it was a calculated ideological crusade. I just don’t believe it. I do, however, believe the one in the group that admits, “my goal was just to be able to provide for my family”.
Many have noted that Latter-day Saint moms dominate the motherhood and lifestyle space on social media. The reasons behind that phenomenon spring from the real dilemmas that arise for “Mormon wives” in their “secret lives”. We want to give our children the best life we can without having to always be away from them to do it. The rise of social media has provided an interesting alternative economy for moms, and “Mormon” moms are particularly well-suited to it.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t have paid positions in their local congregations. As such, we all take turns learning to fill different roles. We learn homemaking skills for youth activities and we begin to learn to speak in front of people and present talks starting at 5 years old. Add to that the pioneer heritage so many of those in Utah have, and you can see why a determination to build something from nothing to take care of our families runs through our very veins.
Millennial moms raised through the 90s and early 2000s also grew up with the world beginning to emphasize that women can do anything and should be out working. Society shifted and began to tell women they’d find more value in worldly accomplishments. Yet, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the few remaining bastions where the importance and joy of motherhood continues to be heavily emphasized. We believe children have eternal identities that existed before they came here. The stewardship of their care is very serious to us, but the longing to make an impact on the world outside our homes remains. So, what is a well-spoken woman with ambition in her heart and a baby in her arms to do, but take her pursuits to the internet?
But as we all know, the internet renders us all imminently corruptible.
Perhaps MomTok did start out as a fun project among friends, a way to support their families. But the internet is noisy and the sensational is what sells. They wouldn’t be the first content creators to get knocked off course when things “blew up”. What starts as a little side hustle to pay your bills becomes a desperate bid for attention and you begin to be willing to do whatever will get you more of it. Unfortunately, when things “blow up”, they also tend to blow up.
I won’t bother to address what remains of the trailer of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It goes so far off the behavioral deep end that I doubt anyone really believes those choices have anything to do with a “Mormon life”.
But the producers chose that title and the MomTok women traded on the Mormon label originally because the world doesn’t understand why someone would strive to keep high moral standards and live by strict codes of conduct unless there is a puppet master somewhere pulling the strings. To have such standards must just be a facade and people obsessively search for the cracks.
Ironically, the MomTok story is a vivid illustration of exactly why we willingly follow the commandments we obey, and sincerely believe that they are from a loving Heavenly Father who asked these things of us to allow us a life of more freedom and joy, not less.
Rules about chastity before getting married and fidelity afterward may seem, to some, quaint at best and oppressive at worst. (Though statistically, religious women in marriages report sexual satisfaction 50% higher than their secular peers). The MomTok group might well have considered their “soft swinging” departure from those antiquated rules enlightened and modern, or at least spicy for a minute, but that departure ultimately ended in multiple broken homes and displaced children.
You can protect yourself from a cliff with a fence at the top or an ambulance at the bottom, devout Latter-day Saints simply choose the fence.
Yes, the “secret” life of a real Mormon wife is not a story of “good girls gone bad”. It’s a story of good girls trying very, very hard to be good. It’s studying scripture and trying to have more meaningful prayers. It’s crying in the middle of the night with a new baby and not knowing if you’ll ever feel like yourself again. But it’s also getting an unexpected dinner brought to your door because someone just had a feeling you might need it. It’s trying to find time to make cookies for the funeral of someone you don’t even know, but also sitting at the funeral of someone you do know and feeling reassured by the knowledge that you will see them again.
It’s coming in late to a church meeting because you were trying to get all your children dressed in their Sunday best; sorrowing that you missed the chance to take the sacrament. But it’s also knowing that because of that very sacrament, representative of the redeeming power of Jesus, you can always try again to be better next time. It’s deeply believing that your relationship with the Savior means you can overcome any weakness, but also being troubled that you aren’t stronger or more consistent by now. It‘s facing true disappointment and grief, but knowing where to turn for peace.
The struggles in the lives of “Mormon” wives are real, but this show doesn’t explore them. The producers have taken what, in reality, is just a story of a bunch of beautiful people making a hot mess of their lives and brought in the word “Mormon” to try to give their mess relevance. They borrowed something sacred to offer significance to the salacious. They traded on a juxtaposition they knew would sell; the name of a Church with strict rules for a moral life against the images of women who made a whole brand out of throwing that lifestyle away, and they don’t care that they’re spreading sweeping misconceptions in their wake.
Don’t fall for it. Watch the dramas of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives enfold if you must, but don’t believe that you’ve learned anything accurate about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the process.
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