The LDS Church recently posted a story celebrating a husband who supports his wife’s career as a pediatric neurologist. What looked like a simple social media post quickly became a very Mormon argument about motherhood, women’s careers, and whether the church has changed its teachings or just softened its public language.

In this episode of Mormon Monday, we talk about Jana Riess’s coverage of the post, the Family Proclamation, and older teachings from LDS leaders who framed motherhood and homemaking as women’s divinely assigned role. We also talk about why older women are not misremembering what they were taught, and why celebrating working mothers now requires an honest accounting of what the church used to discourage.

Sources mentioned in the episode are linked below.

Ezra Taft Benson, 1981. The Honored Place Of Women.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1981/10/the-honored-place-of-woman?lang=eng

Henry B. Eyring, 2018. Women and Gospel Learning In The Church.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/women-and-gospel-learning-in-the-home?lang=eng

Spencer W. Kimball, 1987. To The Mothers In Zion.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/womens-divine-roles-and-responsibilities/to-the-mothers-in-zion-institute?lang=eng

Jana Reiss, 2026. LDS Church’s Post About Working Moms Does Indeed Clash With Past Teachings.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/05/11/jana-riess-lds-churchs-post-about/

Two Mormon brothers killed their brothers 30 years apart. Two obituaries that don't say how they died. One pattern that made both disappear.

On June 18, 1964, Stephen Ferrin, 15, shot his 13-year-old brother David three times after David refused to obey a command. The obituary called him the victim of a Thursday shooting. In 1993, Joe DiLello spent four hours on a couch in Clearfield, Utah after reading Utah's home defense statute, then fired 14 times when his brother Michael kicked through the door. Michael's obituary in the church-owned Deseret News said he passed away November 7, 1993. Neither obituary named the killer.

Jess and Hannah trace the theological architecture underneath both cases — the Nephi narrative as founding text, priesthood worthiness as public family grading, patriarchal blessings that sanctify parental favoritism as prophecy, and exaltation theology that makes the stakes of sibling competition literally eternal — and document a pattern of fraternal violence and institutional erasure running across 100 years of Mormon community headlines.

Trigger warnings: homicide, family violence, death of a child.

In the debut episode of What Do You Know Wednesday, Jess finds out what she knows about Tim Ballard — founder of Operation Underground Railroad and subject of the 2023 film Sound of Freedom. On the table: the six civil lawsuits filed against Ballard in October 2023, the "couple's ruse" his accusers describe in detail, a Mormon psychic who channels Nephi, and a true crime thread connecting one of his plaintiffs to a Pleasant Grove fratricide case. New episodes weekly.