Living the divine divide: A phenomenological study of Mormon mothers who are career-professional women

Abstract

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormon Church – upholds a cultural expectation for women of their community to remain unemployed outside the home and to dedicate their early adulthood to bearing and raising children. This paper reports on a phenomenological exploration, using Smith and Osborn’s (2008) model of interpretative phenomenological analysis, of the use, as a conflict-controlling strategy, of sanctification, or the sacred aspects of life, in the religious cultural navigation of 16 religious Mormon women who maintain full-time professional careers in the fields of law, medicine, education, science, administration or engineering, and who simultaneously mother one or more children under the age of 12. The findings of this study document significant demographic, values-based and experiential differences between the study participants and their Latter-day Saints (LDS) peers who live within the subculture’s norm.