My town has both a strong Mormon and Catholic presence. I notice that, unlike in the past - we’ve got loads of Mormon families with 6,7,8 kids - and most of the Catholic families in my parish have two - maybe three. Four is a very large family. It used to be that you asked if someone was Catholic if they had a busload of children - and now we ask if they are LDS.
What are they doing right that we are not?
Mormon women are treated worse on average. Perhaps it’s a matter of men wanting a certain number of children and Catholic women putting a limit on that while Mormon women don’t have the option.
I can’t help but notice that Muslim women are, on average, treated pretty badly within the religion of Islam as well. And Muslims also tend to have more babies than anyone else. Some of this has to do with the part of the world you’re from, but that’s clearly not all there is to it- Muslim fertility continues to outpace everyone else when you’re talking about, for example, Muslim immigrants to Europe.
The Mexican-American comparison comes to mind as well. Gender roles and spousal expectations are pretty different from one culture to the other, and I’ve gotten to see that with a variety of combinations- American women with Mexican men, Mexican women with American men, Mexican women who start with a Mexican man and then wind up with an American man- and on average, although I can tell you from experience that there are notable exceptions, Mexican women tend to be treated in a way that’s more restrictive. That has less to do with religion (usually Catholic) and more to do with culture, and you can see how this bears out when you make apples-to-apples (Catholic-to-Catholic) comparisons between cultures. You’ll also notice that Mexicans are far more fertile than Americans (whether they’re Catholic, Protestant, or anything else), and this continues to be the case three or four generations after Mexicans emigrate to America.
For whatever reason, I guess the 21st century woman (whether she’s Christian, atheist, or anything else) is someone who would rather have 2 or 3 kids than 7 or 8. And when she gets to decide on it for herself, that’s what she does. When she doesn’t get to decide and it’s not really up to her, she winds up having a lot more babies. She’ll probably be more domestic, too- and of course there’s nothing wrong with choosing to be domestic as long as the choice is freely made, but problems arise when a situation’s restrictive or coercive and a woman’s options are strictly limited like that.
This, of course, is a sweeping generalization and if there’s any value to it, I don’t doubt for a second that its value lies in a very average population of people and it has far less value in assessing a relatively small and unique group. Like, for example, a few dozen CAF regulars. I’m pretty sure this would have barely anything to do with you.
If I may answer your question a bit more directly, though- What are they doing right that you’re not? I really don’t think it’s a matter of doing something right. I think Mormon women need to be treated better just because I’m generally opposed to poor treatment of women and favorable toward treating women right. Incidentally, I also think it’s quite likely that this poor treatment of women is one of the primary reasons why the average Mormon is so much more fertile than the average Catholic (or the average Mexican is more fertile than the average American or the average Muslim is more fertile than the average anybody from anywhere).
If you’re looking for ways to get the Catholic fertility rate up, there’s a lot of other ways of going at it. But the sharp disparity between Mormon babymaking and Catholic babymaking (imo) mostly has to do with Catholics treating women right while Mormons do a worse job of that. Even though the fallout (iyo) is ultimately not what you would really want to hope for.
