Mormons Value Organized Weekly Family Times

Once a week, Brent and Ella Romney gather their six kids - from 15-year-old Brandon to 2-year-old Brooke - into the living room of the family’s big old house.

Romney teaches a lesson, interrupted only occasionally by the girls’ somersaults and the boys’ grousing that they’d rather be playing basketball. After the lesson, the Romneys sing a song, play a game, say a prayer and eat a snack.

They call it a Family Home Evening. They might also call it the secret to Mormon success.

Started in the 1960s in the midst of the sexual revolution, the Family Home Evening remains a bulwark of traditional Mormon values, even as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it is formally named, deals with a quiet revolution in family issues.

“I’m very concerned with what’s going on around us, all the things pulling our kids, all the things thrown at them constantly, like sex and bad language and music,” said Ella Romney, 38, a homemaker and volunteer director of a children’s performing group called “Sunshine Generation.”

“But I realize we have to live in the world. So I like the Family Home Evenings because we can talk about these things.”

On a recent Monday night, seated near a fireplace, the kids each offered an example of something that made them happy the previous week.

They talked about dentist appointments, sleepovers and 8-year-old Brielle’s outing with her dad.

Then Brent Romney began a lesson about how to treat people’s differences. He blindfolded Bradley, 13, and asked him to imagine how he would feel if he couldn’t see.

He asked Blake, 11, to untie 5-year-old Bryce’s shoes while wearing socks on his hands. He told a story of a boy who was bullied at school. The kids listened, wide-eyed.

The home evening lasted an hour. Then the kids switched on the television set and began rushing around the house.

The Latter-day Saints publish a 346-page guide to Family Home Evenings, which includes 37 lesson plans on topics such as rules in the home, making “righteous choices” and appreciating the separate roles of men and women.

It is this last topic that Mormons continue to discuss. At the Latter-day Saints’ General Conference this fall, the church president and elders issued a new round of pronouncements, particularly about single mothers and working women.

In his address, church President Gordon B. Hinckley said while he agrees with traditional Mormon teaching that women should stay home to raise children, he also understands the reality that most women hold paying jobs.

“It is well-nigh impossible to be a full-time homemaker and a full-time employee,” Hinckley said. “(But) I know how some of you struggle with decisions concerning this matter. … Do the very best you can.”

His statements came a year after the church issued a major proclamation that strongly affirmed traditional marriage and childrearing by women as ordained by God. That proclamation was viewed as an effort to hold the line in favor of conservative values.

One reason for this emphasis is that Mormons believe that before they’re born they live in a family as premortal spirits. Eventually they’re sent to Earth by God to claim their bodies and to be trained as parents.

When Mormons die, they believe they are reunited with their families for eternity.

So while the Latter-day Saints continue to emphasize the traditional family through efforts such as the home evenings, they also are gradually broadening their concept of the family, which may be why the home evening manual includes a section on how single adults can join a group.

Even in the Romneys’ local congregation (called a ward), change is afoot. Among the 150 families who are part of the ward in Dallas, there are only a few traditional Mormon families. Many are singles, divorced people and couples without children.

The Romneys, who both were reared as Mormons, say they intend to keep their own family bonds strong and serve as an example to converts.

“If you’re a Mormon, it’s not just a Sunday thing. It’s a whole way of life,” Ella Romney said after the home evening. The children were eating brownies that Bradley made for the event.

“And if the religious values are taught in the home, it seems to stay with them more. … Were it not for our emphasis on the family, we probably would be like a lot of other churches.”

The kids know that Sundays are set aside for church and family and that a weekly home evening will be held each week. They know the older kids baby-sit the younger children. They know their parents’ rules about curfews, dating and grades.

The Romneys believe these rules free their children from having to make too many choices at a young age. As a result, they say, there is more harmony between the children and their parents and between father and mother.