401: A Response to Dallin Oaks' Desire for LDS Girls to Marry Younger

Latter Day Struggles

Valerie Hamaker

Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Mental Health

4.5 • 859 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Send us a Positive Review! In this episode I respond to your requests to explore President Dallin Oaks' desire that LDS girls get married younger. As a bonus, I propose a counter-solution to. the current LDS mixed-faith marriage crisis that does not involve pressuring younger marriage (and its well-documented risk factors) on LDS young adults. Please share this episode if it resonates! Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction and Overview 00:18 Valerie's Analysis of Early Marriage...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Valerie's work at Latter Day Struggles is now supported by the Faith Journey Foundation,
0:06.1	a nonprofit created to elevate integrity-based voices working in the LDS faith expansion space.
0:12.8	Your tax-deductible donation helps fund podcast scholarships, making psychologically
0:17.4	informed, spiritually grounded content accessible to more people in need.
0:22.0	It's a chance to support both the professionals who provide this healing work and the individuals
0:26.7	who most need it. Donate today at latterday struggles.com. Hey, everybody, welcome to Latter Day Struggles.
0:44.0	This is your host, Valerie.
0:45.2	I am excited to be here with you.
0:46.7	Today, I made a commitment a few days ago when many of you reached out and asked if I would respond to the recent
0:56.8	news item from President Dallan H. Oaks commenting on, well, actually, let me go ahead and
1:04.2	just give a little bit of a backstory for those of you who might be new to this information.
1:09.0	I don't know that that's very many of you out there, but just in the
1:11.5	spirit of starting from scratch, it would appear that last weekend, President Dallin Oaks was at
1:21.1	a temple dedication in Idaho, at which point in time he was interviewed. And there were a series of different questions that came
1:31.4	up. The one that I'm going to be focusing on and that has evoked a lot of concern or upset or maybe
1:40.5	some confusion, frustration, lots of emotions is the following question.
1:46.6	This is the question that was asked, and then I'm going to go ahead and just directly quote
1:50.8	his answer.
1:51.9	The interviewer asked the following.
1:53.7	You recently announced that young women can serve missions at age 18.
1:58.7	How do you think that will bless the lives of young women across the church?
2:02.6	Okay. President Oakes's answer is as follows. I think it will increase their time for planning their
	...

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