I agree with your point of view.
My upbringing was confusing. I had an angry, workaholic father that was inactive and violent about just about everything and a mother who was obsessively active in church but stuck her head in the sand a lot and told me that Jesus was my best friend.

Basically, it sucked and as a result I have loads of issues I have to comb through-some worse than others.

In other words, I'm like a lot of people. Just better looking and funnier.

;P

I guess I grew up ex-Mormon, so I don't get to comment.

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http://www.signifyingnothing.com/clint

I have no idea what it was like to grow up Mormon. I didn't even know what Mormons believed until I met my husband-to-be. His mother had a violent, alcoholic, neglectful husband. Her large family of children grew up poor and ignored by their father.When the missionaries knocked at their door, it was a godsend to this mother and children. The mother at last had a purpose in life, and felt valuable. The children were all baptised. The father was left out in the cold -- but hey, he'd had his chance and blown it.
As a young (lapsed) Catholic girl, I met and married my husband, getting baptised into his faith six weeks before the wedding (in a chapel of course). My ignorance appalls me now. I was rushed into baptism by missionaries (I now realise) obsessed with quotas. My husband and I had, and still have, a strong and unbreakable mind connection/deep friendship which has saved us from a breakup. But a few years into Mormonism I knew I couldn't go on pretending to be something I wasn't. I had never had a testimony. Everything I did was to please "the family." I pulled out, and I am everlastingly glad I did. Our children were raised with 'two sides to the story' -- the official Mormon side, and the
'real world' side from me, who had known a life outside of the church. All but one are now inactive. I left it up to them to choose -- I never badmouthed the church, but growing up with an objective viewpoint gave them options. My marital life is now, after many years, rocky. We still have our deep bond, but my husband feels he belongs to the "one true church" and disregards the inner spiritual growth that I cherish so much. I'm sure many others live with this kind of duality in their marriages. I guess all I can say is, don't date outside your religion/comfort zone/culture!! There's no guarantee that the person you 'convert' will stay that way!
Be true to yourself, and you can't go wrong. None of us needs to "see the light" --we all have that light within us already. We just need to recognise it.

Anonymous,

Hate to tell you, but you are hardly in the category of being able to give your kids an "Objective" view of Mormonism. I find it kind of laughable that you would even suggest it.

You are no more objective than the missionaries who rushed you in against your will.

Growing up Mormon was weird. My experience was probably opposite from most others. Both of my grandfathers were Mormon bishops, so I was exposed to hardcore Mormonism. On the other hand, my parents weren't quite so gung-ho. They thought spending 3 hours in church every Sunday was a total waste of time. Instead, they would do something fun, like skiing, hiking or going to brunch. Because my parents did not go to church, I felt very uncomfortable and somewhat ostracized when I went to church. I only felt this way at church, and in my immediate neighborhood. Going to school, and socializing with my classmates was a much better experience.

When I was 14, I stopped going to church (alone), and decided to join my parents and brothers on their Sunday adventures. My only regret is that I didn't join them earlier,

I like this post, it's thought provoking.

I grew up in Davis County where I didn't know anyone who wasn't mormon. I thought that's what the world was like. When I was 7, we moved to Germany. I expected everyone to still be mormon, but they weren't. I was shocked when I went to friends houses and they didn't pray before their meals.

The kids on the playground were the same though. Everyone in Germany was just as rambunctions, free spirited, smart and kind, as the kids on the playground in Utah.

However, when I hit 5th grade, there was a boy in my class who found out I was mormon, and he was a southern baptist. After that, all I ever heard from him was that I was going to hell. I don't know if this is how all southern baptists are or not, but this is how he was.

I remember being a little embarrassed in high school because while my family was active LDS, we never had family home evenings or scripture study or anything like that. I felt like we weren't as good or as righteous as my friends families, so there was some self worthlessness there.

I'm rambling. I'll stop now.

I grew up with a sweet, loving extremely mormon mother and a sweet, loving extrememly mormon father. All my parents wanted from me (being a girl) was that I grow up a good mormon girl. I knew when I was in my extremely early teens that I was going to disappoint them terribly. Mormonism always seemed so wacked to me -- Jews? in submarines? traveling to the US? Horses? in pre-conquest Americas? Swords? etc. that it was clear to me that either me or my culture was living in some painful fantasy. My parents were wonderful, but I wasn't the daughter they wanted. For one thing, I spent my teen years so depressed that I barely left my room. My sweet mormon parents didn't believe in psychology or anything, so I never got any help. Of course, having grown up Mormon I never ever would have trusted a mental health professional with any real info about me, such as my state of disbelief. I had numerous (OK some) friends who were booted out of their homes for not being sufficiently mormon. I wasn't about to take the risk. It seems painfully clear that a side-effect of the large families that Mormons have is a rather startling willingness to toss misbehaving children out into the cold.
I did disappoint my family. I'm not a good mormon girl. I'm rather, heaven forbid, a productive member of society in my own right. Enough. Bah.