Raising a family as a single parent is difficult at best. As an LDS single parent, these difficulties take on a unique challenge. The purpose of this project is to offer specific, LDS related guidelines to assist the LDS single parent mother in strengthening her family and thus acquiring the skills needed in handling the unique challenge of raising a family in a gospel oriented society. A variety of resources were used to include theorists, practicioners, scriptures, and personal experiences. Examples and case studies demonstrate the integration of gospel principles and family practices as they relate to LDS single parent families.

This research focuses on the empowering experiences of LDS women within the patriarchal structure as organized by the LDS church. Women in the LDS church empower themselves by drawing both external and internal resources. The degree of flexibility that leaders and member of the LDS church adopt externally influences the degree of empowerment that LDS women. The more internal factors an LDS woman adopts the greater her internal sense of empowerment.

Recent studies have shown that a number of researchers have turned to the concept of the interpretive community to explain how audiences interpret the media within the context of their everyday experiences (Biocca, 1989; Gunter, 1989; Lindlof, 1989, 1992; Radway, 1984; Schrøder, 1994). D. A. Stout (1993) conducted a study that discovered three interpretive communities among LDS women who watch television, establishing that interpretive communities do exist among religious media audiences.In 1994, K. Schrøder showed that the interpretive community can be further understood by taking a "social semiotic" approach to analyzing interpretive community members' social interaction with other communities. This study explored the nature of the interpretive community by using qualitative methodology and a social semiotic approach to analyze the social interaction patterns of Stout's (1993) interpretive communities of LDS women who watch television.

Dear Father is a memoir of one year of the life of Shelly Fankhauser. Experiencing the death of her grandfather and husband, she is forced to reexamine her basic belief system as a New Zealand Maori LDS woman. Through her losses and the process of her grief, she discovers the identity that she was struggling to find did not come from her culture or her religion as she had once thought, but from within herself.Dear Father is an autobiographical account of finding inner strength and discovering hope.

Latter-day Saint female missionary activities informally began in the early 1830's, remaining numerically unconstant until 1879, when a significant increase began. Between 1830 and 1898 over two hundred women had been involved in missionary work, laboring mostly in California, New York, Hawaii and England.Before 1865, Latter-day Saint women did not have any official missionary status. After 1865, Church officials began the practice of setting them apart. Finally, in 1898 women were "certified" as missionaries which placed them on an equal status with their male counterparts.Some lady missionaries performed household chores, taught school, preached sermons and presided over female auxiliary organizations. There were some who suffered extreme illness and even death. Others experienced dangerous modes of transportation and extremely poor living conditions. The extraordinary faith and courage demonstrated by many Latter-day Saint lady missionaries has rendered an important contribution to the missionary work of the Church.

This work is presented for the purpose of contributing to a more accurate understanding of woman's place in the philosophy of Mormonism, and as a basis for further study on this problem.The writer has not attempted to prove any particular hypothesis regarding Mormon women but has presented data which give an historical account of woman's status in the Church and among Mormon people during the first fifteen years of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.The writer does not claim to have made any particularly new discoveries regarding Mormon women but rather to have brought together a considerable quantity of material in which can be seen a little more clearly than heretofore the factors which have influenced woman's status in Mormon philosophy.

This thesis examines the belief in and use of the concept of Mother in Heaven among some women's support groups comprised of female members (and attached males) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The expectations were that those surveyed would express belief in Heavenly Mother, but that the concept would not be a central one. Various propositions suggested relationships between religious dimension, feminism, and alienation variables and belief in and salience of Mother in Heaven. Most of those surveyed believe in the Goddess, but the concept is underutilized among those surveyed. Belief in Mother in Heaven was found to be strongly a function of religious orthodoxy. Salience of Mother in Heaven was found to be related to a more complex set of model variables.

The purpose of this study was to examine burnout in Mormon mothers in a suburban Utah town. Specifically the amount and some determinants of burnout among these Mormon women was studied. A random sample of 266 Mormon mothers completed a questionnaire and a modified version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) which consisted of three subscales, (Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment), and two categories in each subscale (Frequency and Intensity). The subjects scored in the moderately burned out category in each subscale. Significant relationships were found between the amount of burnout and the following: the age of the mother, the number of children residing in the home, the number of children residing out of the home, and the average age of the children. Significant differences were found in the amount of burnout according to activity in the church, job status, and expectations of the mother in some of the subscales. Significant differences existed in amount of reported burnout according to moral support from the husband and moral support from the children in every subscale in frequency and intensity.

Other-centeredness and depression were examined to see if a relationship existed between the two. One scale measuring other-centeredness and another measuring depression were given to a sample of married Mormon women who did not work outside the home. Other-centeredness and depression were significantly negatively correlated. The women scoring in the top one-third of the range of other-centeredness scores suffered no depression on the depression scale. The factor most predictive for depression was the relationship the women had with her husband, and other-centeredness was found to overlap with this variable to some extent. The factors of health, income, and education were also better predictors of depression than other-centeredness. When they are held constant the relationship between other-centeredness and depression increases substantially.

The purpose of this study was to (a) describe the characteristics of divorced Mormon women residing in Salt Lake County, (b) determine the extent to which these women were aware of and used government, private, and Mormon church agencies after divorce in helping them solve their problems, and (c) determine the extent these women felt each agency was effective.Responses from the questionnaire indicated that more than half of these women could be categorized as displaced homemakers. Results showed significant decreases in income before and after divorce. The women in this study had higher than national average occupational levels and income levels. The results of this study showed that these women used the Mormon church and its agencies significantly more often than government and private agencies and institutions. Furthermore, they also felt these Church agencies provided a significant amount of help with problems of personal adjustment, children's problems, and family management.