This study discusses diaries by three Mormon women on America's southwestern frontier. These diaries cover a period stretching from 1880-1920. The study explores how these diarists (in a culture that was and remains highly communitarian and which valued, for women, the primary roles of helpmeet and mother), leave the imprint of individual as well as cooperative consciousness in private writings. As authors, diarists display remarkable persistence in maintaining and elaborating on a daily text. Since diaries are a type of private writing engaged in even by women who--because of education, social class, or life circumstances--do little other writing, women's diaries offer significant clues to women's writing strategies and goals. Most study of women's diaries positions these texts as footnotes to history or the literary canon. This study discusses the interplay between persona, tone and style, a diarist's life experience (pioneering, for example) and Mormon expectations for women. Consistently positioning women as helpers in building a millenial kingdom, Mormonism deemphasizes the very act which keeping diaries encourages them to begin: placing the self in a position of (literal) authority. In these diaries, the writers have been able to include or omit what they choose from daily narrative, signaling meaning through shifts in style or tone. As writers, these women function as authorities in their individual and communal lives. Three diaries form the core of this study. The Udall diary is taken from a published version edited by her granddaughter, Maria S. Ellsworth. The Chase diary comes from the University of Utah's archives, from among papers of the diarist's husband, George Ogden Chase. The Willis diary was edited from manuscript and donated for this study by Kim Brown, who supplied photocopies of both her typescript and the original Willis manuscript.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of History, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-159).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications. / Bibliography: leaves 103-109.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Sociology. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-93).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Sociology. / Electronic thesis. Bibliography: leaves 114-121. Also available in print ed.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Brigham Young University. Dept. of Philosophy Education, 1942. / Electronic thesis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-231). Also available in print ed.

No description available.

This research looks at the effect employed active LDS mothers have on their daughters' future plans for education, career, marriage, and children. Mothers' educational level, type of employment, and daughters' attachment to the LDS church were taken into consideration. It was found that a majority of daughters are definite in their plans for education, career, marriage, and children regardless of the employment status of their mother. Daughters of employed LDS mothers are more definite in their plans for a career than daughters of unemployed LDS mothers. No effect was found for mothers' employment on daughters' future plans for college, marriage, and children. Mothers' type of employment also had no effect. Mothers' education, but not for career, marriage, or children. Mothers' employment had a greater effect on her daughters' future plans for a career than did the daughters' attachment to the LDS church.

The effects of maternal employment status on the happiness and/or unhappiness of married Utah women with children were studied. The independent variables were employment status, age, and denomination. Covariates were health, husbands income, and number of children. Denominational differences were not found to impact happiness, but age and employment status were related to happiness, with non-employed and younger mothers being happier.

This descriptive study examined the nursing and health care activities of Mormon women in the pre-depression period of 1914 through 1930 through analysis of the official voice of the Relief Society, the Relief Society Magazine. Entries from the Relief Society Magazine that dealt with any nursing or health care topic were coded according to the themes they addressed. Five themes emerged: Nursing, faith, healing, women's health, children's health, and public health.In each of the themes, the Relief Society Magazine showed that the members of the Relief Society recognized the health care problems of their communities and claimed responsibility for addressing those challenges. Mormon women developed programs and cooperated with existing government and private organizations to achieve their health care goals. The existence of the Relief Society Magazine gave Mormon women a vehicle for communicating their nursing and health care plans, goals, and successes with each other and provided an instrument for exploring the nursing and health work of Mormon women in the 1914 to 1930 period.