Sharing some thoughts from our bloggers on the newly announced age change for young women to serve missions:

Linda Hamilton: I’m significantly more upset than I thought I’d be. 1. It feels like another crumb, since women will continue to serve less time and be restricted from mission leadership roles. 2. I don’t think 18 is a healthy age for missionary service for anyone. It feels like the main motivation is to indoctrinate youth into staying by getting them on missions, rather than allowing youth to develop into young adults with life experiences.

Kara Stevenson: It’s about time! But I still hate the pressure placed on young men. Saying that the Lord asks every young man to serve, instead of encouraging young men to discern what is best for themselves, isn’t okay.

Michelle Bulsiewicz: Now when will they actually have them serve for the same amount of time? When elders automatically get more experienced it makes a big difference in equality on the mission too. 

M. Alva Nilsson: I’m glad to see greater equality! I think this sends an important message to young women that they are capable of what the Church thinks young men can do. Also though, I personally wish the age for men had been raised to 19 instead. In my interactions with some of these younger missionaries, I really get the impression that another year of working, college, or just life experience would be good! Some of them have not even been out of high school for a summer before they’re out living on their own trying to share the gospel! (Side note: if I hear one more missionary say: “I hadn’t read the Book of Mormon before my mission,” I am going to crash out. They went through the temple and committed to sharing this, but they don’t even know what it is???) 

Candice Wendt: Yeah, I’m all for anything that moves toward equal opportunities for women, but I find no joy in thinking of 18 year old women (or men) being out in the mission field. The age 18 thing seems to just be an attempt to catch and commit them before they get adult life experience. What I really think should happen is a whole mission program rehaul. The approach is really out of date. Just this week someone I work with complained to me at length about LDS missionaries sometimes stopping him up to 4 times a day and showing no appreciation for the fact he is already happily religious and attending a church. He doesn’t want to be invited to another church that is supposedly more correct.

I think it should be a young adult internship starting at age 22 with options for the length of time. More humanitarian service focused, more focused on gaining a wider variety of life and work skills. No more church dress at non-church events. Free program with a stipend to help them pay for school, etc. More oriented toward gaining skills that will help them forge their lives. I don’t think it’s too worldly to want to redesign missions to help young people succeed in life and have a good start. I’ve grown to hate the mission program as it is. 

Heidi Toth: I agree on all fronts–parity is good, but it would be better for everyone to have more life experience before going. It really does feel like a way to suck people in before they go off into the world and get corrupted. (Not really, but that’s my uncharitable interpretation.) I just remember being in the MTC and having a missionary ask how to do laundry. And people not having the emotional maturity or self-reliance to be able to handle what comes up. So many of these messages–go on a mission at 18! Get married young! Have kids young!–seems like an attempt to tie people to the church–to make it harder to separate yourself if you’re so inclined. 

Candice: One of the reasons I’m so critical of the mission system now is I live in an unusually high-baptizing community. One reason for this is that Montreal is the place many immigrants and refugees first arrive to and start to make a life in Canada, so there are lots of vulnerable people looking for connections. I see that missionaries work their butts off baptizing people, and I also see that we retain very, very few of these people. Stake and missions don’t always work together well. Here we are quite mismatched: a low-bandwidth, not very socially connected, high needs ward cannot fellowship a high intake of new members effectively. 

I’ve grown very critical of the idea that we should prioritize conversion and baptisms, getting others to believe and think like us. Effective conversations that connect us meaningfully with others come through accepting others as they are and learning from diverse perspectives, not through seeking conformity. I’m concerned the conversion focus reflects emotion and spiritual immaturity. As I look back at the times I was involved in missionary work, I had ulterior, self-gratifying motives. Yeah, I did have a genuine desire to help people. But I also wanted my worldview validated. I wanted to see for myself that someone could be convinced. I needed to pad my own fragile ego and hide from my doubts. 

The idea that we need to help save people spiritually has very problematic facets: it’s too heavy a burden, it puffs our egos, and it’s questionable how spiritual the endeavor really is. What people might need more than a sense of expected afterlife outcomes is connection with God and transformation now. The afterlife focus is a distraction from things that are more directly helpful.

Bailey: AAAHHHHHH! I’m screaming into the void about this. I find the comments on the church’s Instagram page frustrating because of a lack of recognition of who made the age policy to begin with. There are many comments along the lines of ‘the Lord is hastening the work’ when people don’t realize that it was men who made the age policy decisions and chose not to treat women equally with men from the beginning. 

I agree with others’ concerns about 18 being too young overall especially if someone hasn’t had prior experience traveling or living away from parents. As a parent of a young adult and a teen and also as a high school psychology teacher, I have grown increasingly concerned over the last number of years watching teens leave on missions. Many missionaries that I know have returned early due to a variety of concerns, many of which are related to mental health and safety. If the church insists on allowing 18-year-olds to be missionaries, then changes to the program are sorely needed to make it a more positive and developmentally appropriate experience. As others have mentioned, I agree that humanitarian focused missions would likely provide a better experience for all involved. 

Even without making badly needed structural changes to missions, one specific beneficial change that can be made immediately is the number of hours of sleep that missionaries are allowed. My psychology students are finishing a unit on the Teen Brain which is a unit students love because it’s all about how their brains change during adolescence. One favorite topic in this unit is sleep. The recommended amount of sleep for adolescents is 8-10 hours per night. Yes, those 18-year-old missionaries could need 10 hours of sleep a night. 19-year-olds are in a transitional time and many need more than 8 hours of sleep, especially while under the stress. While some could get by on a minimum of 8 hours, the schedule needs to allow for those who need 10 hours. (I know I could not function on the minimum of 7 hours of the 7-9 that are recommended for an adult; I need 8 to 8.5.) Brain development during this time is critically important and sleep supports that development. Additionally, sleep plays a role in processing and regulating emotions. Allowing missionaries to get biologically necessary sleep could provide a protective factor for mental health. As a parent, I am relieved that my young adult chose not to serve a mission because I do not trust the church to have young adults’ needs in mind. 

Rose: With the number of missionaries who are returning early due to mental and physical health issues, I am strongly opposed to young men or young women going on missions when they are 18. They need at last a year of maturity either through school, work experience, or both to face the rigors of a mission. The expectation (and social and religious pressure) on 17-year-olds sending in papers for a mission when they are in high school is unacceptable.

Ann: My first reaction was “oh good, now the girls can have trauma from going too early, just like the boys.”

I’m trying to picture myself as a senior in highschool hearing this news.

18 year old me would probably have been thrilled! I didn’t have to have plans for college or a job out of high school. I could go on a mission and make my parents so proud. I wouldn’t have to worry about permanently breaking up with my boyfriend after high school. We could go on missions and get home at roughly the same time and then get married. (At 20 yay!) I’m not sure what I would have thought about going through the temple at 18, but if all my friends were going before their missions then I would probably just go along with the crowd. 

In my life I went to college after high school. I moved out and went to school 2.5 hours away. I learned to differentiate from my parents. I did break up with that boyfriend and it was AWFUL but necessary. And I really chose the church instead of doing the next thing expected of me.

When I think about it, a mission kind of feels like an extension of childhood. I know there is hard work and rules and discouragement. But if an 18 year old goes on a mission right out of high school did they really have to put a lot of choice into that decision? Especially if they come from a devout family? It’s not like picking a college where you pick a school you think will work for you. It’s just turning in your papers and trusting the decision someone else makes for you.

I don’t know, maybe I’d think differently if I had served a mission. But that’s my perspective.

The whole thing feels icky.

Caroline: Like Candice, I’m guessing that one important reason for this change is that the church is losing a significant number of young women when they graduate from high school. If they can get girls on missions right away after graduation — girls that might otherwise decide to not go to RS/church when they go off to college or embark on their adult life — they have a better chance of retaining them long term. So I’d put my money on retention being a primary motivator for the change.

Trudy: I was really excited to read the news that women will be permitted to serve missions at the same age as men. I served a mission back when the age was 21, and if I had been able to serve at 18, my life might have turned out for the better. I had to interrupt my education to serve a mission in a way that going right out of high school wouldn’t have interrupted it. My interruption wasn’t as bad as some, since I went between college and law school, but I think I would have taken the full 4 years in college rather than powering through in three if I had been able to go earlier.

I think that allowing women to serve missions earlier will create more parity in future marriages because recently returned male missionaries will be more likely to date women their own age rather than pursuing teenage recent high school graduates.