Mormon Stories 1113: Parenting After a Mormon Faith Crisis: An Overview Pt. 2

Parenting After a Mormon Faith Crisis: Why the Obedience Model Breaks Down

The phone call comes at 2 AM. Your teenager is crying at a friend's house because they cannot face coming home to the religious expectations waiting there. This scene repeats in Mormon households across the Wasatch Front and beyond, but not for the reasons church manuals suggest. Parents navigating parenting after a Mormon faith crisis often discover that the control strategies they inherited (command, punish, repeat) do not merely fail. They actively drive the behaviors they hope to prevent underground.

Research discussed on the Mormon Stories podcast reveals a troubling pattern. When parents rely on extrinsic control, children learn to perform compliance while hiding their authentic selves. The split becomes literal: one personality for the dinner table, another for the dark.

The Control Paradigm and