The Wannabe Balanced Mom - Crystal Escobar Pt. 1 | Ep. 1127

When the Church Builds the Cage: Crystal Escobar, Mormon Motherhood, and the Cost of a Perfect Image

Crystal Escobar's story, as told on the Mormon Stories Podcast episode 1127, is not primarily a faith crisis story. It is a story about what happens when religious ideals about womanhood collide with the actual texture of a woman's interior life, and what gets quietly destroyed in that collision.

Escobar, a blogger and podcaster known through her platform "The Wannabe Balanced Mom," sat down with host John Dehlin in June 2019 to walk through how the LDS Church's expectations for mothers shaped her sense of self, her career ambitions, and her experience of raising children. Her account is personal. It is also, for thousands of Mormon women, painfully familiar.

The Doctrinal Background: What LDS Women Were Actually Taught

To understand Escobar's experience, you have to start with what the institutional church was teaching when she was growing up.

Former LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson gave a series of talks, including at BYU, stating explicitly that a woman's place was in the home. He suggested that women who worked outside the home were damaging their children and betraying a sacred calling. His words carried prophetic weight for members.