Growing Up in Polygamy - Sam & Melissa Zitting Wyson Part 1 - 1617

The Vocabulary of Obedience: What Growing Up in Polygamy Actually Looks Like

Sam Zitting learned early that language itself was a weapon of submission. In the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, calling your biological mother "mom" earned swift punishment. The correct terms were "father" and "mother," or for your father's other wives, "mother" followed by their first name. This was not merely etiquette. It was theological infrastructure, a daily reminder that individual parentage mattered less than patriarchal authority.

This linguistic precision represents just one thread in the complex reality of growing up in polygamy, a topic explored with unflinching candor in a recent Mormon Stories Podcast interview with Sam and Melissa Zitting Wyson. Their testimony offers something rare: a firsthand account of childhood inside the FLDS that traces direct lineage to the earliest days of Mormonism, unbroken by the official LDS Church's 1890 Manifesto.

From Swedish Converts to Border Towns

Sam's great-great-grandfather converted in Sweden and migrated to Utah with the early