Editor Kristine Haglund on Mormon motherhood

Editor Kristine Haglund was tapped for quotes on Mormon motherhood in light of the remarks on Ann Romney’s motherhood:

“The strong prescription that women should not work seemed more jarring in a social context in which women’s right to participate more fully in the economy was starting to seem well-established,” said Kristine Haglund, a feminist and editor at liberal Mormon journal Dialogue.

And

But even as church leaders’ rhetoric has modernized, the Mormon ideal continues to hold that women should, whenever possible, stay home to raise their children. And in the Romneys’ ardent defense of their chosen lifestyle, Haglund sees shades of their church’s doctrine.
“I think one might see Mormon-ness… in their seeming assurance that this is the way things should be,” said Haglund. “That in an ideal world, all women would stay home with their children, and, perhaps, that it is anomalous or somehow wrong for women to want to maintain careers after they become mothers.”

Click for the entire article from BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins on “Why Ann Stayed Home.”
[Edited to add another new article 4/20/2012] And new from Salon, quoting Editor Kristine Haglund on “The rise of the Mormon feminist housewife.”

“In a congregation 15 years ago, anyone could have told you which women were employed outside their home and which ones weren’t,” says Kristine Haglund, editor of the liberal Mormon journal Dialogue. That’s no longer the case, she says, partly out economic necessity, and because young women “didn’t grow up with the sense that there was something inherently wicked about women participating in public life.”

And

The Church has pointed out in its defense that women do hold some prominent positions in the religious structure, but critics counter that only ones that are subordinate to men. Mitt Romney, who was active in church leadership, would have been no exception — and for him, says Haglund, that held true outside the church as well. “[Romney] has never been in a position either in his work life or his church life where he had to defer to the opinion of a woman, ever,” she says.