the problem with babysitters

Since we’ve been in Utah, we’ve gotten family members to baby sit. Since all of our family in Utah are faithful, devout Mormons, we’ve been very choosey about who to have baby sit out son. The sister-in-law we’re staying with is great; the sister-who-actual talks to me is fine; I even asked the sister-whose-husband-left-the-church. I’ve never asked the most natural choice, my mom. She’s grown suspicious about why that might be and thinks I must hate her (that’s her low self-esteem and depression talking, unfortunately). Everyone is a capable babysitter, surely, all being parents themselves.

But there’s this little problem of them being Molly Mormons and Peter Priesthoods. Of being so engrained in the Mormon social life and culture, that they don’t even realize they are talking, acting, thinking Mormon when they are. For this reason, my husband suggested we lay down some boundaries with potential babysitters about what we consider crossing the line. I knew this was a good idea, but it also made me extremely uncomfortable. You see, to talk to them about it would mean we needed to talk to them about it. That they are ignorant enough, uncaring enough, unaware enough, that we’d have to point things out to them.

I felt like having to sit down and tell them, “Listen, don’t bring up religion around my son; don’t tell him how Heavenly Father is God and Jesus is alive, don’t tell him that Joseph Smith is second only to Jesus” would be the equivalent of them telling me, “Listen, you can only baby sit our kids if you promise not to tell them there is no God and that Joseph Smith was a liar.” That would just be insulting and misguided, because I would never say that to their kids. I don’t even say that to my own kid. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt; I wanted to be hopeful that saying those things would be unnecessary. That we’d all be aware and nice enough to respect each other’s religious choices and how we want to raise our own kids.

Also, I felt that asking them to avoid religion talk would be like asking them to chop off their own arm. They just couldn’t do it. It’s not just church—it’s daily life, daily conversation, their way of understanding and negotiating the world. I honestly feel that if I asked my mom to avoid religious talk around my son, she’d say, “How I am supposed to do that?”

to be continued...