Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Recently, polygamy has become a “primetime” phenomenon. Television shows like Big Love and Sister Wives demonstrate the “progressive” side of polygamy, while horror stories from victims of abusive marriages offer less upbeat experiences among the adherents of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church). Bennion, herself a product of Mormon polygamy, seeks to dispel the myths and misinformation that surround this topic. This study, based on seventeen years of ethnographic research among the Allred Group (Apostolic United Brethren) and on an analysis of recent blog journal entries written by a range of polygamous women, examines the variety and complexity of contemporary Mormon fundamentalist life in the Intermountain West. Although Bennion highlights problems associated with polygamy, including evidence that some forms are at high risk for father-child incest, she challenges the media-driven depiction of plural marriage as uniformly abusive and harmful to women. She shows how polygamist families can provide both economic security and social sustenance for some women, and how the authority of the husband can be undermined by the stresses of providing for multiple wives and children. Going beyond the media’s obsession with the sexual aspects of polygamous marriage, Bennion offers a rich description of familial, social, and legal contexts. Throughout, she makes the case for legalizing polygamy in order to allow greater visibility and regulation of the practice.

Polygamy. --- Latter Day Saint fundamentalism. --- Latter Day Saint women --- Social conditions.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Polygamy --- Forced marriage --- Child marriage --- Child sexual abuse --- Latter Day Saint fundamentalism --- Prevention. --- Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Mabel Finlayson Allred was a wife of Rulon Allred, leader of the Apostolic United Brethren, one of the major groups of fundamentalist Mormons who, since about the 1930's, have practiced plural marriage as separatists from the mainstream Latter-day Saints Church. Mabel's autobiography maintains a mood of everyday normalcy strikingly in contrast with the stress of the ostracized life she was living. Her cheerful tone, expressive of her wish to live simply and gracefully in this world, is tempered by more somber descriptions of her personal struggle with clinical depression, of Rulon

Allred, Mabel Finlayson, --- Apostolic United Brethren --- Allreds (Religious group) --- Allred Group --- Corporation of the Presiding Elder of the Apostolic United Brethren --- Mormon fundamentalism. --- Mormon Church --- Religious fundamentalism --- Finlayson, Mabel, --- Mormon fundamentalism --- Latter Day Saint churches --- Latter Day Saint fundamentalism.