Revelation or Recruitment? Gut Reactions to Lowering Women's Mission Age

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced on November 21, 2025 that women can now serve missions at age 18: the same minimum age as men. This is being celebrated as a step toward equality and framed as revelation from God through President Dallin H. Oaks.

I have some reactions to this announcment.

Younger Minds, Deeper Hooks

Let's be direct about what a mission is: 18 - 24 months of intensive indoctrination where young people are:

• Isolated from family and friends
• Paired with a companion 24/7 who monitors their behavior
• Required to follow strict schedules, dress codes, and media restrictions
• Immersed in scripture study and church materials for hours daily
• Taught to interpret any positive feelings as confirmation of truth
• Taught that any negative feelings are weakness of faith, commitment, or a result of adversity
• Trained to defend the faith against criticism
• Socially rewarded for "success" measured in baptisms and discussions

This isn't cynicism, this is what I experienced. The mission is designed to deepen commitment precisely because it demands sacrifice. You've invested 18 - 24 months of your life, paid thousands of dollars, and publicly committed to the faith. Walking away after that investment is psychologically difficult.

Lowering the age for women from 19 to 18 means catching them right out of high school, before:

• A year of college might expose them to different perspectives
• Living independently might help them develop their own identity
• Distance from family and ward might give space for questioning
• Maturity might make them more resistant to high-demand environments

The church frames this as "giving women more options." What it actually does is give the church access to women at the same vulnerable transition point it's always had access to men.

An 18-year-old brain is still developing. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and evaluating long-term consequences, doesn't fully mature until the mid-20s. There's a reason high-pressure recruitment organizations target this age group through missions and other on-campus proseltyzing efforts.

Missionaries Pay to Serve

Here's something that has astonished me for some time: missionaries pay for the privilege of doing the church's recruitment work.

Currently, the monthly cost is around $500 per missionary, paid by the missionary or their family. For an 18-month mission, that's $9,000. For a 24-month mission (still required for men), that's $12,000.

The church, which has over $100 billion in investment assets according to whistleblower reports, requires young people and their families to fund their own service.

And what are missionaries doing? They're:

• Recruiting new tithe-paying members
• Providing free labor for church programs
• Serving as visible advertisements for the faith
• Strengthening their own lifetime commitment (and tithing)

Any other organization that required you to pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity to recruit new paying members for them would be recognized immediately as exploitative. But because it's religious, it's called "sacrifice" and "service."

The church could easily fund all missionary service from its investment returns. It chooses not to. The financial sacrifice is part of the commitment mechanism.

The Marriage Pipeline

This is where it gets insidious.

Before the 2012 age change, women couldn't serve missions until 21. This created a social dynamic where women who wanted to serve missions had to delay marriage - and in Mormon culture, that's significant. A 21-year-old woman returning from a mission at 22.5 was "older" by Mormon dating standards, where many women marry at 19-21.

When the age dropped to 19 in 2012, women could serve and return by 20.5 - still prime marriage age in Mormon culture.

Now at 18, women can serve and return by 19.5.

Here's the pattern:

Women will now return from missions younger than men do.

In a culture that still heavily emphasizes early marriage and motherhood as women's primary roles, this has predictable effects:

• Women lose the "I'm preparing for/serving a mission" buffer against marriage pressure
• They return at 19-20, immediately facing "so when are you getting married?" pressure
• They have less time for education or career exploration before the marriage push begins
• The mission itself reinforces traditional gender roles and church commitment

The church statement explicitly noted that missions remain "optional" for women while being a "priesthood responsibility" for men. Women still serve shorter missions (18 months vs. 24 months). The structural inequality remains. This change just removes one of the few socially acceptable reasons women had to delay marriage.

"Revelation" That Follows Demographics

The church frames this as revelation with President Oaks receiving divine guidance. But notice the pattern:

2012: Church lowers ages to 18 (men) and 19 (women)
Result: Applications double within days. Women missionaries jump from 12% to nearly 30% of the missionary force.

2025: Church lowers women's age to 18
Context: One of new President Oaks' first major moves. 55 new missions announced. Church growth in traditional markets is stagnant.

The "revelation" consistently moves in the direction of institutional benefit:

• More missionaries = more recruitment
• Younger missionaries = more malleable, more committed
• Equal ages = removes a talking point about inequality

If this is revelation, God seems remarkably aligned with institutional growth metrics.

Compare this to revelations that cost the church something:

• Polygamy ended only under extreme federal pressure and threat of asset seizure
• Black members received priesthood in 1978 after decades of protest and right before Brazil temple opening (where determining "African lineage" would be impossible)
• LGBTQ+ members... still waiting for any revelation that costs the church socially conservative members

When "revelation" consistently benefits institutional interests and never requires genuine sacrifice from the institution, it starts to look less like divine guidance and more like strategic planning with religious branding.

What About the Sisters Serving Now?

There's another group I found myself wondering about: the young women currently in the mission field who had to wait until 19.

How does this announcement land for them?

Some will likely genuinely rejoice that their younger sisters in the faith won't have to wait that extra year. The church will highlight these reactions as the selfless missionaries who are just happy the work is moving forward.

But others might feel something more complicated:

• Cheated - "I had to wait a year. I put off school, watched my friends leave, wondered if I was making the right choice. And now they just... changed it?"
• Invalidated - "Was the rule ever actually important? If God wanted women to serve at 18, why did I have to wait?"
• Questioning - "If this policy could change so easily, what else might change? What other sacrifices was I asked to make that weren't actually necessary?"

This is the hidden cost of presenting policy changes as revelation. When the rule was 19, it wasn't framed as "an administrative decision we might revisit." It was presented as the Lord's standard. Young women who wanted to leave at 18 were told to be patient, to trust in God's timing, to use that year to prepare.

Now, with a signature from the First Presidency, God's timing has apparently changed.

The faithful response is to celebrate continuing revelation. But somewhere in the mission field right now, there's a 19-year-old sister missionary doing the math, realizing she could have been here a year ago, wondering why she had to wait when her younger sister won't.

The church won't acknowledge this tension. To do so would be to admit that "revelation" sometimes looks indistinguishable from policy adjustment and that real people bear real costs while waiting for policies to catch up with societal expectations.

What "More Options" Actually Means

The church says this gives women "more options and flexibility."

Let's examine what options Mormon women actually have:

Option 1: Serve a mission at 18, return at 19.5, face immediate marriage pressure, marry young, have children, be a stay-at-home mother as church leaders consistently counsel

Option 2: Don't serve a mission, face questions about your faithfulness, marry young, have children, be a stay-at-home mother

Option 3: Pursue education/career, delay marriage, face constant social pressure and concern from family and ward members about your "priorities," possibly serve a mission later but be "older" when you return

Option 4: Leave the church (but lose your entire social network, possibly family relationships, and community)

The "option" of serving a mission at 18 instead of 19 isn't expanding women's choices in any meaningful sense. It's just adjusting the timing of the pipeline.

Real options would look like:

• Women holding priesthood leadership roles
• Equal mission lengths
• No social penalty for choosing education/career over early marriage
• Women's voices equally weighted in church governance
• No worthiness interviews with male leaders about sexual behavior

Lowering the mission age doesn't give women more options. It gives the institution earlier access.

The Disparity They Didn't Fix

Notice what didn't change:

• Men serve 24 months, women serve 18 months
• Men are told it's their "priesthood responsibility," women are told it's "optional"
• Top leadership remains exclusively male
• Women still can't hold priesthood

When asked in 2012 why women's missions are shorter, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, "One miracle at a time."

Thirteen years later, the Salt Lake Tribune noted: "The sisters, it seems, will have to wait a little longer for that second miracle."

This is the pattern: make incremental changes that look like progress while preserving fundamental inequality. Celebrate each small step as evidence of continuing revelation while the structural barriers remain firmly in place.

A Personal Note

I served a mission. I believed I was doing God's work. I sacrificed 13 months of my life and thousands of my family's dollars. I genuinely thought I was helping people. I came home early under the auspice of needing help with depression.

The church talks about missions as "the opportunity of a lifetime" that bestows gifts of faith, testimony, and spiritual growth. My gifts were different. I returned with pneumonia-damaged lungs that have never fully recovered. I returned 30 pounds heavier, with stretch marks to prove it, because a companion thought it was funny to double-book dinner appointments and Polynesian hospitality doesn't take "no" for an answer (or at least people-pleasing patterns I learned before my mission said so). I returned without several of my missionary journals because weight restrictions forced me to mail them home, and they never arrived.

I returned wondering if my mission had done anybody any good, because it certainly has seldom felt that it did me much good.

My trainer accused me of faking pneumonia to get out of working. It took four nights of sleeping upright in a recliner, overcome with coughing fits every time I tried to lie down, before he believed I needed a doctor. Another companion's primary goal was to become "as massive as possible" He talked of wanting to weigh 300 pounds. One night after a visit to a member family and I engaged in some verbal taunting, he wanted to fight physically. These were the people I spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week with, in an environment I couldn't leave.

Prior to my mission, I could run almost indefinitely without getting tired. After, working out has been a chore. My weight and lung capacity have been sources of difficulty ever since. The physical damage was real. The psychological damage was worse.

I came home with feelings of uncertainty about how people would react when they found out I hadn't served the typical 24 months. Fortunately, my family and closest friends showed few signs of rejection. But my mission has never been and likely never will be something I would declare as "the best experience of my life." Rather, it was the beginning of a walk down a path that left me confused, lost, and seemingly unfit for the blessings I was told would come from walking the "gospel path."

When I see the church lowering the mission age for women, I don't see expanded options. I see the institution optimizing its pipeline: catching young people earlier, deepening commitment through sacrifice, and funneling them toward the outcomes the church wants. Lifelong membership, tithing, and in women's case, early marriage and large families.

The framing as "revelation" makes it sacred, unquestionable. But the pattern is institutional, predictable, and serves the church's interests far more clearly than it serves the young women being invited to sacrifice 18 months and thousands of dollars before their brains have finished developing.

I know what missions can cost. Not the $9,000 in fees but the real costs. Physical health. Mental health. Years of recovery. A sense that you failed at something you were told would be the defining experience of your life.

This isn't revelation. It's recruitment strategy with a spiritual veneer. And now they want to start even younger.