This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A note to any Mormon homemakers who post their daily doings on a blog: Your dispatches of domestic bliss have become an obsession to many non-Mormon web surfers.
Writer Emily Matchar — who describes herself as "your standard-issue late-20-something childless overeducated atheist feminist" — cops to it in an essay on Salon.com, admitting that she reads, on average, a half-dozen Mormon blogs a day (such as Nat the Fat Rat, pictured above).
Matchar writes that, though she would never want to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (her husband is a former member), "these blogs are weirdly 'uplifting.' To read Mormon lifestyle blogs is to peer into a strange and fascinating world where the most fraught issues of modern living — marriage and child rearing — appear completely unproblematic."
Of course, it may not necessarily be so. Matchar cites the fact that Utah leads the nation in prescription antidepressant use — which is attributable in part to the pressure placed on Mormon moms and wifes to be perfect.