The Mormon church can't hold on to its young womenAre Mormons Losing Their Distinctiveness?

Mormons were known for high birth rates, early marriage and lifelong loyalty to the faith, but both retention and fertility are now falling fast.

Mormons have sometimes called themselves a peculiar people, and statistically they were: higher birth rates, earlier marriages, bigger families, and members who tended to stay for life.

The old patterns are caving in

Not anymore. In 2024, only about half of young people born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stayed in it, down from more than 80 percent in the 1980s. The marriage rate has dropped 10 percent since 2011. Over the past 40 years, annual recorded births per 1,000 members fell from 25 to five.

The Church's spokesperson points to record converts and growing worldwide participation. But the problem is big enough that the new leader, Dallin Oaks, issued a warning at conference: marriage and birth rates beat the U.S. average, yet they have declined significantly. 'We are a family Church,' he said.

Not just a Mormon problem

Behind it is a broader American shift: fewer babies, and people leaving religion across the board. Once a faith grows past a core of strong believers, its particular edges get sanded down — meatless Fridays, say — until it resembles mainstream Protestant culture. A historian of the faith calls this 'the long process of assimilation becoming more noticeable.'

Lower retention also has knock-on effects: fewer young people means fewer missionaries, and fewer members means the volunteer-run church leans on fewer shoulders.

Why young women leave first

Women are the hardest to keep. In 2025, fewer than 40 percent of 18-year-old girls stayed in the faith. Many leave because the Church is more conservative than they are, and many say they feel undervalued — only men hold the priesthood, and, as one scholar puts it, there is nowhere in the Church where a man reports to a woman on questions of final authority.

Leaders have noticed: women can now direct their ward's Sunday school, and the missionary age for women dropped from 19 to 18. But finishing a mission puts them back around age 20, and the next item on the checklist is marriage and children.

Even those who want big families struggle: home prices in Utah, Idaho and Arizona have risen above the national average since 2020, making two incomes a necessity. Members once went to chapel four times a week; now most come only on Sundays.