By the same token, a woman’s righteous and appropriate desires to grow, to develop, and to magnify her talents—desires strongly reinforced by current feminist teachings—also have their extreme manifestations, which can lead to attempts to preempt priesthood leadership, to the advocacy of ideas out of harmony with Church doctrine, or even to the abandonment of family responsibilities.

"Being a mother and nurturer"

The various roles of women have not decreased a woman’s responsibility. While these roles are challenging, the central roles of wife and mother remain in the soul and cry out to be satisfied. It is in the soul to want to love and be loved by a good man and to be able to respond to the God-given, deepest feelings of womanhood—those of being a mother and nurturer.

Joseph Smith made many prophetic statements that last to our day. Some of them seemed preposterous at the time. Lillie Freeze recalls one such. "He said the time would come when none but the women of the Latter-day Saints would be willing to bear children."

In large measure this is already happening today-before our eyes. He said on another occasion that the Saints would be driven and would suffer, but they would go to the Rocky Mountains and there become a great and mighty people. Other recollections of that prophecy do not say a great and "mighty" but a great and "wealthy" people who would be tried more with riches than they ever had been with poverty. This too is happening before our eyes.

One can refuse to bear (beget) children. And one can refuse to bear (love and nurture) begotten children. Both refusals are epidemic in our time.

By divine design, men and women are intended to progress together toward perfection and a fulness of glory. Because of their distinctive temperaments and capacities, males and females each bring to a marriage relationship unique perspectives and experiences. The man and the woman contribute differently but equally to a oneness and a unity that can be achieved in no other way. The man completes and perfects the woman and the woman completes and perfects the man as they learn from and mutually strengthen and bless each other.

Many men though they’ve lived with a woman for years don't seem to have the faintest idea about what a woman needs and how she could be inspired to be made perfect.

The house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman.

Let every mother understand that if she does anything to diminish her children’s father or the father’s image in the eyes of the children, it may injure and do irreparable damage to the self-worth and personal security of the children themselves. How infinitely more productive and satisfying it is for a woman to build up her husband rather than tear him down. You women are so superior to men in so many ways that you demean yourselves by belittling masculinity and manhood.

"[T]he future is with women"

To call women the weaker sex is a libel: it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women.

It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being. Separate, she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he, her softness, sensibility and acute discernment. Together, they are most likely to succeed in the world.