September 24th, 2025, 3pm MDT
“We, us, the Council of 12 Apostles of the Presidency and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have solely declared that marriage between men and women is appointed by God, and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of his children.”
Over the past 20 years, Jenet Erickson has researched, studied and taught the deep basic truths found in nine paragraphs (approximately 600 words) called “Family: A Declaration to the World.”
“I think it’s very beautiful,” Erickson said of the declaration. For many years, Ericson has taught a class called “Eternal Family” at Brigham Young University. This explores the principles taught in the “Family Declaration.”
As a fellow at both the Wheatley Institute and the Family Institute, Erickson has delved deep into academic research and policy, including marriage and family.
“Every time I read or read (the declaration), I marvel at what it offers,” she said on an episode of the church news podcast.
But Erickson admitted that there was a time when she believed and promoted the truth found in that prophetic document, but struggled to see herself and her situation reflected in her teachings.
“We talked about motherhood for a long time before becoming a mother,” Erickson said. For years she had been eager to become a wife and mother, but “it seems I couldn’t make it happen. If I couldn’t go through it, I didn’t know exactly where it would fit in my marriage and motherhood plans.”
Some individuals may struggle with marriage, divorce, infertility, broken relationships, abuse, parent-child or marital relationships, or struggling with issues of gender or sexuality, if experiences appear to be inconsistent with the principles outlined in the Declaration.
The reality is that Ericson said that “family declarations” are not about perfect families. “It’s about redemption by Christ.”
“Family is an eternal story.”
“All humans – men and women are made of God’s image, each of them the beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, each with the divine nature and destiny.”
Throughout her career, Erickson said she has seen hundreds, if not thousands of studies in support of the principles taught in the Declaration. Families are important to individuals, cultures, nations and society. Still, the declaration and the words of the modern prophet offer an expanded view, she said. The family system is not just about mortality. It will be important forever.
The family said, “The reason we are – we have fathers and mothers, and their job is to allow us to live in the quality of the relationship we have as fathers and mothers. So it’s like it’s planned for this reality of the family.
The “Family Declaration” shows “the sacred design of heavenly parents for who we are and our growth and development.”
But no one will have the perfect fatal family, relationship, or experience, Erickson said. They all break and break, as everything is affected by death, mistakes and sin. “But we all belong to the perfect eternal family. We all have divinity-based identities with the possibility that our parents will become everything.”
Erickson spoke about a well-known Washington, DC analyst diagnosed with terminal cancer. People will say she is DC’s most talented analyst and writer, but even so, her last writing post did nothing about her career. It was about her 9- and 11-year-old children that she helped her get Halloween ready from her sick bed.
“What it says to us is, at the end of it all, what we long for around us is these relationships we’ve built,” Erickson said.
“He’s a waymaker.”
“A sacred plan of happiness allows family relationships to last beyond the tomb. The sacred rituals and covenants available in sacred temples allow individuals to return to God’s existence and allow families to unite forever.”
Individuals cherish the “immense privilege of being deeply connected to other humans” and recognize that God’s children are “designed for eternal and deep relationships,” but they acknowledge that these relationships are “not easy.”
These close and intimate relationships “break us,” Erickson said. “In a sense, it is designed to allow us to experience a broken heart and a spirit of repentance with the deepest form of intimacy. We make it very imperfect. We will make our children fail.
Two years ago, during a dedicated broadcast to students at BYU -Pathway Worldwide, Erickson shared how she faced fertility when she finally got married. When she was ultimately blessed with two children, she struggled with what she felt was her weakness as a mother.
Everything will experience a gap from ideals, she explained. That gap can only be bridged by faith and trust in the Savior.
In many cases, the Lord invites individuals to build hopes and dreams on the altar.
Through the Savior, “The pain we knew would be very resiliently restored with the bloating of joy, only to us in our adoration of God’s goodness. That is him. And along the way we learned a lot about the ways of charity, how to be meek, how to be a man full of Christ.
The imperfections that individuals experience in their families and relationships drive them to the Savior. “We have been given to the Savior who has given us the power to turn us into an eternal love being. All I know is the Father, our mother, and love, God is love, and that heavenly life is perfect love and intimate life.”
That’s what the declaration gives to the world. “Through the tone sin of Jesus Christ, we can all take part in sacred rituals and covenants that bring us back to God’s existence and bind us to eternal relationships forever.”
