Church History
Single Adults

Single Adults

Many Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century sought to improve society through organizations and programs. Participants in different organizations of the Church developed programs to fellowship and support single adult members that eventually grew into a single adult wards and stakes. In 1913, the Relief Society sponsored a home for young single women who came to Salt Lake City looking for work or lodging. The effort to provide shelter for potentially vulnerable women expanded in 1920 with the revival of the Beehive House, originally the residence of Brigham Young and his large family, as a dormitory for young single women.1 Around the same time, several fraternities and sororities for Latter-day Saints brought college students and returned missionaries into social groups that ran in parallel to the new “collegiate seminaries,” what became Institutes of Religion, that Church leaders established on some university campuses. Activity programs grew with the rising numbers of young adults attending college.2

group of young women

The Huntington Park, California, group of Gleaner Girls, an early association for single Latter-day Saint women, celebrating their annual banquet, 1930.

By the 1950s, Church leaders considered ways to integrate the ecclesiastical structure of wards and stakes with campus life. In 1956, the BYU Stake was formed primarily for unmarried young adults attending Brigham Young University. Its twelve wards soon accommodated students with young families and maintained most of the same organizations found in traditional wards, such as Sunday School and Primary. Away from college campuses, other stakes hosted wards organized primarily for single adults.3

As campus-affiliated fellowshipping organizations flourished, Church leaders in the 1970s recognized ways single adults of all ages could benefit from a ministry tuned to their needs, interests, and concerns. Many unmarried adults relayed feelings of isolation from participating in a community that often referenced one’s married status.4 A woman widowed during this time reflected later how attending Church was “really just not the same” for unmarried members.5 The Mutual Improvement Association (MIA) developed “M Men” and “Gleaner Girls” groups for young adult men and women. In 1972, efforts to correlate the MIA with priesthood quorums gave rise to a new program for single adults.6 In introducing this program, Elder James E. Faust recounted having heard single Latter-day Saints report feeling marginalized and discouraged. “We must begin by trying to reach the one,” he said. “We want all to feel that they belong to the Church.”7 Unmarried members ages 18 to 25 were grouped as “Young Single Adults” and those age 26 and older were grouped as “Special Interests.” Local bishops created family home evening groups for single members not living with their families of origin. In areas with enough young single adults, stake presidents and bishops sometimes organized Sunday School and Relief Society groups.8 As the number of young single adult (YSA) wards exceeded student wards in the early 21st century, student wards were retired. By 2016, young single adults, whether attending schools or not, participated in over 1,300 YSA units throughout the world.9

By 2021, the demographic outlook for adult Church members shifted toward a majority of them being single. As early as the 1980s, leaders had anticipated expanding YSA and Special Interests organizations to accommodate such a change. They carried out efforts in the following decades to refine fellowshipping and activity programs to better include and support single adults. In a 2021 Face to Face broadcast for single members over age 30, leaders from the Quorum of the Twelve and General Relief Society Presidency addressed the changing landscape of Church membership throughout the world. “Every member, no matter their circumstances,” said Sharon Eubank on the occasion, “has so much to contribute and we hope to better recognize this of members of the Church.”10

Related Topics: Seminaries and Institutes

  1. Natalie Kaye Rose, “‘Our Utah Girls’: Girls and Young Women in the Transitional Mormon Church” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 2016), 240–41.

  2. Laura Lee Smith, “The LDS ‘Greeks’: Lambda Delta Sigma and Sigma Gamma Chi,” Ensign, Sept. 1986, 27–31; By Study and Also by Faith: One Hundred Years of Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2015), 33–84; see Topic: Seminaries and Institutes. See also Thomas W. Simpson, American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

  3. R. Scott Lloyd, “Church’s First Student Stake Commemorated in Special Devotional,” Church News, Jan. 10, 2016, 3–4.

  4. Elizabeth J. Mott, “Singlehood,” in Claudia L. Bushman and Caroline Kline, eds., Mormon Women Have Their Say: Essays from the Claremont Oral History Collection (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 45–71.

  5. Mott, “Singlehood,” 51–52.

  6. “Ward M Man-Gleaner Council,” Priesthood Bulletin, Aug. 1972, 9–10; Rebecca de Schweinitz, “Holding on to the ‘Chosen Generation’: The Mormon Battle for Youth in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s,” in Patrick Q. Mason and John G. Turner, eds., Out of Obscurity: Mormonism since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 278–301.

  7. James E. Faust, in Conference Report, Apr. 1973, 112–15.

  8. “Meetings for Single Adult Women,” and “Guidelines for Young Adult Sunday School Classes,” Priesthood Bulletin, Oct. 1973, 2–3, 8–10. See Topic: Family Home Evening.

  9. Lloyd, “Church’s First Student Stake,” 3–4.

  10. “Single Adult Face to Face with Elder Andersen, Sister Bingham and Sister Eubank,” Newsroom, June 13, 2021, newsroom.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.