On the perfect smile

As I said above, I don’t really believe the theory to begin with, but…assuming you are correct, then I will go with the following:

A large portion of dental students once desired to be medical students. They did not become so for a variety of reasons: Changes in preferences, bad test scores, too much time in school for an MD, etc…All of these things lead me to the following (very cynical) hypothesis, which I believe IS supported by the numbers:

(With no offense intended to any dentists out there reading this):

Many Mormons, especially recently returned missionaries, impose on themselves a silly requirement of making a career out of “helping” people. Thus, they choose medical school. However, not everyone gets into medical school, and some realize that far enough in advance to avoid taking excess courses in biology, chemistry, and anatomy and become something useful (like, say, economists).

However, for the remaining group, all of their time is spent preparing for medical school, until they realize they’re going to be in school until the 2nd coming, and their new fiance wants a home with a two (or three!) car garage, and the famous Mormon guilt-over-not-being-a-good-provider sets in and makes them reconsider decade-long poverty. And then they have a baby…and they realize that rotations with kids will mean that they’re bad fathers (not really, but this is Mormon self-loathing at its finest), and they further question medical school. But because they’ve learned nothing that is useful outside of medicine, they’re stuck…until that one glorious day when someone points out that dentists earn a (relatively) comparable wage, and only go to school for 4 years…with NO rotations.

All it takes is a quick self-convincing that they’re still “serving” people, and Boom! They get to be righteous husbands and fathers, blessings to the community, and incur half of the debt (see my earlier comment).

Voila: Mormon dentists.

I don’t know how reliable the cynical case theory is in reality; My experience, while only anecdotal, is that almost every Mormon dentist I’ve ever known started out wanting to be a doctor. I’m certainly curious to hear if other people can rebut or confirm this.

Less cynically, if you look at the originating article on this (the What Mormons Like article) it contains commentary from the author and comments later with confusion about the “30% of the class was LDS, but only 1% of the population was LDS” type of phenomenon. The fact is, a simple look into the emphasis LDS culture places on education will reveal ‘disproportionate” numbers of LDS people in nearly every program across the spectrum–dentistry, law, animal science, literature, and so on. Thus, to see if Mormons really like dentistry that much–and not just graduate school (or higher incomes!)–you should look not at the general population vs the number of LDS dental students, but the proportion of LDS grad students in dentistry.

My dentist is not only LDS but lives in our ward as well. I am just grateful that it is my dentist that lives in our ward and not my OB/GYN.

My experience is that there is a saturation of LDS dentists in the area where I live. I literally receive mailings with pictures of dentists and their families (all smiling with their beautiful teeth, of course ) several times a week promising me free teeth whitening until I die if I will let them be my dentist. Not only are there a lot of LDS dentists (in my experience), but there are a lot of them trying to set up their practice in the same place as well.

I think the fact that dentists make good money, have “family-friendly” hours they work (except in the rare occasion they have a true emergency),and the fact that a beautiful smile is much more important to people these days (take a look at your grandparent’s teeth or even your parent’s teeth (if they still have their real teeth)…. they don’t have the perfectly straight, white smile that many of the younger generation do), makes it even that much more attractive to the LDS man. I could be wrong but it seems more people are seeking out dentists for services these days than they were in the past strictly for aesthetic reasons alone.

I have to agree, at least from my experience, that there are a lot of LDS dentists….and they all live by me!

I don’t know why there are so many dentists, but Utahns do seem to have far higher standards for dental perfection, so maybe it’s the proliferation of dentists or maybe the other way around (supply creates demand?). In PA, my dentist always told me what nice teeth I had compared to everyone else he worked on. Then I moved to UT, and immediately, I had several dentists and technicians crowded around my mouth saying things like: “Oh, yeah, we’re going to have to break the palate and start all over here.”

I second the “second” time with braces due to poor retainer usage. Maybe there is a high number of dentists among Mormons because Mormons don’t take care of their teeth properly (at least, for the data sample of me, Andrew, my DW).

Been giving some thought to this whole professionalisation of the church thing.Do we have plumbers any more?My son is no rocket scientist and would make a perfectly good tradesman,but i fear that he will learn from church that trades are less acceptable to the Lord than professions and consequently that he has no place in mormonism-should the fancy take him.Are we becoming class ridden?We’re now seeing unemployed returned missionaries who could be making a perfectly good contribution to society who will not accept work that does not require a ten year commitment to education when they could be establishing and providing for a family.Someone’s got to collect the trash,and s/he’s as good as me.

I’ll vouch for statistics quoted by others. I live in a fairly new neighborhood on the west side of the Salt Lake valley, so my demographics are a little skewed because we have a lot of students, police officers, and some blue-collar types as well. But among the professionals in my ward, we have three dentists (including the current and former EQ presidents), five accountants, one lawyer (he’s just starting out and I’d imagine he’ll move to the east side as soon as he can), and several general business types. What I think is interesting is that my profession has many if not all of the perks enjoyed by doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, etc. but I’m the only LDS consultant I know of. Maybe it’s the road warrior aspect…

I think some of the main reasons are that you can support a large family (most dentists make considerably more than the average physician), you have a job with regular hours that you control (you are your own boss usually) which allows you to take important callings and be there for your family (physicians are on call a lot, and especially surgeons, are gone on weekends and at night), and you are a respected professional in the community. There is also professional satisfaction in that you are doing something for individuals that they need done. The main drawback as I see it, is that it looks terribly boring, and people cringe to think of seeing you professionally.

The more educated people are, the less judgmental and open-minded they are.

Fwiw, some of the most judgmental, narrow-minded people I’ve met in my life were HIGHLY educated.

#20
AMEN RAY! That has been my experience as well.

Andrew:

Word. What is your bishop’s name?

There are quite a few dentists in my stake. I live in California, and thinking of the dental groups along the main street of our town, I’d say about fifteen percent of the dentists are mormon. My dentist is LDS but I didn’t know that till I’d been going to him for awhile.

I just stumbled upon this post. Consider this angle: My Dad is a dentist and a majority of my family (brothers, uncles, brother-in-laws, cousins, etc.) are in the dental or medical profession. (My degree is in history, but I attempted pre dental.) My Dad, a convert with no medical “heritage” started all of this. It might just run in the family. Things grow exponentially. We’d all have been Southern Baptist farmers if it weren’t for a single fateful decision 60 years ago.
My Dad chose dentistry long before there was the “dental phenomena” in Mormon culture, but his reason for doing so may also explain why he had joined the Church: Self-reliance. He wanted to be his own boss, to make his own life-decisions. You can’t do that working for someone else, and you can’t do that when you’re poor (as I have sadly found out first-hand). Dentistry is the perfect answer. And the Church is an answer, in some ways, too: universal priesthood authority, doctrine of direct revelation, emphasis on personal growth (learning) and progression, common consent (at least in theory), and diffused responsibility (callings) –all of which you don’t get in other churches (or at least not as much). So, it’s a personality type within us that may make both dentistry and Mormonism attractive.
This theory probably won’t hold much water if you were to shine anything more than a candle on it, but it might explain a little.