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I remember reading for the first time the stunning research showing the incredible influence a father has on his children. Over the course of my ministry, I have thought much about how we can help strengthen fathers. In all my research around this topic, it wasn’t until recently that I came across this idea that the single greatest harm to the spiritual formation of families in the Western world was the industrial revolution. As work shifted the family farm to urban factories, fathers began spending less time at home and began transferring primary spiritual leadership of their homes to their wives.
Up to that point, there was no separation of duties within the family. The husband and wife were partners in both the economics of their home as well as the more domestic tasks of child-rearing. What’s crazy is the Church let it happen. In her book Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey describes the role of fathers:
In the colonial period, the husband and father was regarded as the head of the household. … Dad was called to sacrifice his own interests—to be disinterested—in order to represent the interests of the whole. Husbands and fathers were not to be driven by personal ambition or self-interest but to take responsibility for the common good of the entire household.
Being a father was not a separate activity to come home to after a day at work; rather, it was an integral part of a man’s daily routine. Historical records reveal that colonial literature on parenting—like sermons and child-rearing manuals—were not addressed to mothers, as the majority are today. Instead, they were typically addressed to fathers. Fathers were considered the primary parent, and were held to be particularly important in their children’s religious and intellectual training.
As a result, the most striking feature of child-rearing manuals of the mid-nineteenth century is the disappearance of references to fathers. For the first time we find sermons and pamphlets on the topic of child-rearing addressed exclusively to mothers rather than to fathers or both parents. Men began to feel connected to their children primarily through their wives.
“Women took men’s place as the custodians of communal virtue,” Rotundo writes, but in doing so, they “were freeing men to pursue self-interest.” In other words, men were being let off the hook.
In short, instead of challenging the growing secularism among men, the church largely acquiesced—by turning to women. Churchmen seemed relieved to find at least one sphere, the home, where religion still held sway. Whereas traditional church teaching had held that fathers were responsible for their children’s education, in the early 1800s, says one historian, “New England ministers fervently reiterated their consensus that mothers were more important than fathers in forming ‘the tastes, sentiments, and habits of children,’ and more effective in instructing them.” As a result, “mothers increasingly took over the formerly paternal task of conducting family prayers.”[1] (Emphases added.)
We need godly women and godly mothers, but I agree with Pearcey: Our culture in general — and the Church in particular — has let men off the hook. Often our preaching is aimed at mothers and we expect them to translate it to fathers. In this path of least resistance, and we have hurt both the Church and the family.
Pearcey adds: “In terms of the father’s constant presence in the home, nineteenth-century America was actually closer to the world of Martin Luther than to our own. ‘When a father washes diapers and performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool,’ Luther wrote, ‘he should remember that God with all his angels and creatures is smiling .’”[2]
I have been guilty myself at times in decrying the feminization of the Church. I will be the first to admit I have given into the idea many times that women are the bastions of virtues and guys are the lucky recipients of said virtue. Too often, the Church has taken its parenting cue from the culture that says parenting is women’s work and dads get a pass. When this happens, who suffers? The whole family, especially our kids. If I am honest, I gear most of my “parental partnership plans” to mothers. This must change.
What also must change is our tone in how we train, educate and treat men. Men have committed many wrongs, and we should acknowledge them honestly. But in our right desire for justice, we must be sure to be specific in our condemnation. Rather than broadbrush the issue, we can specifically decry how certain men have shown indifference to parental responsibilities, completely abdicated their fatherly role and/or committed violence toward woman and children. But if we overgeneralize the issue, we will do damage that may take generations to recover from. We have seen that when men are demonized whole-cloth, they tend to withdraw in exactly the moments and places they need to engage . Women end up with more of the responsibility that was meant to be shared or even shouldered by men.
The Problem
The issue isn’t male leadership. The problem is sinful men leading sinfully. We need to address the shortcomings and sinful behavior that we see rather than demonize and further push men, as a category, away from their God-ordained responsibility to wives and children. The answer to the evils our society blames on sinful patriarchy isn’t radical feminism; it’s the recovery of biblical manhood and womanhood. Men and women must work together with the gifts God has given them to accomplish what God has called them to do.
True, biblical family ministry calls for both dads and moms to raise their kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord. So in our current cultural climate, we must ask these questions: How do we help dads engage at home? How do we help dads in their calling from Scripture? How do we change the deeply entrenched idea that raising children is only women’s work?
In our desire to see men and women functioning in the unique ways God has gifted them, we must return to how God sees the family unit as it functions best — not rejecting hundreds of years of orthodoxy because we are afraid of challenging the growing secularism in our culture that has affected every institution, including the Church.
The Solution
Men, be the father that God has called you to be. Many of us didn’t have a great example of biblical manhood in our earthly fathers. But that doesn’t mean you can’t faithfully pursue your God-given calling to love your children and point them to Christ. Being a godly dad comes from a place of understanding the heart of the Father who, while you were still a sinner, sent His only Son at grave cost to redeem you and restore relationship with you. God almighty has rescued you. He has adopted you into His family and given you the ability to call Him Abba, Father.
So dads, thank you for all you do. This Father’s Day and every day, don’t shrink back. Be the dad your kids need, God’s Word requires and God’s grace empowers.
Matt Markins, CEO of Awana, has written a heartwarming and beautifully illustrated story. Daddy, How Much Do You Love Me? tells the tender story of a father and his son and points children to the even greater love of their heavenly Father. It is a great reminder of the profound necessity of fatherhood. Order your copy here or wherever books are sold.
[1] Nancy Pearcey. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Crossway, 2008), 335, Kindle.
[2] Pearcey. Total Truth, 329, Kindle.
