Before my wife Becky and I married, we were agreed that day care was not an option for our future children; neither was a nanny or in-home care provided by a third party. I don't believe this decision is easy or preferable for everyone, but we decided together that one of us should care for our children during the day.
Of course, it is easy to write "one of us" in retrospect. At the time, we assumed Becky would be the one staying home with our children. Then our first daughter was born. Becky had a good, well-paying job that allowed us to purchase our first home, that provided health insurance, and that supplied enough financial margin for us to begin saving for the future. I had graduated college just six months previous, an English major with primarily creative skills and experience mostly in Christian ministry and menial labor (custodial work, primarily).
When our daughter was born we were faced with a choice. We could sacrifice financial security by having Beck come home and me go to work. We could sacrifice our sense of familial security by both of us going to work and having third party care of our daughter. Or we could sacrifice preconceived notions and risk the criticism of others by maintaining financial security in having my wife continue working outside the home and maintaining familial security in having our daughter's father work inside the home.
It was not an easy choice and, to be honest, it is not an ideal arrangement. Seven years later my wife still is the primary breadwinner for our household and I have worked both as a writer and as a minister, making some money (but not enough to support our family) and serving as the primary caregiver for our two daughters. This has been a sacrifice for us, because my wife's desire has been to be a stay-at-home mom and my desire has been to support my family financially, but in the meantime we have learned that it is okay to sacrifice our desires for the good of our family. This is called servanthood and the Bible commends it.
Others who read the Bible, however, do not. The number of stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) in America is rising every year, and this includes inside the Church, but acceptance and regard is vastly different inside and out. I received an e-mail last week from a man whose church is threatening him with church discipline for "making his wife work" and for being a SAHD. It was painful to read and reminded me not just of the sideways glances I receive from older Christian men who hear me say I've been a SAHD but also of the time a blogger called me a woman for working inside the home.
So what's the deal? Is it wrong? Is it a sin for a father to be the primary caregiver for his children while their mother serves as the primary breadwinner?
Naturally I have more than a few thoughts on this matter, but I should lay my cards out on the table to put them in context. Some of them may surprise you.
1. I Am a Complementarian What this means is that I affirm what I see as the Bible's distinction between men and women, and how this distinction applies to their roles in the sphere of the church and home. It is not popular these days to be a complementarian, but I am not so much interested in being popular as I am in being biblical. I believe that God has placed the husband as head over his wife in the same way that Christ is over the Church. I believe that husbands are to lead their homes spiritually and that wives are to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22-24). This biblical mandate has led to rampant abuse within the home (with dictatorial husbands and subservient wives), but in a gospel-centered household, it really means that husbands incarnate Christlikeness in service and sacrifice and that wives, like the Church, benefit from sanctification (Eph. 5:25-27).
2. I Do Not Believe SAHDs and Working Moms is Ideal Please note that I am not saying it is unbiblical or sinful. I'm only saying that the normative biblical arrangement for a two-parent household and the normative temperament and spiritual makeup of men and women naturally converge to where fathers working outside the home and mothers working inside the home is the ideal arrangement. I will go on record as saying this applies to my own situation. Although my wife and I believe we are operating within our giftings and talents and competencies, we also believe that we are generally operating outside of our hearts. But we have accepted this arrangement for the good of our family, not for the fulfillment of ourselves. Moreover, when I say this arrangement is ideal, I do not mean to say that it is a universal truism or, still less, a biblical command, as so many of the critics of SAHDs do. I only mean to say that households where mothers are fulfilled personally by working outside the home and fathers are fulfilled personally by working inside the home is not the norm. To repeat: I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's not the norm.
That is where I'm coming from. It is probably not the typical approach of the Christian defender of SAHDs, at least the most vocal, who tend to argue from an egalitarian perspective on gender roles and from a postmodernist view of biblical interpretation.
A Biblical Framework
1. "Keepers At Home" In Titus 2 we find one of the primary references to wives as "keepers of the home." Titus 2:3-5 encourages older women in the Church to train younger women to be "busy at home" (NIV) or "working at home" (ESV). The general thrust of this text indicates that the home is the primary sphere of care for a wife and mother. This is quite in keeping with a complementarian assertion of the household ideal. But it is quite a leap to read into this brief clause a universal prohibition of women working outside the home.
Even the usual go-to complementarian secondary text affirms this nuance. In "The Family and the Church," George W. Knight III's contribution to Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (eds. John Piper and Wayne Grudem), Knight writes:
Some Christians have interpreted Titus 2:5 . . . to mean that any work outside the home is inappropriate for the wife and mother. But the fact that wives should care for their home does not necessarily imply that they should not work outside the home, any more than the statement that an "overseer" in the church should "manage his own household" (1 Tim. 3:4-5) means that he cannot work outside the home. In neither case does the text say that!
This comparison is a helpful observation, because the typical tack taken by critics of SAHDs involves enlarging this admonition into a universal stipulation. But as Knight points out, if being a diligent homemaker prohibits wives from working outside the home, then being a diligent manager of the household ought to prohibit husbands likewise.
Moreover, the pick-and-choose cultural application is in play here as well. Critics of SAHDs and working moms don't mind lifting this admonition to a culture in which wives pretty much couldn't support their families financially but there is more said in the New Testament about women wearing headcoverings in church than staying at home. Only a select few churches and denominations still adhere to that stipulation. Certainly at, say, Mars Hill Church in Seattle, where Pastor Mark Driscoll and the elders are critical of SAHDs to the point of threatening church discipline against practitioners in their congregation, they do not similarly threaten discipline to violators of 1 Corinthians 11:3-10, where the admonition to female headcoverings is more extensive than the brief reference to "keeping home" and actually flows from an appeal to the creation order for male headship (v. 3). In addition 1 Corinthians 11:14 says long hair on a man is shameful. Would MHCS enforce this rule as well? And if not, why not?
The thrust of "keepers at home," in context and spirit, is that women are designed to have the home as their primary concern, and that when other concerns drown this one out, their concerns ought to be recalibrated (in this instance by older women).
The Greek word in use there, oikouros, has connotations of "bewaring" of the home, of protecting the home, of managing family affairs. It ought to be connected to and tempered by Proverbs 31:27's telling us that the virtuous woman "watches over the affairs of the household." All of this is to say that it is natural and good and encouraged for a wife and mother to have her chief concern be for her home, that it is a welcoming and hospitable and nurturing and godly environment for her family and the fellowship of believers. It does not automatically mean this can only be accomplished as a stay-at-home mom
2. Proverbs 31 I really like when critics of working moms refer to Proverbs 31 as a template for biblical womanhood. I agree, it is the best place to turn for a profile of what a wife and mother should be and do. Unfortunately for critics of working moms, the Proverbs 31 woman is doing an awful lot of work, including work for pay outside the confines of the home.
What we should all agree on, however, is that the Proverbs 31 woman is not doing this work to find personal fulfillment or to "further her career," but to provide for her home and support her family.
3. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 "If a man doesn't work, he shall not eat." Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? But the context of this verse is not a husband or father not earning a living, but rather lazy men in the church who still expect to benefit from the community's having "all things in common" (per Acts 2). This is not an admonition to husbands to earn a paycheck so much as it is a condemnation of laziness. And as any SAHD will tell you, what we do is hard work!
But in any event, if a SAHD has adopted that role out of laziness, indifference to his ability to support his family, or apathy towards his wife's burnout or disillusionment with working outside the home, he is a lazy jerk and ought to be rebuked.
4. 1 Timothy 5:8 This verse is really the linchpin, and I imagine it is the real source of the impetus to "discipline" SAHDs in the church. Indeed, it was on the basis of his interpretation of this passage that Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee declared that SAHDs are going to hell. The verse reads:
If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (NIV)
Everything in this verse hangs on what it means to provide. To begin with, the context is about taking care of widows. It doesn't really even have a direct connection to husbands and wives and children. It is about taking care of our elders.
Secondly, if we're going to decontextualize it and make it about husbands providing for their wives and children, we should at least admit that a) not all provision is monetary, and b) not all men are able to provide. Setting aside husbands whose job prospects earn less than their wives, let's consider the disabled. Or the unemployed during a deep economic depression. There are actually some husbands who literally cannot support their families financially. Are they worse than unbelievers?
Sliding back to the first caveat, let's remember that not all provision is monetary provision. As I delve into the synthesis of this biblical framework in the next installment, I hope to lay out a deeper, more substantive, and -- most importantly -- more Christlike focus for what it means for a husband and father to provide for his family. Providing a roof overhead and meals on the table and money for education is indeed part of a man's charge. But providing those things isn't as cut and dry as the American nuclear family ideal would always have us think. To be biblical isn't always to be the all-American dad, but to be a provider and Christlike emptier of self always is biblical.
More next time . . .
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
Great article. For 10 years, I was the working parent and my husband was a stay-at-home dad. I brought home the paycheck, but he was clearly in charge of taking care of the family. When I couldn't work anymore due to illness, he cheerfully went back into the workforce. We liked the arrangement that we had at the time and completely believe that we were where God wanted us to be. Right now, our situation has changed, so we've adjusted as well. Anyway, thanks for the article. I definitely agree that a husband providing for his family has far more to do with attitude than who leaves the house in the morning. Thanks.
I enjoyed your thorough parsing of what the Bible actually says (and doesn't say) about SAHD's. But my overwhelming feeling is one of sadness that you actually even had to write this article in the first place. Except in a very extreme case where a man might be REFUSING to lift a finger to provide financially for his family, I can't even see any reason why this should matter to church leadership. When will christian church leadership stop 'straining at gnats and swallowing camels' in what they get all upset about??
I can't help but think that these same leaders have never been in a place where they struggled financially or have had to make hard decisions about what was best their families. Maybe they have always been so nicely supported by the tithes and offerings of their people that they have lost sight of their primary function, which is to MINISTER. Whatever the reason, it just comes off as very harsh and judgemental.
I actually think most of these folks are well-meaning believers who are only trying to be firm in what they believe the Bible teaches here. The irony, I think, is that they are actually more colored by culture in thinking a decontextualized 1 Timothy 5:8 supports the prototypical American nuclear family than the recipients of their criticism who are often trying to embody Jesus' service and sacrifice.
It's also interesting that they'd consider a man staying home to take care of kids and housework lazy, but they wouldn't say that about a woman. At least, I don't think they would. :-)
I will have more to say on this stuff next week, particularly about having a Bible-shaped view of manhood and masculinity, which is more manly than our culture would have us think but probably less "macho" than some of these critics of SAHDs would like.
Jared, this is an excellent article and I commend you for your concern as to what the Bible teaches and means concerning the subject. Unfortunately, I would not try to convince you in either direction because it has too many unknowns. You are right that the Bible definitely teaches that it is a man's place to supply the family and a woman's place to tend the home and children. As a general rule, this is far better since men are normally somewhat stronger and capable of hard work, while women are adept at household chores. Plus a woman's tender touch with children cannot help but be beneficial to the child. And I can see that you understand that.
But, you have some factors on your side. If, for instance a man is disabled, what then? I don't think anyone would say that it woulod be wrong for a woman to work and do what she could to feed the family.
I'm from the old school and when we married in 1955, things were somewhat different. The economy was shaped where a man could earn enough to feed his family without both parties working and my wife and I agreed that we would prefer to take that route. We both were working at the time but as soon as she became pregnant with our first child she quit work. I managed to keep our heads above water until our youngest was in high school and then, my wife returned to work, whenever it was convenient for us. We lived pretty tough at times, but I think it helped us and strengthened us. After 53 years of marriage we love each other dearly and dread the day one of us has to leave the other. I really wouldn't change my approach, if all things were equal. But they are not. Our economy is geared such as to almost require two to work, or at best to choose as you and yours are doing. And although I prefer the life that we lived, I would not condemn yours in any way. But most of all, I could never adjust to full time domestic work. I would rather dig ditches or plow a mule. :o) God bless you and yours.
I do believe the times work against family cohesiveness, but I am optimistic that subversive allegiance to Jesus can do wonders for Christian families.
» left by Patrick Lynch from Raleigh, NC (1 year 111 days ago.)
So I asked my dad (he's 77, most conservative dude ever, grew up poor, farming in Massachusetts) what he thought about this issue - and he busted out laughing, and said "those are people who don't pray"
He'd never imagined that anybody could believe God would think it a SIN to take care of your kids however you have to.
» left by Wayne Larson from Des Moines, IA (1 year 111 days ago.)
I posted this comment on a different blog, but I'll post it here too. I think it strengthens your point regarding Titus 2:3-5.
I find it interesting that Mark Driscol's wife misquotes Titus 2:5 in making her point. Paul gave these general directives in order that "the Word of God may not be reviled." Paul is not saying that they are reviling the Word by any sort of misconduct, rather he is talking about the Word being reviled by the public. Rhetorically, he's using the categories of honor and shame. This is made more explicit in verse 8.
The irony here is that Paul is appealing to the cultural expectations for household management by the general public within the late Roman empire. The larger point is that, while there are certainly biblical norms in various lifestyle decisions we happen to make, we must conduct ourselves in a way that our lifestyles themselves do not become a stumbling block to the gospel.
Wayne, that's a good addition to the interpretative work.
And I especially appreciate your final line. You're right: We must remember it is the gospel we mean to make much of, that it is God we aim to glorify, not "the American family."
I can identify with your SAHD situation, as it is mine also. I really enjoyed the article. You laid out the discussion very thoroughly, and I believe your view is balanced and biblical. This is the kind of manhood education that I teach at our local jail. May be you and I should co-author a book on SAHDs. We use your articles on SAHDs plus my diary as a SAHD. Let me know if you're interested, man. Anyway, great article. ~mogama~
» left by Anonymous (12 hours 40 minutes ago.) New Comment!
Thank you man. I was seriously freaked out when I heard a Pastor and his wife who I completely respect rip the stay home dad situation apart. I was completely distressed about it and rushed to scripture hoping I wasn't committing some major sin for allowing my wife to earn money at work outside the home when I by circumstance have to be at home raising my boy (which is a life changing experience). Thanks for clarifying the scripture mention in your article. I must admit though I find myself second guessing the afore mentioned Pastor and his wife now when they make comments about scripture.
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