Tag Archives: Courting

Commentary

What is the value proposition for a Christian man considering marriage?

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Basically, I think that my job as husband and father is:

  1. to make sure that I focus on being a good protector, provider and moral spiritual leader by making good decisions and setting aside time to learn how to defend my views on religion and morality
  2. to make sure that I am aware of areas where God has an interest, like the abortion debate, the marriage debate, the debate over the origin of the universe, the debate over biological origins, the debate over free markets vs secular socialism, the debate over religious liberty and family vs fascism, etc.
  3. to make sure that I am aware of the skills, arguments and evidence that are related to these trouble areas
  4. to make sure that I assess the skills and capabilities of my future children
  5. to choose a wife who is aware of these problem areas and the relevant skills
  6. assess the skills and capabilities of the children
  7. communicate to them the areas where Christianity is under fire
  8. demonstrate to the children how much these areas matter to their parents
  9. together with my future wife, to steer the future children into degrees and careers that will move the ball forward in these areas.
  10. act intentionally to ensure that they achieve influence in the problem areas as effectively as possible

I don’t think that it is Dad’s job to just roll over and pay for a wife and several children unless the wife agrees with me to try and achieve something together that we could not achieve as singles. I.e. – I think that if we have a child, then we should NOT be as happy if the child is a poet as we would be if the child is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or William Lane Craig. I think that some things that a child can be are more influential than others, and that children should be jointly steered in the direction of being influential and effective as a way of making the marriage count for the Lord. And I think the Bible supports the idea of stewardship and making the most of gifts and blessings.

So I don’t feel that I am obligated to marry unless I can foresee that my wife is serious about making the marriage, family and children count for God. If I don’t foresee a return on the investment, which is quite risky for the man given the feminism and socialism in the laws and tax codes, then wouldn’t I be better off just working and giving the money away to Christian speakers for apologetics speaking and debating? Children typically cost $250,000 and stay-at-home moms are expensive too. Is it worth it to have a wife who doesn’t agree with me on the purpose of the marriage and the parenting? Am I supposed to hand her hundreds of thousands of dollars and get nothing at all back to show for it?

I think the fundamental question is this: What is the purpose of marriage for men, and how should a prospective wife present herself to a man who wants the marriage and the children to count for the Lord? How can she show that she is aware of what he is planning and show that she has taken steps to help him to achieve results for God, instead of just making herself happy? How can she show that there a difference between a child being a good student and a bad student? How can she show that there a difference between writing poetry and being an ADF lawyer?

Are some directions more likely to have an influence on the culture than others? Is the role of parents to produce a return for the blessings that God has given them, or are they just supposed to let children do whatever makes them happy, so that the parents will be happy and be their children’s friends? I think what it boils down to is this: should Christian parents steer their children to be William Lane Craig or Michele Bachmann on purpose, or should they just let them be poets if that’s what makes the children happy?

Commentary

How important are biological fathers for healthy child development?

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Some statistics on the importance of biological fathers from Fathers.com.

Excerpt:

Some fathering advocates would say that almost every social ill faced by America’s children is related to fatherlessness. Six are noted here. As supported by the data below, children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.

For a summary, I’ll just list one fact from each of the six categories they listed.

1. Poverty

Fact:

– Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor. In 2002, 7.8% of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 38.4% of children in female-householder families.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002, P20-547, Table C8. Washington, D.C.: GPO 2003.

2. Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Fact:

– The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. Survey on Child Health. Washington, DC, 1993.

3. Physical and Emotional Health

Fact:

– Unmarried mothers are less likely to obtain prenatal care and more likely to have a low birthweight baby. Researchers find that these negative effects persist even when they take into account factors, such as parental education, that often distinguish single-parent from two-parent families.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Service. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics. Report to Congress on Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing. Hyattsville, MD (Sept. 1995): 12.

– Children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems.Source: Stanton, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics.”National Health Interview Survey.” Hyattsville, MD, 1988.

4. Educational Achievement

Fact:

– After taking into account race, socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ability, high school students from single-parent households were 1.7 times more likely to drop out than were their corresponding counterparts living with both biological parents.Source: McNeal, Ralph B. Jr.”Extracurricular Activities and High School Dropouts.” Sociology of Education 68(1995): 62-81.

5. Crime

Fact:

– Children in single parent families are more likely to be in trouble with the law than their peers who grow up with two parents.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. National Health Interview Survey. Hyattsville, MD, 1988.

6. Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy

Fact:

– A white teenage girl from an advantaged background is five times more likely to become a teen mother if she grows up in a single-mother household than if she grows up in a household with both biological parents.Source: Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe. “Facing the Challenges of Fragmented Families.” The Philanthropy Roundtable 9.1 (1995): 21.

Fathers matter, so women need to choose men who will be good fathers. And that means having an idea of what fathers do, and knowing how to evaluate a man to see if he can do what fathers do. There’s more to fathers than handsomeness and fun!

Research from the Heritage Foundation

Commentary

What is the real issue in the push for legalized abortion?

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I think the main cause of the desire for legalized abortion, is that women and men do not want to take responsibility for their actions.

The sexual act always has a chance of making a baby. If people who are having sex are not ready to take care of a baby, without the government’s help, then they should not have sex. We should not take chances with other people’s lives just so we can do risky things that make us feel good. The needs of grown-ups to feel good does not trump the right to life of another (unborn) human being. We have to sometimes give up things that make us feel good in order to avoid harming others.

I think the reason why people push abortion is because they want to believe that pre-marital recreational sex is normal. The people who push these policies are often those who had sex themselves before they were married, perhaps because it was fun (men) or perhaps because they wanted attention from the opposite sex (women). They wanted the recreational sex to feel good, but didn’t want to be saddled with the consequences of their desire for happiness.

I think the solution is to replace recreational pre-marital sex with chastity, courting and marriage. Men need to learn to control their desires, and make good decisions to prepare for being a husband and father, and get married, before they have sex. Women need to learn to do without male attention, to prepare themselves for having a husband and children, and to have sex only after they are married. Pre-marital sex isn’t an appropriate way for a woman to get attention from a man. There are other ways. And we should be training men to respond to those other ways. We should also be encouraging fathers to stay married and model love for their children by loving their wives.

We should not have any laws or policies that discourage men from preparing for their role of protector/provider/moral-and-spiritual-leader in a marriage. Sex education should not be subsidized or promoted by government because it makes children learn about sex outside of the context of marriage. And we should likewise not have any laws or policies that discourage women from preparing for marriage, by making husbands seem unnecessary to having and raising children. For example, we should end welfare payments for single mothers to make it clear that men are needed to provide for children, and that men should be selected by women for that role.

Children need a stable relationship with their married biological mother and father. So government has to promote marriage. Government may have to give up promoting third-wave feminism so that we can strengthen marriage, since third-wave feminism is opposed to marriage. We may need to to roll-back to first-wave (equal opportunity) feminism and give up the misguided quest to equate men with women in every area of life.

And we shouldn’t be pushing sex education as a way of removing the moral prohibitions on pre-marital sex. Those prohibitions were there for a reason and people who have pre-marital sex SHOULD feel bad. The solution is NOT to tell everyone that there is nothing wrong with it just because the people who do it want to feel better about themselves by making everyone agree with them. I think the left uses the public schools to beat down moral standards so that they will feel better about their own immorality. But immorality is harmful – and it’s better for young people to abide by traditional moral rules and avoid harming themselves and others than for grown-ups to avoid feeling bad for breaking those rules. Sorry grown-ups, but maybe it feels bad because it is bad – and stop trying to tell everyone that what you did was fine. It wasn’t fine. It was wrong.

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