Tag Archives: Parenting

Commentary

Are “de-facto” parents good for children?

1 Comment

ECM sent me this interesting National Review article about how courts are undermining the rights of children by breaking down traditional parental roles.

Excerpt:

This year, the District of Columbia Council passed a law allowing biological parents’ registered domestic partners to be presumed parents, and to be listed as such on the children’s birth certificates. The law also allows a person to be legally designated a parent if he consents in writing to the artificial insemination of his partner, or if he “hold[s] out” the child as his own—that is, presents the child as his to others. (D.C. already had a law allowing people to sue for child custody if they could show they had acted as “de facto” parents (D.C. Code 16-831.01).)

Then, last month, the Delaware legislature went even farther when it enacted legislation giving state courts the ability to designate a non-parent as a “de facto” parent (with all the legal ramifications of parenthood) as long as the biological parent of a child “fosters” a “parent-like relationship” between the non-parent and the child, and as long as the “de facto” parent has acted like a parent and bonded with the child in a way that is “parental in nature.”

The Delaware law completely untethers legal parentage from biology, marriage, adoption, and even the relationship between the adults who are the child’s legal “parents.” It also abandons the binary nature of legal parenthood by allowing three or more adults to be designated “parents” of a child at the same time.

The article goes on to explain why the court’s designation of de facto parents is a bad idea for children, who are increasingly having their rights to a happy childhood denied by courts. This is what Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was concerned about in her recent podcast on family and marriage.

I think the bottom line here is that children do best when bonding to two opposite-sex parents who are biologically linked to them. That is the most stable, loving environment in which to have children. The left is sacrificing the welfare of children in order to cater to the needs of adults who don’t care about what is best for children.

Mentoring

The rules for friendship and courtship between Christian men and women

118 Comments

This post will probably be changing as time passes and I learn more about relationships.

The goal

The goal of my opposite-sex friendships (hereafter just “friendships”) is for me to build up the skills of Christian women by exchanging training materials to work through, and monitoring progress. The training materials for friendship are centered around apologetics, with some conservative policy, as well. The friendships are beneficial to God because we are building each other up, and it also provides a context for us to evaluate changing to a courtship.

Most of my relationships with Christian women will never enter into the friendship phase because virtually none of them even care for apologetics. But some Christian women have shown an interest in apologetics and conservative policy and that’s what gets the friendship going.

I basically think about this friendship-courtship distinction as a continuum where passing through the gate from friendship to courtship is dependent on progress in sharing my vision with her and having her take appropriate steps to recognize and contribute to my vision. When a female Christian friend begins to contribute to my overall life vision, that’s the point at which we consider changing to a courtship.

Marriage

I am open to marrying any chaste female Christian. The grounds for the decision to marry are that the marriage would provide a better benefit to God in terms of his purposes in the world than if we continued to work separately. In particular, I am looking for my prospective mate to demonstrate her commitment to my four-pronged vision for serving God in the most effective ways. (See below)

I am also interested in whether she understands the challenges facing men and male needs, especially in areas like feminism, big government, no-fault divorce, child custody, etc. But I am also interested in her views in areas like chastity, modesty, grooming, physical fitness and expected frequency of marital sex. She must also recognize standards of chastity, chivalry and romance and participate in standard activities like letter-writing.

My vision

My vision involves operations in 4 areas:

The university:

  • get a PhD and teach in the university as a publicly-identified Christian OR no PhD, but teach in a community college
  • fund Christian scholars to lecture and debate at the university
  • fund research by intelligent design scholars
  • raise brilliant home-schooled children who can get PhDs and go on to impact the university

The church

  • bring scholars in to lecture and especially to debate in the church, and sponsor these events
  • teach adult Sunday school classes in apologetics (i.e. – show debates and discuss them, read books and discuss them)
  • find a wife who can help with these goals

The workplace

  • study apologetics and engage co-workers in discussions at lunch if they are interested
  • operate a library to lend out lectures and debates to those who are interested
  • give co-workers gifts at Christmas like DVDs on intelligent design or debates
  • put things in my office to declare myself as a thoughtful Christian
  • find a wife who can be hospitable, prepare meals and host discussions in our home

The public square

  • blog: inform and educate Christians about economic and public policies that affect our liberty
  • donate to Christian politicians who reflect my priorities
  • donate to other Christians who engage in debates on abortion, Islam, etc.
  • run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage wife to run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage kids to run for office after they retire from teaching at the universities

If a Christian woman is interested in having me assist her with learning apologetics and stuff, so she can serve God better, that’s called a friendship. If she starts to inquire about my vision and begins to show real recognition and support for it, that’s called a courtship.

The main thing is that God’s goals are always the center of our interactions. Marriage is not the end goal of the relationship. God’s goals in the world are the end. Marriage is just a possible means to that end. Being a good husband is a means to that end. Even being a good father is a means to that end.

The rules

Here are my rules for dealing with Christian women:

  1. No touching during friendship or courtship. This rule holds until the engagement day, where a kiss is permitted, but nothing more. The reason for this rule is to avoid losing 1) the ability to focus on my plan instead of women, and 2) the ability to evaluate Christian women objectively and dispassionately. (Note: I now think that hand-holding and hugging is OK once the initial evaluation of her is complete, and she starts to put in effort on the things that you care about, that are related to your plan)
  2. No being together by ourselves in non-public places without a chaperone. This applies to friendship and courtship.
  3. The friendship advances by exchanging and executing tasks that help us both to be more effective Christians. For example, listening to lectures together and stopping the lecture to discuss things, and then writing about the lecture afterward.
  4. The courtship advances by exchanging and executing tasks related to my vision. For example, we arrange a viewing of a debate or lecture DVD at her church and then jointly take questions from the audience.
  5. Gifts exchange is allowed during the friendship, but no tokens can be given to me.
  6. Token exchange (e.g. – a lady’s handkerchief with her colors), is reserved to mark the beginning of courtship. I have to carry it with me whenever I fight, and give reports to her on how I did. She can withdraw it, ending the courtship. I can also return it, ending the courtship. I can only carry one token at a time.
  7. Parents should be kept informed about the progress of friendships and courtships.
  8. Her parents have the right to engage me in discussions about my views on apologetics, etc. at any time during the friendship or courtship, but they do not have the right to override my vision with their vision.
  9. It helps me if women dress modestly, because I am more comfortable when a woman tries to attract me using non-physical approaches, like words. I resent it when women try to attract me using sex appeal instead of words. I like being in control of myself. Sex appeal is strictly for after the wedding. There are a million ways for a Christian woman to knock a Christian man off his feet just by taking an interest in things like apologetics and economics. The trick is to find a man who cares about being friends with God.
  10. I am looking to court someone who already has the skills to assist me with my vision, or who demonstrates a willingness to develop them, or who is able to persuade me that other skills are an even better match for my vision.

These are guidelines that I try to communicate to women to help us to constrain our relationship to serve God’s goals. These are all subject to discussion and debate, of course.

I think that one of the effects of these rules is to take the pressure to be “sexy” off of women. And to remove sex from the equation entirely – there is no room for clumsy groping in the back seat of a car in this operation. Instead, a woman wins the heart of a man if she is willing to listen to him, learn about his needs as a man, and his vision to serve God, and then work hard to recognize and support all that.

Sample activities

In a friendship, the first steps are going to involve a lot of studying and talking. For example, it is not uncommon for me to spend 2-6 hours just talking to a Christian woman about spiritual things. We do independent studies around things like reading the same books, listening to the same lectures, or even doing the political compass or resurrection questionnaires together. Individual tasks for me from her might include Bible reading, church attending, bringing her resources that she asks for, writing about my feelings and experiences, etc.

I believe in exchanging tasks so that the woman gets into the pattern of getting outside her own needs and thinking about her obligations to me. My concern is that a lot of women have a fairy tale view of marriage. She picks a man for superficial reasons and hopes to change him later. This leads women to ignore male needs and the man’s vision prior to marriage. The man is tricked into the marriage by pre-marital sexual activity.

Unfortunately choosing a bad man and then tricking him with sex doesn’t work to keep that man as her appearance fades. This is particularly bad for women whose self-esteem is tied to appearance. And I think that is a major reason why women are so interested in no-fault divorce and massive government social programs – to relieve them of the burden of having to choose the right man and having to work to win him and having to work to keep him.

Real men find big government very discouraging, which is why men are not interested in marriage any more. The prospect of facing activist family courts run by feminists is too much for thoughtful men to contemplate. Men can’t support a family on a salary that is highly taxed to pay for things like VAWA or welfare programs, or single-payer health care. Men also don’t want to lose access to their kids based on fake charges of domestic violence.

I know that these rules and procedures are going to strike a lot of you as odd, and some of you are going to stop reading my blog because I am just too weird. Well, I think you should just snicker at me and keep reading. After all, someone has to be different. The only people really in a position to judge whether this is working are my female Christian friends, and God. I myself am very happy with these rules because they help me to put God first.

Building Christian women up

One last thing. The man’s role in the relationship is to love his wife all the time, and to do it intelligently. It’s therefore imperative for him to read about how women understand love. I recommend the book “The Five Love Languages” for learning about how to love women well. Also, it’s a great idea to read all about how women think and feel about what they do in a marriage, so that you can support them after first understanding them. A good book to read on that is “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women: and similar books. It’s a good idea to think about how to become better at leading by persuasion – by convincing women to grow upward. For example, I convinced one girl I was courting to go back to school and do a degree in economics. Another one went back to school get her law degree. And this not to even mention the basic stuff that women I court do – like organizing public debates, apologetics conferences, teaching apologetics in the church, finding summer jobs, getting top grades in school, giving public speeches, and so on. Courting is the time where you intentionally lead women to become stronger.

In the 2012 the Presidential election, I supported Michele Bachmann as my first choice for the office of President. Her husband Marcus is very traditional about courtship and marriage, just like me. He actually asked her to go back to school at one point to specialize in tax law, in order to help the family business and be better at pushing the children upward through school. That was a smart decision, to grow his wife up like that so that she could be better. So whatever you do in the courtship, your goal should always be to push women up, up, up. And that applies whether she is for you or for someone else or for no one else. Make her better than she used to be so that she can serve God better – to be a better wife and mother, and to have more of an influence in the world for Christ and his Kingdom. Never, ever bring her down or minimize the impact she can have for good. She is a partner in serving God, after all.

Related posts

Neil has a related post on complementarian marriage (which is my view).

Mentoring

MUST-READ: Guest post: Purposeful parenting today

9 Comments

The following post is a guest post from my friend Andrew.

Purposeful Parenting in Today’s World

Bob drives his bright red sports car 140 kilometres per hour on the highway and is pulled over by a police officer.  The officer gives Bob a:

  1. friendly greeting
  2. cookie
  3. speeding ticket

Susan prefers sleeping late to showing up at work on time.  After arriving at the office two to three hours late for two weeks in a row, Susan’s boss tells her to:

  1. get to bed a little earlier
  2. take some vacation time to rest up
  3. look for another job

This reality check comes from an article on parenting by Dr. Bill Maier from Focus on the Family.  It shows in a humorous way how real life consequences will catch up with your child sooner or later (the answer to both questions is number 3, of course).

Now here are a couple of my own:

Your son starts university and soon realizes that one of his professors is a hostile feminist.  The feminist professor:

  1. immediately concedes her radical feminist views and offers to help your son with his studies
  2. tells the class what an asset conservatism and/or Christianity is to our society
  3. publicly humiliates your son when he voices an objection, and makes every effort to fail him

Your daughter enters the workforce.  Her colleagues say things like:

  1. how I can become a Christian just like you?
  2. maybe we could start a Bible study together
  3. are you for real – do you actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead

Are your children going to be able to handle this?

Let me start off with some general principles that I think you will find useful for parenting in general.  Then in the second half of this post I want to share some more ideas that will help you be more purposeful in the formation of your child and help them prepare for what life will throw at them – ideas that I hope will help you to address the last two scenarios above.

Your children need you to be their parent, not their friend

Children need and want their parents to lay down the rules, to set boundaries, and to give them guidance.  They really need to know where they stand.  While they have friends elsewhere, they don’t get parenting from anywhere else.  Your children don’t have to like you, but they have to respect and obey you.  When you make the rules clear and consistent and your children choose to disobey them, then the punishment is their choice rather than your infliction.  This should really be a separate point, but don’t be afraid to discipline your children.  This will help them in the long run.

Your children respect your authority and guidance more than you think

Parents tend to underestimate the influence that they have on their children and overestimate the influence that friends have.  Don’t be afraid to teach your children, give them your opinion and set boundaries.

Follow through or your children won’t take you seriously

Children learn quickly, so if you state a consequence you have to be willing to follow through with it.  If you don’t, your words will be empty to them and they will not respect you or listen to you.  If you tell your child that if they hit their sibling one more time you will call off the big trip to the zoo then you have to be willing to do this, so choose your words carefully!

Short term pain, long term gain

This was our motto when our children were infants, and it still is.  Addressing problems immediately will be painful, but they will only become a habit or worse problems down the road if you don’t.  We learned pretty quickly that running to our crying baby every hour during the night would quiet them down and give us instant gratification at a time when we were sleep-deprived, but we also learned that if we suffered the short term pain of letting them cry it out a bit then our baby would learn how to settle themselves and sleep better.

Let boys be boys and girls be girls

Don’t let feminist ideology creep into the way you parent.  It’s healthy for girls to play ‘house’, nurture their dolls, and play dress-up.  And it’s okay for boys to try ‘dangerous’ things, be rambunctious, and open doors for ladies.  Boys and girls are innately different, and that’s okay.

Okay, these are some great general guidelines that have helped us with our parenting so far.  Now for some deeper principles that I hope will prepare your child for life:

Be purposeful with your parenting…have a plan and an end goal in mind

You can’t guarantee how your children will turn out, but if you are purposeful with your parenting and have an end goal rather than just hoping they will turn out okay, there is a good chance you will be successful.  For my wife and I, the end goal is to train our children so that when they come of age we will be able to launch them into life with them being capable of standing on their own two feet (e.g., capable of dealing effectively with the third and fourth situations at the start of this post).  This is our conscious plan.  Children need to be gradually given more and more freedom and responsibility as they demonstrate that they can handle it.  Don’t wait until they are about to leave the nest to give them their freedom because it may be more than they can handle.  You have a relatively small window of opportunity to train your children.  This window decreases with time, so don’t waste it.

Allow your children to fail under controlled circumstances

Failure is a great teacher, so allow your children to fail when they are young.  For example, let them spend some of their hard earned chore money on a cheap toy that will fall apart after the first use.  This will teach them the value of money and give them discretion in spending.  You don’t want them to learn this lesson the hard way later on when they are buying their first house.  Let them go to their math test in grade 10 without having studied because they really wanted to play.  Better to have them learn this lesson now than in univer$ity.

Expose them to scenarios that they will experience later and teach them how to deal with them

Again, in a controlled setting you need to carefully expose your children to what they will encounter in life.  Take them to a university debate between a Christian and an atheist.  Let them hear the arguments, see how the audience reacts, and allow them to feel uncomfortable.  Show them a news article about schoolchildren who were told that they had to send a letter to their government representative with a certain view.  Let your child hear a homosexual activist on the radio.  Supervise them and discuss with them what they have just experienced.  Teach them how to respond in these scenarios.  You won’t be able to shelter them for life, so gradually expose them under controlled conditions and teach them how to deal and respond to what they encounter.

Train yourself, and do it well

Listen, training up your children is your responsibility and no one else’s.  Not only that, but you are the only one that is going to prepare them properly – you can no longer rely on school, church, friend’s parents, etc.  In order to train them to respond to life circumstances and defend their beliefs you are going to have to learn this stuff yourself.  Take the time to read books, listen to lectures/debates, etc.  As a parent I know it is really tough to find the time to do this when you are working full time or are busy with life, but you have to do it.  Don’t let your life get too busy with distractions because otherwise your purposeful parenting plan won’t happen, it requires purposeful daily decisions. What is the point of having children only to lose them to militant atheist, leftist, feminist, homosexual, etc. ideology because you didn’t prepare them properly.

Train your children well

I know I’ve touched on this already, but let me expand a bit.  This is really, really important!  A lot of people around your children are going to teach them bad ideas that are opposite to your own – their school, their friends and the government will all do this.  You need to be purposeful in teaching them moral values and virtues, otherwise they probably won’t learn them.  Training your children is your responsibility.  Be purposeful in teaching your children virtues like loyalty, bravery, chivalry, respect, modesty (especially for girls), and discipline.  Teach them about freedom of speech, religious liberty, chastity, capitalism, free markets, the sanctity of life, post-modern culture, traditional marriage, and abstinence.  Also give them books with characters who portray these things and discuss these things with your children on every occasion (as an aside, don’t let your children rot in front of the trash that is shown on television…rather teach them to love to read books).

Most importantly, as a Christian who believes that Christianity is objectively true, I can’t stress enough how important it is to teach your children about Christianity.  All religions are testable, and our Christian faith can hold its own and can compete well in the marketplace of ideas.  The evidence is very much on our side and we stand on the shoulders of giants who have gone before us.  Having said this, we live in a world that is very hostile to Christianity and you need to teach your children the evidence for their faith.  They need to know the Bible inside-out and backwards, but they also need to know how to defend their faith using other evidence (hint: Christian apologetics; see the Resources section below).  Teaching them how to do this will give them the courage to defend what they believe to be true.  You also need to teach your children about different worldviews and religions, and why they don’t make sense.

I know, this all sounds like a tremendous amount of work, but your child is relying on you and no one else to prepare them for life.  It’s actually easier than you think.  Just start off with a few books.  This is so much more important than teaching them how to be on time, how to drive a car, how to take a math test, how to swim, and all of the other things that you will obviously teach them.  As I said above, you have a relatively small window of opportunity to train your children.  This window decreases with time, so don’t waste it.  For a first step please look at the Resources section below.

And lastly:

Put your marriage first

Make sure that you put your marriage ahead of your parenting.  I am convinced that one of the best things that you can do for your children is to give them the security of a stable family life and to model what a good marriage looks like.  Let them witness husband and wife roles, let them see that you love each other, and let them see you apologize to each other when you get angry or make a mistake.  Don’t get so involved in your children’s life that you neglect your spouse.  If you do this then once your children are out of the house (if your marriage survives that long), you and your spouse won’t know each other anymore.  Parenting in today’s world requires a parenting team, so you need to make sure your team is strong.

UPDATE: This is Wintery Knight. I wanted to include this bit of wisdom from commenter Shalini:

One other important thing is when one parent is disciplining the child, the other parent MUST NOT talk in defense of the child. Parents should always agree on disciplining, ’cause if one of the parents try taking sides with the kid, chances are the kid is going to assume that one parent is good and the other is bad. It doesn’t help the case in anyway!

Andrew liked this comment,  so I thought I would add it to the post.

A few resources:

Parenting

Christian Apologetics

Related posts