“…Discussing Babywise or the Preparation for Parenting series can result in conversations that range from slightly awkward to downright volatile. Dialoguing about parenting choices tends to lend itself to a posture of defensiveness for nearly all of us. How can we have peaceful, grace-filled conversations with others about a topic that is often a catalyst for divisiveness?…”

Some Christian men that I have observed treat their wives as baby machines. The wife is never under any circumstances permitted to work outside the home, despite the fact that the Bible nowhere forbids such work. True, the young mother’s central Biblical responsibility is domestic — her family (1 Tim. 5:14). Today’s “career-minded moms” whose work is a separate track from her husband’s generally conflict with the Bible’s pattern of the woman as a suitable help to her husband (Gen. 2:18-25). However, the Bible does not prohibit women, including wives and mothers, from working outside the home. We must not, therefore, allow “conservative” standards to supplant Biblical standards.

The authority that some patriarchalists arrogate to themselves truly borders on tyranny. One has written that a father who sends his daughter off to college is guilty of irresponsibility. Apparently, all daughters must maintain residence in their father’s household to be deemed “under authority.” Not a shred of Biblical evidence supports this theory and, in fact, at times the father may be guilty of irresponsibility if he does not dispatch an intellectually gifted daughter to college. (The idea that children should ordinarily stay home and take Internet college courses is fraught with peril. We will never train culture-reclaiming physicians, nuclear physicists, and engineers by such apron-centered, kitchen-table tutelage.)

Perhaps, however, the most hazardous element of the new hegemonic patriarchy is its easy diffidence or downright hostility toward the church. This patriarchalism emerges largely because too many churches are anything but “family-friendly”; and, of course, they abdicate their calling when they act so irresponsibly. The solution to this problem, however, is the reformation of the church, not the institution of “The Family Church,” i. e., the Daddy pastor, the Mommy assistant pastor, and the kiddy members. The Church is authorized to do three things that no family in ordinary conditions is ever permitted to do: preserve orthodoxy; administer sacraments; and excommunicate heretics and egregious, unrepentant sinners.