ROLE REVERSALS

Writing about parenthood, the great preacher and writer, J. R. Miller says: “Duties cannot be transferred.” I happen to agree with him, although many modern Christians would not.

Why do we think we know better than God? Why do we think that we have a better plan for our lives that the one who intricately, wonderfully, and marvelously created us?

God, in His perfect design, for “all His ways are perfect,” created a father and a mother to bring children into the world and to care for them in this world. He gave each one distinct roles to fulfil. Each brings their own strengths to the parenting career. Many want to change the roles because of convenience. The wife wants to take on the role of provider which means she must give her children to someone else to watch. And yet no guardian, no matter how loving, can ever be in tune to the innermost needs of her child like the mother.

Sometimes a mother can earn more money than her husband so she goes to work while her husband stays home with the children. This is a role reversal and not planned by the God who created us.

But you say, “I know fathers who are great stay-at-home-fathers to their children.” That may be so, but they cannot be a mother no matter how they try. God has put within women a maternal anointing that men don’t have. Yes, men love their children. They have a strong instinct to protect their children. They want to provide for their children, but they cannot mother their children, especially babies and little ones.

Babies and toddlers need the comfort of their mother’s breasts. Breastfeeding is tied up with motherhood. Scientific studies reveal that the more frequently a mother breastfeeds her baby the more motherly and nurturing she becomes. The hormones release the mothering hormones and a man does not have the abundance of these hormones that God gives to a mother to nurture.

God has also put within women a love for home, unless of course it is brainwashed out of her by our education system, the media, and the deception of our progressive society. A man is not cut out for the finer touches of the home and to making a home feel like a home. He was created to go out and to provide. To work hard for his family.

To get back to our original statement, I do concede that men and women can transfer their roles to a certain extent, but only at the expense of God’s ultimate blessing for the family. God intends fathers and mothers to fully embrace the way He created them and to reveal these strengths to their children so they pass them on from one generation to the next. Children who grow up in a family where the mother works and the husband stays home with the children will have a distorted understanding of God’s definitive plan. They will be confused and deceived. And what happens in the next generation? Will they think it normal to carry on this pattern until we have a society of men at home and women in the work force? God forbid.

Be blessed today in your God-given role of mothering,

Nancy Campbell

Painting: Elizabeth Nourse "A Mother (une Mère)" [American Painter, 1860-1938]