The Family, The Bible, The Battle 2: Husbands and Fathers

The Family Lesson 2: Fathers / Husbands

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Introduction

Fewer Than Half of American Children Growing Up In Intact Families, Survey Finds

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 By Susan Jones

(CNSNews.com) - Only 45 percent of American children have spent their childhood in an intact family, according to a survey produced by a conservative advocacy group.

The "Index of Belonging and Rejection," produced by Dr. Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council's Marriage and Religion Research Institute, defines an intact family as a biological mother and father who remain legally married to one another from the time of their child's birth.

"American society is dysfunctional, characterized by a faulty understanding of the male-female relationship," Fagan said in a news release. "Our culture needs a compass correction, learning again how to belong to each other when we have begotten children together."

Fagan said providing children with intact families holds "immeasurable benefits" for children, adults and society in general. The benefits include financial, educational, legislative, legal and judicial gains, Fagan added.

The survey's findings:

-- 62 percent of Asian-American teenagers live with both married parents.

-- 54 percent of white youth live with both parents.

-- 41 percent of teenagers from multiracial family backgrounds live in intact families.

-- 40 percent of Hispanic teenagers nationwide live with both parents.

-- 24 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native adolescents -- fewer than one in four -- have lived with both married parents throughout childhood.

-- 17 percent of African-American youth -- fewer than one in five -- live with both married parents.

The Index also varies across regional and socioeconomic lines:

-- 41 percent of adolescents living in the South grow up belonging to an intact family.

-- Large urban counties whose populations are less educated, less affluent, and contain high concentrations of minority groups tend to have lower proportions of two-parent families.

Fagan says the “culture of rejection” in American homes affects individuals and the nation as a whole.

"Children in broken homes are more likely to be poor or welfare-dependent. They enjoy less academic achievement and less social development, have more accidents and injuries, and have worse mental health and more behavioral problems. These children also have worse relationships with their parents and are more likely to reject their own spouses later.

The Family: Husbands and Fathers

The husband must be constantly aware of four vital relationships. They are his relationship with God, his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his children and his relationship with himself.

Relationship with God

This is the Husbands primary relationship.

Read Mark 12:30 What is the key word in this text?  All

All does not mean exclusive, but inclusive.

Loving God does not mean hating others.

Mark 12:31 is an example of love when it has been given to God.

There can be no relation without salvation.

Romans 3:23 All have sinned.

Romans 6:23 Wages of sin is death.

Romans 5:8 Christ died for all.

Romans 10:9 Confess Jesus as Lord and believe he is alive.

Romans 10:13 Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord.

Once the relationship is established the husband's calling is to the leadership of the family.

This includes in all spiritual matters.   

Joshua 24:15 ... as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

The husbands should lead his family in church attendance, prayers at the table and at night, and in Bible Reading. 

He should also lead in physical, day to day matters as seen in 1 Timothy 3:12  Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

The final decisions that affect the family must be the husbands. Ultimately, he will stand before God to answer for his leadership

 Relationship with his wife

The wife is the husband's priority on earth.  Genesis 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

The word cleave means joined/glued in Hebrew.

No one else on earth should be closer than your wife.

The husband is to love his wife.  Ephesians 5:25  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

This word love means unselfish, self-giving, sacrificial love.

Paul used the greatest example, Jesus Christ, as a model for the husband's love.  It was a model of self-sacrificing love.

What are some things a husband may need to sacrifice because of love?

Ambitions, dreams, friends

The husband should honor his wife. 

1 Peter 3:7  Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
 

The word honor means high respect, due to worth and merit.

In other word, it means putting her on a pedestal.

The husband should rejoice with his wife.  

Proverbs 5:18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
 

Passage context refers to marital faithfulness.

The word rejoice means spontaneous emotion or joy which is expressed in a visible manner.

Simply it says, “Have fun with your wife.”

This is not an option it is a responsibility of the relationship.

Relationship to Self

You should strive to be your best. 

Jeremiah 12:5  If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?

You should be around uplifting people.   

Psalm 1:1-3  Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.  But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.  And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

You should fulfill God's purpose in your life.  

Ephesians 1:12, 14
 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ....Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

The Battle

The Importance of Fathers (According to Science)

In 1960, only 10% of children were raised without a father in the home. Today, 40% are.

Children With Fathers Are Less Likely to Live in Poverty

Statistics suggest that children in father-absent homes are more likely to be poor. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 44% of children in mother-only families were living in poverty, compared to only 12% of children living in a household headed by a married couple.

The U.S. Department of Health has reported similar statistics that connect absent fathers with poverty. In a 2012 report, they found that children living in female-headed households with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6%, over 4 times the rate of married-couple families.

Children With Fathers Do Better in School

A 2001 study by the Department of Education showed that students whose fathers were highly involved at school were 43% more likely to receive A’s. This was true for fathers in biological parent families, for stepfathers, and for fathers heading single-parent families.

On the flip side, students living in father-absent homes were twice as likely to repeat a grade as students with a father in the home.

A concern that many educators have about boys is that they don’t enjoy reading. But dads can help here too. One study reports that when fathers read recreationally, their sons read more and scored higher than did boys whose fathers did little or no recreational reading.

Children Without Fathers Are More Likely to Do Jail Time

Youths in father-absent households have significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother/father families. This was even true after controlling for different income levels. Young people who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds of doing jail time.

The Department of Justice surveyed 7,000 inmates in 2002 and found that 39% of them lived in a mother-only household before being locked-up. In a similar study that surveyed nearly 14,000 female inmates, more than half grew up in a single-mother household.

Children With Fathers Are Less Likely to Abuse Drugs and Alcohol

A report in the Journal of Marriage and Family showed that even after controlling for community context, there is significantly more drug use among children who live in father-absent homes.

In another survey of 228 boys, those from single-mother homes reported higher rates of drinking and smoking as well as higher scores on delinquency and aggression tests when compared to boys from father/mother households.

Children Without Fathers Are More Likely to Be Sexually Active as Teenagers

A recent study showed that involved dads have twice the influence as moms on reducing teen sex.

Another study that pooled teenagers from the U.S. and New Zealand found that children without fathers were twice as likely to be involved in early sexual activity and seven times more likely to get pregnant as adolescents.

Children Without Fathers Are More Likely to Be Obese

Children in father-absent homes have a higher risk of becoming obese and suffer all the health risks that come with excess weight.

But even if dad is around, it doesn’t necessarily mean his kids will be fit. In fact, several studies report that fathers have the biggest impact on the overall fitness and weight of their children.

In one, it was found that the father’s, not the mother’s, total and percentage body fat was the best predictor of whether or not the couple’s daughters gained weight as they got older.

Another study showed fathers’ (again, not the mothers’) body mass index is directly related to a child’s activity level.

Children With Fathers Get More Roughhousing (And Roughhousing Makes Kids Awesome)

Cross-cultural studies have found that the one thing fathers across the world have in common is that they roughhouse with their kids more than moms. And roughhousing, according to science, makes kids awesome. As we highlighted in a previous post, roughhousing makes kids resilient, smart, moral, and socially adept.

Children With Fathers Are More Likely to Have a Larger Vocabulary

When it comes to a child’s verbal development, the popular belief is that the mother plays the most important role because, well, women are usually with their children more and women are supposed to be more verbal than men.

As Paul Raeburn highlights in his book Do Fathers Matter?, recent research suggests that dads actually play just as an important, if not more important, role in the verbal fluency of their children. Professor Lynne Vernon-Feagans and her team conducted a study to measure parental influence on early childhood verbal development. The surprising result from this study was that fathers, not mothers, had much more of an influence on a child’s verbal adeptness.

Vernon-Feagans hypothesizes the reason dads have more of an influence on a child’s verbal development is that because fathers frequently don’t spend as much time with children, they’re not as attuned to their current verbal development as mothers. Consequently, while mothers will use words that the child is familiar with, fathers will use unfamiliar words, thus helping the child broaden their vocabulary and learn new concepts.

Children With Fathers Are More Likely to Be Encouraged to Take Healthy Risks

While mothers tend to focus on their child’s safety and well-being, dads are more likely to encourage risk and independent thinking in their children which will benefit them well into adulthood. As family and marriage researcher Professor Brad Wilcox has noted, researchers have found that dads are more likely than moms to encourage their kids to talk to strangers, take on challenges, and to think for themselves.

Children With Fathers Gain Many Additional Benefits to Health and Happiness

The Grant Study, the longest longitudal study ever done on the lives of men, found that a man’s father influenced his life in many ways exclusive to his relationship with his mother. Loving fathers imparted to their sons:

            • enhanced capacity to play

            • more enjoyment of vacations

            • greater likelihood of being able to use humor as a healthy coping mechanism

            • better adjustment to, and contentment with, life after retirement

            • less anxiety and fewer physical and mental symptoms under stress in young adulthood

In the negative column, it “was not the men with poor mothering but the ones with poor fathering who were significantly more likely to have poor marriages over their lifetimes.” Men who lacked a positive relationship with their fathers were also “much more likely to call themselves pessimists and to report having trouble letting others get close.”

If there was ever any doubt, fathers matter, a lot: When all is said and done, a man’s relationship with his father very significantly predicted his overall life satisfaction at age 75 — “a variable not even suggestively associated with the maternal relationship.”

From <https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-brew-coffee-without-a-coffee-maker/>

Conclusion

The primary responsibility for the success of the family, by God’s design, is the husband and father. Not only does the Bible plainly state this truth, research, scientific studies and common-sense show this to be true.

Because of the importance and the difficulty of being the right husband and father, men need all the help they can get. That help comes first from their walk with God and knowledge of His Word and it should be strengthened by his wife, his extended family and by his church. It is too important to just let them figure it out for themselves.