What Women Should Do to Prepare for Marriage

The church and culture today do little to train or prepare women for marriage. In fact, they often teach or encourage bad habits that undermine preparation for marriage. Chief among the harmful philosophies women absorb is feminism, which tells them they don't need a man and don't have any specific womanly roles in a marriage to even prepare for.

In reality, there are a number of things women should be doing to prepare for marriage. Here are just some of them.

– Studying what their role would be in marriage and what their husband’s role would be and embracing this vision for marriage.

– Understanding the authority hierarchy of marriage and how important it is.

– Studying apologetics so they are prepared to teach their future children about the evidence for Christianity.

– Practicing proper submission to authority, self-control, wisdom, care for children, house keeping, and other godly traits for wives.

– Learning to build up a man through encouragement and support.

– Practicing good money habits so that they will be able to live within their husband’s income and frugally so as to lighten his burden of provision and ensure that she can be home with the children and not forced to work. This includes, at minimum, avoiding debt of all kinds and avoiding unnecessary spending on luxuries.

– Practicing teaching children and learning about their needs and how to care for them.

– Learning to control their tongues to avoid being bossy, argumentative, nagging, vulgar, or foolish with what they say.

– Developing a feminine attitude and demeanor that embraces their God-given and uniquely feminine traits and abilities.

– Practicing discretion and modesty in all things.

– Being chaste and having a proper understanding of Biblical sexuality, which includes sex being only within marriage but given freely within marriage, and also understanding what sex means to a man.

– Learning how to resolve conflict peaceably.

– Learning how to place others first.

– Keeping in shape and developing good eating habits and hygiene.

– Learning to cook healthy, nutritious, and delicious food and to do so frugally.

– Learning to clean and organize a house effectively and to keep it maintained in a state of order and cleanliness.

– Learning wisdom and proper priorities in life so that they are prepared to provide wise help to a husband and not blow issues out of proportion.

– Evaluating men on character traits and practicing being attracted to good character over looks or style. Also, realizing that there isn't just one soul mate out there who will show up at the proper time, but that there are only better or worse choices that she can make (and that she will have to live with).

– Getting what education they can without going into debt. This would ideally be in a field that will help with future training of their children (science, math, education, child development, etc) or that provides skills to help a husband or run a household (bookkeeping, home economics, gardening, canning, etc).

I’m sure there are others as well, but these are some of the major ways that women can prepare for marriage. There's a lot more to it than most women know. Not all of these need to be complete before marriage, of course. There's always more to learn. But working on these areas and having an awareness of the gravity of marriage and the skills required of them will make women better prepared to be good wives and mothers.