Men Should be Providers and Women Should be at Home

Given the needs of children for a full-time caregiver who knows and loves them, it is important for one of the parents to stay home and provide that care. That's a controversial idea in our culture today, though it shouldn't be. However, many people who accept the idea of a parent staying home with the children claim that it doesn't matter which parent stays home. It could just as well be the father as the mother, couldn't it? But no, that doesn't work nearly as well.

There's a reason that societies have historically had separate and distinct roles for the man and woman such that the father works to provide for the family while the mother stays at home with the children and cares for the home. Even in our modern society, it makes a lot more sense for the man to be the main breadwinner and the woman to stay home. Here's why.

1) Every family needs someone to build a steady career, and it's a lot harder for a woman to do that when she keeps taking time off to have babies. It's even more of a problem for her career if she breastfeeds and provides the nurturing that a baby needs specifically from the mother for at least the first year. The man is in a position to build a career more effectively than a woman simply because of biology.

2) Men are tasked with the role of provision. It is the man's responsibility to ensure that his family has the needed resources to survive - food, shelter, money for necessities, etc - in ways that don't apply to the woman. Men are called to be providers.

3) Men are naturally designed to gravitate toward provision and to gain satisfaction from working to provide in ways women do not. On the flip side, women are designed to gravitate toward caring for children and keeping a home in ways that men are not. Women are more in tune with the needs of children and have a greater ability to multitask, which is needed when keeping a home and caring for children. Men are designed to focus strongly on a task and a vision, which is often advantageous for the kinds of work needed to build a career and provide for a family. Men generally have an outward focus toward the world while women are more naturally oriented toward the home. In addition, many jobs that are needed by society involve hard physical labor which men are well-suited for and women simply are not. The physical and mental aptitudes of men and women lend themselves better to a division of labor that involves the woman staying home while the man earns.

4) The relationship between husband and wife thrives far better when they have traditional gender roles that involve the husband as main provider and wife at home. Studies have shown that wives respect their husbands more and have more sex with him when the wives do the housework and the man does the providing. Men and women are not only physically designed for traditional roles, but mentally wired to appreciate the opposite roles in a spouse as well. Women have a far harder time respecting and being attracted to a husband who fulfills a womanly role like caring for children or housework instead of providing.

5) History tell us that men have produced the vast majority of civilizational advancements when motivated by the desire to provide for their families. Societies are safer, more productive, more innovative, and more stable when men apply their specific manly skills to the problems their society faces. The greater aggression, strength, and focus of men are a huge advantage when applied to the workforce, technology, protection of the weak, and many other areas that require men to leave the home and work. Women simply don't have the same skills or the same drive.

6) The Bible specifically tells men to provide and women to keep the home.

Titus 2:3-5 tells us "...that aged women likewise be reverent in demeanor, not slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good; that they may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober-minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed..."

Meanwhile, men are told in 1 Timothy 5:8 "But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." It is men who were told in Genesis that the sweat of their brow would be needed to provide food for their families.

There are many reasons, both Biblical and practical, that indicate that men are to be the main providers for the family while women are needed to tend the home and children. This isn't about being stifled or pressed into arbitrary roles, but rather a fulfillment of the inherent design of men and women and also a matter of providing best for the specific needs of children. Men, women, and children do better when these roles are preserved, the marriage is stronger, and society flourishes.