*This article contains some generalizations about men. They will not apply to every man. We do not opine on the origins of men’s struggles to balance work and family, whether culture, God-given nature, what men witnessed from their own fathers, or something else.
Men play, hands down, the most important role in children’s lives. And the thing children need most is the security of a good relationship between their parents. Therefore, we believe thinking ahead about these issues can help singles choose potential spouses wisely.
Introduction
What an interesting dichotomy. We want men who are successful and respected in their fields. Yet we also want someone who is hands-on and available at home. Are our expectations realistic? Are they fair to the male sex? How many hours a week can he work? How often does he have to be in touch with us while he’s at work? And when he comes home, how long can he rest and decompress before we expect him to work there too?
I never thought about these questions as a single. Of course I wanted the best of both worlds—someone who was great at work and at home. But I never stopped to think about how hard that might be—both for me to find and for the man to accomplish.
Real-Life Examples
Being married with children can be very different from dating in terms of time spent together. Some men work a lot, whether out of necessity or drive, especially when they have a family to provide for. Here are a couple examples to help us think about this concept more concretely.
A woman in her first few years of marriage has a one-year-old and another on the way. In order to pay the bills, her husband works from 6 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. six days a week.
My father-in-law got married and entered the military right after graduating from college. During Vietnam, he was deployed to southeast Asia for months at a time. One of his deployments started when he and my mother-in-law had a 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and 10-day old.
Whether you have lots of marriage prospects or none, Jason and I want to help you be better informed about what men are generally like so you can think ahead about these matters and help your significant others do the same.
Why Men Struggle
The truth is it can be very hard for men to balance work and family. That doesn’t mean they’re not good men. It doesn’t mean they’re not spiritual. It just means that, if you want a man who will put family first above work, you are probably either looking for a rare man or one who is willing to grow in this area.
The drive to work hard is part of how God created men. They need a tangible sense of accomplishment; they want work satisfaction. They like to create things and receive accolades. They are wired to compete, achieve, and conquer.
At work, men get the gratification of saying, “I just got a promotion; I’m a good provider” or “I just solved a big problem; I’m important.” Even a pastor might say, “I’m out there saving souls; I’m doing eternal work!” Men can absolutely get the same satisfaction at home with their families. It just isn’t as easy to achieve when you’re dealing with toddlers’ tantrums and poopy accidents as it is when you’re dealing with rational adults and systems you can control.
According to my husband, Jason, very few men are naturally thinking, “How can I be nurturing to a wife and children?” especially if they did not witness this behavior in their own fathers or male role models. Rather, married men, absent someone challenging their thinking, tend to view their primary role as being a financial provider. Their mindset is usually, “You have your roles; I have mine.” Unless there is a major problem at home, they would rather keep chugging along the way things are. It’s much simpler to just check the “provider” box by putting in a full day’s work, then going to bed tired and resting till it’s time to do it all over again than to stop and prioritize family relationships.
It’s also not immediately apparent why they should shift gears to voluntarily step back from accomplishments at work. They are not likely to see positive results from their efforts nearly as quickly as they would at work. This is all the truer if there are difficulties at home. Working on relationships in situations where they’re not measuring up can feel like loss and even failure to men.
Family Life
Whether men realize it in advance or not, they will have a big adjustment to make once they get married and have children. If they hope to have a happy, healthy family, they may be required to do things that do not come naturally to them. They will be confronted with competition for their time and the need to reevaluate their priorities. My husband, Jason, says he was not prepared for how demanding his role as a husband and father would be before he got married.
However, just because prioritizing family over work tends to be counterintuitive to men does not mean it’s impossible. If the Bible is a man’s framework for godly living, it should help him do uncomfortable and sacrificial things he otherwise would not choose. Jason is a full-time dad of three children, ages two to five. His job is so hard that he naturally wants to just check out. In fact, having experienced the high pressures of both the work world and the family world, Jason now thinks that working 80, or even 100, hours a week would be much easier than his job as a dad! But, because he feels like instructing his children is a biblical mandate from God, he’s willing to fight to stay involved and engaged.
A man who strives to live according to the Bible, who views himself as a steward, not an owner—of his life, house, job, family, etc.—will be willing to follow God’s ways, even if those ways differ from his own.
Prioritizing Family Over Work
Dr. James Dobson tells a story about being a teenager and beginning to rebel. His dad was away a lot as a traveling evangelist, and his absence was having a negative impact on Dr. Dobson. One day, his mom called his dad while he was on a trip and said, “I need you.” The dad cancelled four years’ worth of bookings, sold their house, and moved the family to a small town in Texas, where he took a job as a pastor so he could stay home. That sacrifice impacted Dr. Dobson deeply. So deeply that, years later when he was at a similar crossroads, he followed in his father’s footsteps.
He had a prestigious position as a medical school professor and was advancing in his career. But he also started to do a lot of traveling, especially related to the success of his first book Dare to Discipline. His dad saw what was happening and wrote him a letter. In the letter, he congratulated Dr. Dobson for his accomplishments, but he also reminded him that his most important responsibility was his children’s spiritual welfare. His job was to build their faith by modeling it personally. No amount of success would compensate for failing at home, he said.
Dr. Dobson, then, gave up his professorship so he could focus on ministry and stay home. He didn’t do book tours and he quit accepting speaking engagements. Instead, he focused on video and radio content that he could produce locally.
Of course these stories don’t necessarily mean that, in order to prove himself to you, your husband should quit his job. The point is, if he were faced with competing priorities, what would come first?
D.L. Moody’s Example
Here is another example of a man keeping family (and God) first while also meeting significant work/ministry demands. Dwight L. Moody grew up poor and uneducated in Massachusetts. Yet God prospered him to become a household name by the time of his death in 1899. He was a man of boundless energy. As an evangelist and revivalist, he traveled by train and ship all over the country and the world, spending much of his time in hotels. He often spoke six days a week. He received hundreds of letters per day. He had a hand in everything from evangelistic campaigns to conferences to publishing to education.
And yet, his wife and children did not feel abandoned or neglected by him. In a way that was uncharacteristic, both for his occupation and generation, he was uncompromising in his determination to keep his family together as much as possible. They traveled with him, and the children would attend school in various cities, even if only for a few months. Even as unmarried adults, all three children accompanied their parents on a multi-year speaking tour to Great Britain.
When he did have to be away, Moody would write extremely affectionate letters home to each family member. To his daughter, for example, before she headed off to Europe, he wrote, “I must write to you once more before you leave this land. I have no news to tell you but I am real lonely at the thought of your going. … [I]t seems as if a part of myself was gone…. I need not tell you that I love you very much[,] far more than I can tell you, and you are in my thoughts so much of the time. I never loved you more than I do tonight….”
But Moody’s commitment was to God first and foremost. He spent six hours a day in study, prayer, and time alone with God, often starting in the middle of the night. R.A. Torrey, one of his mentees, spent the night at his house and heard a gentle knock on his door at 5 a.m. It was Moody, checking to see if he was up because he wanted to show him something. Torrey learned that Moody had already been up for a couple hours.
Premarital Dialogue
Not every man will be a world changer like Moody. Not every man will quit his job and stop traveling like Dobson. The question is not whether a man will mimic someone else’s behavior but will he, no matter how busy or stressed out or important he is, dedicate himself to prioritizing God and family over work, even when it costs him to do so? Some single men (and women) may have never thought about this struggle, so having healthy dialogue around it can help head off problems before they arise (or show you that you want to move on and keep looking).
May God give you grace and wisdom as you engage in honest dialogue surrounding priorities.
Prayer:
God, we thank you for how you have made us male and female in your image. Raise up for yourself an army of men who understands the unique and vital role you have created them to play in the lives of women and children. Gain glory for yourself through them, we pray.
Questions:
Is this a topic you’ve thought about before? How do your expectations about marital roles align with and differ from what you witnessed as a child? Whose job do you believe it is to provide for the family? Are you concerned about having future marital discord over imbalanced work/family priorities? Have you ever talked to a significant other about this topic?
