Men Who Let Their Wives Work Are “Destroying” Children’s Minds

I did some rough calculations. In my locale, a single breadwinner would need to make +/-fifty dollars an hour to be “middle” class.

Did the wife in Proverbs 31 destroy her children’s minds by working and contributing to the household income?

I’ve heard whines like this from preachers who apparently suffer from egg shell egos and fragile masculinity and are threatened by anything that looks like a woman being able to maintain any sort of independence from or equality to a man. (I’m complimentarian BTW). I heard an IFB preacher and respected grad of one of our best seminaries launch into a mini-sermon about why a man should never let his wife drive his car and let him be a passenger with the warning “That’s how it starts!”.

Titus 2:5 is frequently read in a capitalistic context that has very little similarity with the way homes and business were conducted in the first century. “Working at home” would have most often involved the wife helping the husband in his work and not visiting mommy blogs and watching Netflix idly wandering around from friend’s house to friend’s house while the husband did all the work.

G.N. beat me to Proverbs 31, but that—as well as numerous other passages indicating that women were engaged in grinding, tending vineyards, tending sheep, and the like—seems to argue against the notion that women can’t work outside the home. Plus, Lydia, no?

I’ve noticed that those who insist that married women should not work outside the home usually (at least in practice) exempt these two jobs:

• Church secretary
• Teacher in a Christian school

….I’m guessing there’s an interesting smell to the walls of that church, if you catch my drift.

I have also seen numerous instances where the man stays home with the children and the wife works. And that situation works out very well.

I agree with the above comments as to families where it’s economically necessary for the wife/mother to work (including, for example, some situations where the wife’s job affords health insurance benefits that the husband’s doesn’t). But … where it’s not economically necessary, the wife/mother working outside the home seems selfish and sub-optimal for the family (both the children and the marriage). (The selfishness could be the husband’s — he wants even more income than his well-paying job affords, which was the case with my wife’s ex-husband — or the wife’s or both.) I was fortunate enough to be able to earn enough money during my kids’ childhoods that we did not need my wife to work, so she didn’t work from the time our first child was born until he started college (at which point we definitely did need the extra income to help pay those tuition bills). We could have used some extra money for extras that we couldn’t afford on one income — vacations, debt-reduction, etc. — but we had the necessities covered. During those years, I would have regarded any insistence by my wife that she needed to work in order to be her own person, to have her own identity, etc., or just to have more money, as selfish and unbiblical. I think we’ve grown soft, infected with the culture’s rampant feminism, when we issue blanket endorsements of wives/mothers working outside the home even when it’s not necessary. (I am specifically not taking issue with mothers working where it’s necessary — i.e., to satisfy 1 Tim. 5:8.) If even in fundamentalist circles we’re criticizing husbands who don’t want their wives to work when it’s not necessary as having fragile egos, that’s not just sad, it’s bad.

But there is absolutely no indication that the Proverbs 31 wife’s income was “necessary.” (Which in itself is a very slippery term. What seems necessary to one does not to another. It is necessary because of purchases that were not truly necessary now makes it necessary to keep up the payments?) It’s impossible to make hard and fast rules that fit everyone’s situation. Clearly a wife and mother should not neglect her home and family. Ages and number of children vary a great deal from family to family. However, as the Proverbs 31 woman exemplifies, many wives and mothers can find creative ways to contribute to household income being while still attending to the other needs of the home. I think the general principles of the Bible should be taught. I think the application of these principles must be left to each husband and wife to decide for themselves.

I’m not sure that’s the case. But in any event, it certainly wasn’t work that she was doing to demonstrate her independence or equality, to protect her individual identity, or because she was bored at home with the kids. Also, keep in mind that the “work” of the Proverbs 31 woman and the extent to which she was “outside the home” to do that work was very different from 99% of the outside work wives/mothers do today.

Plus, I was defending husbands who have decided that she is not going to work outside the home from “friendly fire” that he has an “egg shell ego” or “fragile masculinity.”

Am I correct in assuming that Scripture does not prohibit woman working outside the home?