August 19, 2005 by s.z.

Training Your Kids the Patriarch Way

I have a headache, and am cranky and out of sorts.  So, here's something that I've been saving for just such an occasion: Family-Centered Training After HIgh School by our old friend Philip Lancaster, the Dominionist/Patriarch/spanking guy.

Those of us who homeschool our children have come to understand the substantial measure of responsibility we have for their total upbringing and the great degree to which we can and must be involved in their lives.

Yeah, we must oversee every aspect of their lives or they might gain a sense of autonomy -- and we hate it when that happens.

The question is: When does this responsibility end? It seems that most parents would consider the process complete once the child has completed "high school" level academic work. It is at that point that even homeschooling parents tend to regard the young person as ready to go out and make his own decision about education, vocation, and marriage, with a minimum of input from the parents.

And that's a big mistake.  Sure, the young person may be a legal adult then, but a lifetime of being sheltered from life has rendered him unable to function in the real world, or to think for himself.  That's why you should direct his life until he's at least 50 (or you're dead --whichever comes first).

One of the tragedies we see in the homeschooling subculture is that the fruit of many years of devoted training is being squandered as parents essentially abandon their children to make their "personal" decisions as "individuals" when it comes to the most important choices in life: further education and training, vocation, and marriage.

For these children aren't "individuals," they are part of you.  Therefore, you can't let them make their own decisions, because they might screw up -- and then you'll look bad.

So we send our children off to college, assuming that academic preparation is most important, and ignoring the moral and spiritual dangers of this approach. We urge our children to move out of the house, get their own apartments and a job to support themselves, and we forget their need for continued guidance and preparation for their life work and for marriage.

In our misguided belief that the goal of good parenting is to prepare our children to function without us, we mistakenly encourage them to live their own lives.  What idiots we are!

What exactly is wrong with the standard send-them-away approach to our post-high-school children? And what would be a better approach? Let us consider several issues.

LIFE VISION

We must raise our children with the expectation that their preparation for their future family responsibilities is the most important dimension of their life preparation. In short, above all else we must communicate the vision that creating their own godly households will be life's greatest adventure.

Procreation should be their only goal!  Because that's how you, as the patriatch, gain a substantial group to lead. 

As Phil says in "Multi-generational Vision,:

The Lord has graciously given me six children. If each of them has six, I will have 36 grandchildren. If each of them has six, I will have 216 great grandchildren. If each of them has six, I will have 1,296 great-great grandchildren. Imagine, in four short generations I could be the patriarch of about 1,300 Christian families.

Of course, if they all run away from home and join celibate religious, become gay, or just decide not to have children, then Phil will only have his wife to boss around -- and what a let down that will be. 

The present-day approach communicates none of this vision. Instead young people are given the impression that home and family are for kids and that as newly-arrived adults they must set out on an adventure away from the confines of the home.

When, in truth, there is no reason for a child to ever leave the house!  The newly-arrived adult can have all kinds of adventures while living at home and serving as his father's indentured servant!

Consider the pervasive mission trip craze. (How many appeals for funding have you received this past year?) Though obviously not wrong as such, they tend to feed the notion that the serious work for God is somehow far way and exotic. Helping haul bricks to build an orphanage in India, or witnessing on the streets of Mexico City for two weeks is seen as the purest form of the spiritual quest. What an adventure! Pity the poor kid who has to stay home and merely can applesauce or help run the family business. But in fact, the latter are engaging in preparation far better suited to the real life God has called them to live for the rest of their lives.

Yes, God would much rather have young adults helping Mom can applesauce than building an orphanage, because American apples are of much more concern to Him than Indian orphans..

Needless to say, sending children off to college assures that their hearts will be turned away from home and family and reoriented toward the pursuit of the all-important "career." What college student has foremost in his (or her) mind that he is preparing to be a family leader, a godly spouse, a parent to children, and that from this base will spring his greatest effectiveness in every other area of life?

Ben Shapiro? 

Why can't we give young people a vision that fits more closely with a biblical view of what their primary life calling is to be? We can, but it will involve re-thinking the standard cultural models for training after high school. Our greatest challenge today is to learn how to help our children see a family-centered life as the real adventure.

Our greatest challenge today is keeping our children from having any contact with the outside world, as that might cause them to have their own goals and aspirations instead of knuckling under and accepting their parents' vision of how they should live.

EXPECTATIONS

Closely related to the issue of the vision we give our children as they near adulthood is that of the expectations that we create through the methods we use in their preparation. [...] It is the young women who are especially injured by the method of being sent away from the home for their life preparation. While their God-given calling is a home-centered one (Titus 2; Proverbs 31) and their life mission is to be the helper of a man as he pursues his dominion calling (Genesis 2), the experience of being trained outside the home tempts them to dissatisfaction with their role.

Women are becoming dissatisfied with their proscribed life mission of being a helper to a man?  That's terrible!  Phil has the right idea -- we should keep them locked up in their fathers's homes until they are safely married, so they don't get any ideas in their pretty heads.

Even if we keep the priority of being a wife and mother before the girls and don't allow them to prepare for a career outside the home, we may lead them astray. The very act of sending a daughter away on a mission trip for a couple weeks or on an apprenticeship for several months teaches her to have a spirit of independence that will not suit her for her calling as a helper to her husband.

No, there is no room for a spirit of independence when you're nothing more than a Husband's Helper.

Nowhere in Scripture do you see a model that allows for daughters to leave their fathers' authority and protection prior to marriage, yet that is the norm even in Christian circles today. By training our daughters to be independent we may be training them to blaspheme the word of God.

Because God hates career women.

After spending some time in Russia as part of a mission team, a girl wrote others of her experience. One statement caught the attention of my oldest daughter (who does a lot of home-centered work and has never been to Russia). The girl wrote: "When I left Russia, I left part of my heart there." What struck both my daughter and me was this: Why is this young lady being put in a position where she is developing affections for a work that is neither her father's nor her husband's? How is she being trained for the life that God is actually calling her to as a woman?

Why is she being allowed to have experiences which enrich her life and help other people, but do nothing for her father or her husband?  That hardly seems right.

In fact, despite the worthy nature of the work itself, she is nevertheless subtly being trained to be independent, to develop her own sense of direction and priorities in life. We're not saying her life is ruined.

But it is. She will never be a properly submissive husband helper now, so her life is pretty much shot all to hell.

FAMILY BONDS

Let's not just teach our children that preparing for starting their own families is their most important calling, let's also teach them to view that new family in the context of the extended family. [...] How many men can say that his descendants are mighty in the earth? Perhaps part of the reason is that his descendants are scattered over the earth with no sense of connection or obligation to the rest of their extended family.

In other words, it's hard for you, as the patriach, to have a proper tribe to lead if your descendants are scattered all over the place.  But if you can keep them all in your own little community, you can end up with a nice, inbred clan to rule.

HOW I'M APPLYING ALL THIS

Allow me to conclude by becoming personal and sharing how I am attempting to implement all these ideas in my own family. You can rest assured that I fall far short in many ways, and things always sound better on paper than they look in reality. But here's a glimpse anyway.

I have six children (20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 6). All have been homeschooled from the beginning. We consider it sin to send children to public school, and we don't find most Christian schools much better.

Because if your kids go to school, even Christian school, you can't oversee every single aspect of their lives.

We have taught our children to expect our guidance beyond the high school level, extending to the time they are married. They expect my wife, Pam, and I to help them in the process of finding a mate. The girls know that I will take the initiative in investigating young men and presenting one to them who I consider a good candidate for marriage.

And the girls know that they damned better well marry anyone Phil chooses for them.  That's God's will.

I have sought to expose my sons to as much and various work as I could over the years, and living in a rural area the last five years has greatly enhanced my ability to do that, since it seems there is more work that a boy can do out here. While I want each son to pursue academic training as far as his ability and interest dictates, I am even more concerned that each one learn some trade skills which he can use to earn a living and care for his own family in the future. Part of my working assumption has been that we are entering a period of history in which self-sufficiency skills will be more valuable than very specialized skills that will only equip a man for a narrow niche in the division of labor. I want to shape well-rounded men who can do a lot well and take care of themselves and their families no matter what happens to our society.

Yes, Phil believes that society is going to crumble, and that his sons need to know how to plough fields with oxen, and kill and skin wolves, more than they need to know how to read and write.

My oldest son Drew (almost 19) works building houses and is setting up his own house so that he is ready to live on his own in anticipation of taking a wife when the Lord provides one.

Why does this sound like the plot for a modern-day version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?

As early as 15 Drew was talking of his desire to finish his academic training so he could work, set up a home, get married, and have many godly children and grandchildren. (I don't think I had that vision at 15!)

Yeah, not many boys of 15 claim that their big goal in life is to have many grandchildren.

The girls are busy at home, practicing the life skills they will need in the future as they bless my family now with their labors. My oldest daughter Sarah (with a little help) has canned nearly 1,000 jars of food this year. The girls planted most of the vegetable garden and provided most of the care. They help me out in my ministry work, entering data, sending out mail orders, making tapes. Later they will help their husbands in similar ways.

Manual labor and low-level clerical work will be their lot even after marriage.  What birght futures they have to look forward to.

All the girls have "hope chests" (whether or not it is a chest) in which they are setting aside things they can use when they are married and have a family. This is a constant focus for them all, even now for six-year-old Alice. It is a form of dowry that I can offer a prospective husband along with my daughter.

It's great that six-year-old Alice if focused on building a dowry that her father can offer to her prospective husband.  You don't see that much in first graders these days.

I would not send a daughter away for any kind of academic training since her training is supposed to be home-centered in any case, and since I could not exercise my duty of oversight and protection if she were out of the home.

Yes, it's hard to oversee your adult daughter if she's out of the home -- and if she went to college, how could you guard her virginity?

Sending a daughter to college, in my view, would be to tempt her to abandon the calling God has given her and to invite her to develop a spirit of independence. It would also weaken the influence that my wife and I could exert and would likely lead to the fracturing of our family as she would likely marry someone of her own choosing and move somewhere else.

Exactly.  If she went to college, she might escape.

All my children are being trained to expect to remain close to the rest of the family, unless God somehow clearly calls them to another location (and finding a godly man for the daughters could well require that).

I like how Phil trains his children to expect that their lives will always be run by Phil.

The norm is to remain with family, to build ties between siblings, cousins, etc., and between the generations of the extended family. We will seek to invite the prospective husbands for my daughters to become part of our community here.

The Lancaster tribal community.

Back to our original issue: we reject the notion that it is normal to send children away just at the time that they are ready to make the most important decisions in life. We believe it is a lie that they need distance from their parents or the training of some distant "experts" to be adequately prepared for life. Their best training is in the context of the home, church, and community. This is real life. This is the basis for real strength over the years.

Yes, real life is living with your parents until you marry the person they've chosen for you, and then living next door to them.  

Thanks, Phil, for that instructive article.  

And if anyone wants to learn more about subjugating one's children, Phil has a book out: Family Man, Family Leader. 

 

What this country needs is a few good men — husbands and fathers who are willing to love and lead their households with manly resolve and godly vision. Frankly, the Church needs these men every bit as much as the rest of the country. We are experiencing a national crisis of manhood of epidemic proportions. Absent a revival of fatherhood, we can expect to see an ever-increasing rise in the number of effeminate boys and masculine women, as well as the breakdown of the Christian family as it is defined in Holy Scripture.

Wow, an ever-increasing rise in the number of effeminate boys and masculine women -- we sure don't want that!  Of course, if we do have a revival of Phil's kind of tatherhood, we can expect to see an ever-increasing rise in the number of really screwed up kids who end up killing their parents.  Just something to think about.

2:49:14 AM