Decisions for Daughters

My oldest is now nineteen and many people are beginning to ask what her plans are for the future.


Well, long term, she wants to be a housewife and mother. However that particular job doesn’t appear to have any openings at the moment.



We have all prayed and talked about her many options from college to missionary, get-a-job to do-volunteer work. Her overwhelming feeling is that God has a great deal more He wants her to learn at this time in her life. We went through our personal library and assembled a course of study:

1. Study Skills (speed reading, speed math, shorthand)

2. The History of Modern Philosophy

3. General Science overview from a biblical perspective with emphasis on Creation vs Evolution (including reading books teaching both views)

4. Advanced Home Economics

5. Early American History

6. English Linguistics

7. Management

(All but one of these books were written for adults.)

In addition she feels the need to hang around and continue helping here. Frankly, though I could manage without her, she is a tremendous help! She manages the laundry, helps teach, supervises cleaning of zones, and cooks the main dish for supper. I know I could manage without her only because I must have before she got this old, but I’m not real sure how I did it:-P



Here at home she is appreciated, needed and loved. She knows she is a needed member of our family (isn’t that what everyone really wants in life?) Add to this that our house is always full of laughter and love and you have to ask why would anyone be in a hurry to leave? Oh, the day will come when she does want to leave. There’s just no hurry.



And let’s ask the biblical question:

Why are American Christians in such a hurry to rush their children, especially their girls, out the door?

Biblically, a child appears to be accountable at age 20. God only held those twenty and older accountable for Israel’s rebellion at the Promised Land. He also charged a different tax for those above twenty than for those below.

There is a difference in age counting though. I understand the Israelites called a child “1” during their first year. We call them “1” during their second year. This would mean 20 in the Bible is what we call 19. At any rate, the “adult at 18” is from the Vietnam War era when soldiers thought is unfair that they could be drafted but couldn’t vote at 18. It also happens to be when most of us finish our formal education or switch to college.



The book of Genesis tells us “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they twain shall be one flesh.” It is only after marriage that God appears to expect children to separate from their parents. Of course, the average age for marriage was about 14 for girls and maybe 18-20 for boys, so this is a little hard to compare to today where the average ages are 24 for girls and 30 for boys.



(Actually, I would prefer earlier marriage. I think it is healthier emotionally and spiritually. There is something cruel about telling someone “you have to wait until you marry to be sexually fulfilled. Oh and by the way, you can’t marry until 10-15 YEARS after puberty.”

I believe it is best for men and women to grow up together in order to form one unit. Waiting until you are both done maturing before you get married makes it much harder to mesh into one unit.

If both parties are prepared for this responsibility there is no reason it can’t be successful. In fact, young marriages from the past have a far better record than our older marriages today.

There is a problem though if both people have not been prepared for marriage. God will often give the prepared one a different calling to fulfill while waiting for their future mate to be ready.)



Truth be told, there is no biblical precedence for children, especially girls, to go out and make their own life a way from their parents. Girls were held under their father’s headship until marriage.



Now, were my daughter to decide she needed that experience of being on her own and taking care of herself, we would support her. God has different callings for each of us and He may want her to have those skills at some time. Once she is an adult, she’s answerable to Him, not us, and there are many women in our modern world God has had work for them to do before marriage outside their parent’s home.

To conclusion is that we can't assume just one method is best for every situation. Not only does this mean we need to be prepared for all our children to go to college, we need to be prepared for them to choose a different course as well. We need to realize that they may be called to minister to there parents and siblings for a time and not devalue that calling.