AT The Orthosphere, Alan Roebuck has a very good essay on marriage and men that manages to be both realistic and idealistic, a significant feat for so difficult a subject. Though the essay is mostly directed to men who are not yet married (and he doesn’t suggest that every single man marry), my favorite parts are those addressed to men who are married, in which he describes the essential leadership qualities of husband and father. Here is a brief excerpt:

Men and women were designed by God to love and support each other in marriage, but modernity has set them against one another. The most accurate brief way to characterize the current disorder in male-female relations is to say that modernity has made men and women into rivals, each seeking to gain the advantage at the expense of the other. At the outset, then, the properly masculine man rejects the modernist paradigm. Although probably a majority of women will not be seeking a proper relationship with a man, and many women will be hostile toward men from the start of any relationship, you will transcend the hostility. You will not mistrust women in general (although you know you must be wary of many of them), because you know the God-ordained purpose of marriage: Fellowship between man and woman, under the leadership of the man, leading to marriage and children. And even if your woman shows signs of hostility or rivalry, you will recognize it as a sin to be opposed rather than accept it as an unavoidable expression of the fundamental female nature.

Mr. Roebuck’s comments about the “hostility” of women should be viewed in the context of feminism, which fosters that hostility.

Please follow and like us: