(Compass - Christian Explorations of Daily Living) David H. Jensen - Parenting (2011, Fortress Press) PDF

Authentic parenting in a radically new light
JENSEN
This lively and personal volume demonstrates how central Christian convictions
DAVID H. JENSEN
inform the age-old practices of parenting and how the experience and practice
of parenting shape Christian faith today. Parenting pays special attention to some
of the day-to-day challenges and routines of parenting in a globalized world and
puts those in conversation with the history of the church. Jensen concludes with a
brief theology of parenting to help contemporary parents live out their calling by
offering a fresh vision which promotes justice, human flourishing, and recognition
that all people are children of God, who cares for the world as a Parent.
“In his thoughtful and poignant portrait of parenting, David Jensen bears witness
to the many fruits of recent developments in practical theology and childhood
studies. He takes us inside—inside his own life as a parent and inside the thought
of classic theologians—to reclaim the potential of parenting to enrich theology
and everyday Christian life. Parents, scholars, and ministers alike will benefit from
the dexterity and wisdom he brings to this endeavor.”
parenting
parenting
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore
E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor
of Pastoral Theology, The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University
Author, In the Midst of Chaos: Care of Children as Spiritual Practice
David H. Jensen is professor of constructive the-

ology and associate dean for academic programs
at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His
most recent books are Living Hope: The Future
and Christian Faith (2010), Responsive Labor: A
Theology of Work (2006), and Flourishing Desire: A
Theology of Human Sexuality (forthcoming, 2012).
He is series editor of the Compass series.
C M PA S S
C M PA S S
Christian Explorations of Daily Living
Religion / Ethics

parenting
“David Jensen’s Parenting weaves everyday experience and

Christian traditions to produce a wise, complex, and beautifully
written exploration of parenting as a gift. Theologians, students,
parents, ministers, and others will be inspired to think outside
current boxes by this honest and searching new vision for rais-
ing children. Here is theology at its profound and transformative
best.”
John Wall
Professor of Religion
Rutgers University
“David Jensen’s insightful meditation sheds new light on the

practice of parenting for twenty-first-century Christians. Draw-
ing on the riches of the Christian biblical and theological tradi-
tion and his own experience as parent, theologian, and ethicist,
Jensen both invites and challenges his readers to experience
parenting as a spiritual task. This is no mere idealization of
child-rearing but, rather, a realistic proposal that suffuses daily
routines with creative grace.”
Barbara Pitkin
Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies
Stanford University
compass
David H. Jensen, Series Editor
Playing
James H. Evans Jr.
Shopping
Michelle A. Gonzalez
Eating and Drinking

Elizabeth T. Groppe
Parenting
David H. Jensen
Working
Darby Kathleen Ray
Traveling
Joerg Rieger
Forthcoming Volumes
Dreaming
Barbara Holmes
parenting
David H. Jensen
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
PARENTING
Compass series
Copyright © 2011 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief
quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be
reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the
publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write
to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
A portion of chapter 2 appeared earlier as “Playful Fathering: The Bur-

den and Promise of Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture,” in Father-
ing: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as
Fathers 1/2 (June 2003).
A portion of chapter 3 appeared earlier as “Adopted into the Family:

Toward a Theology of Parenting,” in Journal of Childhood and Reli-
gion, 1/2 (2010).
Cover design: Laurie Ingram
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jensen, David Hadley
Parenting / David H. Jensen.
p. cm. — (Compass series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 978-0-8006-9848-5 (alk. paper)
1. Parenting—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Child rearing—Reli-
gious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BV4526.3.J46 2011
248.8’45—dc23
2011021849
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.

15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
For Grace and Finn
contents
series foreword •• David H. Jensen ix

acknowledgments xiii
introduction 1
1 •• o rdinary routines, ordinary times 7

Interrupted Sleep 7
Breakfast 12
Drop-Off 17
Pickup 25
Dinner and Homework 32
Playing 37
Arguing 39
Worship 41
Tired 45
2 •• p arenting in christian traditions 49

The Hebrew Bible: Blessing and Honor
amid Family Foibles 50
The New Testament: Suspicion of Family
and Order in the Family 54
John Chrysostom: Parenting and Faith
Development 59
vii
viii • contents
Thomas Aquinas and the Order of

Parental Love 63
Martin Luther: Beauty amid the Mundane 67
Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture,
and Children’s Play 72
Bonnie Miller-McLemore: Family
Spirituality and Chaos 77
Conclusion 82
3 •• t oward a theology of parenting 85

Adoption 85
Triune Life and Parenting Life 92
Work and Play 98
Hospitality 104
Blessing 111
Conclusion 116
notes 119
suggestions for further reading 123
reader’s guide 125
series foreword
Everyday practices matter for Christian faith. Our ordi-

nary routines—eating, cooking, working, walking, shop-
ping, playing, and parenting—are responses to the life God
gives to the world. Christian faith claims that the ordinary
materials and practices of human life are graced by God’s
presence: basic foodstuffs become the body of Christ in
a shared meal, water becomes the promise of new birth
as ordinary people gather in Christ’s name, and a trans-
formed household becomes a metaphor for God’s reign.
Bodies, baths, meals, and households matter to Christian
faith because God takes these everyday practices and mate-
rials as God’s own: blessing, redeeming, and transforming
them so that they more nearly reflect the hope and grace
that come to us in the midst of the everyday. Christian
faith does not flee from the everyday but embeds itself in
daily, ordinary routines. This series considers everyday
practices as sites for theological reflection. When we pay
close attention to everyday practices, we can glimpse clas-
sical Christian themes—redemption, creation, and incar-
nation—in new light. This book series does not attempt
to apply classical doctrines to particular practices but to
offer narratives of ordinary routines, explore how immer-
sion in them affects Christian life in a global world, and
ix
x • series foreword
imagine how practice might reform theology and theology

reform practice.
The series also explores the implications of globaliza-
tion for daily practices and how these ordinary routines are
implicated—for good and for ill—in the often-bewildering
effects of an increasingly interconnected world. Every-
day practices, after all, are the places where the global
becomes local. We encounter globalization not in abstract
theory but in the routine affairs of shopping at the cor-
ner grocery for food grown on the other side of the globe,
maintaining friendships with persons on other continents,
and carrying out jobs where workplace decisions ripple
outward to seemingly distant neighbors. Daily practices
put a human face on the complex phenomenon of glo-
balization and offer one place to begin theological reflec-
tion on this phenomenon. Paying close attention to these
practices helps unveil the injustice as well as the hope of a
global world. Since unreflective and consumptive forms of
these daily practices often manifest themselves in Ameri-
can consumer society, this series also offers concrete sug-
gestions for how daily practices might be reconfigured to
more nearly reflect the hope and justice that is given to
the world by God’s grace. If daily practices implicate our
complicity in global injustice, they might also be sites to
imagine that world alternatively.
Though each book displays an organization uniquely
its own, every title in the series offers three common
themes: (1) The books offer thick descriptions of particular
practices in North American society. What do parenting,
cooking, and dressing look like in American communities
in the twenty-first century? (2) The books survey varied
Christian understandings of each practice, summoning
theological resources for enhanced understanding and
series foreword • xi
critique of typical forms of practice. What have Christians

said about eating, dreaming, and traveling throughout their
history, and how do their reflections matter today? (3) The
books offer a constructive restatement of each practice and
explore how ordinary practices might reshape or sharpen
beliefs and themes of Christian faith. How does attention
to practice affect the way we understand Christian theol-
ogy, and how does attention to theology affect the way we
understand everyday practice? Each book shares the con-
viction that Christian life is best encountered (and often
best understood) in the midst of the ordinary.
Many of the authors of each volume are members of
the Workgroup in Constructive Theology, an ecumenical
group of teachers and scholars that writes and teaches
theology in dialogue with contemporary critiques of
Christian traditions. We are diverse in theological and
denominational orientation yet share the recognition that
Christian theology has often been employed for abusive
ends. Theological traditions have silenced women, peo-
ple of color, the poor, and GLBT (gay/lesbian/bisexual/
transgender) persons. Our constructive restatements of
Christian practice, therefore, do not simply restate clas-
sical Christian traditions but question them as we learn
from them. We listen to the past while we also critique
it, just as we hope that subsequent generations will also
criticize and learn from us. Because so many voices have
been silenced throughout the church’s history, it is essen-
tial that Christian theologians attend to voices beyond
the corridors of ecclesial and social power. Outside these
corridors, after all, is where Christian faith takes root in
ordinary life. Though each of us writes theology some-
what differently—some with explicit schools of theology
in mind, such as liberationist or womanist theology—we
xii • series foreword
all share the conviction that theology matters not simply

for reflective life but for the life of the world. Christian the-
ology, at its best, is one expression of life’s fullness and
flourishing. Our words, in other words, ought to point
to a more abundant life of grace in the face of the death-
dealing forces at work on an economically stratified and
ecologically threatened planet.
We have written each book with a minimum of techni-
cal jargon, intending them to be read in a wide variety of
settings. The books may be used in seminary and under-
graduate courses, including introductions to theology, eth-
ics, and Christian spirituality. Clergy will also find them
useful as they seek brief yet substantive books on Chris-
tian life that will inform their work of preaching, counsel-
ing, and teaching. We also imagine that each text could
be used in churches for adult education classes. Many
Christians seek guides for how faith is lived but are disen-
chanted with conservative approaches that shun dialogue
with the wider culture of religious diversity. This series
offers a progressive, culturally engaged approach to daily
practices, globalization, and Christian theology. We think
the books are as important in the questions they ask as in
the answers they attempt.
David H. Jensen
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
acknowledgments
This short book has been years in the making. It began in

July 1998, and I will continue to reflect on its themes for
the rest of my life as I continue to parent. For the reflec-
tions and conversations that have sustained my work on
the book, I have many to thank.
Students in my courses at Austin Seminary on the care
and theology of children have asked consistently percep-
tive questions. Colleagues at Austin Seminary—especially
Allan Cole, Cindy Rigby, and Bill Greenway—have helped
me live out the dual vocation of seminary professor and
parent. The Workgroup in Constructive Christian Theol-
ogy continues to sustain my own work and research with
memorable spring gatherings every year in Nashville, the
city where I first became a parent.
Members of several churches have assisted me in edu-
cational and retreat settings: Government Street Pres-
byterian Church, Mobile, Alabama; Central Presbyterian
Church, Austin; Covenant Presbyterian Church, Aus-
tin; and First Presbyterian Church, Lampasas, Texas. A
Church of the Brethren conference on caring ministries,
in Lititz, Pennsylvania, provided me with an early oppor-
tunity to put some of these thoughts into words. The 2010
Williamson Distinguished Scholars conference at Austin
xiii
xiv • acknowledgments
Seminary also provided space for some of these prelimi-

nary reflections to be exchanged with scholars whose work
I cite in these pages.
My parents, John and Gretchen Jensen, have given me
powerful living examples of what it means to parent with
delight. Molly Jensen, my partner, makes parenting a joy,
no matter how much work it involves. The book is dedi-
cated, appropriately, to our children, Grace and Finn, who
continue to surprise me with the gift of their lives. Toward
the end of the Christian Bible, we hear these words: “See,
I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). I am
reminded of the gift of that newness—and the anticipa-
tion of further newness as creation finds its home in God’s
life—each day of life with Molly, Grace, and Finn. Each
morning, their faces make all things new for me.
introduction
On a Saturday evening in late July 1998, my wife, Molly,

told me she had missed her period. After talking about it
over dinner, we decided not to fret much about it. We told
ourselves, “Sometimes women miss their periods,” even
though Molly hadn’t ever missed hers before. As we nib-
bled on stir-fry, we found it difficult to talk about anything
else, but eventually we moved on to other topics. Conver-
sation was strained, however, and after cleaning up the
dishes, we decided to go to bed early. We fell asleep wor-
ried. The following morning, after breakfast, we tumbled
into our car and drove to Walgreens on a mission to buy
one thing: a pregnancy test. Instead of driving to the drug-
store in our neighborhood, we drove across town. In our
agitated state, we wanted to be sure that no one we knew
saw us buying a pregnancy test. When we arrived at Wal-
greens, we selected a pregnancy test kit with multiple tes-
ters, just to be sure. We also grabbed some chocolate as we
headed for the cashier. It was an easy enough purchase.
On the drive back home, my heart was pounding. What
if Molly really was pregnant? Neither of us had a full-time
job. Molly had just finished her doctoral coursework and
was beginning to prepare for comprehensive exams. I was
neck-deep in my dissertation, working twenty hours a week
1
2 • parenting
at a sporting-goods store. We paid our bills and rent with

student loans and my rather low wages. Our marriage was
still young, barely a year old. We had talked about having
kids but had agreed that parenthood still lay some years in
the future. Now was clearly not the time for us. As I drove,
Molly asked, “What are we going to do?” “I don’t know,” I
said, “Let’s just first take this test.”
We got home, climbed the metal stairs to our little
apartment, ripped open the pregnancy tests, read the
instructions, and saw that the “result window” would
change from a minus sign to a plus sign if it detected signs
of pregnancy. We also read that the reaction causing the
plus sign to emerge could take up to a minute and a half.
Molly took the first test, and the plus sign appeared within
seconds. “Better try again,” I said. The second test pro-
duced the same result, as did the third. We were stunned.
We cried—not exactly tears of joy—and cried some more.
“Oh, Dave, what are we going to do?” Molly asked. Most
of the rest of that day, we asked each other that question,
lying on our bed together, alternating between sorrow
and panic. Neither of us ate much. The pit in my stomach
grew, and worry settled in for what seemed like a perma-
nent stay.
The next few days went by in a blur. The Monday after
the positive pregnancy tests, I began a week-long train-
ing program to be a teaching assistant. During every
lunch hour that week, Molly and I would rush to each
other and find some secluded space where we could be
together. Because it was summer, the Vanderbilt Divin-
ity School chapel was empty, and we found seclusion in
the balcony. All I remember about those moments in the
chapel were that we cried, held each other, and prayed.
We thought about our options and considered all of them.
introduction • 3
We made an appointment with a university counselor and

talked to her about our struggle. It wasn’t time for us to
be parents, we told her. We were worried about how the
enormous responsibilities of a child would affect our mar-
riage so early in it, at a time when neither of us had gainful
employment.
And then, on Friday evening, we decided to play ten-
nis. It seems incongruous in retrospect that we chose to
do this, but there we were at a court down the street from
our apartment. My birthday was occurring that weekend,
and we figured we needed some kind of celebration at
the end of an unbelievable week. We had recently begun
playing tennis together, were getting better at it, and were
convinced we’d be playing long into our marriage. On this
night, however, we didn’t hit many volleys; our minds
weren’t really on tennis or my birthday. We took a break
after about fifteen minutes, left the court, and sat on the
grass in the shade outside the fence. The details of the con-
versation we shared have
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
now faded from memory.
We prepared ourselves to
But on that evening, in
receive this child as a gift,
the shade of that tree, on
even though we were not
a muggy Nashville eve-
ready for it.
ning, we decided that we
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
would welcome this child
into the world as her parents. For some reason, we knew
she would be a girl. And we knew that we would name her
Grace. On that evening, we prepared ourselves to receive
this child as a gift, even though we were not ready for it,
even though barely a week previously we would not have
chosen to have a child. It was an excruciating decision for
us, but we told ourselves that somehow we’d figure out
how to make it all work.
4 • parenting
We never found out the gender of our daughter dur-

ing those many visits to the nurse-midwife. But when
Grace was born, we decided to name her Hannah Grace—
“double-grace,” since Hannah means grace in Hebrew.
Double-Grace changed our lives with the gift of her pres-
ence on that day and has changed it every day since then.
In the beginning, she taught us that parenting was a gift,
even when we weren’t prepared to receive it. That is some-
thing she still does today, even on days when she irritates
her parents with preteen melodrama. The gift has changed
over time since 1998, just as we have changed, but it still
remains a gift.
Parenting changes things for those who parent. Par-
ents, upon the appearance of a child in their lives, imme-
diately become responsible for another person, a person
who is dependent on the parent for life. This small book
is one attempt to document the significance of the gift of
those changes through the lenses of everyday experience
with children and the basic claims of Christian faith.
Christians have parented as long as there has been a
Christian church. In this sense, parenting is nothing new
to people of faith. For many of us, the family, the relation-
ships between parents and children, provide one of the
primary places where we learn Christian faith. Christian
faith gets lived out in families, in households where people
spend many of their eating, resting, and working hours.
What follows in these pages is one theologian’s attempt
to wrestle with some of the everyday experiences of parents
in conversation with the history of the church and with an
eye toward interpreting parenting for today. I have divided
the book into three chapters. The first explores some com-
mon routines of an American, middle-class family. I nar-
rate this section in the first person since I can best account
introduction • 5
for parenting experiences that are close to home. Even

though the chapter narrates my experience as a parent,
the routines and issues (such as household chores, driv-
ing to school, disciplining, eating together, playing, and
arguing) are common to many, if not most, middle-class
parents. These narrations of parenting experiences set the
stage for the second chapter, which surveys a broad spec-
trum of Christian theology. I have gathered voices from
across the ages, including the Bible, John Chrysostom,
Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Horace Bushnell, and
Bonnie Miller-McLemore. These theological reflections
begin prior to the emergence of Christianity and con-
clude with a twenty-first- ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
century voice. In this sur- Five themes—adoption,
vey, I encourage readers triune life, work and play,
to listen to these theo- hospitality, and blessing—
logians—to their short- might help contemporary
comings as well as their Christian parents live out
strengths—as each tries their calling to care for
to articulate a vision of their children.
parenting in light of faith. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The book concludes with a
chapter that develops a brief theology of parenting, atten-
tive to some of the experiences, issues, and concerns raised
in the first chapter as well as the legacy of the church’s his-
tory explored in the second chapter. In this final chapter, I
identify five themes—adoption, triune life, work and play,
hospitality, and blessing—that might help contemporary
Christian parents live out their calling to care for their
children and other children as they respond to a God who
cares for the world as a parent.
The perspective on parenting that I am offering is lim-
ited. It is not intended as a universal set of guidelines for
6 • parenting
all parents. The dilemmas I focus on are certainly more

common to middle-class parents in North America than
impoverished parents in Haiti. I write, moreover, as a
father, and though I am attentive to the voices of femi-
nist theologians, I cannot claim to know much about
the unique experiences of mothering. But I do hope that
despite these limitations readers will sense my conviction
that parenting, in the end, is a gift. This gift is certainly not
essential to Christian life, but it is one of many gifts that
can change our understanding of faith and what it means
to live well in the world.
1
ordinary routines, ordinary times
Interrupted Sleep
Morning comes too soon, this time with the beep of an
electronic watch. In the fog of a half-awake mind, I reach
toward the familiar, irritating sound that announces,
“Monday.” As I fumble for the button that turns off the
device I will soon put on my wrist, I glance at the person
next to me, who is still asleep. Somewhat to my surprise,
I discover that it is not Molly but our five-year-old son,
Finn. Sometime during the night, apparently, beds got
shuffled. This is not the first time this has happened, nor
will it be the last. Sometimes I snore and Molly, in des-
peration, will find another place to sleep. On those morn-
ings, I wake up alone. At other times, Finn comes running
to our room in the middle of the night, and if we don’t
escort him back to his room, the easiest course is to let
him sleep with us, which means that one of us eventually
has to move to another bed. Finn takes up space, and our
bed is not large. On those mornings, either Molly or I will
wake up with Finn. Just like today.
Waking up with Finn is a disruption of the way I think
life should be and a reminder of the beauty involved in
7
8 • parenting
being a parent. On one level, it interrupts life and sleep.

I would much rather wake up with Molly at my side. We
chose one another; we fell in love sixteen years ago; we
will share this same bed long after our children have left
the house. I look forward to waking up next to Molly and
seeing her face first thing in the morning—seeing the one
whose indescribable beauty still surprises me. Waking up
next to Molly is the best way to start the day. It is our room
and our bed, after all.
Finn doesn’t interrupt our sleep as he did when he was
five months old. On those nights during that first year,
Molly and I were often inordinately tired as we took turns
rocking our little boy back to sleep. Now the interruption
is more subtle. Even on nights when we sleep well, the
beds sometimes get shuffled in annoying ways. But I know
this disruption of sleep will end fairly soon, just as it did
with our daughter, Grace. Parenting, it often seems, is an
interruption.
When I get past the initial annoyance and surprise
of our son appearing in our bed, I am also struck by the
way Finn is lying there, eyes closed, soft cadence of breath
announcing, “I am still asleep.” During the night, he has
curled closer to my body, inching toward the warmth of
another person, reaching out in a form of primal connec-
tion. Most of us spend a good part of life trying to find
someone to sleep next to. Last night, Finn left the con-
fines of his own room (a relatively recent phenomenon in
family life, due in part to material prosperity) and found
someone. As I look at him sleeping this morning, it is hard
to imagine anything more peaceful. Nearly every parent
relishes watching his or her children sleep, as they remind
us in rest of the gift that is their life, as if their breath were
a summons simply to watch and wonder. What child is
ordinary routines, ordinary times • 9
this? And how on earth did he come into my life? As much

as Finn’s appearance in bed constitutes an interruption,
watching him continue to sleep isn’t a bad way to begin
the day either.
Molly and I are members of that often-maligned
demographic group Generation X, a generation that took
its time figuring out what it wanted to do when it grew up,
the first generation in American history that, at least for
the middle class, knew that it would probably not experi-
ence a higher standard of living than our parents’ genera-
tion. In our parents’ generation, dual-career couples were
becoming the norm for the white middle class. That life-
style had long been the norm in the lower classes and for
many racial minority groups, where the meager wages of
one job could not support a family with children. But the
generation of middle-class white Americans that came of
age in the 1970s and 1980s had a different experience of
childhood than their counterparts of the 1950s and 1960s.
Our generation knew a world where both parents worked
outside the home, and this often meant day care, babysit-
ters, and the care provided by extended family members.
We also knew a world where the boundaries between what
men and women “could” or “should” do were beginning
to blur. For that, we are mostly thankful, and we continue
many of the patterns our parents set in place.
If our parents often sought greater economic security,
however, many Gen Xers have chosen a more downwardly
mobile course. We often clamor for part-time or flextime
work while our children are young. Others of us have cho-
sen careers that allow for more creative scheduling. One of
the most appealing things about being a seminary profes-
sor, at this point in my life, is that I do not have to be in the
office from nine to five. I have the freedom to grade papers
10 • parenting
after the kids have gone to bed, which allows me to pick

them up from school many afternoons. For me and many
others, that’s worth more
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• than a larger paycheck
Most of the time, I think at the end of the month.
I’m a better parent because Our generation has also
I also am a teacher. But learned, through struggle,
sometimes I’m not. juggling, and compromise,
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• that sometimes one’s voca-
tion outside the home can

enrich the vocation of parenting. Most of the time, I think
I’m a better parent because I also am a teacher. But some-
times I’m not.
Generation X has revisited some of the patterns of
parenting that our parents implemented. If Dr. Spock
informed our parents’ generation, Dr. Sears seems more
our style. Sears advocates “attachment parenting” that
stresses the importance of physical touch and for parents
to respond to children’s needs. In this school of thought,
parenting is less about molding and more about nurtur-
ing, at times even letting children take the lead. At our
first baby shower, Molly and I received a copy of Wil-
liam and Martha Sears’s The Baby Book,1 which became
the only book on parenting I actually read. The Sears’s
approach made sense to us, and before Grace was born
we were sold on its message. We bought a baby sling so
we could wear our baby as we cleaned, walked, shopped,
or cooked. We tried “co-sleeping” when Grace came
home from the hospital. Whenever Grace made a peep,
we would rush to her rescue. Nothing, it seemed, could
be too close.
Our parents thought we were crazy. Molly’s mother
sent us newspaper articles about parents rolling over in
bed, suffocating their children. My parents told us it was

okay to let babies cry for a little while. But we kept getting
up, three or four times a night, to “attach” to our daugh-
ter. After ten months of attachment and sleep deprivation,
Molly and I looked like wrecks and felt exhausted. We
aged a lot between February 1999 and January 2000. Just
as we were about to employ some other kind of parental
method, Grace somehow, miraculously slept through the
night. We woke up refreshed and stunned and rarely con-
sulted Dr. Sears again.
With Finn, we didn’t employ the Sears’s methods
in toto. Co-sleeping was out of the question; he never
seemed to need it anyway. But now, at age five, he crops
up in our bed on many mornings. After abandoning Sears,
we now find ourselves with a five-year-old in bed with us,
and we often lie down with our twelve-year-old daughter
before she goes to sleep, recounting the events of the day,
her worries and her joys. Neither of us remembers either
of our parents doing these things with us. Neither Molly
nor I advocates “attachment parenting,” but vestiges of
it remain, and to a parent of an older generation, it sure
appears that we exemplify it.
We have parented differently than our parents did,
and at times our approach has seemed rather indulgent.
So we find ourselves improvising, searching for ways to
parent that chart a middle course between overindulgence
and underattentiveness. Most of the time we parent by
heart, by feeling. It looks different from what our parents
did, but maybe it isn’t all that different in the end. In the
meantime, sometimes I wake up with Molly by my side, at
other times with Finn. He’ll grow up eventually, just as we
did. If he eventually becomes a parent, I’m sure he’ll par-
ent differently than we did.
12 • parenting
Breakfast
We don’t linger over breakfast in the Jensen house.
Because our family enjoys sleep, we wake up at the lat-
est possible minute. Breakfast is not a meal that Jensens
cook, at least on weekdays. Instead, it comes in boxes or
bags, meant to be poured or toasted. Most of the time, it’s
a rather hurried affair. But even when they’re hurried, the
best breakfasts are when we are all at the table together.
It happens that way this morning, when Grace and
Finn woke up ten minutes after Molly and me. Both of our
kids like cereal, something I’ve become convinced is hard-
wired in American children. Today, it’s Honey Bunches of
Oats and Life—not the worst cereals (at least it’s not Lucky
Charms), but not the most nutritious either. For Molly and
me, it’s toast, coffee, and grapefruit.
Like many parents of our generation, we endeavor to
make a more concerted effort at healthful eating. Our gen-
eration has learned some of the impact—for good and for
ill—of industrial agriculture. Most of the parents we know
have watched Supersize Me and Food, Inc. We know that
some of the foods we ate while growing up are only mar-
ginally nutritious and that others are actually injurious to
health. The impact on the environment—from pesticides
to irrigation to methods of agriculture that increase ero-
sion—adds further to our concern. So does the encourage-
ment to eat locally and organically. But eating that way can
also be expensive, so sometimes—today, for example—the
easiest breakfast is from a box.
As we eat this morning, we talk about our food. “Where
did your cereal come from, Finn?” we ask.
“From a box,” he quips.
“What’s in that box?”
“Oats and honey bunches.”
Those words get us talking about oat fields and bee-

hives. Finn likes talking about bees, so he’s becoming
aware of the connections between the food he puts in his
body and the wider world, but I confess that I don’t know
where the oats and honey in his cereal come from. Texas?
Probably not. North America? Maybe. But there are prob-
ably some ingredients in this box from other parts of
the world. This morning we’re eating neither locally nor
organically.
Some Saturdays, we putter around in the community
garden at the university where Molly teaches. Finn and
Grace have pulled carrots from the ground and cut leaves
of spinach for the evening’s salad. They know that food
doesn’t come from boxes, at least originally. They know
that raising food can be a lot of hard work. Many hands
have been involved in the food that makes it to our break-
fast table. “Why don’t we say thank you for this food?”
Finn asks. Sometimes our five-year-old’s words can blow
me away.
When we first got married, Molly and I had grandiose,
Gen X visions of living lightly on the earth and cultivating
our own food, with children at our sides, digging in the
dirt. Eventually, we started a small garden at our house
in central Austin, beside the driveway, replete with toma-
toes, broccoli, lettuce, basil, and zucchini. Gardening has
become more popular in recent times, but gardening in
Texas can present its own challenges. The summer sun is
unforgiving, and the schedule of our lives didn’t permit
hours upon end for labor. We never even got the compost
pile started. Lettuce, it turned out, did fine without a lot
of effort, and so did basil. But the tomatoes were a differ-
ent story. There was too much shade where we planted
our garden, and no matter how much we attended to those
14 • parenting
plants, they eventually withered. So we now have aban-

doned—at least for the time being—the side-yard garden
and instead invest occasional energies at the community
garden, a place where common efforts can yield better
results. There our children can learn from gardeners bet-
ter than their parents.
The drive to eat healthfully can sometimes be tyranni-
cal. If our generation is rightly concerned with the nature
and quality of food, we can also become obsessed with it.
The list of “forbidden foods” in some families stretches
longer than the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the list of
books deemed detrimental to faith by sixteenth-century
Catholic censors. Breakfast this morning at the Jensen
house seems more permissive than restrictive. Thirteen
years ago, before Molly and I had children, I’m sure we
imagined oatmeal or home-baked bread rather than
Honey Bunches. We could have prepared something dif-
ferent for breakfast on this morning, too. But our children
like this breakfast, and it seems okay. At least we’re all sit-
ting together, and that, for the moment, is good.
Both of our children like starches. When Grace was
asked to put together a collage of her favorite foods in
kindergarten, they all turned out to be from the bread
group: macaroni, Cheerios, rolls, and toast. When asked
to name her favorite food, she told her teacher “cereal,”
stating what was obvious to us. Finn’s palate these days
isn’t much different, and we’re trying to expand it.
“Finn, let’s have something else for breakfast today.”
“I want cereal.” Molly sets a bowl of cereal alongside a
half of grapefruit in front of him. Finn is such a carb freak
that he doesn’t even want milk on his Honey Bunches.
One part of me murmurs, “He needs those carbs,” while
the other whispers, “You’re killing him with that stuff.”
He devours the cereal like a wolf and immediately

asks for another bowl. Instead of pouring another bowl, I
say, “Not until you eat your grapefruit.” I convince myself
that this is the way to proceed: by offering choices, not by
imposing parental will. I don’t know if I read this some-
where or whether this seems like the most appropriate
response.
A day in the life of a parent is filled with count-
less moments like this, when children present a wish or
demand and the parent is called upon to listen and redi-
rect, to say no to the demand while saying yes to the child.
Sometimes saying yes to our children also involves saying
yes to their request, even if it isn’t the request that we, as
parents, would make. Some days I’m more pliable, oth-
ers I’m more rigid. I know the questions will change over
the years in which our children share the same roof and
rooms with us. Instead of asking for more cereal, they will
ask for keys to the car or for a later curfew. How and when
one says yes or no constitutes a large part of parenting.
Finn is visibly upset when I say no to his request. It
seems reasonable enough. He’s still hungry, and the cereal
does have vitamins. So he sits and makes his “mad face.”
Grace has now finished her cereal and grapefruit and rises
from the table to clear her plate and gather her notebooks
for the school day. She ate her grapefruit, but I decide not
to call attention to that. Sibling comparisons tend to cre-
ate more conflict than clarity in our household. Molly tells
Finn, “Mmm, the grapefruit is good today,” which doesn’t
change Finn’s countenance. She begins to gather her
things, too, since she’s driving Grace to school today. That
leaves Finn and me at the table, Finn with his mad face
and me glancing at the newspaper. I don’t feel like talking
anymore about the cereal.
16 • parenting
I ask Finn, “Are you looking forward to seeing your

friends today?”
No response. He looks at me and says in a susurrant
voice that surfaces when he’s embarrassed or knows he’s
making a request that probably will not be granted, “Dad,
I want some more cereal.”
“When you finish your grapefruit.” I place dishes in the
dishwasher, wipe the counters clean, and then head to Finn’s
room to find some clothes. Finn can wear shorts today, since
the forecast is for seventy degrees. He’ll like that.
Grace and Molly have gathered their belongings and
are making for the door. Hugs, kisses, and words of I love
you. Finn receives them but doesn’t really say anything.
I do like this ritual of saying, “Have a good day,” kissing
the woman I love more than life itself, and hugging our
children. We’re each going separate ways, but those ways
begin with words of affection and a touch that will eventu-
ally bring us home again. None of this takes very long. We
scurry about, and as Grace is walking out the door, she hol-
lers, “Dad, I forgot my water bottle.” Where is that blasted
thing? Rushing around, I find it crammed into a cupboard.
Fill it with ice, hold it under the water tap, and rush it out
the door. They’re on their way with a wave and a smile.
I head back into the house with a T-shirt and shorts
in my hand, ready for Finn. I arrive at the table, and he’s
halfway through with his grapefruit. “Dad, can I have some
cereal now?” “Sure,” I say. He winds up eating most of the
grapefruit, not finishing it, but finishes the cereal almost
as I’m pouring it. I guess it was a pretty good breakfast.
The frown is now gone from Finn’s face, and he’s ready to
get dressed.
All of this takes place in less than fifteen minutes, this
ritual of beginning the day with food and with words and
gestures of love. Sometimes it involves setting limits for

our children; other mornings are relatively free and easy.
Some mornings parenting seems a breeze, with routines
that comfort our children and food and warm drink that
nourish the body.
Finn and I still have time together before we have to
pile into our other car to head to work and school. In the
half hour that we’ve got, we decide to read a book, Rep-
tiles. This is the latest fascination, even an obsession. Finn
knows the names of creatures that I have neither seen nor
heard of, like the Draco lizard. As we open the book, the
cereal incident seems distant history. I’d rather read him
another book, but he likes this one. We settle in and I start
reading, which involves his questions for me and narra-
tion of the book in his own words. The next part of the day
begins with lizards.
Drop-Off
Our old house, where we lived until the summer of 2010,
was in a rather old neighborhood (old, at least, for Aus-
tin) a mere thirteen blocks from the seminary and Finn’s
preschool. Pecan trees lined the streets in a canopy. Side-
walks also lined each street, leading to the neighborhood
grocery, bakery, and ice-cream parlor. Many houses were
small, at least by twenty-first-century American standards.
A quirky mix of college students, high-tech workers, musi-
cians, and professors populated these shady streets. The
commute for Finn and me was easy. Most of the time we
rode my bike, which included a tag-along contraption that
delighted Finn as we’d coast down the hill to school.
But the houses in our old neighborhood also required
constant maintenance and the kind of attention and
18 • parenting
finances that proved difficult for our family. One of the

ironies of that simple lifestyle was that it proved quite
expensive, especially as our kids grew. So in the summer
of 2010, we sold our house built in 1915 and moved farther
north from the center of town. The move has made Molly’s
commute much easier, since she teaches at a university
just north of Austin and no longer has to negotiate down-
town traffic.
The houses in our new neighborhood—nearly all of
them built in the 1970s—sit on larger lots and are more
spacious and less expensive to maintain. The neighbor-
hood was built on hills, and the soil is rockier, yielding live
oaks rather than pecans. Sidewalks are more sporadic. We
still walk but also find ourselves driving a bit more. This
means that each weekday morning we pile into two vehi-
cles, each heading in opposite directions as we begin the
day. Our choice to move in 2010 has made many things
easier. We rest easier knowing that we can do much of the
basic maintenance on our house and not viewing the slow
deterioration of a vintage home. There is more space for
Finn and Grace to run and play. We sleep better in the rel-
ative quiet of the new neighborhood, which doesn’t have
the raucous college parties that punctuated the night at
our old place.
Our decision to move is a common one that many par-
ents make: as children grow, they seem to require more
space. But in a society that continues to crave more, I
have often asked myself whether I am simply caving in to
insatiable American desires to have more. Moves to new
neighborhoods in the United States are increasingly intri-
cate consumer transactions: parents shop not simply for
a house to fit their needs but for neighborhoods with the
“best” schools and areas less affected by property crime.
All of these qualities were factors in our deliberations last

summer. Because of our relatively secure economic sta-
tus as a two-teacher household, we had more options than
many families do. But our choices also tapped into some
disturbing patterns in the larger Austin community and
undercut other values that we supposedly espoused, like
a commitment to economic, cultural, and racial diversity.
Our new neighborhood seems more racially diverse than
the old but only by a bit, as it is still overwhelmingly white.
As Austin schools struggle with financing (while I am writ-
ing this chapter, the school board is mulling whether to
eliminate over 1,100 jobs, almost 600 of which are teach-
ers), the schools on the west side of town where we live
fare better than those on the east side, where a larger per-
centage of African American and Hispanic families live.
Where does regard for one’s children and concern for
providing opportunities for them fit in with the pattern of
one’s larger values? A constant temptation in American
society—whether viewed in house-hunting patterns or
decisions over which school to attend—is to insulate, pro-
tect, and preserve one’s children. All of these efforts stem
from good motives, but they can also feed into larger, more
destructive patterns that wind up neglecting children who
are not one’s “own.” Hence, finding a good school for one’s
own child can contribute to disregard of other children’s
basic education.
I have no easy answers to those questions, patterns, and
temptations. I simply note the tension, especially for par-
ents who espouse Christian faith. Christian faith teaches
regard and concern for those beyond the family circle;
indeed, it stresses our obligation for the most vulnerable in
society, who are disproportionately children. If a pattern
of a consumer society is to care obsessively for one’s own
20 • parenting
child, our faith throws us beyond hearth and home to care

for children who may not share the same opportunities.
Even moving to a new house reveals the tensions between
these two imperatives: to
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
love our own children and
If a pattern of a consumer
to love all children of God.
society is to care
On this morning, the
obsessively for one’s own
commute from the new
child, our faith throws us
house is a long one. As I
beyond hearth and home
turn onto the expressway,
to care for children who
I see three lanes of traf-
may not share the same
fic barely moving. Even in
opportunities.
slow economic times, Aus-
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
tin appears like a booming
Sun Belt mecca. More people move here every year, and
that means more cars. Mass-transit options are relatively
poor compared with those in other cities of its size, so our
family drives. Lately, it seems as if we’ve been driving a
lot. I don’t know why traffic is so slow at 8:30 this morn-
ing, but it probably means we’ll barely make it in time for
Finn’s 9:00 school bell. We scan through radio stations,
trying to find a tune that Finn and I both can enjoy, even-
tually landing on a bubble-gum pop station that we sing
along to. Because he has a preteen sister, Finn knows the
words to these pop tunes. I, embarrassingly, know the
words too, and it does make the stop-and-go traffic a bit
more tolerable. As each song goes by, I am amazed that
Finn knows the lyrics. What a memory: mine seems to be
getting shorter, his vaster. After three songs have played,
the cars pick up steam a bit. More songs, more singing,
and we pull into his preschool at 8:54.
At drop-off, I see a few dads but mostly moms. When I
pick him up in the afternoon, it will be only moms. Society
has witnessed many changes in parenting patterns since

the 1950s and ’60s, but many things have stayed the same.
More parents talk about co-parenting these days, and
there is evidence that many are putting those words into
practice. The relatively flexible nature of higher-education
teaching allowed Molly and me to do things in the after-
noon with our children when we “should” have otherwise
been at work. But this also creates confusion and bewil-
derment from others.
When we first moved to Austin, my classes met only
two days a week, which meant I had a heavy schedule both
of those days but ample time with our two-and-a-half-
year-old daughter, Grace, on the off days, when Molly had
time to complete her dissertation. Grace and I would walk
the four blocks to our neighborhood park, and sometimes
the walk would take an hour. In those days, we had lots of
time. Grace was curious about all the things she met along
the way to the park: pecan tree bark, neighborhood cats,
flowers, cacti. When she paid attention to those things,
I, too, began to pay more attention. Grace taught me on
those walks. We made our first friends at the park, but the
adults at the park were mainly moms. After a few months
of these park visits, I was chatting with one of the moms I
saw fairly regularly and in passing mentioned something
about my teaching. “You work?” she asked incredulously.
Yes, I do work.
Arlie Russell Hochschild has done some of the best
research on the nature of dual-career families and their
effect on men, women, and children. She finds that even
among couples who believe they share the parenting and
housekeeping duties equally, the burden of labor falls
squarely upon mothers’ shoulders. Women who work full-
time or even part-time find, upon returning home, not the
22 • parenting
equitable sharing of household duties, but a “second shift”

during which home becomes yet more work.2
The illusion that I had been “sharing” in the work of the
house was destroyed when Finn was born during the year
of my first sabbatical. When Molly went back to her paid
job, Finn and I spent the entire day together nearly every
day. I wouldn’t exchange those months for anything: walks
through the neighborhood, the mundane acts of feeding
him by bottle (with mother’s milk) as I’d focus eyes on
him. Much of the tenor of our relationship now, I am con-
vinced, is rooted in that first year of his life and the time we
shared. In the midst of caring for Finn, I cooked, cleaned,
shopped, and laundered. Sometimes I got tired of it, even
bored. Some days, I would not have any adult conversa-
tion other than the phone calls I’d make to Molly or the
brief encounters with other adults at the park or the gro-
cery store. I didn’t get much writing done that sabbatical.
I started resenting some of this parenting work after a few
months. “Why don’t you help me out a little more around
here?” I’d ask Molly in a self-righteous tone. I began acting
smug about what a “great dad” I was being. We had some
fights that first year. But one day Molly said, “Dave, you’re
just doing exactly what I was doing when Grace was born,
and you have only been at it for two months.”
Before Finn was born, I’d often come home from
work and make a production out of “helping,” convincing
myself I was co-parenting. Sometimes I still do that. In
the shared work of parenting, however, there are seasons
of time, different demands that get placed on each parent.
I parent at my worst when I start tabulating a chart of all
the things I have done for the sake of our kids in com-
parison to what Molly has done. Then parenting becomes
work that I resent rather than relish. All parents—single
parents, coupled parents, divorced parents—need oth-

ers to assist in the work of parenting. When that work is
shared, it is less likely to become drudgery.
What does parenting labor look like when it is shared?
How do children benefit or not benefit when parents nego-
tiate the continued responsibilities placed upon them both
inside and outside the home? Finn and Grace have spent
more time in day care and after-school care than I did.
They are savvier socially than I was. They know well the
attention and concern of adults other than their parents
and have become introduced to a world of wider concern.
But this has also come at a cost: some days the kids come
home exhausted. Sometimes when I pick up Finn, his first
words are “Daddy, I’m tired.” As I drop off Finn at pre-
school, I have more questions than answers.
We walk from the car, down the walkway and stairs,
through the bright red doors that announce his preschool.
Several teachers line the way saying “good morning” to each
of the children. The adults know all of the children by name.
This is a good place: classes are relatively small, children
learn, chapel occurs twice a week. Finn enjoys music and
art and is taking the first tentative steps toward reading. As
we walk through the red doors, Finn cracks a slight smile
at the teachers who are saying his name, but he doesn’t say
“good morning” in return. It’s part of his shy nature.
When we walk through his classroom door, he makes
his way for his cubby, hanging his backpack on a peg. He
then finds a few of his pals, boys who share his interest in
Star Wars, and they start swapping stories about Darth
Vader and drawing the Death Star in their journals. I don’t
know how a boy can know so much about a movie he’s
never seen. It must be the Legos. I touch Finn on the head
and say, “I love you; have a good day.” At other times, he’ll
24 • parenting
say “I love you,” but not here. I wave at Finn’s teacher and
make my way back to the car and ultimately to my office
to start another workday. All four of us are now in our
respective places until the afternoon.
A large part of our family’s day is spent in age-
segregated institutions. This is another hallmark of Amer-
ican parenting and society. We start segregating by age at
a very early age. One of the more interesting treatments of
this pattern is the French documentary Babies, a film with
no narrator and almost no dialogue, focused on babies in
four different nations: Namibia, Japan, Mongolia, and
the United States. Viewers of this film quickly notice how
parenting patterns in the urban areas of the economically
developed countries of Japan and the United States dif-
fer from parenting in rural, less-developed Mongolia and
Namibia. In the Namibian and Mongolian countryside,
parenting appears in the midst of everyday life. Babies
in these settings are immersed in life as they are carried
to fetch water or tend to goats. Babies play with stones,
sticks, and each other’s hair as their parents work side
by side. Parents do not intervene as much as incorporate
babies into everyday affairs. Surrounded by quotidian
work, babies and young children have much unstructured
time and are socialized through that time. Babies in Japan
and the United States, by contrast, get shuttled from one
bit of “intentional time” to the next. They attend day care
or music classes just for kids, and they spend time alone
with parents inside, away from the maddening crowds of
the city. Japanese and American parents focus more indi-
vidual attention on one child—at least for moments of the
day—and there is less immersion of the child in the mun-
dane work of everyday life. Japanese and U.S. parents
aim for “quality time” with children, while Mongolian and
Namibian parents exist alongside their children and even

leave children alone for stretches of time. U.S. and Japa-
nese children often spend long stretches of time in age-
segregated groups, while such segregation is unknown for
Mongolian and Namibian children. The movie makes no
judgments upon the patterns, but one impression is fairly
clear: U.S. and Japanese children appear lonelier as they
are insulated from the adult world.
How much of the age segregation of childhood in U.S.
society is a boon, and how much is it a detriment to flour-
ishing? The pattern of the school day gets mimicked on
Sunday morning as our children attend separate Sunday
school classes and Finn goes to a children’s church that
occurs alongside the worship service. American parenting
is laden with the assumption of “quality time”—that one
must structure activities and opportunities to parent best.
But how much of this is actually an escape from parent-
ing? As I begin the workday, I’m unsure of the answer to
any of these questions. But I also know that Finn likes his
school, his friends, and his teachers. Grace smiles when
we drop her off at her elementary school. She is learning
Spanish, world history, and drama. Both of our kids look
forward to school. And as I teach, I know that our children
are being taught well. I’m also convinced that it’s good that
they’re away from their parents for part of the day, learn-
ing that there are others in the world who care about their
well-being and growth. But as I work, I also look forward
to picking them up.
Pickup
Coordinating pickup can be a complicated affair, at least
for us. Finn’s school has an “after-care” program that
26 • parenting
provides a time for napping and, after rest, other enrich-

ment and play time for children. Kids can stay at school
until 5:30, if necessary. Most days of the week, either Molly
or I will pick up Finn at the regular time, 2:00, but on this
day we need Finn to stay in after-care. It’s a somewhat
anomalous Monday, and I have a hastily scheduled after-
noon committee meeting. Molly has an early-afternoon
class and can’t pick up Finn, but she can pick up Grace at
3:30 and drop her off at the pool just down the road from
our house for her 4:00 practice. I’ll pick up Finn and take
him to his soccer practice. On the way home, I can pick up
Grace, and if it all works according to plan, we will all be
home a little after 5:00. Grace’s swim team is somewhat
low-key; kids can come to as few as one practice per week
or as many as four. Most of the time, Grace makes it for
two practices. Finn’s practice is one day a week. All of this
means that Monday starts off our week with a bang for us,
and we don’t get home until after 5:00. It’s certainly a full
platter and sometimes feels like a taxi service. As I finish
the committee meeting, however, seminary politics van-
ish from my mind. I was a little worked up in the meeting,
but as I pile into the minivan, I begin to wonder why. I’m
ready to see Finn again.
Pickup goes smoothly. I ring the bell next to the bright
red door, and Ms. Elena welcomes me in. Finn is finishing
his snack of Ritz crackers and raisins. He smiles as I hol-
ler, “Hi, buddy!” He picks up his napkin, tosses it in the
trash can, goes to his cubby, puts on his backpack, and we
make for the door. His other friends say, “Bye, Finn,” as
we leave. It was a good day, I think. Finn is smiling as we
leave the school. I tell him, “I’m happy to see you.”
He tells me, “Dad, I got a new book from the library
today.”
“Cool, what’s it about?”

“Sharks.”
“Let’s read it when we get home!”
Open the car door, climb in, strap the seatbelt over
this remarkable child in the booster chair. I don’t turn on
the music this time. Instead, we talk.
“Dad, I have soccer today, right?”
“Yep, we’re going to practice now.”
“I’ve got my ball, right?”
“Yes, and I’ve got your shin guards, too. We’ll put them
on when we get to the park.”
“OK. Dad, a whale shark is the biggest shark. But whale
sharks don’t hurt people. They eat small fish.” He knows
more about whale sharks than I do. “Dad, can you tell me
a story about a whale shark?”
“OK.” I start scrambling for details, combing my mem-
ory for any tidbit about whale sharks. I decide to make
it a story about Finn discovering a whale shark and how
he learns about the shark’s feeding habits, how Finn dons
scuba gear and swims around a coral reef, learning that
the shark’s home is in danger. I don’t know if whale sharks
haunt coral reefs (they probably don’t), but this seems like
a good detail to add because there are lots of other sea
creatures there. This can allow me to insert a little bit of
danger into the story (a great white shark) that brave Finn
is able to avoid craftily. The end of the story contains some
detail of Finn being able to take a ride on the whale shark’s
back because of the concern that Finn has shown it. Finn
knows about habitats and endangered animals and is con-
cerned about species that are in danger of disappearing
from the earth. There’s anthropomorphism in the story,
but as I tell of Finn protecting this shark’s home, I look
back in the rearview mirror and see him smiling proudly.
28 • parenting
He really likes the part about riding along on the back of

the whale shark.
As I finish, Finn announces, “Dad, I’m going to be a
paleontologist and a pirate. But a good pirate.”
“You’d be good at those things, Finn. You could learn
about dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. But what’s a
good pirate?”
“He’s a pirate that doesn’t hurt people and sails
around.”
“That sounds fun. Do you like the water, Finn?” Some-
times we go canoeing, but Finn really hasn’t spent much
time on a boat. Learning that he wants to become a pirate
surprises me a bit.
“Yes, and I like swimming.”
“We can start going swimming again soon.” One of the
great things about living in central Texas is that the swim
season is long.
As we near the park, we stop at an intersection with a
median. A man is standing on the concrete traffic island,
holding a sign that says, “Single dad, need food and work.”
Finn sees him and says, “He needs money, right?”
“Yes, he does.”
“Do you have any money for him, Dad?”
“Today I don’t.” I’m not lying. In a debit card world, I
rarely seem to carry around much cash. Would I have told
Finn the same thing if I really did have cash in my wallet?
“Why does he need money, Dad?”
“He needs some food for him and his kids.” Finn stays
quiet for a while. “It’s sad, isn’t it Finn? Everyone should
have enough to eat. No one should be hungry.” Here in
this moment, I am once again confronted with the glar-
ing disparities of the American economy: Finn and I in
our car, another dad on the street begging for scraps.
How do we introduce children who have the basics (and

more) to the glaring inequities of the world? Finn knows
of these inequities, whether we talk about them or not.
He sees them on street corners. His teachers and chap-
lain talk about them in school. We talk about them at
home.
He says, “I don’t like it when people are hungry. I don’t
like to be hungry, either.” I don’t know if we talk about
these things in the right way or the best way for our chil-
dren to understand. Can one ever really understand the
disparities? It seems more appropriate to be angry or sad-
dened because of them. I don’t say anything at this point.
Then Finn says, “I bring food to school, Dad. My chapel
food.” At Finn’s school, students make an offering of food
during worship services: canned goods, dried foods, boxes
of pasta, anything with a shelf life of more than a week.
At first, Finn told me that this was “food that God eats.”
But now he’s making the connections. He told me at the
beginning of his second year of preschool that they bring
food so that others who are hungry can eat. Now at this
street corner, Finn is making a connection between his
sadness over someone who doesn’t have enough food and
something small that he did to help feed someone else.
Christian faith revolves around food: taking and blessing
bread, showing hospitality to strangers, meeting the risen
Christ at the communion table and church potlucks. But
here, Finn has made a connection.
I don’t tell him that he’s helping that man on the cor-
ner, but I do tell him this: “Thanks, Finn, for sharing some
of your food.”
We’re at practice now. Finn looks out the window and
sees a few of his teammates kicking a ball around. He is
eager to get out of the car. Strap on the shin guards and
30 • parenting
long socks, rush out the door, and he’s ready to go. Finn
likes soccer. He’s playing organized sports at an earlier
age than his mother, sister, or I did. I wonder about this
whole phenomenon of hyperorganized kid activities. Our
children experience more structured time than either
Molly or I did. Some of this is good, some of it ambiguous,
and other parts of it are probably detrimental. We have
said no to some things and yes to others, but the push is
always to say yes to more activities. The American middle
class often behaves as if busy kids make for happy kids; if
you don’t have kids involved in enough things, they’ll be
“missing out.” Grace didn’t begin gymnastics until she was
in the fourth grade, and by that time it was “too late.” Too
late? At age nine?
Finn has a good soccer coach, a dad who understands
the kids’ energetic spirit and can channel it in ways that
actually lead to goals and fun. Finn dives into practice and
spends the half hour running about, occasionally stopping
for a drink of water. Sports, at least for him, are an essen-
tial outlet.
Yet these activities reveal gaps between those who
have and those who don’t have. Each of these activities
costs money, and I don’t see many families taking the bus
to soccer practice. Are these activities yet another form of
economic segregation that saturates American life? Even
the equipment that Finn wears for his soccer games dis-
plays some of these disparities. I look at his shin guards
and see that they’re made in Sri Lanka. I wonder who made
them. Were other children’s fingers involved in their man-
ufacture? Did their smaller hands help run the machines
so that my child could play? Connections abound. The lei-
sure of one child can be built on the back of another child’s
labor on the other side of the globe. Calvinist conceptions
of the human person recognize that none of our activities

are ever unaffected by the scar of sin, and as a Presbyte-
rian I remain convinced of that. But such recognitions do
not absolve us from responsibility for our own sin. How,
as I teach the faith and play soccer with Finn, do I com-
municate some of this to him?
While the boys run around, I enjoy the company of
the other parents gathered at Ramsey Park. We exchange
anecdotes about our children’s lives, some of the strug-
gles and joys of being a parent. We learn more about one
another. Parents, I am convinced, need the company of
others who care for children. We need each other’s sto-
ries, each other’s wisdom, in order to flourish. It is easy
to feel alone as a parent in American society, where cars
pull into driveways and parents and children enter the
house from the garage door, interacting minimally with
neighbors. Backyard gatherings rather than front-porch
living are the norm in neighborhoods like ours. Somehow
these gatherings with other parents at children’s activities
remind me that we are not alone as parents. I’ll keep going
to practice.
Finn finishes with a flushed face and gives his pals
a hug good-bye. There will be a game on Saturday, and
everyone will play the same amount of time. Games are a
riot. As we get back in the car, Finn tells me, “I like games
better than practices.”
“Why, Finn?”
“Because I get to wear my cool uniform.”
“It does look cool on you.”
“I run faster in it.” Little things like uniforms make
Finn happy. The uniform, I think, validates his experience
as someone who can do something on his own.
“Do you want to put it on when we get home?” I ask.
32 • parenting
“Yeah!”
I call Molly before we pull away. “Do you want me to
pick up Grace at swimming?”
“She didn’t have her goggles. They’re in your car.” I
glance back. Sure enough, there they sit.
“Oh, no!” (I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, shit!”)
“We just came home,” Molly says to me. “It gave us
some time to rest anyway.” We chat a bit more, and I hang
up the phone. So many things to keep track of! Sometimes
I feel as if we’re barely keeping up. But sometimes missing
activities can also hide blessings. We pull into the drive-
way and enter the door, and the evening seems wide open.
Back together again.
Dinner and Homework

Tonight Molly and I can share the labors of cooking. It’s
a simple meal—Greek salad, hummus and pita bread, and
grilled chicken—but it gives us time to decompress and
share the stories of the day. As Molly chops vegetables
and I prepare the chicken, we laugh about some of the
day’s episodes, including the swim goggles. It seems crazy
sometimes, this running to and fro. Sometimes we’re
barely holding it together. At least we can laugh with one
another. I like this time working side by side with my wife;
it captures something of a partnership. The kitchen is a
lively place in our house, a gathering place. The living room
isn’t used much, so the kitchen is where we come together
with lots of conversation and warmth, even when the meal
is a basic one. One of the first gifts that I got Molly was a
cookbook, which we still use, and other cookbooks have
followed. These meals provide comfort, nourishment, and
hospitality all rolled into one place.
Our children, too, know the routine of dinner, since

they set and clear the table. It wasn’t always this way.
For the first ten years of Grace’s life, we were the kinds
of parents who tried to do it all. The chores we gave her
were minimal and irregular. We tried a few fits and starts
with allowances but never seemed to follow through with
them. Some mornings and evenings just seemed too busy
to expect much of our kids. Over the last year, however,
we became tired of nagging: “Make your bed. Pick up
your clothes.” Then Molly got the idea of a chart, a vis-
ible reminder of the tasks that our children are expected
to do each day, complete with pictures so that Finn, too,
could follow. Right now it seems to be working. They have
been making their beds, picking up their toys, and setting
and clearing the table without us having to ask. Maybe
it’s the stickers that Finn sees on the chart; maybe it’s the
money that Grace receives at the end of each week. Finn,
in particular, seems most changed by the chart. I notice a
certain pride and confidence in his demeanor as he does
his chores. Why didn’t we think of the chart sooner? Fam-
ilies are built on shared responsibilities. Are we doing that
with the chart? I hope so. Or are we simply feeding out-
side incentives (stickers, allowance) to get our children to
do things they ought to be doing without our asking? At
least we are asking them to do things less, and the nagging
has stopped.
The relationship of children to chores has changed
much in the history of the American household, along
with profound changes in domestic life brought about by
industrialization and the rising middle class. For centu-
ries, whether in urban or rural environments, children
have done significant amounts of work in the family,
whether in the fields or in the kitchen. Children’s labor
34 • parenting
was essential to family livelihood, patterns that continued

well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for most
children. When Molly and I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder
series to Grace, one of the things that surprised her was
how much Laura and her sisters worked. The daily pat-
terns of Laura’s life looked quite different from her own.
But toward the end of the nineteenth century, some
of these working patterns began to change, especially in
urban areas. As families began to gravitate toward the
cities and as fathers began to spend most of their work-
ing hours away from home—in factories, offices, or else-
where—the romanticization of the domestic sphere began
to take hold in the public imagination. Home now repre-
sented not the central space of commercial life but a retreat
from it, sustained by the mother’s work. As father earned
daily bread for the family in an often hostile world, mother
baked that bread in the warmth of a family hearth, offer-
ing a refuge from outside hostility. Mother began to take
on the primary parental responsibilities and was charged
with shaping and molding the children’s lives. Children
slowly began to shed some of their earlier responsibili-
ties and were subtly encouraged to “be children,” to hang
on to this precious state of life that mirrored some of the
freedom of eternal life. One of the prophets of this view of
childhood and parenting was Horace Bushnell, whom we
shall examine more thoroughly in the next chapter. For
Bushnell, children needed to be sheltered and nurtured;
they can grow into responsibilities, but full responsibili-
ties of work should wait for later.
Many of Bushnell’s ideals continue to hold sway in the
American imagination, whether they are acknowledged or
not. Daily chores for children, when they are given, are
given to teach children responsibilities or simply because
“chores are good for them.” Chores build up the child. This
differs from an understanding that sees children’s work
as essential because it contributes to the well-being of
family and society. Instead of economic necessity, chores
are seen as developmentally necessary. But for many in
this age, chores seem an option rather than a necessity.3
More important are activities that enrich, such as ballet,
Little League, and piano lessons. In many families, such
activities replace chores at home. Such was the case in
our house as well, and it was only recently, as Molly and I
began to wilt under an increasing weight of laundry, cook-
ing, cleaning, and straightening, that we decided to imple-
ment the chart.
Conversation over dinner is entertaining. Finn, who
until three months ago tended to hold his tongue at meals,
now engages in conversation with gusto. He and Grace
like to report on their days. Today Finn talks about a fire-
fighter who visited his class and told them about smoke
detectors. He told us we need more of them in our house.
He’s right. I’ll have to buy some more this weekend. Maybe
Finn can help me hang them. As we crunch our romaine
lettuce, Grace talks about her school play rehearsal. One
of her friends misspoke some lines, which caused the class
to erupt in laughter. The play gets staged next week, and
they’re not quite ready, apparently. Finn laughs along with
us as Grace tells the story. Mmm, the chicken turned out
well. Grace then asks Molly and me about our days. Dur-
ing the past year she has begun to do this, which suggests
that she has a growing sense of her relationship to others
and their well-being. It’s rewarding to see this.
After hearing us talk a bit about our days, Grace
announces, “I’ve got a ton of homework tonight.” She’d
been working on it before Finn and I arrived home, but
36 • parenting
there’s still more to do. This is another thing that has

changed enormously in just a generation. I don’t remem-
ber regular homework assignments until I started high
school. Grace, however, rarely has a day without home-
work. Sometimes it’s quite intense and can stretch past
bedtime.
The announcement hits us like a rock. Will this be
another evening with a meltdown? We’ve had some of
those lately, a combination of preteen hormonal surges
and the pressures of middle-class American childhood in
the twenty-first century. As we wrap up the meal, Grace
and Finn clear off the table. Then Grace heads to her
homework, and Finn gets to play a game on the computer.
Molly and I wash dishes. There still is an imbalance in
the amount of time spent doing chores; we’re under no
illusions that there’s an equal sharing of labors between
parents and children, nor do we think there should be.
Parenting, after all, is a lot of work. As we load the dishes,
we hear some sobbing from the other room. We look at
each other silently. Molly then asks me, “Will you go and
sit with her?”
I walk into the living room, which is Grace’s preferred
homework space. She’s staring at a workbook with tears in
her eyes. “This is the worst day of my life!”
I sit down next to her. “Why is it the worst day, Grace?”
(This is not the first time she has uttered this proclama-
tion. It’s her way of saying, “I need help!”)
She talks about the language arts homework, “I’ve got
three pages of this grammar workbook and have to study
for the social studies test after that!”
I let her keep talking. I think to myself, “How do I
respond to this crisis?” I say, “The homework is hard and
takes time, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Dad,” she replies glaringly.

“Would you like me to sit here with you while you do
it and check your work when you’re done?” I’m guessing
that at this point Grace just needs someone present, per-
haps to give her some sense of calm in the midst of this
latest storm. I seem to guess right. There are some more
sniffles and a cry of “I hate this!” but she gets through the
homework as I sit next to her, reading the newspaper. (I’m
actually quite thankful for the chance to read it!) My atten-
tion isn’t riveted on the news, as I keep glancing sideways
at my daughter with pencil in hand. She makes it through
the work. I check it, and I ask her some vocabulary terms
for the social studies test. It’s a test on the rise of European
nationalism, a subject I know something about. The gram-
mar work is fine, and she’s prepared for the test. Some-
times being a parent simply means being-with, listening.
We make it through the remaining work in an hour, not
without incident, avoiding a complete meltdown. There’s
still an hour before bedtime. What should we do with this
gift of free time?
Playing
Molly is grading a few papers, and Finn is still at his com-
puter game. We pulled the plug on cable TV at our house
several years ago when the kids seemed to be watching
too much of it. Now, in an inevitable move, they spend
more time online. One screen has replaced another. We
try to enforce daily limits of screen time, but some days
are more lax than others. Tonight is one of those. Grace’s
homework crisis and Molly’s pile of grading both demand
time. In an effort to distract and occupy our younger child,
we tell him he can play a game on pbskids.org. He enjoys
38 • parenting
it, and perhaps he’s “learning something,” but mostly

it’s the path of least resistance while we attend to other
things—an ambiguous choice, to be sure.
Grace and I decide it would be fun to play a game
together, some game that all of us can enjoy. Grace goes to
get Molly in our bedroom, where she’s hunched over the
paper pile. It proves easy to pull her from this work. I go
to the study to get Finn, a task that requires a little more
cajoling. But when I say we’re playing the Lego game, his
eyes light up. Legos are another one of his favorite things.
For Christmas my parents got him a game called Creation-
ary, where players draw cards with pictures of buildings,
vehicles, plants, and animals that they try to build out of
Legos. The other players try to guess what the builder is
making. It’s one of the few games that all of us can play
together, and since Finn’s building skills are stronger than
either Molly’s or mine, it is a game in which he holds more
than his own. It invariably generates laughter as the par-
ents struggle to make things vaguely recognizable. So we
begin unwinding and play.
On most weekday evenings, there isn’t time for diver-
sions like this. But on this evening, we all are thankful for
it and the freedom and spontaneity that come with the
game. We never know what kind of intricate creation Finn
will prepare next. Grace is particularly adept at guessing
our respective creations. Molly and I mostly laugh. Finn
builds a kangaroo that is remarkable in detail. Grace
guesses, to my surprise, that my incomprehensible cre-
ation is a daisy. And Molly builds a jeep that Finn is first
to identify. It all makes for a good time.
Play is one thing that seems to save us from the drudg-
ery of an overly scheduled life. Parenting can sometimes
seem like an endless chain of responsibilities: getting fees
and bills paid, providing a taxi service for our children,

making sure there’s enough food in the refrigerator, pro-
viding discipline and nurture, getting to school on time,
keeping the house reasonably straight and clean. There are
days when I bemoan the grind of it all. I haven’t had the
quintessential male midlife crisis, but on some days I get
close. Some days I want to
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
sell the house, get rid of
Play is one thing that
all this stuff, head for the
seems to save us from
beach, and become a surf-
the drudgery of an overly
ing instructor. But there
scheduled life.
are also days, like this one,
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
when the four of us play.
In these forty-five minutes, we enjoy the gift of one
another once again, at least until the phone rings. Molly
picks it up. It’s Finn’s teacher. I hear some conversation,
but Molly doesn’t say much. After hanging up, she returns
but doesn’t say much until we wrap up the game. Then it’s
time to get ready for bed. We box up the Legos and tell the
kids it’s time for pj’s and brushing teeth. Then Molly asks
me to come to our room to talk.
Arguing
On the phone, Ms. Estella told Molly that Finn had a “red-
light” day today. In Finn’s classroom, a large traffic light
adorns the wall, and the children begin the day by placing
their names on the green light. If they are disruptive, they
move their name tags to yellow, and if they improve their
behavior, they get to move back down to green again. Usu-
ally, this is the course of things. Finn is hardly a shrink-
ing violet. He engages classroom activities with zeal and
occasional boisterousness. He is quite comfortable with
40 • parenting
his friends, and they get silly on occasion. We know he has

had yellow-light days before, but this is the first time he’s
had a red-light day. We close the bedroom door.
Red light is the “light of last resort” for Finn’s teacher.
Apparently, Finn had been acting up all day, talking while
Ms. Estella was talking and getting into a disagreement
with some of the other boys. He was the only kid on red
light today. We wonder whether his allergies or simple
tiredness might have contributed to his behavior. There
are a host of possible explanations. We look at each other,
both confused, both wondering what to do.
Then I say, “Molly, I’m tired. I’m worn out. I’ve already
done so much today.”
Molly replies, “I am too, and I’ve got these papers yet
to grade. I need to get them back to students tomorrow.”
“Well, there’s still laundry to do, and I did the wash
last time,” I reply. Not the best thing to say. Sometimes
when I feel overwhelmed, I start doing the mental tabula-
tion of which parent has done what, and I’m feeling pretty
confident that I’ve done more over the past few days than
Molly. This justifies my tiredness. Apparently, the stress
of learning about Finn’s classroom misbehavior today is
spilling over into my frustration about whether or not my
partner is sharing the duties of parenting with me. I know
she is, but it just feels like it’s time to vent.
“You were gone last weekend, Dave, and that meant
I didn’t have time to grade these papers.” Molly’s right.
I was away, speaking at a church conference. It’s over-
whelming to be the only parent with our kids. I don’t know
how single parents do it.
“Yeah, but as soon as I got home, I took over everything
and let you go out with your friends.” Everything? I know
this is hyperbole. And “let” her go out with her friends?
Come on. I’m getting desperate. We’re not communicat-

ing well. Instead, I’m doing mental calculations about
who’s doing what in this partnership, who’s carrying the
weight of parenting at the moment. I know in my heart
that we are each trying our damnedest, that this is a real
partnership, and that over the long haul of any marriage,
there is always give-and-take, there are seasons where one
partner has to pick up some things that the other will carry
at a later time. I know all this, but mostly what I feel now
is righteous indignation, however unjustified it is. “Fine,”
I say, “get back to your grading. I’ll put the kids to bed.”
I huff out the door, knowing I’ve missed some oppor-
tunity for connecting, for working through something
together. Instead, I just leave the room. This isn’t a great
feeling. This isn’t much of a partnership at the moment.
I’m thinking, “What’s my problem?” at the same time I’m
asking myself, “What’s her problem? Why doesn’t she
appreciate me?” Clearly, I’ve missed an opportunity here,
and we didn’t even adequately address the issue of Finn’s
red-light day. Parenting is often a struggle. Sometimes we
work through the struggle and at others we seem to work
more against each other under the stress. As I leave the
room, I’m wishing I had said some things just a bit differ-
ently. Maybe Molly is, too.
Worship
In the bathroom down the hall from our bedroom, Finn
and Grace are almost through brushing their teeth. I know
they have heard some of their parents’ argument—not all
of it, I’m sure, but some of it. I’m thinking, “Well, at least
we didn’t yell, and it didn’t last very long. It was a pretty
minor disagreement anyway.” I’m tempted to avoid even
42 • parenting
mentioning it, but I know that pretending nothing hap-

pened would be a parental failure. I say, “Mom and Dad
love each other a lot. Sometimes when you’re really close to
someone and share everything with that person, you have
arguments. Do you ever have arguments with your friends?”
Grace and Finn both nod. I know the impact of hearing
their parents’ words is still echoing in their brains.
Then I hear Molly open our bedroom door and walk
down the hall. She comes into the bathroom, and I tell her
I’m sorry. We hug each other. She turns to the children,
gives them both hugs and kisses and says, “Dad is put-
ting you to bed tonight. Everything is all right. Let’s all get
some good rest.”
Things seem a little better after that. I’m thinking to
myself, “They heard their parents argue, but they also saw
them show affection and make up. Maybe that’s a net gain
rather than a net loss.” Grace smiles and gives me another
hug. She heads to her room to read. I’ll put Finn to bed
first and then spend some time with her.
I turn to Finn and say, “Let’s find some books to read!”
We head to his room and scan the bookshelf. He chooses
Reptiles again, the same book from this morning. Not my
first choice, but it’s better than some of the others. Then
we turn to Sharks, his new acquisition from the library.
Lying down on his bed, we begin turning pages. Telling
stories with Finn now involves lots of questions. He asks,
“Is that snake venomous, Dad?” “I’ve seen a Gila monster
before.” “Is that a great white shark?” Stories that should
take five minutes to read now take fifteen minutes. Most
of the time it’s hilarious. We rarely make it through the
entire book.
After reading, I ask him a question: “Finn, what hap-
pened at school today? Ms. Estella called us tonight.”
He looks away for a moment, and then in a soft voice,

he replies, “I was on red light.”
“How did you get on red light?”
“I was talking and acting silly.”
I know I needn’t belabor the past, and I know he rec-
ognizes his own misbehavior. He’s not blaming anyone
else, and he seems to be taking responsibility for his own
actions. So I say these words: “Tomorrow you can be on
green light. Tomorrow you’ll listen when your teacher is
talking, and you won’t interrupt others.” That’s it. I’m not
sure what else there is to be said.
Finn and I lie there, and I ask him, “Are you ready to
pray?” He is. We fold our hands and say the same prayer
we always do: “Thank you, God, for today, for Mom, Dad,
Grace, and Finn. Thank you for my friends and my school.
Help us to help others. Amen.” He knows the routine. It’s
short, and the words are for the concrete things in his life.
Sometimes he’ll add others. If we’ve had a special adven-
ture one day, he’ll add something like “Thank you for
swimming.” This is the way we close our days together, by
acknowledging God as the giver of all life.
What is worship, and who is worship for? Praying with
our children has shifted my own understanding of prayer
a bit. Now I think it’s less about the words that are said
and more about the regular habit of prayer. I find myself
less self-conscious about my own prayers and more will-
ing to pray when others ask me to pray (a job hazard pecu-
liar to my line of work). Molly and I have been intentional
about teaching our children to pray, but in the process,
they have also taught us to pray. I think we’re all becom-
ing better versed in what it means to lead a prayerful life,
even if prayers we pray are short and the words in those
prayers are nearly identical each time we say them. Good
44 • parenting
night, Finn. I love you. See you in the morning. Sleep is

not far off.
I head to Grace’s room as she nears the end of yet
another Nancy Drew book. I think it’s the fifteenth one she’s
tackled this year. She’s twelve and still likes it when her par-
ents close the day by lying
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
down with her for a few
Molly and I have been
minutes before she nods
intentional about teaching
off to sleep. I don’t know if
our children to pray, but in
this is normal. Grace is the
the process, they have also
only twelve-year-old girl
taught us to pray.
that I live with, but I think
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
it’s probably a little outside
the norm. This is the time of day when Grace most likes to
talk with her parents. She likes, in the lingo of our time, to
“process,” to relay an event of the day, a feeling that she
has, or a joy or disappointment in her life.
Today she wants to talk about something that hap-
pened in P.E. class. She and two other girls were doing
basketball drills, and the two girls she was practicing with
got into some kind of argument. One of the girls pushed the
other to the ground, which caused some degree of uproar
in the gym. The P.E. teacher came over to find one girl cry-
ing on the floor. This led to a “she-said, she-said” hurling
of words, and Grace was caught in the middle. The teacher
turned to Grace to find out what happened. All three of the
girls got sent to the assistant principal’s office, and each of
them was called in one at a time. I ask Grace how she felt
about watching the fight unfold. She’s better friends with
the girl who did the pushing, and she also noticed that her
friend was provoked a bit. The whole thing upset her, and
she didn’t like being brought into the assistant principal’s
office. “It scared me to see them fighting like that.”
“It would have scared me, too, Grace.”

“It was weird, too; suddenly the whole class was going
crazy.” I listen to her express feelings. Is this my time to
give advice? Do I just listen? What is the balance between
teaching one’s children and simply allowing them to
express themselves? I have no answers here, but the more
she talks about this, the less it seems to be weighing on
her. I ask her what she said to the assistant principal, and
she says, “I just told him what I saw happen.”
I tell her, “I’m proud of you Grace. You’re a good
friend and an honest person. You did the right thing.” We
talk more about the day’s event and what she’s going to
do tomorrow when she sees those girls again in P.E. class.
She’ll figure it out, I’m sure.
As we pause, we also pray. With Grace, it’s the Lord’s
Prayer. Again, the same words every night. Much of the
time, I don’t even think about the words, since they come
automatically. How many times have I prayed this prayer?
The rhythm of the words is a comfort for me. Is it for
Grace, too?
Our family’s worship often doesn’t take on many more
rituals than this: bedtime prayers, grace at mealtime, occa-
sionally a story from the Bible. But it is worship, and it is
the way we close the day. Good night, Grace. I love you.
Tired
I turn off the lights in Grace’s bedroom and stride toward
the kitchen. Thirsty, I get myself a cup of cold water and
head for the bedroom, where Molly is still grading papers.
It’s about an hour before Molly and I typically go to sleep,
so I think momentarily that we might have time to start a
movie. During one of our phone calls to each other in the
46 • parenting
middle of the day, Molly suggested that we watch a movie

online. At the time, it sounded like a wonderful idea. But
now Molly is grading papers, and I’m wiped out. I don’t
think I have it in me to watch a movie tonight; it would
mean that I’d go to bed too late, anyway. Parenting tires
me out.
I walk into the bedroom and say, “Molly, I’m sorry for
getting defensive earlier tonight. I’m just tired. I know
you’re doing a lot—for this family and at your job. I guess
I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.”
“I know I’ve been somewhat difficult to live with these
past few days, Dave, so focused on these student papers.
It’s almost over. I’ll have them done tomorrow.”
“I was gone all last weekend, and that didn’t help any.
Let’s figure out something we can all do this weekend.
We could even get a babysitter one night, and you and I
could get some dinner at that Italian place we’ve wanted to
try.” We don’t go out on enough dates, just the two of us,
though it’s starting to get better. Some days I long for the
simplicity of our life—and frankly, some of the adventure
and freedom of it—before we had children. Our marriage
was barely a year and a half old before Grace came into
our lives. But at the same time, I can’t imagine life with-
out our children. The joy that they’ve brought to life has
been exponential, even if the struggles have also seemed
to increase.
Molly and I have chosen one another, that is true. But
our children have also claimed us, and in claiming us, they
have made love grow in unbelievable ways. So I find par-
enting strengthened as Molly and I share the labors of it
together. When we find occasional times away from our
children, we’re reminded of how this family began. This
last hour of the day together is a reminder of that. Now we
talk: about Finn’s red-light day, about Grace’s P.E. inci-

dent, about where we want to have dinner this weekend,
about our dreams for next year, about what we’ll plant in
the yard, about the funny people in our lives, about Alice
Walker and Karl Rahner, about life and ideas, about what
we’ll wear tomorrow. Ultimately, this talk is about love.
There won’t be a movie tonight. We won’t make love. But
we’ll talk and hold one another and kiss each other good
night. We’ll fall asleep exhausted and start again in the
morning: new challenges with the same people we love.
I do like it. This last hour of the day, while the children
sleep, can make parenting more joyous even on the most
difficult days.
2
parenting in christian traditions
Although many of the challenges of parenting in twenty-

first-century America seem relatively new, wisdom to face
those challenges can be gathered from earlier sources.
When we turn to the Christian Scriptures, we find parents
and children in joy and lament, in worship and work, in
harmony and struggle. We also find customs of parent-
ing that often differ markedly from those of the American
middle class. Perhaps most significantly, we find descrip-
tions of family that shake up the rather narrow vision that
sometimes dominates American religious life. Parents in
the Bible are not narrowly concerned with their “own”
children, nor do children belong to one set of parents. The
Bible—diverse as its many voices are—expands the family
beyond a tight circle by orienting us to a divine parent who
calls us toward one another.
The wisdom of our parental ancestors, moreover, is
not restricted to the Christian Scriptures. Contemporary
parents can gain much as they look to the history of the
church, as our foremothers and forefathers wrestled with
the biblical legacy, as they sought to articulate Christian
faith amid new contexts and dilemmas. This chapter
turns, then, to the variety of traditions that have shaped
historical Christian understandings of parenting. It is far
49
50 • parenting
from comprehensive; I offer only a sampling of a vastly

more complex and variegated menu. By necessity, this
sampling is limited, though it does include voices from
several different eras of the church’s history: biblical,
patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern. Some of
these perspectives are shocking to modern ears; others are
more familiar. All, however, are worth considering again,
as parents find joy and struggle in a practice that unites
people of faith across time and cultures.
The Hebrew Bible: Blessing and Honor amid

Family Foibles
Children and family were central to the religious life of
ancient Israel. One of the central rites of Israel’s religious
life, circumcision, was tied to the birth of each male child.
The mark of Israel’s identity, its covenant with God, was
borne on the bodies of infants. In this context, children
represented the ongoing survival of a culture and people;
their birth helped ensured the future. In an era where the
survival of children and mothers at birth was far from
guaranteed, children signified a blessing from God to
parents.
Many of the patriarchal narratives of Genesis relay the
experiences of parents who long for children but do not
receive them until a miracle of divine intervention. This
begins, archetypically, in the narrative of Abraham and
Sarah. Sarah’s barrenness is cause for lament. When God
speaks to Abraham and announces that Sarah will bear a
child, Abraham can only laugh in disbelief (Genesis 17:17).
This laugh yields the name of their son, Isaac, whose name
means “he laughs,” about whom Sarah claims, “God has
brought laughter for me” (21:6). This child is a sign of
parenting in christian traditions • 51
God’s favor toward Abraham and Sarah, a promise that

they have a future, that a people will arise from their fam-
ily with descendants as numerous as the stars (15:5).
This pattern of expectation, barrenness, and the gift of
the child reoccurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. It is pres-
ent in the story of Rachel and Jacob, when Rachel utters
in desperation, “Give me children, or I shall die!” (Genesis
30:2). God heeds Rachel’s lament, remembers her, and
opens her womb in the birth of Joseph, another central
character in Israel’s history. Later, this pattern surfaces
in Hannah, who receives a son, Samuel, as an answer to
prayer (1 Samuel 1:11-28). In the Hebrew Scriptures, such
prayers for a child are consistently answered, even if par-
ents have to wait years. Though such stories document
God’s continued faithfulness and stress the gift of each
child, they can also prove vexing for couples experienc-
ing infertility. As Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner has noted,
“There is not one woman recorded in either the Old or New
Testament who, desirous of progeny, remained barren.
There is not one model, mentor, or mother in Scripture
with whom modern-day infertile women can connect.”1
If children come as gifts to parents and hope for soci-
ety, they also present parents with obligations. Parents in
the Hebrew Bible often appear as teachers who instruct
and transmit the faith to the next generation. One of the
foundational texts of Israel’s faith, both ancient and mod-
ern, is found in the Shema:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep
these words that I am commanding you today in your
heart. Recite them to your children and talk about
52 • parenting
them when you are at home and when you are away,
when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as
a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your
forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your
house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
Here parents relay the heart of their faith to their children.

Religious instruction occurs, according to the Shema, in
the home as parents teach and pray with their children.
As parents teach, children are to respect and honor
parents. Children look to their parents for wisdom and
follow their example. The Ten Commandments enshrine
the importance of children’s obligations to their parents:
“Honor your father and your mother, so that your days
may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving
you” (Exodus 20:12). Consequences for dishonoring par-
ents are particularly severe, including execution for those
who curse parents (Leviticus 20:9)! Where teaching and
honor are present, however, parents and children can
flourish in covenant.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Idealizers of family val-
Idealizers of family values
ues who seek in Old Testa-
who seek in Old Testament
ment families models for
families models for a
a moral life, however, will
moral life will likely be
likely be disappointed.
disappointed.
There is no model fam-
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
ily anywhere in the Bible.
What we find, by contrast, are family foibles on a grand
scale and a God who works through those foibles in the
name of faithfulness. If children are answers to paren-
tal prayers, they also bring about tumult and discord of
their own. Such conflict is found in the Bible’s first family,
in the violent conflict of Adam and Eve’s sons, Cain and
Abel. The first family gives birth to the first murder, and
from here on, the Bible charts manifold rivalries, petty
jealousies, and destructive fights, most often among sib-
lings but occasionally between parent and child as well.
Noah’s drunkenness leads Ham to discover his nakedness,
suggesting the possibility of a sexual act between son and
father (Genesis 9:21-24). Jacob swindles a blessing from
Esau by tricking their father (Genesis 27). As central as
families are to the faith of ancient Israel, they cannot
become the place of ultimate faith. Children may be the
answer to prayer, but they cannot be the object of prayer.
Parents and children will disappoint each other, and they
cannot become idols that replace the living God.
Children also possess agency in these narratives. They
are not passive recipients of divine or parental favor but
become actors in stories that they help create. The young
Samuel hears a divine call and eventually acts upon it
(1 Samuel 3); young David slays the towering Goliath
(1 Samuel 17).
As the Hebrew Bible realistically depicts the limita-
tions of every family in the petty rivalries of its most her-
alded families, it also points to an expansion of family
that occurs at the edges. The nuclear families of today are
foreign to ancient Israel. The households of these times
included larger groupings of people, related by biology and
adoption. Israelite households included multiple genera-
tions and, for the wealthy, slaves and domestic workers.
The Hebrew Bible also invokes an overarching meta-
phor of God as the Father of the people Israel, who con-
siders all Israel to be his children. The family of ultimate
significance, for this people of faith, is the family of the
covenant. This image occurs first in Exodus 4, as God
instructs Moses to lead his people out of slavery: “Then
54 • parenting
you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: Israel is my

firstborn son. I said to you, “Let my son go that he may
worship me.” But you refused to let him go; now I will kill
your firstborn son’ ” (Exodus 4:22-23). Such imagery por-
trays the special relationship between God and Israel, one
that is intimate and entails special obligations for Israel.
God is the father who created this people, who made and
established them (Deuteronomy 32:6). In Isaiah, God is
the parent who returns sons and daughters from exile
(Isaiah 43:6). God is the parent who shows special con-
cern for the most vulnerable in Israel, orphans and wid-
ows (Psalm 68:5), the one who is the Father and Rock of
salvation (Psalm 89:26). Here, family life centers on the
one who is Father of all.
The New Testament: Suspicion of Family

and Order in the Family
The texts of the New Testament, assembled over a much
shorter period of time than the Hebrew Scriptures, con-
tinue some of the expansive trajectories that envision the
people of God as a family, sustained by God as Father. The
New Testament refers to God more frequently as Father,
reinforcing believers’ status as children of the Father. This
new family, however, questions some of the more custom-
ary obligations to kinfolk. The first word to say on par-
enting in the New Testament, then, is often suspicion of
family in light of Christ’s coming reign.
This suspicion of parenting and family ties emerges
from the lips of Christianity’s central figure, Jesus of Naz-
areth. The New Testament is filled with narratives where
Jesus looks askance at traditional families and questions
the nature of family ties. In the Gospel of Luke, these
questions appear as soon as Jesus has a voice of his own,

in the one canonical reference to Jesus’ youth. Luke’s
story of the boy Jesus in the temple occurs as his parents
search for their child for three days, an eternity for wor-
ried parents. Upon finding him, Mary asks, “Child, why
have you treated us like this?” Jesus’ response: “Why were
you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be
in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48-49). As Jesus grows to
adulthood, his avoidance of typical family ties continues:
he shuns marriage, has no children to call his own, and
refuses to make a home for himself: “Foxes have holes,
and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has
nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). As Jesus grows
to adulthood, he can also appear hostile toward fami-
lies: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and
mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and
even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The
call to discipleship, expressed in Jesus’ own words, may
entail the rejection of home and family.
Beneath this apparent hostility, however, is Jesus’
reconfiguration of family as a herald of God’s reign. Jesus’
words from the cross in the Gospel of John reflect a more
expansive vision of family: “When Jesus saw his mother
and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he
said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said
to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour
the disciple took her into his own home” (John 19:26-27).
What happens to Jesus’ immediate family gets repeated
throughout the church in the formation of a new commu-
nity where all believers are brothers and sisters, mothers
and fathers, to one another.
Jesus’ suspicion of the typical family ties is echoed
in Pauline texts that stress celibacy over marriage and
56 • parenting
singleness over parenthood: “He who marries his fiancée

does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do bet-
ter” (1 Corinthians 7:38; see also 7:7). For Paul, care for
spouse and child can muffle the call of God’s reign: “The
unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord,
how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious
about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and
his interests are divided” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). Accord-
ing to this view, when parents care too much for children,
priorities become misplaced, and they fail to prepare for
the Lord’s coming.
Later writings of the New Testament display some
shifts in understandings of parenting. These are present
most prominently in the household codes of Ephesians
and Colossians, both of which draw on wider notions
of familial responsibilities present in the Greco-Roman
world. Here we see the tension between the coming reign
of Jesus Christ that renders family ties secondary and
the need for keeping order in the household until the
Lord returns. Where the Gospels suggest that the call
to discipleship may cause rupture in the family, Ephe-
sians stresses the need for order in the Christian house-
hold between husband and wife and between parents
and children. Soaked in patriarchy, the household codes
espouse male headship and the need for wives and chil-
dren to be subject to fatherly authority: “Wives, be sub-
ject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. . . . Children,
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor
your father and mother’—this is the first commandment
with a promise: ‘so that it may be well with you and you
may live long on the earth.’ And, fathers, do not provoke
your children to anger, but bring them up in the disci-
pline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 5:21; 6:1-4;
see also Colossians 3:20-21). In 1 Timothy, the expecta-

tions of fathers become more explicit where bishops are
concerned: “He must manage his own household well,
keeping his children submissive and respectful in every
way” (1 Timothy 3:4). Here a different picture of Chris-
tian parenting emerges, concerned primarily with order.
It echoes earlier strands present in the Ten Command-
ments and the law but orients them in a tightly structured
hierarchy, with Christ as head of the church and fathers
drawing headship in their own household from Christ’s
lordship. One gets the sense in reading the household
codes that Christ comes not to disrupt family ties but to
preserve family order.
The New Testament as a whole, however, indicates a
re-creation of family ties. Even those strands that echo
order, such as the household codes, suggest that earthly
orders are temporary. Ephesians, which maintains fam-
ily order as much as any book of the Bible, also points to
a new life in Christ where ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
believers are “renewed in The family where believers
the spirit of your minds,” ultimately belong is formed
clothed “with the new self, not by blood and kin but by
created according to the baptism.
likeness of God in true ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
righteousness and holi-
ness” (Ephesians 4:23-24). The family where believers
ultimately belong is formed not by blood and kin but by
baptism. God is at work creating a new family in which
all believers are siblings to one another. This expansion
of family is captured perhaps more by 1 John than by any
other book in the New Testament: “I write to you, chil-
dren, because you know the Father. I write to you fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning. I write
58 • parenting
to you, young people, because you are strong and the word
of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one”
(1 John 2:14). God creates a new family by faith, and this
community of God’s children is bound by the rule of love.
Love of one’s new brothers and sisters is critically impor-
tant, so that one cannot love God without also loving one’s
brothers and sisters (4:20).
One iconic image that suggests these shifting bounds
of family is the Holy Family. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus—
who are often sentimentalized in our day as a nuclear
family—are themselves examples of a re-created fam-
ily heralding Christ’s reign. Here is a family constituted
not by bonds of blood but by adoption and grace. Jesus is
Joseph’s son not by biology but by adoption. This Jesus
becomes both the son of his adoptive father and the Son
who gives his earthly father life. By saying “Let it be” to
Gabriel (Luke 1:38), Mary allows herself to be opened by
God, to give life to Jesus and nurse him, while she, in turn,
is given new life by Jesus. Here is a mother who is both
the source of her son’s life and the recipient of the grace
he gives. Jesus, who utters strange words about the family
in his ministry, remains his mother’s son until the end,
eventually giving her another child in the beloved disci-
ple. Even as family ties shift in the coming reign, parents
continue to care for children. Though the New Testament
can hardly be employed as a quintessential text of family
values, it does underscore the importance of family ties,
even if those ties are continually being re-created. The
history of Christian reflection on parenting in large part
attempts to address the impermanence of earthly family
and the importance of maintaining family ties as we await
God’s coming reign.
John Chrysostom: Parenting and Faith

Development
John Chrysostom (347–407), though he is less familiar
in the Christian West, occupies a position in the East-
ern churches analogous to Augustine. Renowned as a
preacher, a task that earned him the nickname “Golden
Mouth,” Chrysostom was born in Antioch and raised by
his mother, Anthusa, who became a widow at age twenty
while her son was an infant. Baptized at the age of eigh-
teen, Chrysostom shortly thereafter embarked upon an
ascetic life, which included six years of living in a monastic
cell in the mountains south of Antioch. The ardors of those
severe years contributed to his subsequent poor health.
Much of his impact on the Christian church comes in ser-
mons he preached as bishop of Constantinople. John’s
sermons continually inveighed against the materialism of
the wealthy ruling classes and were deemed by many as
overly strict. His approach to parenting, therefore, is often
marked by a critique of overindulgence.
The family, for Chrysostom, is a cornerstone of faith,
a household church and a foreshadowing of the eternal
kingdom. Families are rooted first in God’s triune life,
where God the Father loves the Son, and the Holy Spirit
carries the love between Father and Son. Human parents
who worship the triune God are “called upon to emulate
God the Father’s love for the Son, while children should
love and obey their parents as the Son loves and obeys the
Father through the Spirit.”2 When love is ordered prop-
erly in the family, families participate in the triune life by
reflecting God’s love to one another. Chrysostom writes,
“When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle,
to be forgiving (all of these are attributes of God), to be
60 • parenting
generous, to love their fellow men, to regard this present

age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls and reveal
the image of God within them.”3 Parents emerge here as
teachers who both instruct their children in virtue and
impart God’s love to them. But as parents love and instruct
their children, children also reflect God’s love for the par-
ent. Familial love is not a one-way street from parent to
child but gathers all members of the family in a dance of
love that reflects the divine.
Chrysostom extols the physical dimensions of love in
ways that differ from many of his contemporaries. The
physical union of wife and husband is cause for thanksgiv-
ing, as it is an expression of the highest form of human
love. Chrysostom writes of a desire “deeply implanted
within our nature” that “knits together these bodies of
ours.”4 The sexual union of parents, borne of divine eros,
also transmits the image and likeness of God from parents
to children. The first word of a child’s birth is not an origi-
nal curse but a blessing of being created in God’s image.
Though the love between parents and children shows
some degree of reciprocity, parents bear the responsibility
for nurturing children’s subsequent love and honor. Chil-
dren’s honor of parents—which is a biblical command—is
cultivated best when parents bring up their children well.
Proper child rearing combines protection of children from
forces alien to Christian faith and instruction in the faith.
Chrysostom’s “Address on Vainglory” is filled with
advice for parents to bring up children in the “right way.”
In words that are surprisingly resonant in contempo-
rary American consumer culture, Chrysostom considers
luxury and extravagance to be the chief threat to parent-
ing. Riches and materialism lead to pride: “Vainglory is
like the fruit of Sodom, which has a fair semblance and
the beholder, as he views it, receives the impression of a

wholesome fruit. But if he takes in his hand a pomegran-
ate or apple, straightway it is soft to his fingers and the
rind that covers it outside is crushed and lets the fingers
light upon dust and ashes. Such also is Vainglory.”5
In the face of threats posed by materialism and vain-
glory, Christian parents inculcate reverence, restraint, and
training. Parents shelter children from corrupting influ-
ences, chiefly those caused by money. They also instruct
their children, through their bodily example, in modes of
piety and reverence. The Christian parent does not, how-
ever, flee the world with the child or conceive the home
as a cocoon insulated from the world. Rather, as the child
is nurtured in faith, she becomes cognizant that others
are not part of the same faith. Chrysostom likens this to
athletic training: “Raise up an athlete for Christ and teach
him though he is living in the world to be reverent from
his earliest youth.”6 These remarks reflect Chrysostom’s
previous history as an ascetic and suggest that parenting
trains children for an alternative way of life in the world.
The Christian child eventually comes to know that she is
different from others, even as she grows in the nurture of
a household of faith.
Besides money and overindulgence, another threat
to children’s upbringing is the theater. “Never send thy
son to the theater that he may not suffer utter corruption
through his ears and eyes.” Instead, parents ought to show
children the wonders of nature and literature: “Show him
the sky, the sun, the flowers of the earth, meadows, and fair
books. Let these give pleasure to his eyes.”7 What children
see and hear, for Chrysostom, becomes a part of the adults
they grow into. Good parents, therefore, must constantly
negotiate whether to show their children or shield them
62 • parenting
from images and sounds. In Chrysostom’s view, media—

particularly the medium (theater) that engaged senses of
eye and ear—are never neutral. As parents are mindful
of these powerful senses, the school of nature sometimes
proves a better teacher than the school of humanity.
As parents protect children, they also provide disci-
pline. Here again are echoes of athleticism. Just as an ath-
lete must at times punish the body with the eye to greater
strength and stamina, parents need to train their children
through the occasional suggestion of the rod. When chil-
dren exhibit wayward tendencies, they need to be brought
back under the eye of parents. Yet Chrysostom urges par-
ents to avoid frequent use of physical punishment, since
it leads to resentment that undermines discipline. For
Chrysostom, the best use of physical punishment is when
children perceive it as a threat but never experience it: “Let
him rather at all times fear blows but not receive them.”8
Though these suggestions about the threat of punishment
are harrowing to modern ears, they are also restrained in
comparison to other voices of the time.
Chrysostom urges physical affection as a means of
teaching children: “As we speak to him, let us kiss him
and put our arms about him, and press him to us to show
our affection. By all these means let us mold him.”9 Here
Chrysostom echoes his reflections on triune love, where
love in the Christian household gains impetus from God’s
self-giving love. The intent, for parents, in this outward
display of love toward children is to form disciples and to
orient children in the wider circle of divine love.
As parents form Christian disciples, they should be
age-appropriate in the ways they narrate stories of faith.
Many Old Testament narratives contain much for young
children: the call of Abram and Sarai, Jacob’s ladder, the
journey of Moses and the Israelites. More “fearful tales,”

however, should be reserved for later. Chrysostom sug-
gests, for example, that children shouldn’t hear of hell until
age fifteen or older. Yet this does not mean that children
ought to be shielded from narratives of divine judgment.
The flood and the descent into Egypt are appropriate for
eight-year-olds or even younger children.10 Chrysostom
pays particular attention to biblical stories of discipline,
since they instill in children and parents a sense of order
and responsibility.
Chrysostom’s advice to parents does not suggest that
parents “save” their children. Though they are respon-
sible for raising children in faith, parents are not—in the
end—the source of grace. But parents are models of faith
for their children and become windows of divine grace for
children entrusted to their care. For Chrysostom, parents
are the most natural teachers of children. When they teach
well, children will flourish. Yet Chrysostom knows that
parents also fall short, sometimes drastically short. The
injunctions for children’s obedience, therefore, are not
absolute. Indeed, Chrysostom allows one caveat: when
parents fail to instruct their children in the Lord, children
may be required to disobey them.11 God saves children,
and parents bear witness to this salvation when they par-
ent by word, deed, discipline, and love. Amid competing
forces in an often hostile world, parents provide a school
for children’s development in faith.
Thomas Aquinas and the Order of Parental Love

Many of Chrysostom’s themes are taken up and enriched
several centuries later by the medieval theologian Thomas
Aquinas (1225?–1274). A Dominican friar and professor
64 • parenting
at the University of Paris, Thomas wrote prolifically, cul-

minating in his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, a
compendium of theological knowledge. Though many of
his writings were controversial in Thomas’s lifetime, they
eventually became foundational to subsequent Roman
Catholic doctrine. He devotes comparatively little space
to parenting and childhood in his writing, but what little
he says about them has become influential in the centu-
ries since. Thomas expands the vision of parenting offered
by Chrysostom, increases children’s agency, and offers a
more robust defense of the ties of affection between par-
ent and child. For Thomas, the “natural” bond between
parent and child entails different obligations for each.
Thomas’s understanding of childhood is primarily
developmental. Children are adults-in-the-making who
lack the fullness of human life because they have not
yet developed full capacities for reason. For Thomas the
end—or purpose—of humanity is to worship, glorify, and
contemplate God. Children, however, are not yet capable
of enjoying this end, although they grow into it as they
age: “So long as man has not the use of reason he differs
not from an irrational animal.”12 Because children lack
this capacity, they are entrusted to parental care. Parents
guide and sustain children as they grow into the full use of
the reason God intends for them. As children grow, their
agency increases. Receiving the care and attention of par-
ents, a child begins to develop free will and reason and
“begins to belong to itself, and is able to look after itself, in
matters concerning the Divine or the natural law.”13
Childhood, in this view, is not an enduring reality of
human life. It is, rather, something we outgrow. Thomas
argues primarily for the essential incompleteness of the
child, who grows into the completeness of humanity as
she is guided in the proper use of reason, by grace. Parents

nurture children as children grow into accountability for
their own behaviors. They are less the passive recipients
of parental teaching and more agents who acquire greater
freedom as they are taught by parents. Yet all children,
if they grow enough, eventually leave childhood behind:
“Thus childhood is not essential to man, and consequently
the same identical subject who was a child, becomes a
man.”14 The point of human being is adult human being,
and one role of parents is to help children usher in that
being for themselves, in light of God’s grace.
Thomas’s account of parental duties toward children is
grounded in his understanding of natural law. God creates
a world with a hierarchy ordered to God’s glory. Human
beings can investigate this natural order and discern pat-
terns that lead to flourishing. One component of this nat-
ural order is parental affection toward children. Human
love, when rightly ordered, extends first and foremost to
God. But this love of God is witnessed and reflected in all
of our earthly loves, which are also ordered. Our earthly
loves are good, Thomas argues, because they also partake
in the love of God. As long as our earthly loves direct us to
the love of God, they ought to be celebrated as reflections
of God’s love for us. Only when they lead us away from
God are they suspect. Thomas mentions self-love first in
the order of earthly loves, suggesting that we cannot love
another truly if we do not love ourselves. For him, our love
for ourselves “is the model” of our “love for another.”15
Parents, in this view, cannot love their own children
unless they also love themselves. Parenting cannot involve
the endless diminishment of oneself for the sake of one’s
child, a ceaseless sacrifice on behalf of parent for another.
Rather, mutual flourishing between parent and child is
66 • parenting
possible as long as parents are able to account for their

own flourishing.
As Christians heed the command to love their neigh-
bors as themselves, they also recognize an order to neigh-
borly love: it is good that we “love those who are more
closely united to us more, both because our love for them
is more intense, and because there are more reasons for
loving them.”16 Thomas considers it natural that parents
love their children more intensely than other neighbors.
In parental love for children, parents reflect some of God’s
love and learn to be schooled in love of neighbor. Parental
love for children does not necessarily conflict with other
loves but may allow other loves to nurture and grow. Care
for children, in this view, provides a school for wider hos-
pitality. It is natural that parents care for those children
for whom they exhibit a fierce parental attachment. But
this love can become noxious if it turns in on itself. As
parents care for children, they also learn to be more com-
passionate and loving to people in general. Though there
are times when care for one’s own children will clash
with parents’ obligations to provide hospitality to others
beyond the scope of kith and kin, the regular patterns of
care required for children can make parents more altru-
istic toward others. Parents learn hospitality as they care
for those nearest them.
Thomas reflects on the natural love that parents have
for children vis-à-vis children’s obligations toward par-
ents. The Ten Commandments express children’s honor
of parents, not parents’ obligations to children. “A man
ought to love his father more than his children, because,
to wit, he loves his father as his principle, in which respect
he is a more exalted good.” It is a higher principle for chil-
dren to love parents, and it is less automatic. However,
Thomas acknowledges that affectional ties are greater the

other direction. From the standpoint of the parent, “a man
loves more that which is more closely connected to him, in
which a man’s children are more loveable to him than his
father. . . . The love of a father for his children is more like
a man’s love for himself.”17 Hence, in the natural order of
love, a parent’s love for child is first, but in the order of
obligation, a child’s love for parent comes first. Both loves,
however, are ordered for the sake of human flourishing.
How do parents show their children love? One of
the primary ways, for Thomas, is by extending care both
materially—the basics of life—and educationally, which
enhances life: “It belongs properly to the father to receive
honor from his children, and to the children to be provided
by their parents with what is good for them.”18 It is more
natural for parents to provide for the immediate needs of
their children, perhaps, than providing for more distant
neighbors. But such acts of care need not exclude consid-
eration of those neighbors. Indeed, the experience of joy,
motivated by love, in caring for children can animate other
acts of charity and caregiving. In the natural order of love,
Thomas’s theology stresses how parents equip children to
be agents of Christian love as they grow.
Martin Luther: Beauty amid the Mundane

As far as we know, Chrysostom and Thomas were not par-
ents. Like many who wrote about the duties and poten-
tial delights of parenting in the church’s first millennia,
these men were not directly involved in the ordinary tasks
of child rearing: feeding, clothing, diapering, educating.
The shifts of the Protestant Reformation, however, intro-
duced other possibilities: subsequent to the removal of
68 • parenting
the celibacy requirement for clergy, some persons wrote

about parenting with an eye both to the church’s tradition
and to daily acts of care for children. Some of the Reform-
ers had direct experiences of parenting that many of their
predecessors lacked. These writers, like their predeces-
sors, were mostly male and hence limited in their ability
to express the broad range of parental experience. Martin
Luther (1483–1546) stands as one representative of this
period. He understands parenting as a vocation given by
God, fraught with beauty amid its often inglorious work.
Luther clearly enjoyed being a father. He wrote of
children romping about his feet while he worked, giving
him delight. His own children’s playfulness earned them
the nickname God’s “little jesters,” who had “splendid
thoughts about God.” He marveled at his son nursing at
his wife Katie’s breast: “He sucks with pleasure at those
breasts, is cheerful, is unconcerned about all his enemies.”
Though his writings on children are not extensive, they
are filled with observations of the detail and peculiarity
of each child’s life. In particular, Luther enjoyed watching
children at play. Children come to parents not as abstrac-
tions, to whom parents owe generalized duties, but as
unique and irreplaceable persons claimed and blessed by
God. Martin and Katie Luther lost two of their own chil-
dren prematurely, deaths that affected Luther dramati-
cally, troubling him “above measure.”19
Luther’s primary framework for understanding par-
enting is as vocation, connected intimately to the voca-
tion of marriage: “The greatest good of married life, that
which makes all suffering and labor worth while, is that
God grants offspring and commands that they be brought
up to worship and serve him. In all the world this is the
noblest and most precious work, because to God there
can be nothing dearer than the salvation of souls. . . . One

should not regard any estate as better in the sight of God
than the estate of marriage.”20 In an era when “vocation”
was often narrowly used to express a calling to the church
as priest or nun, Luther extends the language of vocation
to all work. Marriage and parenting present for Luther an
estate rich “in good works,” where persons find “delight,
love, and joy without end.”21 For Luther the first note in
parenting is often a joyous one: wonder over the birth of
a child, marveling at the child’s dependence on the parent
for life, and delight as children grow into the persons they
are called to become.
Much of the time, however, parents are engrossed
in labors that can hardly be described as glorious. Like
Thomas and Chrysostom,
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Luther recognizes the pri-
“When a father goes
mary duties of parents to
ahead and washes diapers
children as caregiving, but
or performs some other
Luther is more aware that
mean task for his child, and
caregiving is difficult,
someone ridicules him as
monotonous, and even
an effeminate fool . . .
vexing. But amid these
God, with all his angels
duties, however inglori-
and creatures, is smiling—
ous, Luther finds beauty.
not because that father
One of his most color-
is washing diapers, but
ful examples involves the
because he is doing so in
ordinary task of diaper
Christian faith.”
changing: “When a father
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
goes ahead and washes
diapers or performs some other mean task for his child,
and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool . . . God,
with all his angels and creatures, is smiling—not because
that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing
70 • parenting
so in Christian faith.”22 Luther knows that quotidian

realities can consume most of a parent’s day. He does
not gloss over them with romanticism but takes them for
the often-unpleasant tasks that they are. But amid these
tasks, Luther also discerns God’s presence. Parenting,
when carried out in faith, is pleasing to God and a joy to
the soul.
Such observations about parenting demonstrate
Luther’s consistent preference for active work over the
work of contemplation or, perhaps better said, his recog-
nition that the work of contemplation is bound up with
active work. The image of Luther at his writing table sur-
rounded by a tumult of children is an apt one here, for
Luther tended to see his work as a church reformer ani-
mated by his work as father. Acts of child care have value
in themselves and as a response to God’s call on life when
carried out in faith.
Luther strongly emphasizes the instructional role of
parents; they teach their children God’s word, a task that
may place them in the position of correcting children’s
wayward habits. Luther writes, “This work appears easy,
yet few see it rightly. For where the parents are truly godly
and love their children not just in human fashion, but (as
they ought) instruct and direct them by words and works
to serve God in the first three commandments, then in
these cases the child’s own will is constantly broken.”23
Luther’s capacity to delight in children—his recognition of
them as God’s jesters—did not obscure his simultaneous
observation that they, like all others, are sinners stand-
ing in need of God’s grace. In children, sin often manifests
itself in stubbornness, selfishness, or disobedience. This
stubborn will, which leads away from God, was what par-
ents were required to break and remold. In Luther’s view,
when parents broke their child’s will, they were instilling

obedience not simply to them but to God’s word.
Because their responsibilities are so weighty, par-
ents occupy a high notch in the orders of creation. In The
Large Catechism, Luther remarks, “To fatherhood and
motherhood God has given the special distinction, above
all estates that are beneath it. . . . He distinguishes father
and mother above all other persons on earth, and places
them next to himself.”24 Hardly the ramblings of parental
hubris, Luther’s writing here reflects his strong insistence
on human beings as the image of God. We know about
human parenthood, Luther would say, because God is our
Father. Our primary allegiance is to God, but this allegiance
is reflected, however dimly, in the honor we give our own
parents. For those who dishonor parents, Luther’s words
are harsh: “If you are unwilling to obey father and mother
or submit to them, then obey the hangman; and if you will
not obey him, then obey the grim reaper, Death!”25 Like
Thomas Aquinas, Luther had a conception of parenthood
that was distinctly medieval, stressing hierarchy, distinct
orders of creation, and submission to those higher on the
scale. Our parents represent the fatherhood of God, so all
honor is due them. For Luther, moreover, the father stands
at the apex of the family; he is the one who instructs others
in obedience to the Word.26
Luther’s view of parenting is complex. On the one
hand, he does not speak about children in disembodied or
impersonal ways but considers the unique personality of
each child, particularly the children who share his home.
As he writes in this vein, readers catch some of the joy of
parenting, discerning beauty in the midst of the ordinary.
Yet at the same time, Luther stresses order and the pri-
macy of the father, echoing the patriarchy of the Middle
72 • parenting
Ages. The result of this combination is that parenting

emerges as a duty and delight—strict order and the occa-
sional disruption of order as children play.
Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture,

and Children’s Play
Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) is often celebrated as the
American father of nineteenth-century Protestant liber-
alism. A gifted preacher and theologian, Bushnell might
also be described as a public intellectual who spoke out on
many of the controversial issues of his time. Pastor of the
Congregationalist church in Hartford, Bushnell attends to
the emergence of the middle class in the mid-nineteenth-
century United States. His most enduring legacy is his
book Christian Nurture, which offered an extended inter-
pretation of children’s faith and how it is formed. Bush-
nell’s thesis is “that the child is to grow up a Christian, and
never know himself as being otherwise.”27 In this book,
parents emerge as the primary agents of faith formation:
children’s introduction to the faith is to be gradual, nour-
ished within the warmth of hearth and home.
To a culture basking in its own “conquest” of the
Western frontier, celebrating the rugged individualists
who obliterated anything and anyone who resisted, Bush-
nell wrote of interconnection and the well-being of the
self-with-others: “The Scriptures . . . maintain a marked
contrast with the extreme individualism of our modern
philosophy. They do not always regard the individual as an
isolated unit, but they often look upon men as they exist,
in families and in races, under organic laws.”28 For Bush-
nell true human being is being-with, and nowhere is this
more apparent than in the relationship between parent
and child. He writes, “If we . . . examine the relation of

parent and child, we shall not fail to discover something
like a law of organic connection, as regards character, sub-
sisting between them. . . . The character of one is actually
included in that of the other, as a seed is formed in the
capsule; and being there matured, by a nutriment derived
from the stem, is gradually separated from it.”29 This theme
of “organicism” permeates every page of Christian Nur-
ture and fosters not the dissolving of individuality in the
family but the nurturing of difference within it. Parenting
is thus characterized less as an imposition of character on
children than as the planting of a seed in the fertile soil of
familial love and guidance, thus allowing a child’s unique
character to emerge with others. In the earliest stages
of childhood, however, a parent’s bond to the child is so
intimate that it goes beyond the realm of influence and
resembles an “absolute force.”30
One implication of Christian Nurture is its hallow-
ing of the Christian home, its transference of the primary
means of grace from church to family. In passages that
bear traces of a bourgeoning middle class and its cult of
domesticity, Bushnell extols families as “little churches”
and refuges of “quiet hearth and table, away from the great
public world and its strifes, with a priest of their own to
lead them.”31 As Margaret Bendroth has observed, the era
of Bushnell marked a significant shift in societal attitudes
toward children and the home. Once liberated from the
labor force, children of the growing middle classes served
little economic purpose and could now frolic under moth-
er’s watchful eye. In Bendroth’s words, “Home became the
antithesis of the workplace, a private spot where middle-
class Victorians sought rest and leisure.”32 Bushnell thus
offered for his budding audience a brand of domestic
74 • parenting
theology that valorized the home and the mother who

protected her brood from the corrupting and malicious
impositions of the workaday world in which the father
found himself. Though excluded from all forms of official
church leadership, the Christian mother, in Bushnell’s
eyes, became the primary agent of spiritual formation in
her children.
For Bushnell the primary role of the parent is not dis-
ciplinarian, teacher, or even example; rather, the parent
as caregiver enables the growth of each child’s unique
spiritual personality. In the seemingly mundane acts of
bathing, feeding, caressing, and attending, the parent
introduces a child to God’s world. The child’s under-
standing of God and world, accordingly, is formed by the
degree of attention (or lack of attention) shown to that
child. Bushnell considers physical care to be nurture of
the spirit: “So intimate is this connection of mind and
body, so very close to real oneness are they, that no one
can, by any possibility, be a Christian in his mind, and not
be in some sense a Christian in his body.”33 Parenthood
is sacred not because of a spiritual extraordinariness that
parents impart to children but in the ordinary acts of care
that all children need. In a gloss on the word made flesh,
Bushnell reminds his audience that the word cares for the
flesh.
Calling maternity a station endowed with “semi-divine
proportions,”34 Bushnell exhibits nothing less in his under-
standing of family than “faith in the near salvific power of
a godly mother,”35 who casts the character of her children’s
future. Mothers thus become yoked to their children’s
spiritual welfare and are never to betray the slightest trace
of impatience or anxiousness. Locking mothers in a cot-
tage of domesticity, Bushnell leaves fathers to deal with
the supposedly hostile forces of the world on their own. In

effect, his gender typecasting distances fathers from the
organic web of relationships stressed in the early sections
of the book and traps mothers within that same web.
Amid this problematic Victorian typecasting, however,
are intriguing reflections on the play of parents and chil-
dren. Bushnell describes the beginning of life as a “joyous
gambol,”36 which religion too readily suppresses by “need-
less austerity.” The problem with religious instruction, in
his eyes, is the same problem with parenting: it dismisses
play as irrelevant to the life and thought of mature human
beings. Rather than seeing play as something confined to
the fancies of childhood, Bushnell extends its laughter to
all generations: “Play is the symbol and interpreter of . . .
Christian liberty. . . . God has purposely set the beginning
of the natural life in a mood that foreshadows the last and
highest chapter of immortal character. . . . As play is the
forerunner of religion, so religion is to be the friend of
play.”37 In refreshing counterpoint to the legions of how-
to-parent books that have been written in the decades
since Bushnell, his advice to parents is simple: play with
your kids. “Sometimes, too, the parent, having a hearty
interest in the plays of his children, will drop out for the
time in the sense of his years, and go into the frolic of their
mood with them. They will enjoy no other play-time so
much as that.”38 As Bushnell closes his classic work, the
reader hears not the stern admonitions of the Sunday
school teacher but the echoes of parents laughing and
running with their children across the grass. And perhaps
we even catch a glimpse of Bushnell himself tumbling with
his own children on the Hartford town green.
Indeed, this rollicking image of Bushnell as a father
resonates strongly with the anecdotes we have about
76 • parenting
Bushnell’s family life. Bushnell and his wife, Mary, had

five children: a daughter who died in infancy, a son who
died before age two, and three daughters whose playful-
ness contributed to the writing of Christian Nurture. The
reminiscences of his daughter, Mary Bushnell Cheney, are
striking in the detail that describes a family at play:
First among my recollections of my father are the

daily, after-dinner romps, not lasting long, but most
vigorous and hearty at the moment. No summit has
ever seemed so commanding as his shoulder, where
we rode proudly, though sometimes carried about at
what seemed a dangerous pace. Thanksgiving-day
was always a day of special and rare frolic. After the
sermon had been given, and the turkey and pumpkin-
pie were disposed of, father and children joined in a
unique and joyous celebration, whose main feature
was the grand dance, in the course of which my father
would occasionally electrify the children by taking a
flying leap over their heads.
Cheney’s recollections are filled with other episodes that

depict a man who enjoyed fatherhood robustly: a dad who
took time, paid attention, played, and was open to being
changed by his children. She suggests, “It was while watch-
ing the play of his own children with a graceful kitten he
conceived the idea which animates his Work and Play; and
in the same manner he drew from his own home experi-
ence the child-loving chapter on ‘Plays and Pastimes,’ in
his Christian Nurture.”39
Bushnell described childhood as “the paradise of nature
behind us,” which, when we recollect it or when we play
with our children, anticipates “the paradise of grace before
us.”40 To reconnect with the play of childhood, Bushnell

would argue, is one of the many joys of parenthood. Par-
enting is primarily a nurturing task that orients children
in faith through basic acts of caregiving. Though Bushnell
sentimentalizes and valorizes the role of a godly mother,
some of this sentimentality is undercut by his theological
treatment of play, which enhances care as children grow in
grace with their parents.
Bonnie Miller-McLemore: Family Spirituality

and Chaos
One of the ironies of Christian reflections on parenting is
that for centuries they excluded the experience of mothers
as parents. Men—who were often not directly involved in
the care of children—tended to dominate these theologies.
Only recently has the church seemed willing to learn from
mothers on the subject. In the past several decades, women
theologians have produced significant reflections on moth-
erhood and the care of children. Bonnie Miller-McLemore
stands as one of the most important contributors to this
stream. Professor of pastoral theology at Vanderbilt Uni-
versity and mother of grown sons, Miller-McLemore dis-
plays consistent attention to dilemmas and challenges of
parenting that theology has often neglected. She attends
to children through the lenses of Christian feminism and
pastoral theology, offering a reconfiguration of parenting
as a spiritual practice. Her approach avoids romanticiz-
ing the complicated and taxing labors of parenting while it
also glimpses the holy amid the chaos of the everyday.
Miller-McLemore knows that parenting involves much
work that is unrecognized by society. Caring for chil-
dren changes parents’ lives with the innumerable tasks it
78 • parenting
requires. She considers the work of parenting alongside

other forms of work, acknowledging the challenges that
dual-career spouses face as they work inside and outside
the home. In Also a Mother, she frames a dilemma that
many mothers face: coming to terms with the economi-
cally “non-productive” work of parenting in a society that
measures one’s contributions in terms of economic pro-
ductivity. Though many parents experience the competing
pulls between work and home, mothers feel it with partic-
ular intensity in their bodies. This exploration of mother-
hood eventually results in a redefinition of “productivity”
by criticizing the economic measures of modern Ameri-
can society: “We must argue that some forms of caring for
human life can never be purchased and should never be
quantified in material- or product-oriented ways. . . . The
I-Thou relationships of families and children cannot, and
should not, be divided, organized, systematized, rational-
ized, bought, arranged, or bargained over in the same way
as other kinds of labor.”41 For Miller-McLemore, parental
work changes things and ought to change our orientation
in the world.
Miller-McLemore gives far more consideration to
the labor of parenting than her theological predecessors.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Where Luther muses over
“Seeing God in the face of the jesters and Bushnell
the child opens the eyes rollicks in play, she notes
to the face of God in those that parenting “requires
around us.” deep reserves of energy,
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
extended periods of
patience, and a height-
ened intellectual activity that seldom has been recognized
as such.” Parenting can be tedious and taxing, but in car-
ing for a child, “as in caring intimately for any human
being, one may glimpse the divine within creation. Seeing

God in the face of the child opens the eyes to the face of
God in those around us.”42 Parenting for her is not only a
vocation given by God (à la Luther) but a way of meeting
God in the world. The God of Christian faith, in the incar-
nation, is a God who cares for the ordinary and becomes
manifest in the ordinary. Parenting is thus a means of
grace—for parent and child—as parents extend love and
attention to the children entrusted to their care. Parents
do not love their children in the abstract; rather, they love
them in particular, in their closeness, in the act of nam-
ing a child. This particular love tends not to enclose upon
itself when practiced as a spiritual discipline. Rather, par-
enting as an ecclesial practice focuses care on children so
that we might recognize all children (and not just the chil-
dren of parents) as God’s beloved as the circle of care gets
extended.
As parents give care, however, they often experience
sacrifice. Parents give time, energy, and attention to chil-
dren in ways that can push parents’ needs and desires to
the periphery. Hence, parents give up sleep to feed infants,
forgo some purchases in order to clothe children, and offer
countless mundane and sometimes heroic sacrifices. No
one can parent well and think only of oneself. Yet sacrifice
can also prove destructive if it becomes an end in itself.
Miller-McLemore, cognizant of the ways that sacrifice has
been valorized and foisted upon women in the theologi-
cal tradition, redefines the significance of sacrifice. When
parents sacrifice themselves, their labors should also aim
toward mutuality. This recognition underscores the need
for sharing parental labors: “A parent cannot give to a child
unless that giving is refreshed by the supportive attentions
of another, whether spouse, neighbor, friend, or relative.
80 • parenting
In other words, the self-diminishment necessary for care

of others is healthy and good, but only in a social context
in which caring is neither a compulsory nor an exploit-
ative experience.”43 Parental love often begins sacrificially.
But sacrifice is not the end of parenting; its aim should be
patterns where those who give also receive.
Miller-McLemore recognizes, however, that parental
love, attention, and giving never begin mutually. Just as
Thomas notes distinctions in the order of love, Miller-
McLemore notes distinctions in family roles and acts. She
speaks of transitional hierarchies in the family, where par-
ents undertake the majority of responsibilities, decision
making, and the expressions of love, and as children age
they gradually become more responsible for the work of
the family and capable of showing deeper expressions of
love. “Mutuality cannot rule fully at all times and in all
areas of our lives. Transitional hierarchies honor this fact
by allowing temporary inequity between people, whether
of power, authority, expertise, responsibility, or maturity,
undertaken in the hope of moving toward (though it has
not yet arrived at) genuine mutuality.”44 The ordinary
tasks of parenting thus shift over time as parents and chil-
dren begin to share responsibilities, as parents and chil-
dren grow in grace.
In her later work, Miller-McLemore claims parenting
as a spiritual practice. Criticizing a strand of Christian spiri-
tuality that privileges contemplation removed from the din
of children, dishes, and family arguments, she encourages
parents to understand their daily routines with children
as acts of contemplation in the midst of chaos. Christian
spirituality does not flee from the world for the sake of
enlightenment but immerses itself in the world in acts of
compassion. Parents contemplate, she claims, by paying
attention, which requires parents to listen to children. In

an age that encourages parents to meet their “own desires
for solace, affirmation, and success” in their children, the
attentive parent “learns to ask again and again in so many
ways, ‘What are you going through?’ without rushing to
give the answer or act on it.”45 Like any spiritual practice,
this attention requires repeated enaction. Practicing the
presence of attention is an act of love:
Attentive love is part instinct, part effort, and part

gift. It builds on early, almost involuntary responses,
as when a mother’s milk comes in on hearing a
baby’s cry. But it also involves hard work and con-
stant discernment of what to look for, what to ward
off, and how to scan the horizon for dangers. Yet, for
all this, understanding the other is never predictable
or controllable. One cannot command attention by
sheer will power or muscular concentration. Atten-
tion evolves out of joy, as [Simone] Weil says, and its
fruits come as a grace.46
Such attentiveness gets nurtured in the family through

ordinary activities: reading, playing, giving, receiving,
sharing meals, doing chores, teaching and learning about
justice (often in the context of how chores are distributed),
and ultimately as parents bless their children and let go as
time goes by. Christian spirituality takes root in the ordi-
nary, and parenting offers one way of opening our eyes to
God’s presence in the everyday, in the unique faces of each
child and in their particular claims upon parents.
If Miller-McLemore begins her reflections on parent-
ing with the dilemmas mothers face from work inside
and outside the home, she concludes by claiming that no
82 • parenting
parent has a singular vocation: “The supposed ‘choice’

between work of one’s own and love of family is, in fact,
a falsehood.”47 It is false because God’s call on life is mul-
tivocal and the human person glorifies God in multiple
ways. Parenting offers a keen example of a multivocal call,
since parents and children change over time in relation
to one another. The work of parents shifts over the years.
The vocation of parenting, furthermore, is enriched and
animated by other callings: friendship, labors for justice,
and work outside the home. If some modern conceptions
of the family turn in on themselves and conceive of home
as a refuge, Miller-McLemore sees the family and work
of parenting in the midst of wider communities. In this
understanding, anyone who “cares for kids and is changed
by it”48 is a parent. “Parents raise children. But raising
children also raises adults. Children dramatically trans-
form the lives of adults who care for them.”49 Children
change things, coming to parents as gifts who surprise
us. The work of parenting orients us to God’s spirit in the
midst of the mundane, inviting parents and children to
life abundant.
Conclusion
How have Christians interpreted parenting? The answer to
that question is anything but uniform. Parenting is work
and play, instruction and nurture, correction and learn-
ing, duty and delight, molding and breaking, an invitation
and a hindrance to Christian faith. Christians have upheld
family ties as essential to communicating the faith and
disparaged those ties as stumbling blocks. But throughout
every age, Christians have parented. The Bible encour-
ages us to situate family ties amid a larger community
of faith. Patristic resources encourage us to see in family

life a reflection of divine love. Medieval theology senses a
natural order in the differing forms of love and obligation
that parents embody. The Reformation recognizes parent-
ing as a divine call while more recent voices attend to the
play and ordinary work of parenting as imbued with God’s
presence.
Some of the earlier theologies have pitfalls, particu-
larly as men have written about children’s discipline and
motherhood. But each theology we’ve surveyed commu-
nicates something that can contribute to a fuller picture
of parenting in a frantic age such as ours that often seems
inattentive to children. The task that remains is how a
Christian vision of parenting might respond to some of
the challenges presented in the routines of parents and
children outlined in chapter 1. As we begin that task, I will
draw on each of the resources discussed in this chapter.
3
toward a theology of parenting
What does it mean to be a parent? How does Christian

faith have an impact on the ordinary routines that occupy
much of parents’ days? How does parenting influence our
understanding of Christian faith? How might Christians
draw on some of the wisdom about parenting from our
collective past while being attentive to the struggles and
challenges that parents face today? What follows is one
theologian’s attempt to wrestle with these and other par-
enting questions in ways that are illustrative of faith, atten-
tive to children, and responsive to the cries for justice that
emerge from the mouths of children and parents.
Christians in the future will continue to parent and
care for children. As we look toward that future, I suggest
five themes that might frame a Christian practice of par-
enting: adoption, triune life, work and play, hospitality,
and blessing. These markers, which draw from theological
roots, do not exhaust the Christian practice of parenting,
but they do offer one place to begin.
Adoption
Parents often refer to the children they care for with pos-
sessive pronouns: “my” child, “our” daughter, “her” son.
85
86 • parenting
This custom is relatively easy to understand: a child comes

into the world dependent on others for its very life. Pos-
sessive pronouns help identify each child’s caregivers. The
pronouns underscore parents’ responsibilities to children
and indicate where children find a home. If we want to
inquire about a child’s well-being, the first person we typi-
cally ask is a parent. Use of these pronouns, though not
uniform across cultures, is fairly common. If I speak of
“my” daughter in conversation with friends in Zambia,
they know who I’m talking about: Grace, who shares some
of my DNA as well as meals and chores under the same
roof as me. Grace is my daughter in ways that other girls
simply are not.
Such pronouns, obvious as they are, can also be prob-
lematic. One danger in a consumer age is that children
become possessions that need protection at all costs. The
instinct to protect children from violence and harm is nec-
essary for children to thrive. But protective instincts can
also run riot. In the American middle class, parents often
spend enormous amounts of energy protecting and pro-
viding opportunities for children. The amount of unpro-
tected, unsecured time that many middle-class children
have seems to be shrinking. Whereas earlier generations
of children walked to school with peers, twenty-first-
century children now travel the same distance—or less—
alone with parents in the car. Neighborhood bike rides,
especially rides without a parent present, seem rarer in
my neighborhood. Middle-class parenting tends toward
hovering (keeping children under the parent’s watchful
eye) or helicoptering (swooping in to rescue children from
challenges). Accompanying these instincts is the drive to
provide an increasing number of childhood “opportuni-
ties.” I am no stranger to this pursuit. Molly and I often
toward a theology of parenting • 87
fret whether the current array of activities we’ve sched-

uled is enough to ensure our children’s growth. The child
who becomes a parental possession is also the child who is
overly protected and programmed.
If parents avoid viewing their children as possessions,
they are often tempted to consider them investments.
Aspects of this attitude have been around for a long time.
Many biblical narratives, as we have seen, see children
as God’s promise for the future. Many cultures across
the ages consider children a sign of wealth, blessing, or
an essential source of labor for a family. In twenty-first-
century America, however, investment has presented
itself with renewed fervor. Even if children no longer
guarantee a solid financial return for parents, they are
celebrated for their emotional return. Children, accord-
ing to common wisdom, make us happier, make us live
longer, and make us more productive in society. Note how
these observations consider children chiefly in terms of
what they supply for the parent. The message of this line
of thought is clear: funnel as much investment and atten-
tion into the child as possible in order that both child and
parent emerge happier and better adjusted. The problem
with many assumptions about parental investment is that
they view parenting as an instrumental good or as a means
to something else. In the process, the personhood of chil-
dren and the surprise they unleash in life disappear. In
this most distorted form, parenting exists chiefly for the
parent, an idol of the parent’s own making.
If much of the rhetoric and practice in American
consumer culture encourages parents to view children
as possessions or investments, Christian faith suggests
something else: children are gifts from the God who
adopts each one of us as God’s own. In both the Old and
88 • parenting
New Testaments, adoption is a pervasive image, explicit

and implicit, that describes God’s covenantal relationship
to us as God pledges faithfulness to children.1 Imagery of
adoption personalizes the
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
covenantal relationship
Children are gifts from the
between God and Israel
God who adopts each one
and between God and the
of us as God’s own.
church. Hosea 11 offers
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
one image of adoption in
the Hebrew Bible: “When Israel was a child I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son” (v. 1). Here God calls
Israel a child not because God has given birth to Israel,
but because God calls Israel. Another implicit reference
to God’s adoption of Israel includes Jeremiah 3:19: “I
thought how I would set you among my children, and give
you a pleasant land, the most beautiful heritage of all the
nations” (see also Deuteronomy 7:6-7; 14:1). The central
human character in the Pentateuch, Moses, is adopted as
an infant by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10). In the
Hebrew Bible, adoption figures as one of the ways that God
fashions a people and forms leaders for that people. The
familial ties that matter here are not based upon blood but
on God’s initiative to become a parent and to call a people.
As adoption manifests itself in the Hebrew Bible, even a
woman of the oppressor Pharaoh’s household can become
mother to an Israelite. Hospitality and pledges of faithful-
ness take precedence over ties of blood.
The New Testament amplifies adoption imagery sig-
nificantly as the Gospels portray Jesus’ family and Paul
describes the Christian church. In Matthew, Joseph hears
in a dream that he is not to leave Mary but to take her as
his wife and name her child Jesus (1:18-25). This narrative
and Jesus’ subsequent identification as “the carpenter’s
son” (13:55) indicate adoption. Jesus comes to Joseph’s

family not because Jesus shares his father’s biology but
because Joseph names Jesus and pledges to be a father.
Paul likewise employs imagery of adoption in his portrayal
of the Christian church. God sends the Son “in order to
redeem those who were under the law, so that we might
receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:5; see also
Romans 8:12-17; Ephesians 1:3-14). In this family, accord-
ing to David Bartlett, “Jesus is God’s ‘birth’ son and . . . all
other believers, Jews and Gentiles alike, are adopted into
God’s family to become Jesus’ sisters and brothers.”2 In
the new family inaugurated in Jesus Christ, adoption—not
biology—makes the difference.
The imagery of adoption suggests neither that the
church is a second-class family in comparison to the syn-
agogue nor that this new family supersedes the original
family of covenant. But the image does suggest that God
is making something new in adopting the church—that
God is expanding the family circle that begins in a cov-
enant with Abraham, extends to a people who journey out
of slavery into the promised land, and is offered to the
whole world in Jesus Christ. Christians become partici-
pants in this family story not because they can trace their
biological lineage to Abraham but because Christ extends
the hospitality of God, the loving and gracious parent, to
us. Thus the Hebrew story of covenant, Exodus, proph-
ets, and priests becomes the church’s as well through the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Gentiles become
children, in other words, not because we are born into the
covenant family but because we have been incorporated
into it by adoption.
Adoption is helpful for understanding parent-
ing because it glimpses children not as possessions or
90 • parenting
investments but as gifts. If American consumerism inclines

toward an “economy of exchange” that reduces children to
commodities or even nonentities,3 the image of adoption
suggests an economy of grace where children and parents
are gifts to one another. What we learn from the Chris-
tian story—from Table to Scripture to the Savior—is not
an economy of exchange, where tit is exchanged for tat,
where we invest in order to reap a return. What we learn
from that story is that God gives generously, gratuitously,
and that when we are caught up in receiving the gift of
Jesus Christ, we are driven to become a giving people.
God doesn’t give so that some might have more and oth-
ers less; rather, God gives out of abundance, so that all
might have life abundantly. Children come to parents and
parents come to children as gifts, drawing from the abun-
dance of God’s life.
Parents who wait for an adoption—often for years—
know well that the appearance of a child into their lives is
nothing short of a gift. But so, too, do mothers who labor
in maternity wards and fathers and partners who hold the
mother’s hand amid the trials of childbirth. As gifts, chil-
dren surprise parents with their uniqueness, but so too do
parents surprise children as they begin to live in the house-
hold with each other. Such is the nature of gifts: however
much anticipated, they surprise us with grace. When we
receive them, we in turn can become giving people.
The gift of adoptive parenting means that for par-
ents, children are, in Miller-McLemore’s words, “wholly
unearned, they are ours ‘only in trust,’ . . . coming from
and ultimately returning to God.”4 When children are
adopted by their parents, they do not belong to parents
but come to parents from God and direct parents and
children back to God. Jesus claimed as much: “Whoever
welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and

whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who
sent me” (Mark 9:37). When conceived as adoption, par-
enting becomes both a promise to children and a reminder
of the gift of life itself: a gift shared with others, a gift that
transforms both giver and receiver so that both become
gifts to one another as we receive God’s gifts. The economy
of exchange that permeates the U.S. market economy and
has even infected some aspects of global adoption prac-
tices views children as possessions that are meant to be
hoarded. The economy of gift that saturates the Christian
story fosters gift giving so that parents make promises to
children and their lives are shared with others.
Christians can view parenting as akin to adoption,
where all children are regarded as being like adopted chil-
dren. This analogy makes the practice of legal or regular
adoption all the more prominent. A parent’s adoption of
a child unrelated by biology makes explicit the kinds of
practices that ought to accompany all parenting: opening
one’s home to a stranger, acceptance of a child not primar-
ily because of biological traits but because of the gift of
the child. Adoptive parents and children remain distinct;
their experiences do not disappear into a symbolic world,
but their lives offer a sign for other parents and children,
making the grace and promise of parenting more visible
to others.
One of the ways the church hints at adoptive parenting
is its practice of infant baptism or infant dedication. Such
rites, whether they are deemed sacraments or ordinances,
situate the newborn child in the midst of a congregation
at worship. As the child is introduced to the congregation,
the parents and the congregation make promises to the
child: “Do you, as members of the church of Jesus Christ,
92 • parenting
promise to guide and nurture [child’s name] by word and

deed, with love and prayer, encouraging [him or her] to
know and follow Christ and be [a faithful member] of his
church?”5 Here children do not belong to parents but to
God and are entrusted to the guidance and care of the con-
gregation. The church makes this promise, or a promise
like it, each time a child is baptized or dedicated. Bringing
infants and young children into the center of a church’s
worship space is an adoptive act. It reminds parents that
“their” children are given to them, entrusted to them, and
that they are surrounded by a community that makes prom-
ises to them and to “their” children as they seek to nurture
children in faith. Baptisms and dedications also connect
local churches to the global church. Whenever congrega-
tions make promises to particular children in their midst,
they are bound and make promises to children through-
out the worldwide church, to parents and congregations
who answer the same questions in other lands. To make
a promise to a particular child is also to make children on
the other side of the globe more present to the local con-
gregation. Baptism does not leave parents to themselves
in caring for children but connects them to parents and
children in other places. Baptism teaches Christian par-
ents to be claimed by other children as they care for “their
own” children, as we are formed in this adopted family,
the body of Christ.
Triune Life and Parenting Life

Children come as gifts to parents, but nearly every parent
knows they are gifts that require significant work. Parents,
moreover, often struggle with this work. Many conversa-
tions in our house involve negotiations over who is doing
what work: who is cooking tonight, who will help Grace

with her vocabulary terms this evening, and who will take
Finn to soccer practice tomorrow. Tasks get divvied, work
gets assigned. When they succeed these negotiations can
proceed smoothly, but when they fail the work seems over-
whelming. Does Christian faith have anything to say about
the distribution of parental work and the negotiation of
parental responsibilities, especially when many mothers
experience parenting as a “second shift”?
Parents love their children, often in ways that aren’t
automatically mirrored by their children in return. I love
Finn and Grace in different ways than they love me. These
distinct loves proceed from different locations and take dis-
tinctive hues as parents and children build lives together.
Parental love entails discipline of children, which children
may not initially perceive as love even if years later they
recognize it as such. Parents can thus teach children some
of the many facets of love. But children also teach parents
to love and how to love. The dynamic of love in families
can never be reduced to the love a parent shows a child
by example. Instead, that love is circular and dynamic:
responsive, attentive, and surprising as it proceeds from
parent to child and vice versa. The Christian doctrine of
the Trinity offers a further theological rationale for why
Christians should expect parental love to be dynamic and
circular rather than static. What we say about God’s work
and God’s love, in other words, affects how we understand
parental work and love.
The God of Christian faith does not avoid work but
labors for the sake of the world. The Bible depicts God as
worker, from the opening pages of Genesis, where God
fashions humanity out of the earth and breathes life into
Adam’s nostrils, to the closing pages of Revelation, where
94 • parenting
God renews the city Jerusalem in a marvel of divine work.

God labors for the sake of life, and the Trinity expresses
the shape of God’s work for the world: creating, redeem-
ing, and sustaining life.
Trinitarian doctrine offers several implications for a
shared understanding of work. First, the work of the tri-
une God emphasizes distinct contributions of each per-
son’s work: the Father as Creator, the Son as Redeemer,
and the Spirit as Sustainer.6 But the triune God who works
on behalf of the world does not hoard the work of one per-
son for that one person alone. In God’s triune life, the
Father’s work of creation is also the work of the Son and
the Spirit. Spirit hovers above the chaotic waters of cre-
ation (Genesis 1:2), and the Son, the word, is in the begin-
ning and is the one through whom all things were made
(John 1:3). God’s distinct work, in other words, is shared
among the divine persons. As God the worker creates,
sustains, and redeems, God dispenses value to the world,
blessing each object of God’s work. It makes no sense to
say that one work of God is more valuable or integral than
others. Instead, God blesses all that God does and invites
us to take part in God’s work. God works so that we, too,
might align our labors more nearly to the abundant life of
God’s grace.
This sharing of work points to the communion that
constitutes God’s life. One of the most ancient ways of
understanding the Trinity is as a fellowship of divine love.
God the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer are bound
together in an eternal dance of love, the mutual interpen-
etration of each person with, in, and through the other.
In this communion no person can be abstracted from
the others. The classic term for this communion is per-
ichoresis, the mutual indwelling of each person with and
through the other persons, an indwelling constituted by

love for the sake of love. God’s love is shared, is given, and
seeks others as objects of love. God’s love does not close in
upon itself but spills out to other persons and to creation,
so that we become formed by that love wherever we are.
John Chrysostom offers an example of how the gift
of divine love is reflected in the family. In a sermon on
Colossians 4:18, he remarks on the mystery of love: “As
if she were gold receiving the purest of gold, the woman
receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her
it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with
her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The
child is a bridge connecting mother to father, so the three
become one flesh, as when two cities divided by a river are
joined by a bridge. And here that bridge is formed from the
substance of each!”7 Here love between father and mother
invites others to partake in communion as a child is born.
Yet Chrysostom’s understanding of sexual love does not
require that children result from sexual union, since love
is deepened in communion with or without children: “But
suppose there is no child; do they then remain two and not
one? No; their intercourse effects the joining of their bod-
ies, and they are made one, just as when perfume is mixed
with ointment.”8 If the divine love is meant to be shared,
so is marital love. Chil- ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
dren thus result from the When children appear to
sharing of love but are not parents, they intensify the
a mandate of that love. commitments of shared
When children appear love, and they learn from
to parents, they inten- their parents (and teach
sify the commitments them) about the shape and
of shared love, and they scope of love.
learn from their parents ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
96 • parenting
(and teach them) about the shape and scope of love. What
makes a child a participant in the communion of love is
not a particular parental sexual act but the parents’ open-
ness to receive and share love. Children in this sense are
vital, living enfleshments of the promises that couples
make to one another who draw the couple to make fur-
ther promises to another person. This understanding of
children emerging in marriage is as true for gay couples as
straight couples. In both instances, couples receive chil-
dren as promises.
Another consequence of this trinitarian read of family
life is that it conceives both parents and children as agents
in the upbuilding of love. Though the roles of parent and
children are distinct, both contribute to love’s flourishing.
Parents, in loving one another and children, show chil-
dren some of the shapes of love and foster their capacity
to love in return. As children show love for parents, the
parents’ expression of love adapts and shifts over time.
Nearly every day of my life as a parent has been touched
by some gesture of love from Grace or Finn: a finger paint-
ing, a word, a hug, a smile. As soon as children emerge in
the world, they too teach their parents what it means to
love.
Triune life teaches families to share work as well. One
persistent temptation in family life is for each member
to treat certain tasks as private fiefdoms that no one else
is responsible for: laundry is Dad’s, yard work is Mom’s,
and the children—in a hectic age—have little work to do.
Many arguments that Molly and I have had over the years
can be distilled to the question of who’s doing what work.
But in triune life, no person monopolizes her distinct
work or owns the work of another. Rather, the labors are
shared, and the world takes part in God’s work and grace
as a result. When families flourish, the work of families

is shared. Parents cook for younger children in ways that
children do not; parents discipline children in ways that
children do not; children ought to be responsible for some
tasks (cleaning their rooms) in ways that parents are not.
But as parents cook and discipline, they invite children to
begin cooking with them and to exercise self-discipline.
Necessary distinctions in work eventually allow work to
be shared. This does not mean that each member of the
family is always doing the same work for the sake of the
body but that whatever work is done is not ultimately the
property of one person alone. Such invitations to shared
work bring greater delight to the mundane labors of fam-
ily life. Leaf raking at our house becomes less drudgery
and more of a conversation when Grace and Finn lend a
hand. Laundry becomes less of a burden and more of an
occasion of service (and even contemplation) when Molly
and I are not the only ones cleaning.
The Trinity expresses difference in the divine life as
well as it expresses unity and communion. Indeed, it con-
siders unity as a result of difference. The Redeemer is not
the Sustainer or the Creator and is not to be confused with
either of them. But the work of the Redeemer is for the sake
of the unity of God’s work and love shared with the world.
Members of the family are likewise distinct: children are
not parents, and parents are not children. Indeed, prob-
lems often arise when these roles are confused, as when
younger children are forced to care for parents who are
plagued by addiction. Another temptation is for parents to
see themselves primarily as “friends” to their adolescent
children, which can lead to a breakdown of boundaries
and a failure to set appropriate limits. Difference is essen-
tial for family work and love to flourish, but difference is
98 • parenting
for the sake of familial unity, so that each member of the

family can be sustained. Parenting that takes its cues from
triune love honors the difference of each child and the dif-
ference between parents and children while sensing in
that difference a unity of purpose: the building up of each
member of the family in light of God’s grace and love.
Work and Play

Nearly every parent knows that parenting is a lot of work.
Each day, new tasks arise, whether in the form of carpool-
ing, cleaning, or comforting. Many evenings, Molly and I
collapse in bed near exhaustion. I know that our experi-
ence is not abnormal. Most of the parents I know, when
pressed, would probably wish for just a few more hours
each day in order to complete the work necessary for par-
enting, not to mention the time needed for work outside
the home. In many households where both parents work
outside the home and in many single-parent households,
parents are overwhelmed at the work to be done: laundry
keeps piling up, refrigerators get emptied more quickly
than they can be filled, and homework often demands
adult attention. As parents work incessantly, many chil-
dren of middle-class households are expected to do rather
little work in the home. It’s soccer instead of sweeping,
dancing lessons instead of dishwashing. In the name of
providing opportunities for children, parents can wind up
insulating children from the work necessary for sustaining
life. Meanwhile, parents can sacrifice their own being for
the sake of children’s well-being. Some sacrifice, of course,
is essential to life. Christian faith teaches as much, where
the central tenet of faith is that God offers God’s very self
in Christ as a sacrifice for the sake of the world and giving
abundant life to the world. Are all acts of parental sacrifice

invitations to abundant life? Much of the time they are,
but sometimes—at least in my house—they seem distant
from that life.
One response to overwork is play, a critical element of
human life that expresses, as Bushnell righty noted, the
gift of freedom. But play in American culture all too often
becomes yet another object of consumer craving. One must
have the right things in order to play. In this environment,
play becomes another object for human consumption and
a compulsion rather than an expression of freedom. At
play, many of the global inequities of family life surface:
the playthings that occupy American children’s time are
often manufactured in distant corners of the globe, some-
times by the hands of other children who have less time
to play. What does it mean when our children play with
athletic equipment and toys made by children who never
get to play with them?
Christian faith can inform these dilemmas by refram-
ing our understanding of sacrifice and noting the intercon-
nections of work and play. Parenting is sacrificial work but
also playful work. How can parenting involve both sacri-
fice and play? Because it responds to God who gives life
in abundance. In this view, work is not a curse but stems
from the divine command to till the garden and keep it
(Genesis 2:15), to sustain other forms of life entrusted to
our care. Glimpsed in this light, the work of parenting is
a gift from God where parents make a covenant to nur-
ture another life. Parents respond to the God who gives us
gifts as they work on behalf of their children, and at times
parents will experience this work as sacrifice. When we
receive parenting as gift, however, some notions of paren-
tal sacrifice also begin to shift.
100 • parenting
Feminist ethicist Christine Gudorf is parent to three

children, two of whom are adopted and mentally handi-
capped. Both of these developmentally disabled children
had trouble walking and acquiring language skills; one
had difficulty feeding himself. These children tried their
parents’ patience and demanded much time. During the
initial years of parenting these children, Gudorf and her
husband heard much praise about their selfless, heroic
sacrifice as parents. The problem with this widespread
perception, however, was that Gudorf’s experience as par-
ent to these children did not mesh with the heroism that
others were attributing to her. She and her husband did
not experience parenting, and the gift of these children, as
an endless chain of self-giving, but also, these children’s
achievements and growth—however small—became
sources of pride, satisfaction, and happiness for them as
parents. In the midst of sacrifice, they also found fulfill-
ment and experienced their children giving to them.
Gudorf places sacrifice within a wider scope in which
sacrifice is not an end in
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
itself. Often when parents
“Self-sacrificing love
sacrifice themselves for
is always aimed at the
children, they find them-
establishment of mutual
selves as the receivers of
love. An act is only a loving
gifts. Just as the end of
act if it has the potential to
Jesus’ sacrifice was not his
provoke a loving response,
death but the life of the
however far in the future.”
world in resurrection, the
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
end of parental acts of care
is not the self-abnegation of parents but the fuller life of
parent and child. In Gudorf’s analysis, “Sacrifice is essen-
tial in the furthering of the kingdom. But we need to be
very clear that self-sacrificing love is always aimed at the
establishment of mutual love. An act is only a loving act if

it has the potential to provoke a loving response, however
far in the future.”9
Parenting anticipates mutual love, but it doesn’t yet
embody it. Parents love and give to infants and younger
children in ways that children simply cannot return.
Gudorf notes that mutual love rarely begins mutually.
But love is fulfilled as it grows as others are invited to
love in return and as we are moved by love to love one
another. This is the case whether we are talking about
God’s love for the world, our love for another person,
or a parent’s love for a child. Parents of children—even
the youngest of children—know well that love often gets
returned, whether in hugs, words, or the movement of
an eye. Often parents experience an initial sacrifice that
they have made for their children, only later (often many
years later) to experience a gift from a child. Hence, par-
ents often experience joy as a result of prior sacrificial
acts: how monotonous trips to piano lessons resulted in
a child’s joy in music and Mozart filling the home, even
enlivening the ears of others; how dragging a young child
to Sunday school resulted in the child’s passion for justice
as an adolescent. Sacrifice, when glimpsed rightly, results
not solely in parental exhaustion but also in the flourish-
ing of life. This return of love and gifts, of course, is not
guaranteed. Parenting entails the risk of love that is never
received, let alone returned. But the possibility of turning
from the gift does not negate the gift and sacrifice of love,
neither for children nor for parents.
As parents sacrifice and work, however, their labors
are also changed when they glimpse them in the context of
play. God’s work for the sake of the world is not drudgery
but a play of delight. One of the prime instances of God’s
102 • parenting
delight is Genesis 1, where God enjoys and appreciates the

work of creation. At the conclusion of each day of the week
of creation, God proclaims God’s works as “good,” unam-
biguously, unabashedly. God’s work results in aesthetic
appreciation, and we are invited to proclaim creation’s
goodness as well. In creating, moreover, God is not com-
pelled to work; rather, creation is the result of God’s free
initiative. God creates not out of necessity but out of grace.
The fulfillment of this free, creative work is rejoicing in
all that God has made. And at the completion of creation,
God rejoices in all that God has made: “And indeed, it was
very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Parenting also entails play, often as children invite
their parents to play. As an expression of freedom, play can
shake up work that has become compulsion and drudgery.
Play can even resist the temptation to overly structure chil-
dren’s lives and playtime. What is really enjoyable about
playing with children is not the activity that one has struc-
tured but the surprise that comes in the midst of it: not
the goal of eluding “it” in the game of tag but the tumble
in the grass as the child tries to escape parents’ grasp; not
the game itself but the unexpected turns that come within
the game. Play is subversive of structure, particularly
those structures that exclude, dominate, and oppress. As
Bushnell notes, “Play wants no motive but play.”10 Its joy is
found not in reaching some kind of goal but in the delight
of the others with whom we play. To play with one’s chil-
dren is to let them be themselves, to nourish them into
fuller becoming, to delight in the inexplicable otherness
and connectedness that makes them our children.
Playing with one’s child introduces a much-needed
aesthetic perspective to parenting, recognizing the beauty
of a child at play, marveling in the mystery that the child
is. Play is a form of paying attention to children. Parents

do not play with children to avoid responsibility but to be
opened anew to children and even guided by them. When
we play, we recognize that the work of parenting, which
nurtures children, is often at the same time the nurture
of parents. This aesthetic or playful approach to parent-
ing does not result in the eclipsing of ethical responsibili-
ties toward one’s children. Obviously, there is much about
parenting that is not playful: from the daily tasks of set-
ting behavioral limits to the more complex obligations
we have of introducing our children to the world’s injus-
tice and suffering. The interpretation that I am offering
relinquishes few of the duties and work that most classi-
cal theological interpretations of parenting have generally
stressed. Where it differs, however, is in the framing of
those duties within the context of a parenting relationship
that delights in the otherness of one’s child and that nour-
ishes the child’s wonder at the otherness of his or her par-
ent. Play enriches and sustains the multiple dimensions of
parenting and the innumerable responsibilities that par-
ents have toward their children. Playing with our children
is simply one means of cultivating that wonder and ful-
filling those responsibilities. Unless the work of parenting
is connected in some way to the wider realm of relation-
ships of the self with others, the earth, and God, the play
of childhood disappears.
Work and play have critical roles in the ongoing rela-
tionship between parents and children. If one temptation
of middle-class existence is to shelter children from work
that sustains a household, parents counter that temptation
by involving children in the ongoing labors of the family.
This is done not primarily for the sake of the “good” of the
child but to show that the well-being of each member of
104 • parenting
the household is bound up with others’ well-being. We

work—in family and in society—so that others might live,
in response to the God who has already given us life. Work
connects us to others, and children and parents need the
connections that work establishes. When parents shelter
some members of the family from work, others get over-
worked, and those who rarely work miss essential human
connections. When parents and children work and play side
by side, in dishwashing and leaf raking, in swimming and
singing, they enact promises that bind them as family.
As parents and children share these household labors
and play, however, it is also critical for their work to extend
beyond the household, so that they understand the bound-
aries between household neighborhood, and community
as being more porous than rigid. Christian faith calls per-
sons to acts of solidarity with the most vulnerable of soci-
ety: the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, the naked.
Christian parents and children recognize that their family’s
well-being is also bound up with others who do not share
the same roof. Occasional, regular volunteer work is thus
another component of the work of families, where parents
and children see their labors contributing in some small
way to the building of a more just neighborhood, respond-
ing to God’s establishment of a new reign of peace and jus-
tice in Christ. Unless parents include children in volunteer
work at a young age, children are unlikely to volunteer reg-
ularly as they grow into adulthood. Work and play in the
family can allow the family to show hospitality to others.
Hospitality
Most middle-class parents experience some tension
between the immediate claims of their children and the
more distant claims of neighbors down the street, across

town, or on the other side of the globe. Christian par-
ents know they are called to neighbors in need and to the
children who are entrusted to their care. Every day these
parents make choices that reflect the ways in which they
relate the legitimate needs of their children to other legiti-
mate needs of more distant neighbors. For example, Molly
and I spend tuition for Finn’s preschool. It’s not cheap, but
the costs are certainly within our means. Though I don’t
often experience these expenditures as being in conflict
with other ways we could spend the tuition dollars—such
as Oxfam, UNICEF, or the local food pantry—I am keenly
aware that whatever money we spend in one place reduces
the money available to give in others. Some people choose
to ignore this tension. These parents believe that noth-
ing, in the end, is “too good” for their children and wind
up lavishing unbelievable amounts of expense and atten-
tion on their children while they close their eyes to others’
needs. Others experience the tension acutely as a spiritual
dilemma. Some in this group, such as Leo Tolstoy, have
concluded that the more desperate needs of distant neigh-
bors outweigh one’s obligations to family. At the end of his
life, Tolstoy abandoned his family and gave away all his
money and possessions to become an ascetic. Not many
have followed in his footsteps, but a few have. If Christian
parents ought to experience some tension between care of
children and their more distant neighbors, how are they to
negotiate that tension?
Much of the time, these two subjects of concern—our
children and our neighbors—are understood in opposition
to each other. More care for one’s children means less con-
cern for others, and vice versa. What if, however, we under-
stood them not merely as contrasts but as dimensions of the
106 • parenting
same hospitality? Christian faith stresses hospitality over

and again throughout its Scriptures: Abraham and Sarah
offer food, drink, and rest to three strangers and learn from
their guests that Sarah is to give birth (Genesis 18:1-15).
Jesus tells his followers that in giving drink to the thirsty,
clothing to the naked, and food to the hungry, they are feed-
ing and clothing Christ (Matthew 25:35-36). The Letter to
the Hebrews urges readers to “show hospitality to strang-
ers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without
knowing it” (13:2). For Christians, hospitality is not simply
an act of altruism; acts of hospitality provide occasions for
meeting the risen Christ. We live in the light of Christ inso-
far as we recognize the claims of others upon us.
The claims of our children and the claims of our neigh-
bors are interrelated. One way to make this relationship
clear is to consider children as strangers. In an important
work that criticizes modern Christianity’s valorization of
the nuclear family, Rodney Clapp makes this counterin-
tuitive suggestion. Clapp is aware of how modern, con-
sumer practices of parenting can exchange a broad vision
of the reign of God for a narrowly romantic conception of
hearth and home. Clapp’s alternative is to view family as
a school where we learn to welcome others in the name of
Christ: “Christians have children so we can become the
kind of people who welcome strangers.”11 All of the others
whom we welcome first come to us as strangers; biological
and adoptive children are no exception. Parents care for
children rightly when they learn to embrace their strange-
ness. Most parents, he suggests, already know at some
level that children come to them as strangers. Toddlers’
temper tantrums, teenagers’ body piercings, and grade-
schoolers’ interest in guns in pacifist homes will all result
in parents asking, “Whose child is this anyway?” Children
often act in ways that surprise and shock parents: “Who

do not sometimes, in even the happiest of families, feel
their children as intruders into their lives?”12
Parents love their children immediately, automati-
cally, as they receive children as gifts, and they also learn
to love their children in their idiosyncrasies and sometimes
annoying habits. We do not simply love children because
they constitute a part of ourselves (which would make par-
ents narcissistic) but also because they are so mysteriously
other and surprise us each day. This is what makes parent-
ing an act of hospitality: the host offers hospitality to the
guest, and in the receiving
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
of hospitality, the guest
Parenting isn’t a one-way
also shares with the host.
street but an exchange
Parenting isn’t a one-way
where those enveloped in
street but an exchange
hospitality gradually make
where those enveloped in
the world—or the home—
hospitality gradually make
more hospitable for one
the world—or the home—
another.
more hospitable for one
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
another. Parenting thus
is never enclosed in a nuclear family but imprints a pat-
tern of relating to others in grace that gets extended to the
world.
One advantage of Clapp’s metaphor of parenting to
strangers is that it places the nearest and the neediest
not in oppositional conflict but as different dimensions
of the same gospel summons to others. Parenting in this
model does not merely extend self-love to others. Rather,
it places parents in wider circles of care where they are
both caregivers and recipients of care at the same time.
In caring for and loving children, parents also experi-
ence themselves as loved and cared for. Where people like
108 • parenting
Tolstoy are prone to see conflict, Clapp is more open to

consonance. One mark of Christian parenting is for the
practice of caring for children to encourage parents to
become hospitable to strangers rather than closed upon
themselves. In a house closed in upon itself, parents can
see only conflict between their children’s needs and the
needs of strangers; in Clapp’s view, however, parent-
ing leads to further acts of hospitality to strangers. This
account, moreover, emphasizes the mystery of parent-
ing: namely, that those who are closest to us also remain
in some instances the most mysterious, the most other.
Intimacy is revelatory not because it reveals everything
that one needs to know about one’s spouse or one’s child
but because closeness reveals how much more there is to
know about the spouse or child. Parenting to the stranger
does not imply distance as much as it does a journey of
togetherness with children over time, as child and parent
grow into even greater mystery.
In this vision, basic acts of care, teaching children,
and volunteering with children may provide impetus for a
global consciousness. Parents make unique promises and
meet special obligations to their own children without los-
ing sight of wider communal goods. The biblical under-
standing of covenant is a reminder of this relationship
between particular promises and wider responsibilities.
God does not enter into covenant with Israel so that God
can ignore the rest of the world. Instead, God’s blessing of
the whole world is revealed in particular promises to and
relationship with a distinct people. God chooses Israel as
God’s beloved, but this covenant, as Isaiah envisions, is
also a herald to the nations so that they too find a home
in Jerusalem (Isaiah 66:18-23). This same dynamic is
echoed in the new covenant inaugurated in Jesus Christ:
God’s coming in the flesh of one person entails the bless-

ing, embrace, and salvation of all flesh. Both cases of par-
ticular promises—Israel as God’s beloved and Jesus of
Nazareth as God’s Son—result in the widening of divine
hospitality, a welcome to the world.
Parenting, too, represents a kind of covenant. In par-
enting, mothers and fathers make special promises to
their children: to be there for, be there with, provide for,
nurture, cherish, and love. Parents ought to love their chil-
dren, who are given by grace, with a special kind of inten-
sity and even ought to look with favor upon their uniquely
given children. Thomas Aquinas was right to recognize
the fierce attachments of parental love. But the promises
parents make to children do not end at the front door of
the family home; they make us responsive and hospitable
to those who come to those doors and to those whom we
might never meet. A promise to nurture one’s child even-
tually becomes suffocating if attention is lavished only on
that child. That would be one example of idolatry. Parent-
ing and promises flourish when love grows, so that par-
ent and child are not simply focused on themselves but
welcome others in love and hear others’ claims. Of course,
there is no guarantee that parenting mitigates the conflict
between the nearest and neediest. Parenting may just as
often exacerbate those conflicts. But when conceived as an
act of hospitality, parenting may offer some hope that care
for others is not a zero-sum game, that some receive less
care so that others can receive more. The dynamic of the
Christian economy of grace suggests something other than
a zero-sum game. It encourages us to view parenting as
an act of hospitality: where parents experience giving not
only as sacrifice but also as occasions of joy; where chil-
dren not only learn from parents but teach them as well;
110 • parenting
and where care for one’s children, the nearest, results in

greater attention to the neediest.
One of the ways parents introduce children to the
Christian practice of hospitality is through discipline. Yet
this practice, for Gen X parents, is often misunderstood.
Wary of earlier forms of discipline (such as Chrysostom’s
or Luther’s) that emphasized the use or threat of the rod,
and aware of the need to be responsive to children’s needs,
many Gen Xers minimize discipline. I confess my own
struggles over how to discipline rightly: time-outs? removal
of privileges? discussions? teaching moments? Discipline,
however, is essential for parenting not because it offers a
means of molding children or because it teaches confor-
mity. Rather, discipline is essential because it teaches chil-
dren limits. When children transgress limits—by ignoring
others’ feelings or claims, by self-destructive behavior,
or by actions that hurt others—they treat themselves and
others as unworthy of hospitality. All persons have limits.
Learning to live with others entails recognition of those
limits, and that recognition is often the first step toward
hospitality. When parents discipline well, they and their
children become more adept at showing others grace.
As parents and children journey together, they discover
hospitality in daily, ordinary routines. From the moment a
child enters a parent’s life, the parent learns what it means
to share and to provide for another’s well-being, through
unglamorous acts of feeding, clothing, diapering, and
bathing. Children, too, learn that in the give-and-take of
family life, they have to be concerned about people besides
themselves: toys get shared, pieces of cake get halved, and
clothes get picked up. Under a common roof, family mem-
bers every day make countless decisions that reflect acts of
hospitality large and small. Parenting is not the only way
to learn hospitality—and it can run counter to hospital-

ity—but parents and children have ample opportunity to
incorporate hospitality in their daily lives. We best learn
this practice together.
Blessing
The relationship of parent to child changes over time.
If it doesn’t change, the relationship is likely to become
unbearable and break. Parents who offer care to teenag-
ers in the same way that they did to toddlers are likely to
encounter resistance from their children, to say the least!
Yet one temptation of many middle-class parents is to long
for the past, when children were younger. The fierce ties of
attachment that characterize parenting may make it diffi-
cult to negotiate the transitions as children grow. I became
aware of this most keenly on Grace’s first day of preschool
in 2001. She carried a pink backpack with a little embroi-
dered bear. As we drove into the parking lot, she exclaimed
with wide eyes, “Dere’s my school!” She tumbled out of
the car, and we climbed the steps together, opened the
door, and found her classroom, where a cubby and a name
tag were waiting for her. Her teachers, Ms. Betty and Ms.
Maria, introduced themselves with big smiles; Grace told
them her name and immediately ran over to where some
of the other children were playing with blocks. She barely
said good-bye to her parents. Molly and I left with tears in
our eyes, saying to ourselves, “Our little girl is growing up.”
There have been innumerable transitions since then, little
markers along the way as Grace continues to grow. Many
of those transitions have been easier for me to take, but
some have been harder. Stephanie Paulsell writes about
the day of her wedding, as she gazed down the aisle at her
112 • parenting
waiting husband-to-be: “Suddenly, what we were about to

embark upon seemed like one long good-bye.”13 Much the
same can be said about parenting, as parents prepare in
the mundane acts of care to ready their children for the
day when they leave home.
Parenting fails if it becomes excessively or romanti-
cally attached to the past, for parenting involves people
who change over time. Parents say good-bye many times
each day of their lives. The current phenomenon of heli-
copter parents, however, works against the necessity of
saying good-bye. At the seminary where I work, it is now
customary for parents to accompany their children (who
are in their midtwenties) when they visit as prospective
students. Such visits, in my experience, seem to be more
about meeting parents’ needs than the adult children’s
and demonstrate the difficulty that many parents have in
releasing their children or even trusting them.
There is a practice, however, that can assist children
and parents in negotiating these transitions: blessing.
Permeating the Hebrew Bible, the practice is often related
to family life but is grounded first in God’s blessing of the
people Israel. God names, claims, promises and blesses a
people in a covenant given to Abram: “I will make of you
a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who
bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in
you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis
12:2-3). God’s blessing here is astonishingly particular: it
is given first to a husband and wife who long for a child,
as they are told to move and make a home in a new land.
Yet there is something more to this blessing: Abram and
Sarai, who cannot have children, are told that in them, all
of the families of the earth will receive blessing as well.
God’s particular promises to this couple redound to the

well-being of the world. God does not bless so that only
a select few will receive blessing but so that others might
as well. Here, the well-being of one family is bound up
with and connected to the flourishing of the world. Bless-
ings overflow and cannot be hoarded. If one temptation of
family life in the modern era is for each family to hold fast
to possessions and people by protecting them at all costs,
the Hebrew Bible sees the intimate circle of family and the
wider circle of world as objects of the same blessing. Bless-
ings, by their very movement, are meant to be shared.
Of course, blessing also displays ambiguity in the
Hebrew Bible. Jacob deceives his father and swindles for
himself a blessing that belongs to Esau (Genesis 27). Here
we see sibling rivalries unfolding on an epic scale as rivals
jockey for favor. As Jacob receives this stolen blessing,
however, he is reminded that God is the giver: “May God
give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the
earth, and plenty of grain and wine” (27:28). Even when
Isaac discovers the ruse, he does not take his blessing
away from Jacob. Blessings work like that: words and ges-
tures of touch convey meaning and power, and they often
cannot be revoked after they have been spoken. Esau’s
question, upon discovering the swindled blessing, is an
intriguing one: “Have you only one blessing father? Bless
me, me also, father!” (27:38). Family blessings are not
always innocent practices; sometimes they can speak to
deeper favoritisms in the family. In the face of their ambi-
guity, Esau’s question is germane. When parents act as if
only a limited number of blessings exist, they contradict
the dynamic of God’s ceaseless blessing. In the economy of
grace, all are invited to partake in blessing. We bless oth-
ers because God has first blessed us. If Jacob has swindled
114 • parenting
Esau’s blessing, there are surely other blessings that Esau

can receive.
Blessing continues in the New Testament, most vividly
in the ministry of Jesus as he heals others by word and
touch. Jesus touches those whom others deem untouch-
able: lepers, sinners, and the unclean. Jesus heals bodies
wracked by disease and spirits broken by ostracism. As
he touches and blesses, Jesus transgresses the boundar-
ies between what is clean and unclean, demonstrating
that God’s blessing is bestowed indiscriminately upon all:
young and old, sick and well, rich and poor, Jew and Gen-
tile. A memorable instance of this is when people bring
children to Jesus in order that he might touch them. The
disciples seek to hinder them, but Jesus says, “ ‘Let the
little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to
such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. . . .’ And
he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and
blessed them” (Mark 10:14; see also Matthew 19:13-15;
Luke 18:15-17). In Jesus Christ, God’s blessing becomes
tangible as all persons are incorporated into a family that
belongs to children.
Blessing occurs also in the context of worship, particu-
larly at those moments of worship that mark transition.
Most Christian liturgies end with a benediction that con-
fers blessing. These often take their root in the Aaronic
benediction found in the book of Numbers: “The Lord
bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine
upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his coun-
tenance upon you, and give you peace” (6:24-26). Congre-
gations mark the transition from the liturgy of table to the
liturgy of the world with words and gestures that convey
blessing. Worship does not end at the conclusion of the
service but is carried forth into the community as we go
in blessing. As God blesses us, we can bestow blessings on

one another.
Protestant services occasionally have moments that
bestow particular blessings, such as at the ordination of
pastors, elders, and deacons. Here, the laying on of hands
is central: those who are blessed receive divine bless-
ing through the hands of others in the community. Such
moments are particular and do not occur in every service
since they mark particular transitions of members of the
community of faith. But there is a practice in most com-
munities of faith that also bestows blessing every Lord’s
Day: the exchange of peace. This is not a good-morning
gesture but a way in which we share God’s blessing, bear
witness to resurrection, and live toward the reign of peace
given in Christ. It is conferred, moreover, through touch:
in ancient liturgies with a kiss, in the contemporary
church with a handshake or embrace. Blessing involves
touch as believers bear witness to new life. Upon giv-
ing and receiving these blessings, believers release one
another. They do not hold hands indefinitely but also say
good-bye.
Parental blessings ought to take some of their cues
from these liturgical and biblical gestures. Parents bless
not so that they can hold on to children indefinitely. Bon-
nie Miller-McLemore describes blessing as a practice of
“letting go” that entrusts children to God, a practice that
requires some courage: “Parents can do little else than
relinquish their children to the wilderness, trusting that
God will honor the parents’ love ‘by assuring that there
will indeed be angels’ watching over them. It is only such
trust that finally allows parents to stop short of using chil-
dren to build up themselves, and love their children genu-
inely.”14 Blessing reminds parents that children belong not
116 • parenting
first and foremost to themselves but to God and the com-

munity of faith. As parents bless, they enable children to
be agents of blessing themselves.
Blessing can take innumerable forms, but they typi-
cally involve words and touch: A simple “I love you” or
“Drive safely,” a hug before a first sleepover, a talk before
a college road trip. There is no one mandated form for
blessing, but blessings must also entail release, of giving
children over to others in recognition that parents are not
alone in providing care. Blessings situate parents and chil-
dren in the wider circle of divine love, extended to each
of us particularly, binding us together in family and invit-
ing us to the new family inaugurated in Christ, a family
that will not be complete until all partake in abundant life.
When parents bless children, they are oriented to God’s
blessing and become better able to see other children as
recipients of divine blessing as well.
Conclusion
The test of Christian parenting is not how much one has
“done” for one’s child. There are always more things to be
done—and always things that one should have done dif-
ferently—as a parent. If parents fixate on how much they
have done, parenting will continually fall short. A Chris-
tian undertaking of parenting, however, seeks to orient
children toward others and the God who is revealed in oth-
ers. Each of the practices of parenting I have surveyed in
this chapter attempts to do that: as parents adopt, as they
reflect God’s love, as they work and play, show hospitality,
and bestow blessing they orient children not to a narrow
conception of family but to a family that extends to the
ends of the earth. As parents embark on these practices,
however, they are not alone, but draw on wider circles of

support in community and family.
Nevertheless, the children with whom parents share a
roof and meals occupy special attention and summon par-
ents with particular love. Parents know that they love their
children in ways that differ from other loves and that this
love abides as children grow into adulthood. Christian love
of neighbor takes root in particular ways and becomes vis-
ible in the daily interactions with those nearest to us. Our
children have specific claims on parents, and rightfully
so. The relationship of children and parents is a further
example of how deeply incarnational Christian faith is:
love and commitment take root in particular people and
not in generalized, impersonal ways. The unique claims
of children on parents (and vice versa) and their growth
in love point to the way in which we learn and encounter
God’s love. As we parent, we love particular children in
all of their uniqueness and irreplaceability: Grace, Finn,
Emma, Jakob, Siri. These particular loves and our daily
interactions with children become occasions for parents
and children to become more loving and giving people.
This is why parenting, in the end, is ultimately a gift:
when received as gift, parenting becomes an occasion for
joy beyond imagining, even when the work seems over-
whelming. The gift is that this irreplaceable child journeys
with parents for a time so that she, too, can grow in that
journey and show hospitality to others. Parents are always
parents to their children, and children are always children
to their parents, but as parents and children grow with
one another, they are surprised by other gifts from God,
whose very nature is giving.
notes
Chapter 1. Ordinary Routines, Ordinary Times

1. William Sears, M.D., and Martha Sears, R.N., with Robert
Sears, M.D., and James Sears, M.D., The Baby Book: Everything
You Need to Know about Your Baby from Birth to Age Two, rev.
ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003).
2. Arlie Russell Hochschild with Anne Machung, The Second
Shift (New York: Penguin, 2003).
3. For further reflections on children and chores, see Bonnie
Miller-McLemore, “Children, Chores, and Vocation: A Social and
Theological Lacuna,” in The Vocation of the Child, ed. Patrick
McKinley Brennan (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 295–323.
Chapter 2. Parenting in Christian Traditions

1. Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home
in God’s Family (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 23.
2. Vigen Guroian, “The Ecclesial Family: John Chrysostom on
Parenthood and Children,” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed.
Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 64.
3. John Chrysostom, On Marriage and Family Life, trans.
Catharine P. Roth and David Anderson (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladi-
mir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 71.
4. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20 on Ephesians,” in Marriage
in the Early Church, ed. David G. Hunter (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1992), 77.
5. John Chrysostom, “An Address on Vainglory and the Right
Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children,” in Christianity and
Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire, M. L. W. Laistner
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 87.
6. Ibid., 95.
119
120 • notes
7. Ibid., 110–11.
8. Ibid., 99–100.
9. Ibid., 118
10. See ibid., 108–9.
11. Chrysostom, On Marriage and Family Life, 66.
12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: Benz-
inger Bros., 1948), II-II, q. 10, art. 12.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., II-II, q. 4, art. 4.
15. Ibid., II-II, q. 26, art. 4.
16. Ibid., II-II, q. 26, art. 8.
17. Ibid., II-II, q. 26, art. 9.
18. Ibid.
19. See Walter von Loewenich, Martin Luther: The Man and
His Work, trans. Lawrence W. Denef (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1986), 285.
20. Martin Luther, “The Estate of Marriage,” in Luther’s
Works, ed. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962),
45:46–47.
21. Ibid., 45:46, 38.
22. Ibid., 40. Note how Luther refers to diapering as a task that
fathers perform.
23. Martin Luther, “Treatise on Good Works,” in Selected Writ-
ings of Martin Luther: 1517–1520, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Phila-
delphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 164.
24. Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in The Book of Con-
cord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959),
379.
25. Ibid., 383.
26. See “The Small Catechism,” in The Book of Concord,
337–56.
27. Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 10.
28. Ibid., 39.
29. Ibid., 26–27.
30. Ibid., 93.
31. Ibid., 405–6.
32. Margaret Bendroth, “Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nur-
ture,” in Bunge, ed., The Child in Christian Thought, 356.
33. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 272.
34. Ibid., 237.
35. Bendroth, “Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture,” 358.
37. Ibid., 339–41.
notes • 121
38. Ibid., 339–41.

39. Bushnell, The Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, ed. Mary
Bushnell Cheney (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 452–53.
41. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Also a Mother: Work and Fam-
ily as Theological Dilemma (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 195.
42. Ibid., 158.
43. Ibid., 167.
44. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, In the Midst of Chaos: Caring
for Children as Spiritual Practice (San Francisco: John Wiley &
Sons, 2007), 89.
45. Ibid., 51.
46. Ibid., 53–54.
47. Ibid., 94.
48. Ibid., xvii.
49. Ibid., xv.
Chapter 3. Toward a Theology of Parenting

1. The following two paragraphs draw inspiration from David
L. Bartlett, “Adoption in the Bible,” in The Child in the Bible, ed.
Marcia J. Bunge, 375–98 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
2. Ibid., 390.
3. See Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Let the Children Come:
Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective (San Fran-
cisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 102.
4. Ibid.
5. Book of Common Worship (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 1993), 406.
6. Trinitarian language is notoriously problematic. The lan-
guage of Father and Son, in particular, reflects not only basic claims
of Christian faith (which I am interested in continuing) but also
patriarchal imagery for God (which I have no interest in perpetuat-
ing). Because Father-Son-Spirit language is most familiar to most
Christians, I am using that imagery, but I also include other triune
formulations that express the resonance of ancient faith in fresh
idioms.
7. John Chrysostom, On Marriage and Family Life, trans.
Catharine P. Roth and David Anderson (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladi-
mir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 76.
8. Ibid.
9. Christine E. Gudorf, “Parenting, Mutual Love, and Sacrifice,”
in Women’s Consciousness, Women’s Conscience: A Reader in
Feminist Ethics, ed. Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, Christine E. Gudorf,
and Mary D. Pellauer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 190.
122 • notes
10. Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 340.
11. Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Tra-
ditional and Modern Options (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity,
1993), 138.
12. Ibid., 142.
13. Stephanie Paulsell, Honoring the Body: Meditations on a
Christian Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 162.
14. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, In the Midst of Chaos: Caring
for Children as Spiritual Practice (San Francisco: John Wiley &
Sons, 2007), 194.
suggestions for further reading
Anderson, Herbert, and Susan B. W. Johnson. Regarding

Children: A New Respect for Childhood and Families.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994.
Berryman, Jerome W. Children and the Theologians:
Clearing the Way for Grace. New York: Morehouse,
2009.
Browning, Don S. Equality and the Family: A Funda-
mental, Practical Theology of Children, Mothers, and
Fathers in Modern Societies. Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2007.
Bunge, Marcia, ed. The Child in Christian Thought. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.
Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1908.
Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Family: A Christian Social Perspec-
tive. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Chrysostom, John. On Marriage and Family Life. Trans-
lated by Catharine P. Roth and David Anderson. Crest-
wood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986.
Clapp, Rodney. Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Tra-
ditional and Modern Options. Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity, 1993.
123
124 • suggestions for further reading
Hall, Amy Laura. Conceiving Parenthood: American

Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Luther, Martin. “The Estate of Marriage.” In Luther’s
Works 45, ed. Walther I. Brandt. Philadelphia: For-
tress Press, 1962.
McCarthy, David Matzko. Sex and Love in the Home: A
Theology of the Household. London: SCM, 2004.
Miller-McLemore, Bonnie. Also a Mother: Work and
Family as Theological Dilemma. Nashville: Abing-
don, 1994.
. In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as
Spiritual Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.
Stevenson-Moessner, Jeanne. The Spirit of Adoption: At
Home in God’s Family. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2003.
Thatcher, Adrian. Theology and Families. Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell, 2007.
Thompson, Marjorie J. Family: The Forming Center.
Nashville: Upper Room, 1996.
Wigger, J. Bradley. The Power of God at Home: Nurtur-
ing Our Children in Love and Grace. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2003.
Wright, Wendy M. Seasons of a Family’s Life: Cultivat-
ing the Contemplative Spirit at Home. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2003.
reader’s guide
If mealtimes with parents and children could be just right,

what do you think they would look like? How do your ide-
als compare with your actual experiences of family meals?
What is the importance of meals to the life of Christian
faith?
What are your biggest challenges as a parent? What

are your greatest joys? (If you are not a parent, think
about your challenges and joys in relating to children in
your life.)
In what ways do you experience the “time bind”? If you

have children, how does caring for them affect this chal-
lenge? Given that the number of hours to each day is lim-
ited, how do you prioritize the way you spend your time as
a parent? What priorities would you like to set?
When you were growing up, how did your family pray?
How do you pray in your home today? How do you invite
children to pray in your family?
Which of the theologians surveyed in chapter 2 do you

find most helpful for today? Why?
125
126 • reader’s guide
Spend an evening or an afternoon playing together as

a family. What are the effects of play on relationships in
the family? How do you feel after playing? How do your
children (or other children in your life) experience play?
What have you seen parents do to keep from feel-

ing isolated? How well did those ideas work? If you are
a parent, think about who helps, or helped, you with the
work of parenting. How do you (or did you) share the
responsibility?
What does the pattern of household work look like in

your family? What responsibilities do children have in
those patterns of work?
What were the patterns of discipline in your home

when you were a child? What challenges of disciplining do
you see yourself or other parents struggling with today?
What is the purpose of discipline?
Which practices discussed in chapter 3 would you want

to incorporate regularly into your family’s life? Which are
you already doing? Which practices are less familiar to
you? Can you think of any other themes and practices that
might be beneficial to Christian parents?
How do you negotiate your responsibilities to your

children and the Christian call to love and serve your
neighbor?
Engage in a volunteer activity with the children you

care for, and then discuss that experience together. How
does volunteering have an impact on your understanding
of parenting?
Authentic parenting in a radically new light
JENSEN
This lively and personal volume demonstrates how central Christian convictions
DAVID H. JENSEN
inform the age-old practices of parenting and how the experience and practice
of parenting shape Christian faith today. Parenting pays special attention to some
of the day-to-day challenges and routines of parenting in a globalized world and
puts those in conversation with the history of the church. Jensen concludes with a
brief theology of parenting to help contemporary parents live out their calling by
offering a fresh vision which promotes justice, human flourishing, and recognition
that all people are children of God, who cares for the world as a Parent.
“In his thoughtful and poignant portrait of parenting, David Jensen bears witness
to the many fruits of recent developments in practical theology and childhood
studies. He takes us inside—inside his own life as a parent and inside the thought
of classic theologians—to reclaim the potential of parenting to enrich theology
and everyday Christian life. Parents, scholars, and ministers alike will benefit from
the dexterity and wisdom he brings to this endeavor.”
parenting
parenting
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore
E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor
of Pastoral Theology, The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University
Author, In the Midst of Chaos: Care of Children as Spiritual Practice
David H. Jensen is professor of constructive the-

ology and associate dean for academic programs
at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His
most recent books are Living Hope: The Future
and Christian Faith (2010), Responsive Labor: A
Theology of Work (2006), and Flourishing Desire: A
Theology of Human Sexuality (forthcoming, 2012).
He is series editor of the Compass series.
C M PA S S
C M PA S S
Religion / Ethics

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Authentic parenting in a radically new light

David H. Jensen is professor of constructive the-

Christian Explorations of Daily Living

“David Jensen’s Parenting weaves everyday experience and

“David Jensen’s insightful meditation sheds new light on the

Christian Explorations of Daily Living

David H. Jensen, Series Editor

Eating and Drinking

A portion of chapter 2 appeared earlier as “Playful Fathering: The Bur-

A portion of chapter 3 appeared earlier as “Adopted into the Family:

Cover design: Laurie Ingram

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

series foreword •• David H. Jensen ix

1 •• o rdinary routines, ordinary times 7

2 •• p arenting in christian traditions 49

Thomas Aquinas and the Order of

3 •• t oward a theology of parenting 85

Everyday practices matter for Christian faith. Our ordi-

imagine how practice might reform theology and theology

critique of typical forms of practice. What have Christians

all share the conviction that theology matters not simply

This short book has been years in the making. It began in

Seminary also provided space for some of these prelimi-

On a Saturday evening in late July 1998, my wife, Molly,

at a sporting-goods store. We paid our bills and rent with

We made an appointment with a university counselor and

We never found out the gender of our daughter dur-

for parenting experiences that are close to home. Even

all parents. The dilemmas I focus on are certainly more

ordinary routines, ordinary times

being a parent. On one level, it interrupts life and sleep.

this? And how on earth did he come into my life? As much

after the kids have gone to bed, which allows me to pick

tion outside the home can

bed, suffocating their children. My parents told us it was

Those words get us talking about oat fields and bee-

plants, they eventually withered. So we now have aban-

He devours the cereal like a wolf and immediately

I ask Finn, “Are you looking forward to seeing your

gestures of love. Sometimes it involves setting limits for

finances that proved difficult for our family. One of the

All of these qualities were factors in our deliberations last

child, our faith throws us beyond hearth and home to care

has witnessed many changes in parenting patterns since

equitable sharing of household duties, but a “second shift”

parents, coupled parents, divorced parents—need oth-

Namibian parents exist alongside their children and even

provides a time for napping and, after rest, other enrich-

“Cool, what’s it about?”

He really likes the part about riding along on the back of

How do we introduce children who have the basics (and

of the human person recognize that none of our activities

Dinner and Homework

Our children, too, know the routine of dinner, since

was essential to family livelihood, patterns that continued

there’s still more to do. This is another thing that has

“Yes, Dad,” she replies glaringly.

it, and perhaps he’s “learning something,” but mostly

and bills paid, providing a taxi service for our children,

his friends, and they get silly on occasion. We know he has

Come on. I’m getting desperate. We’re not communicat-

1 •• o rdinary routines, ordinary times 7

2 •• p arenting in christian traditions 49

3 •• t oward a theology of parenting 85