Why are we asking women to choose between being a wife and being a mom? One of the themes that pops up often in evangelical marriage literature is warnings to women not to be a mom first and a wife second. It's in almost all of Gary Thomas' books. I used to teach it!...
Let men be dads! It's our third podcast in our let men be men series, and we're finishing that up today with a bang! We often get accused of hating men, which is funny, because we believe men are amazing! Men can be totally emotionally healthy. Men have the Holy...
We know that parenting is the biggest responsibility we will ever have. But we've been told such different things about the nature of that responsibility. If you grew up in an evangelical church, chances are you were told that a parent's job is to teach them to obey,...
I never spanked my kids. Well, there's a funny story about Katie, but I'll leave that for another time. What I did do, though, was write a column in my weekly paper about twenty years ago bemoaning the fact that the Children's Aid Society was taking children away...
When my daughter Rebecca was 19 months old, her baby brother died. He was only a month old. We learned when I was about 5 months pregnant about his heart condition, and that things would be very touch and go. We spent the last four months of the pregnancy petrified of...
Yesterday on the podcast we looked at the metaanalysis about spanking, and talked about gentle parenting. That metaanalysis of 160,000 children found that spanking was either neutral or negative, but not positive. Like if you parent well in other areas, you can blunt...
Christian parenting advice seems to really like discipline and obedience. Rebecca here on the blog today. As I was researching other parenting books and various Christian parenting blogs as I wrote my book, Why I Didn't Rebel, this focus on repentance and obedience...
Do you ever feel like God loves you--with an asterisk? On Fridays I often do round-ups of what's happened on social media this week, and there is so much to share I don't know where to begin. So I've decided to start with something that isn't even my own, but...
We women need to give ourselves time--and allow ourselves to ask for help--when we're recovering from childbirth Recovering from childbirth isn't something that happens overnight, and it isn't something you can achieve through will power or just "doing what needs to...
My girls were both far more emotionally mature on their wedding day than I was on mine. And their husbands were both more emotionally mature than Keith was, too! Keith and I were just so young, in so many ways (though my daughters were both technically younger than I...
Is there a trick to raising great kids? Something that is almost guaranteed to work? We'd all love that! And because we want to raise good kids, we're often focused on how to prevent bad behavior. When we talk about parenting techniques, that's usually what we're...
Does research really say that spanking is bad for kids? We've had an interesting week on the blog, where we've talked about periods, sex, homeschooling, and so much more! But I want to revisit Rebecca's post on Wednesday about how we shouldn't be spanking babies,...
Most of you who read this blog are here because you want to enjoy all God has for us with marriage and sex. But a lot of times we've got roadblocks from our family of origin. Maybe sex wasn't taught well, or you grew up thinking sex was shameful--or your body was...
What is an appropriate age to expect children to do different chores? When can you expect them to be responsible for their own stuff? We've been talking about emotional labor and mental load this month, when mom carries the mental and physical burden for running the...
What if there were an app that could help your kids get more responsible with chores--and with money? We've been talking this month about emotional labor and mental load--how to balance all the details that women especially have running through our heads, as we try to...