I wonder what this changing fatherhood will mean. Children rarely fear their fathers anymore. Are we moving from an Old Testament view of the fearsome, distant Father, to the New Testament view of a loving, involved Father? (Please, I know these “views” are misguided, but they work well here. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New. The differences in charateristics are likely a result of the characters and situations involved.) We need both books (and others) to completely know God. What’s the complementary changing role of motherhood? And how does this changing fatherhood help us understand our Father better?

I also object to egalitarian sharing because it usually extends not just to sharing of responsibilities but of sharing of ways of being. Mothers must become more fatherly and fathers more motherly. In my view, sex differences are eternal, deeply rooted in the divine plan, and therefore we should welcome them and welcome cultural instantiations of them. I do my bit with our children (medical situations make it a necessity even if I were not so inclined), but I do it as a man. My children do fear me a little and I suppose they will into adulthood.

I know that some of my friends have found it liberating to be able to be more feminine and motherly, etc. I have not. I have found it enervating. My nature is my liberation.

I agree that this is not necessarily the only (or even the best) way to understand the divine command that husband and wife are to become “one flesh,” but such relative intercompatability of roles and responsibilities is, I think, an entirely legitimate (if “modern”) manifestation of the same ancient imperative. That is, stay-home dads and working moms–or, more basically, moms who had out discipline and work assignments, and dads who read bedtime stories and sing their children to sleep–are surely deviating from a long-standing social norm, with potential social consequences. But I’m not sure I trust “nature” enough to believe such deviations cannot, in their own way, nonetheless accommodate the most essential requirement of a good family and marriage (namely, unity), and therefore continue to fulfill God’s commands.