Your Marriage Should Come Before Your Children
Children are one of God’s greatest gifts. They should be loved deeply, protected fiercely, disciplined wisely, and raised in the fear and instruction of the Lord. Good parents will spend enormous amounts of time and energy caring for them, especially during the exhausting years when children are very young and seem to need something every twelve seconds. But somewhere along the way, many couples make a serious mistake: they begin building the entire family around the children.
Yes, I get it; it is necessary to devote a lot of time and resources to raising your children; this is normal, and this is good.
But unfortunately, before long, the family calendar revolves around the kiddos. The weekends revolve around them. Conversations revolve around them. Vacations revolve around them. Financial decisions revolve around them.
And sadly, even the marriage itself can become little more than a management partnership designed to transport, feed, educate, entertain, and supervise the kids. Husband and wife slowly stop being husband and wife and become Mom and Dad Incorporated.
That is not a healthy pattern, and more importantly, it does not reflect the biblical design of the family. In the marriage section of Warrior Disciple, I make the point that children deserve tremendous amounts of love, attention, training, and sacrifice, but they should never be elevated above the husband-wife relationship. The Bible presents marriage as a unique covenant in which a man leaves his father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Children enter that covenant family as precious gifts from God, but they do not replace the covenant relationship that created the family in the first place.
Marriage Comes Before Parenthood
Genesis 2:24 gives us one of the foundational texts for understanding marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Notice the order. Marriage exists before children enter the picture, and a husband and wife are joined together in a one-flesh covenant before they ever become Mom and Dad. That matters because your relationship with your spouse is fundamentally different from your relationship with your children.
Your children are certainly part of your family, but they are entrusted to you for a season of training, nurturing, discipline, protection, and preparation. If you do your job well, one day they will leave your home and build lives of their own. That is actually the goal. You are raising them to leave, while your spouse is the person with whom you entered a lifelong covenant. Scripture describes husband and wife as “one flesh,” language never used to describe the relationship between parents and children.
That should immediately tell us something about priorities. A strong family is not created by placing the children at the center and forcing the marriage to survive around them. A strong family is built when Christ is at the center, the husband and wife maintain a healthy covenant relationship under Him, and together they lovingly raise the children God has entrusted to them.
The Child-Centered Home Is Exhausting
Modern parenting culture can easily pressure mothers and fathers into believing that good parenting means constant involvement. Every activity feels important, whether it is sports, lessons, clubs, school functions, birthday parties, travel teams, academic programs, social activities, or church events. None of these things are necessarily bad, and many can be genuinely beneficial, but the problem begins when parents become convinced that their children must participate in practically everything available to them.
Suddenly the family calendar becomes insane. Mom is driving one child across town while Dad is taking another somewhere else. Dinner happens in the car, the husband and wife rarely sit together, there is little unhurried conversation, date nights vanish, prayer together becomes sporadic, and physical intimacy becomes an afterthought because both spouses collapse into bed exhausted. Then years later they look at one another and wonder, “What happened to us?”
Often nothing dramatic happened. They simply stopped cultivating their marriage, and a relationship can deteriorate through neglect without either person consciously deciding to neglect it. In Warrior Disciple, I point out that couples with children will naturally spend enormous amounts of time dealing with their children’s needs. Babies require feeding and changing, toddlers require nearly constant supervision, and older children need help with homework, transportation, instruction, correction, conversation, and spiritual guidance. All of that is normal, but normal parenting responsibilities must not cause the husband and wife to place their relationship permanently on the back burner.
Your Children Should See You Love Your Spouse
One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is a strong marriage. Your children need to see that Mom loves Dad and Dad loves Mom. They should see affection, hear encouragement, witness forgiveness, and observe disagreements being handled without screaming, manipulation, insults, or days of bitter silence. They should see two imperfect Christians continually returning to Scripture, repentance, grace, and Christ.
Children learn about marriage long before they ever marry, and much of their education happens simply by watching you. A son is quietly learning what a husband looks like, while a daughter is quietly learning what marriage looks like. When children see their parents maintaining a close relationship, they learn that marriage is valuable and worthy of investment. When they see Dad continue to pursue Mom years after the wedding, they learn that romance is not merely something that happens during dating, and when they see Mom honor and respect Dad while Dad sacrificially loves and serves Mom, they witness something of the beautiful picture presented in Ephesians 5.
That may be far more influential than any marriage advice you give them twenty years later. What they repeatedly observe in your home will often shape their expectations of marriage more deeply than anything you formally teach them.
Children Are Not Supposed to Rule the House
There is another danger in child-centered parenting: children can gradually become the authority in the home. Parents begin structuring everything around what the children want, including what they want to eat, where they want to go, what activities they want to join, what time they want to go to bed, what church they find entertaining, and what rules they consider fair. Parents begin negotiating matters that should simply be decided by parents.
Scripture gives children an entirely different role. Ephesians 6:1-3 says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’…” The biblical family therefore does not treat children as miniature executives whose preferences determine how the household operates. Children are valuable image-bearers of God who deserve dignity, affection, patience, and careful instruction, but they are also children who need leadership.
That authority should never become harsh or domineering because Christian fathers and mothers are not dictators. Good parental authority is exercised for the child’s good. Sometimes love says yes, and sometimes love says no. Sometimes love says, “I understand that you are disappointed, but this is what our family is doing.” Your children do not need parents who are frightened of upsetting them. They need parents who love them enough to lead them.
Husbands, Do Not Leave Everything to Your Wife
There is also an application here specifically for men. A husband cannot complain that the children have taken over the marriage while leaving his wife responsible for virtually every detail of family life. Men sometimes withdraw into work, hobbies, television, phones, gaming, or other interests while their wives become the household project managers. She remembers the appointments, handles school communication, plans meals, coordinates children’s schedules, knows who needs new shoes, knows who has homework due, and knows where everyone is supposed to be Saturday morning. Then the husband wonders why his wife is exhausted.
Brothers, get involved. One of the practical points in Session 9 of my book Warrior Disciple is that a husband should increasingly accept responsibility around the home instead of leaving everything on his wife’s shoulders. He should get things done, help without demanding recognition, and become a man who contributes to the stability of the household.
That matters for your marriage because serving your family gives your wife room to breathe. Take the kids somewhere so she can rest, handle dinner, do bedtime, or take care of something without asking her to create a detailed instruction manual first. When you help, do not behave as though the Queen should arrive and pin a medal on your chest because you washed some dishes. You live there too, and those are your children too, so serve joyfully.
Protect Time for Your Marriage
If your marriage matters, your calendar should eventually reveal that it matters. You do not need elaborate weekly vacations or expensive dates. Sometimes protecting the marriage means sitting together after the kids are asleep and talking without phones for thirty minutes. Go for a walk, have coffee together, pray together, read Scripture together, go out for dinner once in a while, send the kids to Grandma’s house, and close the bedroom door.
Remember that before you were Mom and Dad, you were husband and wife, and continue pursuing one another. One of the themes running through the marriage section of Warrior Disciple is that husbands must resist complacency. Marriage should not produce an attitude of, “I married her, so the pursuit is finished.” Session 9 specifically warns against the husband who gets lazy once the wedding ring is on and gradually stops investing in his wife and household.
That is a dangerous mindset. Your wife should still know that you delight in her, your husband should still know that you respect him, and your children should occasionally hear, “No, you can’t come with us tonight. Mom and Dad are going out together.” That is good for them, and despite the eye rolls, they will survive.
One Day the Kids Will Leave
There is a practical reality every married parent needs to remember. One day your house may become quiet again. The diapers will disappear, the toys will disappear, the soccer practices will end, the homework will stop, and the bedrooms will empty. Eventually your children may marry and establish households of their own. Genesis 2:24 anticipates exactly that movement, as a child grows, leaves father and mother, and establishes a new one-flesh union with a spouse.
And then you will look across the room at the person you married decades earlier. Who will that person be to you? Will this be a beloved friend, a trusted partner, someone you still enjoy talking with, laughing with, praying with, and growing old beside? Or will you be looking at someone who has become practically a stranger, even though the two of you happened to raise children under the same roof?
Do not wait until the children leave to rediscover your marriage. Invest in it now. Love your children with everything God has given you. Teach them Scripture, pray for them, attend their games, listen to their stories, help with homework, hug them, discipline them, laugh with them, build memories with them, and enjoy every season because those years disappear frighteningly fast. But do not make them the center of your marriage.
Christ belongs at the center. Under His lordship, husband and wife must continue cultivating the covenant God established between them, while together faithfully raising the children He has entrusted to their care. Your children will be better for it, your marriage will be stronger for it, and your home will give them something desperately needed in our increasingly fractured culture: a living picture of a man and woman who love Christ first, remain devoted to one another, and raise their children from the strength of a healthy, God-honoring marriage.
Want to Protect Your Marriage, Integrity, and Walk With Christ?
Warrior Disciple: Discipleship Manual For Men is a practical, Bible-centered resource built to help Christian men become stronger spiritual leaders, more faithful husbands, and more disciplined followers of Jesus Christ.
Warrior Disciple challenges men to stop living passively and start fighting for holiness, purity, leadership, and spiritual maturity.
Covering topics like parenting, sexual temptation, marriage security, leadership, accountability, spiritual warfare, discipline, and pursuing Christ daily, this book gives men practical tools for building a stronger foundation at home and in their walk with God.
Whether used personally, in a men’s small group, discipleship setting, or full church men’s ministry, Warrior Disciple equips men to lead courageously, love sacrificially, and live with biblical conviction in a culture constantly pulling them toward compromise.
If you are serious about honoring Christ, guarding your marriage, and becoming the kind of man your wife and family can trust, this book was written for you.
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