Practical Tips for Instilling Masculinity & Femininity in Your Children - CP031

CongreGate

We open the episode talking about Easter, Holy Week, and some of our church traditions. One of our favorite traditions is our Good Friday service. For the past few years, we have had seven men speak on the seven words of Jesus on the cross. Each man speaks for five minutes, sharing some insight on one of those statements. Each year this has been an encouraging service for our church body. You can listen to a service from last year on our church website.

Then we move on to our main topic for the week, practical tips for instilling masculinity in our boys and femininity in our girls. Current culture is attempting to blur the lines between what is masculine and feminine. In order to promote complementary Biblical roles of men and women, we need to be intentional about encouraging masculinity and femininity in our children.

One of the main ways we encourage masculinity in our boys is by modeling masculinity to them, while our wives model femininity to our daughters. Our roles and work in the home are different; masculine work is typically more physically demanding and feminine work tends to be more nurturing. That doesn't mean women can't work outside or that men can't cook a meal. But God specifically designed men to do jobs that require strength and risk, while he designed women with specific capability to care for and nurture people.

What about men that may not be physically able to do hard manual labor? How can we instill masculinity in other ways? In our church, we provide time for the men and women to have separate times of fellowship. We include our teen children in these events and encourage them to fellowship with men and women outside of their age group. We also discuss how we can include our children in work around the house (even when it makes the work take longer...). As they get older, let your boys hang out and work with other Godly men and your girls spend time with other Godly women.

We'd love to hear more from you about this topic! How do you promote masculinity in your boys and femininity in your girls?