Prayer to Fulfill God’s Purpose for My Family

Modern Families Are Often Missing Something

In pre-industrial times, a family mission was an economic necessity. Families ran farms, businesses, and shops from their home base; home was also where they educated children and cared for the elderly. Nancy Pearcey explains how this practice strengthened family relationships:

For husband and wife, it meant they inhabited the same universe, working side by side in a common enterprise (though not necessarily in identical tasks). For the mother, the location of work within the home meant she was able to raise children while still participating in the family sustenance. . . . With productive endeavor centered on the family hearth, fathers . . . trained their children to work alongside them.

All of this changed with the industrial revolution, which brought separation of the home and the marketplace. Beginning at the turn of the 19th century, many fathers went out to work, leaving mothers at home with the kids.

Over the course of just a few generations, modern families have outsourced many of their productive functions to factories, corporations, supermarkets, schools, and nursing homes. Families no longer depend on working together for the basic necessities of life.

And when husbands and wives, parents and children aren’t working together toward a common mission, they can more easily drift apart. As Alastair Roberts observes, “The family is something that is strengthened through pressure. . . . When there is little weight placed upon it and it is just a matter of private affiliation, it becomes a lot easier to break down.”