Article

Parents cannot farm out their children

Children are discipled by time with their parents, and that time cannot be handed to a school, a screen or a program. What the research does and does not show about family stability and parents’ marriage.

By reformededucation.org · Written 2026-09-30

The plain point

Christian parents are sometimes told that if they choose the right school, church programme or curriculum, the children will be taken care of. They will not. A school can teach, and a church can teach. Neither can replace a father and a mother who are present, who talk with their children, pray with them and eat with them.

Deuteronomy 6:7 describes the pattern: the words of God are to be talked of “when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (KJV). Discipleship here is not a class. It is the ordinary hours of the day, shared.

What the Westminster Standards say parents owe

The Larger Catechism (answer 129) says superiors, and first of all parents, owe those under them love, prayer and blessing; instruction, counsel and admonition; and “protecting, and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body”, and a “grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage”. Nearly all of these need presence. A child cannot be instructed or given an example by someone who is not there.

What we can ask of a busy household

A meal together most days, with no screens.
Family worship: a short passage, a prayer and a catechism question. Sources for this are in the Family section of this site.
One-to-one time with each child, doing something together.
Saying no to activities that take the family out of the house every evening.
Being at church together and talking about the sermon afterwards.
Fathers especially: Ephesians 6:4 addresses fathers by name.

Parents’ marriage is part of their children’s education

Children learn what a husband and wife are by watching theirs. Ephesians 5 sets the pattern: the husband loves as Christ loved the church and the wife respects and submits to him; that marriage pictures Christ and the church. A home where the parents love each other and stay together teaches children more about the gospel than any lesson can.

Research is consistent with this, and it is worth stating carefully:

What the research shows, and does not show

Family stability is among the strongest correlates of a child’s later prospects. A study by Raj Chetty and colleagues of 40 million children (“Where is the Land of Opportunity?”, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014) found that areas with higher upward mobility have “greater family stability”, along with less segregation, less inequality, better primary schools and more social capital. The authors wrote that the fraction of children living in single-parent households was the single strongest correlate of upward income mobility among the variables they explored, as reported by the American Enterprise Institute’s review of the work.
That research is descriptive. The authors say it does not identify the causes, and later work found the link weaker for the causal effect of a place. It is a strong association across communities, not a proof about any one child.
Parents’ relationship quality is linked to how they parent. A 2014 study in the Journal of Family Issues (Ratcliffe, Norton and Dutschi), summarized by the Institute for Family Studies, found that parents who reported an affectionate, positive relationship engaged more positively with their child two years later, and that this was linked to fewer behaviour problems in the child at age five.
We have not found a study showing that parents staying together and liking each other is the single greatest predictor of an individual child’s success, so this site does not make that claim. It is fair to say that the evidence points strongly in that direction and that it agrees with what Scripture teaches about marriage and the home.

For those whose marriage has ended or never was

Single parents and widowed, divorced or abandoned parents are not condemned by any of this, and many raise godly children. The church is told to look after widows and the fatherless (James 1:27). If you are such a parent, ask your church for help, including men to be examples for your sons and women for your daughters.

If your marriage is struggling

Talk to your pastor or elders soon, and consider biblical counseling. The Biblical Counseling section of this site lists organizations and books on marriage. If you are in danger, call your local emergency number or, in the U.S., call or text 988.

Sources

Written for this site. The Chetty abstract was read at NBER; the ‘single strongest correlate’ wording is from the AEI review, which quotes the published paper (p. 1616), and was not checked against the paper itself. The Ratcliffe, Norton and Dutschi findings are from the Institute for Family Studies summary. Correlation is not causation.