• Biblical Families is not a dating website. It is a forum to discuss issues relating to marriage and the Bible, and to offer guidance and support, not to find a wife. Click here for more information.

A dating daughter is a father's failure

Thanks, @Keith Martin, for resurrecting this one, and I'm looking forward to your insight. Some high quality discourse was had already, but I never felt like we got to a solid, biblically articulable answer. We found precedence, but not much of a clear "thus saith the Lord." If the answer is there, I'm guessing it can only be arrived at in a roundabout way, and the described pattern is probably a clue.

One big problem was the red herring of our perception of present circumstances. Unless God's intention for us in this matter is circumstantial, let's please disregard any judgment of men "deserving" one thing or another and focus on what the Lord says the father's responsibility is. If a man doesn't "deserve" to be a husband, we still are able to talk about how he is supposed to be a husband as designed and instituted by God. Likewise, no matter the general state of the competence of men as fathers, we can still drill down to what a father's duty is, as far as this topic goes, as designed and instituted by God.

I am sure that, if we can arrive at that bedrock, we can build an understanding from there that will be more than solid enough to weather modern circumstances. I'd much rather that than stopping short at fear and building on compromise.

P.S.
You're right that most men are unfit for duty. The sadder part is that many have the love and desire necessary to be the man God intends for them to be, they just are completely ignorant about what that should look like. And I don't exclude myself from that description. Ergo this thread.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, @Keith Martin, for resurrecting this one, and I'm looking forward to your insight. Some high quality discourse was had already, but I never felt like we got to a solid, biblically articulable answer. We found precedence, but not much of a clear "thus saith the Lord." If the answer is there, I'm guessing it can only be arrived at in a roundabout way, and the described pattern is probably a clue.
You aren't going to get "Thus saith the Lord" if the answer is manual which won't be followed.

Basic reality is that daughter, just by virtue of having free will, will make decisions for herself. She can always choose to disobey. Since children will make decisions, parents have to provide instructions.

And instruction daughter how to choose good man is neccesity. Like it or not, she will also evaluate potential husband.

And since many factors come into such decision, process of decision making isn't flow-chartable. Also decision is unique for each individual, so no flow-chartable.

And decision can't be just solved with use one/few principle(s).

There is no 1000s pages manual for how to choose good husband, but we can know some things. What is expected of marriage, what are good things ...
 
Teaching your children God’s Insightful Wisdom - through his teachings in his Law - can certainly help, and it’s actually commanded in scripture.

Young women can be very emotional when it comes to their dating partner. So they will look past the most important aspect - is he equally yoked with you? The Bible believing father has a duty there - even if she foolishly gives her boyfriend her virginity (before they are even proposed), the father still has Biblical authority to deny the potential marriage. Of course - his daughter can choose to be arrogant and dis-obedient - and proceed anyways. But that’s why it’s important to instill these principles when they are young. Is he equally yoked? What is his fruit? Can he provide and protect his household? What does my daughter feel about him - are they a good match together?

With the sons - it’s important to teach the young men not to choose a woman based on her outside appearance alone - he shouldn’t even fornicate with such women. She should be equally yoked - and definitely avoid feminists.

Proverbs 21:9 — 'Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.’
 
Last edited:
we have sexual feelings and instincts for a reason. They are given us from Lord for a REASON. Are you truly considering that your logic is better than something which Lord has provided us?
Boom!

The inescapable exhortation to humility in this statement is worthy of generalizing out into a great many subject areas. Human hubris is operating at peak delusion when we think we can improve upon His Design.

In this particular subject area, The Church outdoes itself on the hubristic scales, because they have bastardized His Word to suit their own agendas that center around enslaving us with attempts to legislate our sexuality. There may be no greater evidence of "adding to Scripture" than what takes place in pulpits, etc., related to demonizing Yah-Given motivations.
 
If current culture is seen as problem, solution isn't arranged marriage, but early marriage. Today's Christians are idiots with waiting for marriage till 30s (first do college, prepare finance) while expecting celibacy. Go for early marriage and don't wait years for sex to happen. There is no reason for waiting long time because all relevant information can be found earlier.
A-f'ing-men!

I finished high school in a bygone-days rural Texas ranch-town culture in which half the girls quit school at age 14 at the end of 8th grade in order to get married. Their marital success rate far exceeds those who finished high school -- and way outdoes those of us who went to college.

Tempted to expound, but I'll spare you.
 
How much agency are you willing to give to your daughter? What would happen is you override her will and go against her interest? Welcome to hell and daughter hating you.

What if you choose wrong? She is blame you for destroying her life. Possible forget seeing your grandchildren.
So maybe wholeheartedly agreeing with you in two respects, @MemeFan, may earn me a pass on disagreeing with you here?

First, let me stipulate again that I agree with the focus on early marriage, especially given that we live in the real world. But also let me stipulate that I believe an arranged-marriage system would be superior in more ways than it would be inferior. Just to begin with, it would remove the majority of angst (especially male) teenagers experience wondering if they'll ever get laid. The problem, though, is that there is no visible horizon over which any man in America or any other Western country is going to have the power to choose his daughter's or his son's spouse.

However, I disagree with using the motivations you cited to justify rejecting the concept, because I'm convinced it is 100% always a mistake to make decisions based on whether or not one's child will hate one. I think it's almost always a mistake to let that kind of emotional manipulation on the part of one's wife guide one's footsteps, but the natural order of things is turned upside down and inside out when children are permitted to even partially dominate their parents in this matter. They are our children and owe their lives to us, not the other way around. My daughters can foolishly blame me for whatever they foolishly want to blame me for, but, beyond being dysfunctional, I would only fail my daughters (or sons) if I let them threaten me into altering any decision I had already deliberated on and knew to be right.
 
Last edited:
Maybe, but that would depend on one's definition of "courtship". My wife and I were "courting" before our engagement. And it was not dating, nor frivolous, or marked by immorality.
This is an excellent point, @NickF -- and a distinction I failed to fully appreciate until it was too late with my daughters. We would all do well to return to requiring courtship as a replacement for dating.
 
I agree in principle, in practice that is almost impossible in this day and age unless the father is very intentional to build the foundations for that paradigm from her birth through her youth.
In practice, @NVIII, the only path for success on this is to so successfully mold one's daughter that she internalizes a desire for an arranged marriage beyond even your own desire to arrange one for her.

No legal system within America will permit fathers to forcibly negate a young woman's marital agency.

And, unless the desire for parental arranged marriage isn't absorbed by a girl all the way to her marrow, all it will take to remove any influence you as a father have over her in that regard is one effective conversation she ends up having with a persuasive defender of the romantic-love cultural imperative.
 
And 13 years later we are still blissfully married and loving each other more every day. 3 wonderful sons and two thriving businesses.
What a blessing for you to share that whole story with us, Nick. You may be exaggerating the health of your marriage just a tad, though, because can you really assert that it's already on solid footing when it hasn't yet produced three thriving businesses?

;)
 
Dude, chill out. No need for all that.
Personally, I don't see any reason for @MemeFan to have to chill out based on what he wrote. I've already made clear that I disagree with his motivations, but I see nothing over the top about his expression. It reads, to me, like heart-felt gut-level conviction.

I'm late to this 'game,' but @NVIII appears to want an iron-sharpening-iron process to lead the way, and taking on the topic of arranged marriages isn't an invitation for the faint of heart.
 
How much agency are you willing to give to your daughter? What would happen is you override her will and go against her interest? Welcome to hell and daughter hating you.

What is you choose wrong? She is blame you for destroying her life. Possible forget seeing your grandchildren.

All my objections are based on something obvious. Everybody makes decisions. If you think you can make decision for her, live in delusion.
I'm going to take issue with how two men have taken issue with you, @MemeFan.

The first is a man whom I would vigorously nominate for the presidency of Biblical Families if it were a representative republic instead of a private corporation. The second I refer to as the Zen Trucker, because, underneath the physical presentation and his tendency to be very soft-spoken in person, he can very often 'speak' so effectively and succinctly that he's a proverbial psalmist the way Neil Young plays guitar.
Dude, chill out. No need for all that.
Personally, I don't see any reason for @MemeFan to have to chill out based on what he wrote. I've already made clear that I disagree with his motivations, but I see nothing over the top about his expression. It reads, to me, like heart-felt gut-level conviction.

I'm late to this 'game,' but @NVIII appears to want an iron-sharpening-iron process to lead the way, and taking on the topic of arranged marriages isn't an invitation for the faint of heart.
Evidently in your world this concept is an impossibility. Go ahead and move on to another thread, we won’t be needing you here.
I know, Zen Trucker, that you know better than most that we all need even more than we can get from anyone here who participates in a manner that indicates they want to advance the discussion. Sometimes that may seem like belligerence or being cavalier -- and sometimes we do read doses of cavalier belligerence -- but, no matter how often I too may disagree with @MemeFan, I simply don't get the impression that he's disingenuous. And in this instance, he's the one with his feet on solid ground.

YHWH's Word is solid food, but we're not YHWH, so it can be easy for us to wander into territory in which we don't have our feet on solid ground as we attempt to implement His Word -- and this topic is rife with opportunities to float off into space. As we debate the scriptural or social validity of arranged marriage, we do well only if we're mindful of the fact that, in the real world, we will have no legal backing if we attempt to enforce an arranged marriage on our children. Only one subculture exists in America in which that is successfully being implemented, and that's in a subset of the Gypsy culture. We wouldn't approve of everything they do as far as arranged marriages (or many other things, for that matter) goes, but they may even be a model to follow. However, they make liberal use of intimidation, both within their culture and with the mainstream cultures around where they've created permanent communities in which their neighbors have determined it's best to just leave them alone.

Outside of that, or outside of similar enclaves of intimidation-heavy Muslim communities in Minneapolis, Detroit and elsewhere, there's no hope of establishing formalized examples akin to Sharia Law. All indications are that, in postmodern America, any alternative social structures like marriage that are associated with either Christianity or Judaism will be unmercifully hounded out of existence if attempts are made to expect those structures to be backed up by the legal system.

So, please, @MemeFan, don't leave this conversation [not that I think you care what I think about whether or not you're here!].
 
Does she? Through social or legal constructs she could grasp power and assume agency. But is that scriptural? Is that the order that God created? That's where I'm approaching this from, not looking at the distortion painted on top, but rather what is underneath and supposed to be. But, I'm glad you brought it up, because this is the opinion held by most, that it is her responsibility, her hunt, her choice, and her prize. I see that as being inconsistent and even antithetical to God's design, not to mention the implications that basis sets for a marriage.
Correct, but we don't live in Ancient Palestine. I applaud what you're teaching her, but it's inescapable that you're teaching her that in the Modern Western World.

Again, as the horse I beat far too often, every bit of this discussion is being held in the context that it's a matter of a mopping-up-the-floor symptom that exists in a situation in which we haven't even figured out where the open spigots or the drains are, much less turned them off or unclogged the drain.
 
It's fascinating that you picked that up. That was not what I was trying to say, but it is true. It is my struggle with her that forced my awakening on this particular topic and made me start searching for the truth. In discussions with her, she asked for a compromise: "arranged dating". That was when it dawned on me that courtship may be a compromise and not the truth.
The bottom line here is that, in the real world in which we live, fathers simply can't enforce who they want their daughters to marry, but they do damn sure have the spiritual authority and the legal power to prevent them from dating until they leave the house for good!

Had I had the backbone I didn't have before I surmounted The Coup in my own household 2.5 years ago, I would have followed through on absolutely forbidding my youngest daughter to date at all, given her behavior and attitudes. I would have restricted her contact with males to only in my presence, and I had already told her that if I suspected she was going around my back at school about this I would home school her (which I should have done from the start). She should have been chaperoned every minute -- and even told me after The Coup was quelled that she had been scared to death the whole time she had complete freedom.
 
The bottom line here is that, in the real world...
Nah, that's not the bottom line. Not to the question at the top of this thread. That's a false bottom. Stay focused, Keith. I get fully what both you and MemeFan have been saying. I appreciate the words of caution, and recognize that it is true to the best of my knowledge in this corner of the world I live in. It's not true everywhere, but here it is for sure, and I will have to deal with that. I also recognize that it is the same objection most people resort to in reference to patriarchial order and polygyny if you manage to break through their doctrinal walls with hard evidence from scripture and they don't want to talk about it anymore.

The fact is, I couldn't even force my daughter to eat the food I give her if she really wanted to say no. Unless I actually physically forced her. This is in the same aforementioned real world. The question I'm asking about arranged marriage, rephrased for this imaginary scenario of picky eating, would be, "Do I have authority--and do I have a duty--to her to force her to eat the food I give her? And how can I draw that conclusion from the Word?"

And the answer to the first part of that, I think you said it, is here:
No buts.

The buts are all answers to a different question, which would go something like, "How do I reconcile my responsibility in this matter with the tremendous obstacles faced by fathers in today's society?" That question doesn't need to be answered until the original one is. Until then it's only a distraction. Certainly the answer to the question of compromise shouldn't influence the answer to the question of principle.

I would like to know why you thought my position was correct, because not all my questions that you quoted were rhetorical.
 
So, please, @MemeFan, don't leave this conversation [not that I think you care what I think about whether or not you're here!].
This is nothing. I faced worse on this forum.

I was heated litlte above. Most heated parts were me claiming 12 wives is possible and fight with @MeganC to prove NATO intervention in Ukraine is stupid (WW3).

The first is a man whom I would vigorously nominate for the presidency of Biblical Families if it were a representative republic instead of a private corporation.
Governance function isn't same as ownership. Different men can run these different responsibilities.
However, I disagree with using the motivations you cited to justify rejecting the concept, because I'm convinced it is 100% always a mistake to make decisions based on whether or not one's child will hate one. I think it's almost always a mistake to let that kind of emotional manipulation on the part of one's wife guide one's footsteps, but the natural order of things is turned upside down and inside out when children are permitted to even partially dominate their parents in this matter.
@Keith Martin, what will happen if daughter is presented with future husband fait accompli, "shipped to altar" and marriage soon dies in flames? Daughter won't blame herself, but father as is human nature.

Reality is that teenagers are very interested in other sex and part of growing up is them making decisions for themselves. They need self-confidence they can take care of themselves. Minimizing daughter's participation is foolish.

And part of current problems in today's society is caused by infantilization of people. Don't worry, experts of bureacracy X will make of all decision for you. Just stick into your hideout.
 
Subtitle: arranged marriages are not human trafficking

Sub-subtitle: so-called "courtship" is to dating as trunk or treat is to trick or treat, a "Christian" whitewashing of darkness (aka syncretism)

This is an opinion piece [emphasis added] right now, but close to becoming a conviction. Before I settle my mind on it, I wanted to throw it to the group to let it get chewed up and see what comes out the other end.

My opinion is this: it is not only a father's right, but also his responsibility to arrange the marriage of his daughter. Indeed, it should have been on his mind since her birth. When a man's daughter plays the field, it is to his shame, whether it be by ignorance or not, and cultural norms be damned.

My reasoning for this is based on observation of history and the Word. I can expound somewhat, but one of the biggest reasons it's still only an opinion is that my reasoning hasn't fully come together. So, if you'll indulge me, I'd rather present the opinion and then question and object to everything you say. I have seen dating (courtship) argued for from the Word, but the attempts I have seen so far were all the same parroted blind misreadings and unsubstantiated stretching of the information provided. As a hint, please be extra creative if you are going to reference Ruth. I will say also that I believe God put all the clues in earth that we need in order to see the unseen, that is heavenly things, and so if the heavenly things have been revealed, then likewise we have a cheatsheet for understanding the things of earth.

I think anyone faced with the concept of arranged marriages easily dismisses them as impossible in this age and locality, and therefore not worth discussing, or even dangerous to talk about seriously (because of severe persecution). Seeing as this group is like a gym of Bible buffs, and being emboldened by the Word have already openly discussed socially dodgy ideas... Let's see you lift this one.
I was inspired by @MemeFan to pay attention to this thread that I missed during the past year. I will eventually go through every bit of it, but here are my debatably-worthwhile two cents heading into it.
  • I'm not opposed to arranged marriages and even see them as generally superior to infatuation-driven marriages. I also share @NVIII's reluctance to let either the overarching culture or the fact that something's never been done to prevent discourse toward creating solutions; however, coming anywhere close to being able to implement an arranged marriage in our culture or even our subcultures is downstream of first establishing legitimacy and dominance of patriarchy in our culture. I assert that men in our culture generally do not deserve to choose the husbands of their daughters, because men in our culture have not come close to demonstrating that they can establish headship over their wives, much less the breadth of headship over their daughters required to determine who their mates-for-a-lifetime are going to be.
  • What I am a fan of is raising one's daughters from Day One to be respectfully cooperative, fully aware that they should be prepared to be led by a strong man, and fully prepared to fully function as wives, across the board. I failed in this as a father and now recognize how much there is to catch up on given that I didn't really get in gear until my daughters were 17 and 19.
  • I now thoroughly believe that dating on the part of daughters who aren't prepared to go out in the world without being protected by their fathers is wholly inappropriate and likely destructive of those daughters' futures. Even in our devolved culture with its destructive-of-patriarchy legal system, fathers have the legal authority to prohibit their daughters from dating until they're ready to go out on their own. Having worked in student affairs for numerous universities, I can guarantee everyone that anyone who pays for their children to go to college is a fool, and anyone who pays for their daughters to go off to college to live on campus is an even bigger fool. Only 1 in 1000 girls fail to get sucked into the degenerative atmosphere, negating almost everything you've bothered to teach them; we all want to think our daughters will be the exceptions, but in my many years of observation all but the most tenaciously-devout Christians are the most likely to succumb to debauchery and whoredom. But if they want to pay themselves for 4 years of Hedonistic Summer Camp, then that will be on them, and we can't prevent them from doing so. Fathers can, though, prevent their daughters from dating before they're prepared to be wives, but in most cases it would require willingness on the part of those fathers to send their own wives packing, because the vast majority of Western wives -- and this is true even among Biblical Families wives -- will demand that their daughters be permitted to date (aka known as sampling d***s) while in high school or junior high.
Thanks, @Keith Martin, for resurrecting this one, and I'm looking forward to your insight.
I'm honored by that, @NVIII, and I pray that I not only produce some insight but that you agree that it's insightful after we sharpen our iron pegs by this exercise of dragging them through the brambly bushes.

To fully respond to your most recent message, I have to go back to this response to your OP by @Bartato:
Does this indicate that you think you might be successful in arranging marriages for the younger two, but might have to accept defeat in the case of your eldest daughter?
It's fascinating that you picked that up. That was not what I was trying to say, but it is true. It is my struggle with her that forced my awakening on this particular topic and made me start searching for the truth. In discussions with her, she asked for a compromise: "arranged dating". That was when it dawned on me that courtship may be a compromise and not the truth.
The bottom line here is that, in the real world in which we live, fathers simply can't enforce who they want their daughters to marry, but they do damn sure have the spiritual authority and the legal power to prevent them from dating until they leave the house for good!
Before I wrote this reaction response, I required of myself that I re-read your entire OP.

I did not and have not read every post in this thread -- only everything on page one, and I've been responding as I've gone along, so perhaps you've since come to a greater degree of certainty about this topic, and, if so, I haven't encountered that, but as of your first post you were presenting yourself as having opinions but not certainty -- and certainly no prescriptions or theological/moral battle lines drawn.

I found nothing in your OP that led me to believe either that what is contained in this paragraph you quoted disagrees with your OP or that it would indicate that I needed to approach what I was writing in a manner reflecting that I was confronting you -- because I wasn't confronting or criticizing you there.

Because when I wrote it, my baseline intention was to agree with what you had written. I figured we might suss out some differing definitions of 'courtship,' but I can assure you of this: my intention for this paragraph was to support what you'd previously written. It wasn't a challenge. I see now that perhaps it could have been inadvertently, but not intentionally.

You seemed on the fence about whether we have the authority to arrange our daughters' marriages, but you were asserting that we do have the authority to regulate whether or not our daughters date. My intention was to bolster that. Nothing else. I agree that we have the authority to allow or entirely prohibit dating, from both a spiritual and legal standpoint.
Nah, that's not the bottom line. Not to the question at the top of this thread.
Please double check. These were all the questions in your Original Post at the top of this thread:
Perhaps you're referring to a question you posed elsewhere. If so, just let me know, and I'll respond directly.
Stay focused, Keith. I get fully what both you and @MemeFan have been saying. I appreciate the words of caution, and recognize that it is true to the best of my knowledge in this corner of the world I live in. It's not true everywhere, but here it is for sure, and I will have to deal with that.
I would venture to guess that inescapable legal restrictions against forced arranged marriages are in place in the countries in which at least 95% of Biblical Families members and biblicalfamilies.org participants reside, so, yes, we'll all have to deal with that unless we implement plans to move to countries where forced arranged marriages are permissible -- or decide that we're willing to risk incarceration because this is the hill we're willing to die on.
I also recognize that it is the same objection most people resort to in reference to patriarchal order and polygyny if you manage to break through their doctrinal walls with hard evidence from scripture and they don't want to talk about it anymore.
This is a criticism: I believe this statement of yours is a non sequitur, primarily because I don't see that either @MemeFan or I are exhibiting this kind of dodgy invalidation in response to not being able to make a refutation based on Scripture. Maybe someone else has in this thread (again, I haven't read everything), but, even if someone is, I wouldn't consider the analogy to be applicable -- because how legality relates to patriarchy or polygyny is quite distinct from how it relates to forced arranged marriage. I'll speak to U.S. law: there is simply no wiggle room about arranged marriages here (other than, as I mentioned elsewhere, in regard to insignificant subcultures like the Gypsies or non-mainstream cultures like Muslim enclaves of which mainstream culture is terrified enough to look the other way): no human being has any power to force marriage on any other human being -- even shotgun weddings have been legislated against, and quite a while ago.
The fact is, I couldn't even force my daughter to eat the food I give her if she really wanted to say no. Unless I actually physically forced her. This is in the same aforementioned real world. The question I'm asking about arranged marriage, rephrased for this imaginary scenario of picky eating, would be, "Do I have authority--and do I have a duty--to her to force her to eat the food I give her? And how can I draw that conclusion from the Word?"
Alright! Now we're getting somewhere. Had you just started from the beginning with the question, "Do I have the authority -- and do I have the duty -- to my daughter to force her to marry a man I believe is best for her? And, if so, how can I draw that conclusion from The Word," I would have answered thusly:

"You absolutely have the spiritual authority to choose your daughter's husband and expect her to abide by your wishes, but -- and this matters in congruence with Scripture -- you absolutely do not have the legal authority to expect your daughter to abide by your choice of husband for her, and, unfortunately, outside of your powers of persuasion, the legal trumps the spiritual in this realm. You further have both the spiritual and legal authority to place whatever limits you deem appropriate on your daughters' dating practices. I'd go a step further to assert that you have some degree of spiritual obligation to do so, but it's definitely gray area. Unfortunately, if you're looking for confirmation that you have a duty to arrange your daughters' marriages and/or enforce your choices, you just don't, and this is especially where your last question comes in: you can draw all of these conclusions from The Word by noting (a) that Scripture is replete with ancient examples in which marriages were arranged by fathers or their substitutes, (b) that, however, these arrangements weren't universally practiced, (c) that we are given no indication about whether such practices were initiated by the Israelites or just common practice in all surrounding cultures, and (d) that numerous scriptural examples exist that give fathers the power to intervene, but never is the intervention mandated. Therefore, even back when the legal prohibition against forcing arranged marriages didn't exist, it wasn't a requirement to intervene even when a daughter entered into a sexual liaison inappropriately with her consort, so it simply can't be considered a duty to arrange a marriage."
And the answer to the first part of that, I think you said it, is here:
Except, intentionally or not, you cut-and-pasted a lead-in word from one of my sentences that was in response to something else altogether that began with this:
Your daughter still has agency.
Does she? Through social or legal constructs she could grasp power and assume agency. But is that scriptural? Is that the order that God created? That's where I'm approaching this from, not looking at the distortion painted on top, but rather what is underneath and supposed to be. But, I'm glad you brought it up, because this is the opinion held by most, that it is her responsibility, her hunt, her choice, and her prize. I see that as being inconsistent and even antithetical to God's design, not to mention the implications that basis sets for a marriage.
Correct, but we don't live in Ancient Palestine. I applaud what you're teaching her, but it's inescapable that you're teaching her that in the Modern Western World.

Again, as the horse I beat far too often, every bit of this discussion is being held in the context that it's a matter of a mopping-up-the-floor symptom that exists in a situation in which we haven't even figured out where the open spigots or the drains are, much less turned them off or unclogged the drain.
[emphasis added]
What I was labeling "Correct" was your last sentence before my comment (and I included the preceding sentences for context). I consider you to have been correct when you said that "the opinion held by most, that it is her responsibility, her hunt, her choice, and her prize" is "inconsistent and even antithetical to God's Design, not to mention the implications" that mindset has on a marriage.

In fact, I continue to applaud what you're teaching your daughter, as well as having no choice but to recognize that your power as a father is predominantly neutered in the Modern Western World.

Both can be true.

And it's not the same as the cop-out issues you referred to with patriarchy or polygyny, because I would agree with you on those two points -- especially regarding polygyny -- but both are tremendously distinct from arranged marriage for at least three reasons: (1) opposition to forced arranged marriage has far more legal support, (2) opposition to patriarchy and polygyny is far and away, in fact almost solely, a matter of avoiding social disapproval, and (3) some of the legal basis for criminalizing forced arranged marriage is in the realm of equating it with forced sexual assault: one wouldn't just be requiring one's child to eat her asparagus before getting another meal; one would be requiring one's daughter to have intimate vaginal sexual intercourse with a man whose penis she didn't want anywhere near her, and not just once but at least often enough to produce an heir (after all, that's what we're talking about here). Ultimately, western court systems have determined that forced arranged marriages are too close for comfort to both rape and incest.
The 'buts' are all answers to a different question, which would go something like, "How do I reconcile my responsibility in this matter with the tremendous obstacles faced by fathers in today's society?" That question doesn't need to be answered until the original one is. Until then it's only a distraction. Certainly the answer to the question of compromise shouldn't influence the answer to the question of principle.
I have two responses to this paragraph:
  1. The combination of that question, the other ones you've asked, and the necessity to reconcile them for yourself in order to eliminate cognitive dissonance . . . is inescapably something with which you're going to have to wrestle. The conclusions you come to and the paths you choose to take will be drawn from continua containing thousands of options, the oversimplification of which range from going postal against the system to knuckling under to it to the point of encouraging your daughters to have hoe phases. Only you can decide where you fit on each continuum.
  2. My other answer is the same one I gave you earlier . . .
Again, as the horse I beat far too often, every bit of this discussion is being held in the context that it's a matter of a mopping-up-the-floor symptom that exists in a situation in which we haven't even figured out where the open spigots or the drains are, much less turned them off or unclogged the drain.
. . . reflecting my strongly-held belief that you've reversed the hierarchy between patriarchy and arranging daughter marriages. The latter is downstream of the former, substantial partial evidence of which is that men forcing their daughters to marry particular men would never establish the legitimacy of patriarchy in our culture, whereas establishing patriarchy would have some potential to move mountains about arranged marriages, not to mention straightening out a wide range of social ills, including the establishment of the legitimacy of polygyny.

That's why I equate perseverating on the arranged-marriage issue to be the equivalent of mopping up the floor, with the lack of male headship being the open spigot and condemnation of polygyny being the clogged drain in this metaphor.
not all my questions that you quoted were rhetorical
I guarantee you that I didn't assume that any of them were.
I would like to know why you thought my position was correct
How am I doing so far?

I look forward to seeing you on X.
 
@Keith Martin, what will happen if daughter is presented with future husband fait accompli, "shipped to altar" and marriage soon dies in flames? Daughter won't blame herself, but father as is human nature.
1. Please note that, even though I'm a fan of arranged marriages in regard to their higher success rate, I'm not advocating that anyone make any attempt to force their daughters to marry husbands of their father's choosing.

2. My challenge to you was instead related to your motivation. I consider it to be feminine weakness on the part of a man (a) to make decisions of any significance based on whether he will meet his children's approval, or even (b) to worry about what his children will think of him or blame him for.

Period. This applies across the board. Fathers are men, not mommies or friends.
 
Without having read through more than the first few posts here, I want to offer my perspective. I have been trying to speak with the father of a young lady for quite some time now, but I don't expect him to do anything other than reverse her fears regarding polygny, and pass along to her how I feel about her. I see him as the gatekeeper, but ultimately I wouldn't expect him to make the decision for her, per se. However, I am hoping and believing he can be persuasive enough, if I can get him to realize that this could in fact be God's will, which of course is always a possibility for anything that is not forbidden.

Now when it comes to dating/courtship, I am happy to have everything chaperoned!
 
@MemeFan This was one of your best posts ever.

Everyone who reads your post will be smarter for doing so.
I agree with you on this point, Megan. @MemeFan's use of logic and game theory walked us through how this would actually play out in almost all situations.

He did leave out one alternative (*), which I'll get to later.

@Bartato addressed some scriptural issues, and I loved his prior post, but after reading @MemeFan's analysis, I realized what was missing.
I suggest that father and daughter both have veto authority. The opinions of mom and older brothers should also be taken into consideration, but they don't have veto.
Stipulated that I see no way any of this is implemented any time prior to the death of our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren, I find it an interesting thought exercise as far as combining what Scripture asserts and what we can recognize would be ideal for long-term marital success. Stipulated also that, if I could wave a magic wand (or perhaps a burning acacia bush), I would certainly legitimize a form of arranged marriage, but before I mention it I should also repeat that I see it as absolutely pointless to reintroduce arranged marriages into a culture in which the majority of men haven't established themselves as the heads of their households (until we do that, and it starts with such things as eliminating one's wives having any say whatsoever about whether one takes on another wife, because, as @PeteR points out in his recent interview with @robbkowalski, our women's bodies do belong to us, but our bodies do not belong to them).

Having said all that, I get warm fuzzies in one sense when I consider the possibility of the whole family putting in their two cents, but, again, with my magic wand, I would restrict that to only the very initial phases of the process, because this is a decision that should be reserved to only the father, the daughter and the prospective husband. And I would not give either father or daughter absolute veto power.

*Magic wand in hand: I would institute the ironclad legitimacy of a practice in which:

(a) the father was required to identify a future husband at least by his daughter's 14th birthday,

(b) all prospective husbands would be required to be at least 4 years older than the daughter [and this is mostly to ensure that in our current framework the man would have full adult privileges but also to reflect differing maturation timetables for the two sexes],

(c) the daughter would have the opportunity to immediately accept betrothal and have a vote along with father and future husband in setting the wedding date,

(d) during betrothal only supervised courtship would take place,

(e) the daughter would have veto power over her father's individual choice(s),

(f) should the daughter refuse a choice, her father then has up to 6 months to identify his next choice,

(g) process never ends until daughter accepts her father's choice or her father fails to identify a subsequent choice, and

(h) if father never stops identifying chosen potential husbands, but daughter consistently vetoes, then daughter never marries.

If, however, father stops choosing (effective 6 months after the last vetoed choice), daughter may make her own husband choice with no requirement for approval from father.

This system would ensure that daughter would be provided at least 8 potential husband choices by the time she reached the age of full adulthood. Father would have to very carefully consider the wisdom of especially his first choice, and should also raise his daughter in a way that prepares her for the possibility that she not only fully embraces his first choice but decides with her future husband that she wants to get married any time after her 14th birthday.

Yes, I will hear many objections based on exceptions, but I feel confident (a) that this doesn't violate Scripture, and (b) that this would greatly improve over modern state of relationships between daughters and their fathers, because, if this were the system into which a young woman were born, she would be provided with sufficient incentive from her earliest fully-sentient moments to cultivate a decent, respectful, lasting relationship with her father that would foster high-quality communication between the two as she endeavored to keep her father and herself on the same page as far as what kind of husband she wanted. It would also more fully incentivize potential suitors to mold themselves to be acceptable to the fathers of young women with whom they wished to form permanent bonds. In addition, this would return the focus of what young women consider to be the most important life consideration to becoming prepared to be a wife and mother.

Maybe I should have slept on this before posting it, but I believe it provides adequate honoring of the free agency of all involved on top of recognizing the love fathers have for their daughters as well as the wisdom of fathers who want to see their families thrive for generations to come.
 
Just for legal reasons, I will reiterate that this ministry does not support illegal underage marriage in any way, and remind readers that @Keith Martin's interesting thought experiment is set in a hypothetical future. From a legal perspective it is in the same class as a post-apocalyptic scifi novel discussing the merits of owning a presently-illegal machine gun.
I see no way any of this is implemented any time prior to the death of our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren
 
Back
Top