In her book Just a Housewife: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America, Glenna Matthews chronicles the massive shift in at-home work from colonial America until present day.

When thinking through a theology of home, there are two equal but opposite errors that we must avoid. In the first place, we must not give the impression that life at home in a fallen world is everything. On the other hand, we must not give the impression that life at home in a fallen world means nothing.

Sitting in a hospital consulting room and learning that two of our four children would probably only live into their teenage years was not what we imagined we would be doing that Friday morning – but that is what was happening to us just over twenty years ago. We listened as the consultant paediatrician delivered the diagnosis that Amy and Daniel (then aged 6 and 3) had a rare, genetic condition called Sanfilippo Syndrome.

The term “age of accountability” has become a theological term in many circles. According to Theopedia, it is defined to be “that time in the development of a person when he or she can and invariably does sin against God and thus stands in the need of personal redemption through Jesus Christ.” So what should we think about children, sin, and accountability? Offering biblical clarity rather than emotive responses is vital toward practically viewing and raising our offspring.

If we communicate to our kids that losing one’s life is not simply about giving up what makes us unique, but about releasing what separates us from a holy and loving God, we equip them with confidence to “go and make disciples” in the way God created especially for them. We demonstrate letting go, reckless in love for Christ, in order to gain a life that is immeasurably better.

“We seem collectively blind to the irony that the generation coming of age has begun life with far too few problems,” Ben Sasse writes in a new book. Sasse, the junior U.S. senator from Nebraska, argues in The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance that the economic disruption caused by factors such as globalization and technology demands innovation and grit. Instead, we’re raising children who expect lives of pleasure and ease. The kids are not okay. And neither is America.

Mother’s Day can be painful. I often look at my children and feel crushed by the weight of responsibility to raise them with the obstacles we face. Living with Lyme Disease makes motherhood physically painful, and having passed Lyme on to my four children is emotionally painful. Our circumstances often feel overwhelming and impossible to overcome.

“Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” was the column I wrote for the New York Sun (RIP), and two days later I found myself on The Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, and—for contrast—NPR defending myself. I’ve been defending myself ever since. You see, the question I got asked on those first few shows, and have been asked continually in the nine years since, is this: “But Lenore, how would you have felt if he never came home?”

A willing submission to your mother’s God-given authority is the most foundational way to honor her. Someone who possesses a rogue attitude to their mother certainly does so at the expense of her honor. Disobedience and disrespect are linked together, and it’s essential to submit to the authority figures that God has placed over you in this life.

“What has parenting done for your sanctification?” TGC Council members Danny Akin (president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), Ryan Kelly (pastor for preaching at Desert Springs Church), and Colin Smith (senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church) discuss this question in a new seven-minute roundtable.