How A Patriarchal social structure helps in finding a mate.

Readership: All
Targeted Readership: Young single Christian men
Theme: Transactions
Author’s Note: Coauthored with Jack.
Length: 2,300 words
Reading Time: 13 minutes

Intro

In Jumping through Hoops (2024/8/30), Jack described how a Patriarchal social structure works in helping young people meet and move towards marriage. In this post, I’ll add some of my own insights, based off some previous comments (links provided in the initial words).

On Making an Impression

As Jack pointed out, the key is to build a good reputation with the men in the community. That means that what you want to do is to make yourself useful and helpful to other men. Be the guy who always shows up before church to set up chairs. Be the guy who mows the elderly widow’s lawn. Be the guy who volunteers to help a family move to a new house. Being willing to serve demonstrates good character traits, like humility and conscientiousness. Fathers look for those traits in potential prospects for their daughters. Additionally, men get to know each other best through activities and projects, not sitting around talking (that’s what women do). You’ll make friends with men of different ages. Some will be old guys with daughters (like me). Some will be younger married men with wives who have single friends, sisters, cousins, etc. Some will be young men who have single sisters.

In short, your goal is to earn the respect of the men of the church, NOT to impress the women. The men are elders, fathers, husbands, brothers, cousins, friends, etc. to single young women. Don’t underestimate the importance of making friends with guys who have single sisters. (See Case Study below.)  If the men respect you, then the single young women who love and respect those men will be attracted to you. That’s the kind of girl you want, anyway. Girls who are untethered and unprotected are much more likely to make the kinds of decisions that makes choosing them for marriage risky.

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Case Study 1 — Meeting Girls through Relatives (Oscar)

My sister married my best friend from high school. In fact, most of my high school friends married each other’s sisters. They’re all still married. Remember that women who have a good relationship with their fathers and brothers tend to like and respect men in general. To be clear, there was no patriarchal “system” for anyone to follow in the small Pacific Northwestern town where I attended high school. This was 30 years ago. There was still enough residual Christian patriarchy in the culture that sometimes things just worked like they should – almost by accident. But that wasn’t always the case.

Case Study 2 — Meeting Girls through Relatives (Jack)

Jack had a bad experience with this set up.  His best friend in high school dated two of his cousins and tried to date his sister.  These relationships ended after a time, and his friend never wanted to speak about it with him.  This created an awkwardness that set Jack and his friend at odds for several years.  Jack believes it didn’t ‘work out’ because it didn’t happen in a patriarchal community.  That is, Jack’s friend used Jack to meet his eligible relatives, but he didn’t go through Jack.  He just used Jack to meet his female relatives.  There was no openness or accountability that would induce Jack’s friend and his cousins to take themselves more seriously.

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On Acceptance

So, what does a young man need to do/be to be accepted? I’m speaking here as a Christian father with both sons and daughters. This is a non-exhaustive list of what I’m teaching my boys and will expect for my daughters.

Godliness: This is not negotiable. I’ve invested years of my life raising up my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). I didn’t do that to hand my daughters over to pagans. Besides, I want my grandchildren to be raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That being said, Godliness can be inexperienced, like the young man in the case study below. If that’s the case, a father wants to see…

Teachability / Humility: Ideally, a father-in-law should be a mentor to his son-in-law, but that doesn’t always work, and that’s fine. If a young man lacks Biblical knowledge, but he’s willing to be mentored by a church elder, that’s a great sign.

Diligence: A father wants to know that his son-in-law will provide for his daughter and grandchildren. To avoid sexual immorality, patriarchal Christian communities encourage marrying young. A man in his early 20s won’t have a six-figure salary, but he should have a clear path to a viable career, and the work ethic to climb the ladder. That may mean college, or trade school, or entrepreneurship. Where I live that may mean running the family farm. Whatever it is, the young man needs to show the father that he will be able to provide for his daughter and grandchildren.

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Strength / Aggression: A father wants to know that his son-in-law will protect his daughter and grandchildren. That doesn’t mean that the young man needs to be John Wick (I’m certainly not), but strength, conditioning, and the ability to give and take physical punishment are important, especially as our culture becomes less civilized.

As an example, my church and its sister churches run a rugby club for boys from 8-years-old to college-age. The games are huge family events with all kinds of food and drinks on the sidelines, and they’re total (wholesome) meat markets. Parents show up to cheer their sons, and sisters show up to scope out their brothers’ teammates…. and cheer their brothers. My 8-year-old, 12-year-old, and 14-year-old boys play rugby. At the last game, while the younger boys played their games, my 14-year-old boy spent his whole time waiting for his game talking to a girl who was there to watch her brothers play. Obviously, they’re too young to court, but this is how things start.

Leadership: A father wants to know that his son-in-law will effectively lead his daughter and grandchildren. It breaks my heard that I can no longer recommend the US military as a good place to learn to lead, but there are many other places – sports, church, work, school, etc. This is another place where mentorship is important. Most of us aren’t natural leaders. I’m not. Being groomed for leadership by men already in leadership is crucial for the average guy. A young man should seek out these mentorships/apprenticeships.

Likeability / Social Skills: A father wants to spend a lot of time with his grandchildren, and that means spending a lot of time with his son-in-law. It’s best for everyone involved if everyone enjoys each other’s company. Besides, social skills are crucial for climbing the career ladder and thus being a good provider.

I could have listed a lot of moral character traits, but they’re all covered under “Godliness” (see the Fruit of the Spirit). Keep in mind that as the girl’s parents are interviewing you for the job of husband / father / son-in-law, you’re interviewing them for the job of grandparents / in-laws. You’re not just marrying the girl, you’re marrying into her family. For better or worse, your in-laws will have a lot of influence over your children. If you can’t stand her family, that’s a problem. Some fathers are overbearing, overly critical, have unrealistic expectations, or have trouble letting princess go. You don’t want to be stuck with that for life.

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Case Study on Acceptance (Oscar)

A few months after we moved to our present home, my wife and I attended a newcomers’ welcome event at our church. We met a young man (early 20s) who’d moved here by himself from the East Coast. He had a rough, secular upbringing and became a Christian at 18. He couldn’t find a good church where he lived, heard about ours, and on a Saturday took a one-way flight here with $100 in his pocket. On Sunday morning, he showed up at church and told one of the elders his story. The elders found him a room to rent and a job with one of the entrepreneurs at church.  That’s faith!

When my wife and I met the young man, he told us that he wasn’t sure how long he was going to stick around. My wife told me later, “Yeah right. He’ll be engaged by the end of the year.” Mrs. O was right. He’s now married.

On Rejection

Rejection always feels like a pure negative, but that’s not the case. First of all, it’s a learning opportunity. Did the suitor do something wrong, or fail to do something as the young man below did? Or did the parents expect too much from a man who hasn’t lived long enough to have the attributes they were looking for?

Ideally, the young man’s father should have prepared him for this process ahead of time, and should guide him as he goes through it, but that doesn’t always happen (see below). Maybe the young man doesn’t have a father, or maybe his father happens to be weak in this area. That’s an opportunity for the young man to seek out mentorship.

The biggest negative of rejection is the possibility that other girls and their families will write off the young man simply because he was rejected before. That’s more of a problem in a smaller community. It shouldn’t happen, but people can be petty, and Christian faith doesn’t make them immune to pettiness. I wish it did, but experience says otherwise.

Fortunately, rejection is rarely the end of the world.

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Case Study 1 on Rejection (Jack)

Jack had a close relationship with his pastor’s son and daughter while he was an adolescent. He talked freely to everyone at church saying he was going to marry his daughter. (Was it true love or adolescent naivete?) No one ever discouraged him or challenged him on this idea. Her father, Jack’s pastor, often met Jack for coffee or lunch, and called him his friend despite their age difference. Her grandparents accepted the idea and they often invited Jack to their family events. Her grandparents really loved Jack a lot. Jack had no reason to think he wouldn’t marry this girl.

Jack and his pastor’s son went to the same college and continued to be friends. A few years later while Jack was in college, he felt it was the right time to start a formal courtship with her. So he went to lunch with her father and told him, “Now is the time. I want to start dating [your daughter] with the intentions of marriage.” But her father soundly rejected the idea, saying that she was too young. (She was 16.) Jack was heartbroken and angry. He didn’t want any other girl except her, because they grew up together. But he respected her father’s decision.

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After that, her father kept Jack at a distance from their family. His son, Jack’s friend, also stopped contacting him.

But just within a few months, she started dating another guy and married him as soon as she graduated from high school, which was just a couple years later. Jack was heartbroken all over again. She gave birth to 3 children by the time she was 22.

Case Study 2 on Rejection (Oscar)

Unfortunately, I know a family whose son experienced rejection. He was 17 at the time, and the girl was 18. The boy asked the father to court his daughter, and the father gave him an unemphatic “no”. The boy had just finished homeschooling and earned a GED, and didn’t have a real plan for a career (no kidding, he was 17). The boy and girl met at a homeschool co-op. The girl was ga-ga over the boy. This is what I mean when I say that it’s a lot harder to impress a girl’s father than it is to impress a foolish young woman. If the girl’s father hadn’t been involved, the young couple would’ve been off to the races. If they attended a typical American church, they’d have been humping in the boy’s pickup.

I’m looking at this from the perspective of a father who’s going to be on both sides of this equation soon, and from that perspective, I blame the boy’s father. He should’ve taught his son that he needed to have a clear path to a career that can realistically support a family before asking a father to court his daughter. I wouldn’t worry too much about the boy, though. He got a job at a local construction company with a good reputation. He’s probably getting good mentorship there, and there is room for growth and promotion, so he should be fine in a few years.

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Conclusions

These days, as the vestiges of Christian patriarchy fade away from the culture — and even the church — parents and prospective spouses need to be much more deliberate. If a guy isn’t willing to go through a girl’s father to court and eventually marry her, that’s a problem. Likewise, if a girl is willing to circumvent her father to date a guy, that’s a problem. She may be for recreational purposes only, and if you’re a Christian man, you shouldn’t be seeking out that kind of recreation.

Patriarchal communities protect their women, but in a civilized culture (I agree that we’re becoming more uncivilized), the community doesn’t need to protect their women from men all that much. The community mostly protects young women from their own foolishness. Remember, a young woman is endowed (heh!) with a fortune (in the form of youth and beauty) she’s not prepared to manage. An attractive 18-yar-old girl is like your average 18-year-old boy with a million dollars. There’s little doubt in my mind that I would’ve destroyed myself if someone had just handed me a million dollars when I was 18. We shouldn’t be surprised when foolish young women untethered to and unprotected by a community destroy themselves. It’s a miracle that it doesn’t happen more often.

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