Reader Question – Who Should Lead in Marriage?

Got a reader question to a meme I posted at my Facebook page, and the answer was too long for Facebook, so here goes:

“Why do "husbands and fathers preside in the home as leaders", but never wives and mothers? I think some of the seeming contradiction might be something like why we default to the man as the leader and not choose the leader as the one best equipped to lead, independent of gender?

I will agree that having different roles does not mean that spouses are not equal.

However, I think some of the contradiction comes in how we decide roles. Many would say that, if we truly saw men and women as equal, we would choose roles based on who is best qualified for each role. If the wife has better earning potential, then she can assume the role of primary breadwinner. If dad is better suited for childcare and homemaking, then he can aspire to be a stay at home dad.

It seems that our rhetoric prefers certain ways of dividing up roles and responsibilities, allowing couples to fall back on less ideal choices when necessary. Do we truly see men and women as equally competent in all roles, or do we believe there are inherent inequalities in which roles and responsibilities men and women should aspire to?” – DVN

I think the clue to your answer may already be in your question.

I could be wrong, but perhaps you are looking at the definition of marriage as some old Victorian patriarchal allocation of power politically established by a body of men and voted on by the collective membership.

This is not, and never has been, how the Lord’s plan operates.

Since Genesis, the man was given the responsibility to lead and preside over the family.[i] That commandment has never been rescinded. That order has never changed, except where mankind strayed or moved away from the Lord.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, our definition of marriage and the rules by which we play the game of marriage (forgive me for using a sports metaphor) do not come from us.

“We” the members of the Lord’s church do not decide the order of things.

The Lord does, and we either follow it as closely as we can out of faith…or we don’t.

In Doctrine & Covenants 132:8, the Lord said, “Mine house is a house of order…and not a house of confusion.”

Order does not denote inequality, only role responsibility. To me, this is where the real contradiction resides – when people confuse secular culture with doctrine. The secular Victorian idea that men are built for work outside the home and women are only fit for homemaking and raising children is not only a myth, it is an offensive assumption to make in the gospel, and it downgrades the talents and abilities of each gender.

In marriage under the Lord’s law, the Lord is the head of the household, with the husband and the wife both answering to him in unity for the execution of their respective roles.

Should the husband exercise unrighteous dominion in any degree, he immediately loses that authority. [ii]

Should a husband become incapacitated and unable to lead or is even just required to be away from the home for a time, the role of “head of the household” falls to the wife – not the eldest son or nearest priesthood holder. The wife is just as capable of leading as the husband. The women in our church do have priesthood authority and exercise it when required, both in the home and at church in their callings,[iii] and any decisions she would make are (or should be) in harmony with what she and her husband had decided together – and vice versa.

This is the equality I am referring to - that they are (or should be) unified in all the decisions made. One may naturally do one role better than the other. One might even excel in a non-traditional role, but the responsibility remains where the Lord has placed it. The men are to preside and protect. The women are to nurture.

If the man elects to stay home in the homemaker role, he is still responsible to report back to the Lord on the state of his family. He still presides and protects. If the wife goes out to work in the workplace, she is still the one responsible for the nurturing and teaching that happens at home. No amount of talent or lack of talent in these areas excuses us from these responsibilities in the Lord’s eyes.[iv]

How that is done is another set of lessons. 

This is revelation to us from those with authority to speak for the Lord, and through them He established the order in the household.

If we don’t accept these men as prophets of God, or the scriptures found in the church or any of the teachings found at LDS.org to be true, then what the prophets tell us or what they say is only one other opinion we must choose from in a boiling sea of opinions.

I know, however, that the scriptures and Conference talks we receive are given by prophets of God, and that you and I are entitled to receive revelation for ourselves to know if they are prophets and if this is truly the order the Lord wants in our marriages.

To address your question as to how ‘we’ as members of the Church of Jesus Christ made those decisions about those roles, I find it is generally because the individual married members of the Church have already prayed about and received their own testimony about why and how they should be living this order in their home.

The Lord wants this order, so our marriages can work together as one in love and unity and have direction. It’s not about power, and never was.

When we as husbands and wives are truly unified, both men and women have greater and more efficient power to move forward and progress.

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The authority to hold the priesthood and lead in the home comes from God. This is evident to me in the Fifth Article of Faith. 

As far as what roles we can ‘aspire’ to in the home, there is a correlation of this idea of aspiration in callings extended in the church. When someone is called to any position in the church, that calling doesn’t always go to the most qualified. It goes to the person the Lord wants in that role.

It doesn’t make the called person greater or more powerful than us. It only means that they have a role to fill in the body of Christ. Would we say our heart is greater than our brain? Which would we be willing to remove? The heart and the brain serve different roles, but both are necessary to the function and the health of the whole.

From my perspective, our Father in Heaven’s plan of salvation was not about power or to make himself greater than us. It was about family, keeping the family together, preparing us to become like him and have all he has.

Lucifer’s jockeying for political power and position in the preexistence was just plain inappropriate and a very selfish and shortsighted perspective of things.

I believe the same is true for our marriages. My wife and I look at each other from an eternal perspective, and with the realization that we not only cannot enter the celestial kingdom without each other, we can’t be together for eternity unless we are worthy of each other and want to be together.

Jockeying in our marriages for power, position and to be greater than the other is just inappropriate and counterproductive.

Our time would be better spent serving each other and the Lord, fulfilling the roles we’ve been given, loving each other and helping each other be the best they can be in those roles, and not be a stumbling block for the other.[v]

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[i] Genesis 3:16

[ii] see D&C 121. This is also strongly suggested in the second to last paragraph of “The Family, A Proclamation To The World”.

[iii] See Dallin H. Oak’s talk on priesthood authority - (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2005/10/priesthood-authority-in-the-family-and-the-church?lang=eng)

[iv] See the Proclamation to the World on the Family

[v] Some articles that might also help in understanding these concepts are The Powers of the Priesthood by Dallin H. Oaks, and The Women in our Lives by Gordon B Hinckley.