There is a brand of patriarchs that do nothing but their own thing. Their wives are "keepers at home," but the patriarch lifts not a finger to help. Just completing this sentence pains me for my own failure. Our church's confession of faith, the Baptist Confession of 1689 wages war with the couch potato patriarch saying, "Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife" (Sec. 25). While there is a God-ordained division of labor in marriage, it is too easy to take it to the limit (as I well know from personal experience). Martin Luther sought to bring this to a screeching halt. He lobbed some very colorful words about husbands helping their wives with diapers and all manner of "insignificant, distasteful duties."

“Now observe that clever harlot, our natural reason…takes alook at married life, she turns up her nose and says, ‘Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and that, do this and that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What then does the Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says ‘O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock this little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is pleasing in thy sight.”