Have you ever been asked the question: Who wears the pants in your home? I think everybody recognizes its meaning. Its another way of asking: Who’s boss in your home, father or mother? Questions like that generally raise a chuckle or two, but they are far from innocent. Back of them is the assumption, very wrongly, that someone must be the boss in a home. Also, that at times a woman is actually the boss who runs the whole show. Or even the assumption that a man ought to be the boss who runs the whole show. In either case, that is, for either to be a boss would spell out a loveless home. There should never be a boss in a home.

That question: Who wears the pants? has, I assume, an interesting history. It wasn’t so long ago that women wouldn’t be caught in public wearing pants. On the farm some women would wear jeans for the convenience in the work they were doing, and as a good guard against mosquitoes. But in public, never! The Bible said it was wrong for a woman to wear man’s clothing, and since the Bible said so a woman did not wear men’s pants. And this was the more so because Scripture said that “the Lord your God detests anyone who does this” (Deut. 22:5). Since a man was to be the head of the house, and since a man wore pants, to wear pants came to identify one as the head of the home. But how being head of a home became identified with being boss is another story. It is however very wrong to equate headship with being boss.

There is an interesting background to the word “boss” according to the book “Why you say it.” The author, Webb B. Garrison, claims that “Dutch employers of a few centuries ago were noted for their easygoing nature. So no objection was raised when those who worked for them addressed them familiarly as BAAS (uncle). Gradually the word came to be the equivalent of ‘overseer’ or ‘superior.’ When early settlers established themselves in the New World, the word accompanied them. English colonists, who had paid a dear price for freedom, resented both the old form of authority and the very terms in which they were expressed. They were not only unwilling to remain subjects of the king but also resented his representatives. Many colonists objected to the very word ‘master.’ So early New Englanders, thrown into contact with the Dutch, adopted their word BAAS –taking it over with.the spelling slightly altered. The typically American term BOSS therefore stands as one more monument to the independent spirit of the founding fathers.”

Perhaps, if wearing the pants means boss in that sense, it wouldn’t be all that bad. But boss has come to be equated with master, foreman, administrator. It means today someone who calls the shots and is obeyed. In our modern understanding of the word there is to be no boss in any home. We must not confuse our modern understanding of the word boss with the Scriptural teaching that a man is the head of the woman. They have nothing in common. Perhaps because they are so often identified, and in some cases headship is practised in the way of being a master calling all the shots, that they became synonyms in our thinking. That needs correction.

In this age of women’s liberation, wrongly so-called, we have to take a careful look at what God’s Word says about man being the head of the woman. The rebellion now going on in the world is neither Scriptural nor liberating. You may object to such a statement, because what is not in harmony with God’s Word cannot possibly be liberating. With that we can only agree. But even from a purely secular worldly viewpoint, the women’s liberation movement can only work for the degradation of women. Man cannot flaunt God’s order and find happiness. That only brings more unhappiness.

Strangely enough Christians today are being influenced by this movement. Women are people too, so we are reminded. As though the Lord’s people were learning something new. And since women are people, just like men are people, they supposedly have the same rights as men. No quarrel with that, I am sure. But implied is that they also have the same functions in society, or at least are entitled to the same functions as a man. The reasoning goes something like this: If a man has a right to smoke, so has a woman. If a man can go out to get employment, so can a woman. If a man enjoys driving a truck, a woman should be entitled to the same enjoyment. If a man can be a foreman, so can a woman. If a man can be head of a household, so can the woman, etc., etc. Such reasoning overlooks t he fact that God created man and woman with a difference that must be honored. Both have a calling from the Lord. Both must fulfill that calling unto the Lord. And in the fulfilling of their God-given callings they must always keep the God-given distinctions in view, that man is called by God to be head of the woman, and that both are called to differing functions in life. The man is called to be provider (1 Tim. 5:8) the woman to be a mother and housekeeper (1 Tim. 2:15; 1 Tim. 5:14).

Now I am, as the saying goes, opening a can of worms. I can hear a thousand arguments that have accumulated through the years. Most of them I see as inspired by satan, because they look at housekeeping and childbearing as the menial lot of women, something to get away from if at all possible. Women are people too with a right to use their talents in careers of their choice, etc. etc. But I hear Scripture say that the most glorious of all careers for any woman is to be a mother and homemaker. I hear God’s Word exalting a woman in her beautiful and high calling as one who can bring forth life for and unto the Lord. No career can compare to that. No honor is higher. No woman is more blessed of God than the one who finds joy in motherhood and housekeeping. The Bible tells us so.

Now you wonder what this all has to do with being a boss or a head in a home. Everything! We must let God’s Word show us the beauty of the relationship in which He has placed man and woman, husband and wife. Scripture has much to say about this in many places, but let us limit ourselves to Ephesians 5:21–33. In this passage wives are called to be “subject” to their husbands because they are the heads, and the husbands are called to love their wives. Scripture gives an example, the example of Jesus Christ our Saviour. As the Church is subject to Christ, so wives must be subject to their husbands in everything. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved His Church and gave himself for It. That relationship is both beautiful and liberating. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. When a man truly loves a woman in the Lord, and cares for her as the Lord calls him to do, then the woman‘s calling to be subject to him in all things is made very easy and wonderful. Surely then we know that Scripture nowhere intimates that a man is to be a boss to his wife or family. He is to be devoted head and father. But then it is also clear that no woman may be the head. There are no exceptions here. This does not mean that if a man cannot manage or run affairs that a woman may not help him. I believe she is called as a helper to do just that. But in and through that she is called by God to be “subject” to her less gifted husband. The Lord demands that for the maintenance of a blessed marriage relationship.

I am writing these few lines for young people. I already know how some react to something like this. One says: Marriage is far from my mind right now. I’m only dating! Another says: A young person shouldn’t get serious right away when going out with someone! And some laugh at you when you suggest that courting is a serious matter, and who you go out with is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately it is all too common, that young people don’t take dating seriously and see it as a step towards Christian marriage. It is just exactly that. If you wouldn’t marry the person you date, you shouldn’t date that person.

But there is something more to this. How do you see your future life in marriage? What kind of a partner do you want? Do you really desire, and pray for, a marriage only in the Lord? That consideration has to motivate our whole dating and courting time. Parents are not always as helpful as they should be. The attitude of many seems to be: let young people have some fun, and let them go out with differing young people. So What? Until Jane becomes intensely interested in a Johnny that will make an unequally yoked union in marriage. Then all of a sudden trouble brews, quarrels erupt, and Jane elopes with Johnny. Or if developments are not that radical, at least another mixed-marriage is on the books, spelling trouble.

So young people must be taught to seek a marriage only in the Lord (1 Cor. 7:39). And to build a home after the godly pattern set out in Ephesians 5:21–33. Only such a marriage will be happy and endure.

Which brings up another aspect of this marriage question. What kind of form will you use for your marriage? It seems to be fashionable in these days to make our own forms, and some of these leave much wanting. Even the new form Synod 1979 adopted leaves much wanting. Those who choose to use such forms say something about what kind of a marriage they want, and what kind of married life they desire. You see, women’s liberation even influences our marriage forms. In our marriage forms we are saying as much as: No one is going to be head . in this home. We are going to be equal partners. No subjection to husbands, and no maintenance for wives. We stand on an equal footing! When we say that in our vows we are leaving out what is really the ingredient for a successful marriage prescribed by God. Yes, the new form says something about this in the explanation of marriage, but the vows dismiss this entirely. Allow me to say this once again. When we choose to use forms like this we are laying a foundation for a marriage that cannot be blessed of the Lord.

So much more can and should be said about this whole question, but I will leave it with this. I would appreciate comments or questions so that this whole important matter may become very clear in the minds of our parents and young people. It is so important that we see this clearly that marriage is not a matter of one or the other being boss, neither is it a matter of equal partnership, but rather a union patterned after that of Christ and His Church.

Cecil Tuininga is pastor of the Grande Prairie-La Glace C.R. Church in Alberta, Canada. This article also appeared in the publication of our Canadian affiliate. The Reformed Review of March, 1980.