“The problem for parents today is that we’ve lost sight of the big picture. We could happily tell you our views on bottle-feeding, childcare, spanking, screen time, or sugar. But few of us could tell you exactly what we’re aiming for or how we plan to get there.”

If observers are right, modern parenthood is in crisis. The titles of some recent books say it all: The Collapse of Parenting, Toxic Childhood, and Spoonfed Generation, to name a few. In spite of our all-consuming desire to give our children the perfect childhood, we seem to be raising a generation that is, in many respects, ill-equipped for life in the real world.

The problem isn’t that we lack information. No, the problem for parents today is that we’ve lost sight of the big picture. We could happily tell you our views on bottle-feeding, childcare, spanking, screen time, or sugar. But few of us could tell you exactly what we’re aiming for or how we plan to get there.

At a time when I was a particularly anxious, aimless parent, I turned to the Bible. Its ancient wisdom turned out to be the perfect antidote to the problems that plague modern parents like me. The Bible contains good news for parents, but it also confronts us with some hard truths. Here are three.

1. We’re Responsible for Their Moral Education

In today’s world, parents are taking less and less responsibility for their children’s moral education. In our busy lives, we struggle to commit the time and energy that the task demands. No wonder we expect our children’s schools to pick up the slack.

In a recent study called The Children We Mean to Raise, 80 percent of the young people surveyed said they value personal achievement or happiness over showing concern for others. This came as a complete shock to their parents, who believed the opposite. It’s one thing to hold certain values yourself, but quite another to pass them on to your children.

The Bible describes children as those “who do not yet know good from bad” (Deut. 1:39). Parents bear the primary responsibility for teaching them. Scripture encourages parents to do this by modeling, teaching, encouraging, training, correcting, and disciplining our children, all in the context of a loving and understanding relationship.

But what are the key values we ought to pass on? In the noisy marketplace of parenting advice, it’s easy to get sidetracked.

According to the Bible, the most important thing to teach our children is to love God and neighbor (Matt. 22:37–39). Everything else ought to spring from these foundational values.

2. We’re Not Responsible for Their Perpetual Comfort

Modern parenting is often driven by the fear of our children suffering any kind of harm. So we scramble to protect our kids from the slightest difficulty or disappointment. This mentality can result in anxious parents and children who lack resilience and self-confidence.

When we overprescribe the drug of instant comfort, we deny our children the chance to strengthen their immunity to hardship.

By contrast, the Bible prioritizes the development of godly character and values over comfort. The whole project of passing on our values—teaching our children to love God and neighbor—is summarized by the word discipline:

Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Heb. 12:10–11)

Hardship can be a powerful tool in our children’s moral education. Our job is not to steer our children around difficulties, but to walk alongside them through it all. When we allow our children to experience small doses of hard things—disappointment, frustration, boredom, delay—we’re helping them develop resilience that will serve them later in life.

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