Children do not accidentally become righteous leaders or emotionally healthy and productive adults — any more than seeds thrown randomly to the wind grow to be part of a thriving garden.

Simply throwing children into a cultural tornado and hoping for the best gives them little chance of living up to their potential or coming out unharmed. Someone needs to take responsibility for their nurture, protection, nourishment, intellectual development, manners, recreation, personal needs, and spiritual development. Someone needs to commit time and energy into staying close to them as they grow, encouraging and correcting and teaching.

Doesn't it make sense that a wise God, who ordered the rest of creation in an intricate and systematic way, would also have provided such a person to care for children — to commit wholeheartedly to creating the right environment for them to grow and to prepare them to live throughout eternity bearing his image?

Children are eternal human beings whose lives and souls will last throughout all of eternity. God has given them into our hands to protect and lead and shepherd them through this life on earth. The kingdom of this world and all of its pleasures last only for a time. Committing ourselves to fulfilling God's design falls under the admonition to seek first his kingdom — the kingdom of heaven where we will live for all eternity.

Read more about this in The Mission of Motherhood.