There is one question that thrills kindergartners, paralyzes college freshmen, and may send the early retiree into a midlife crisis if it catches them by surprise: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
With toddlers, the answers they toss back can split your sides. Knight! Policeman! Bear hunter! Godzilla! Or my favorite: Cheese stick! By high school, however, the question comes flying with greater precision, sobriety, and force.
After serving in youth and college ministry for a decade, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked—and answered—such a query. Discovery, definition, trajectory—these are fundamentally questions about vocation: We like to know what people do, and what they might do in the future.
So, we mine for aspirations. When we ask, “What do you want to be?” if a youngster responds, “I want to be kind,” or “loving,” or “godly,” or “mature,” we smile and clarify, “No, I mean what sort of job would you like to have?” We’re scanning for their sense of calling, searching out any indication of the shape their future might take.
As well-intentioned as these conversations may be, the unbalanced emphasis on employment might display a disordered view of vocation. The kinds of questions we ask, and the types of answers we expect, train our children how to think about, frame, and prioritize their life decisions. It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to get vocation right and to get it in its proper place.
Vocation and Households
Consider our cultural moment. As the bow goes, so too the quiver, and we are certainly stringing one another along. Men and women are not only getting married later, they are getting married less; further, their begetting of children follows that same poor trajectory.[1] This is no surprise, given that the standard plan most parents envision for their kids sounds something like this:
1. In 1970, 67% of Americans ages 25 to 49 were living with their spouse and one or more children younger than 18. Over the past five decades, that share has dropped to 37% (according to data from 2023). See also John Schweiker Shelton, “Don’t Wait to Have Kids: If You’re Married, You’re Ready to Start Having Children—and Waiting Is Risky,” WORLD Opinions, 8 April 2025.
Kids, here is what you ought to do. You should graduate high school at eighteen, college at twenty-two, and then pursue a career. Once your career is established (in five or six years), then it might be time to start thinking about getting married. But, you should take your time getting to know your potential spouse; a two-to-three year on-ramp from dating to marriage is reasonable. Also, you’ll want to enjoy your marriage, so don’t add any kids for the first few years.
The compounding results of this vision have been disastrous. Generations are delaying milestones. The birth rate is plummeting. And one of the most bitter implications of this pattern affects aspiring mothers: Due to their more limited window of fertility, they have the most to lose.[2]
2. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “A woman’s peak reproductive years are between the late teens and late 20s. By age 30, fertility (the ability to get pregnant) starts to decline. This decline happens faster once you reach your mid-30s. By 45, fertility has declined so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely.”
Could the delayed and truncated pursuit of family be partly because we are training our kids to think about their future in terms of career rather than in terms of vocation? We teach them by word, example, and inquiry to pursue a career first and fit the family around that pursuit. We present the same vision to boys and girls alike. Even for self-avowed complementarians, we are often too squeamish and embarrassed to present any vision of eudaimonia—the happy life—that differentiates between the sexes. So, we cut against the grain of creation and train our boys and girls to pursue the gender-neutral, career-centric vision of “the good life.” And then we are surprised when our sons are hesitant to get married, and we wonder why our daughters are not hurrying up with the grandbabies already. We clip the wings, and watch for flight. We stomp on toes, and demand a dance. We castrate our vision of the future, and still expect the geldings to be fruitful.
We don’t realize we’re seeing the fruit of seeds we’ve been sowing for decades with thousands of “tiny” and “innocent” actions like asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” What if a six-year-old girl answered that question by saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a wife and mother. That’s the main thing I want to do.” What if she said that when she was sixteen? A college senior? What if her five-year plan was “to have better care of the home, and a better instruction of my children in the knowledge of the Lord”? Odds are the adult who asked the question will steer the little girl toward a “backup plan” that looks strangely similar to the career path of a young man who wants to be a breadwinner.
My concern is not only to say that “homemaker” is a valid career choice. It is. In fact, I would say it’s the default career choice we should commend to our daughters. But more than this, we will not have the boldness or clarity to commend a truly complementarian vision of vocations unless we first understand the relation of the vocation to the household. Therefore, my main concern is that many believers are prioritizing a career in their future above the development of a family. This is a biblically disordered doctrine of vocation; no wonder women are reluctant to enter the home; no wonder men are passive once inside it—all because we have pitched them such an upside-down framework. A proper understanding of vocation for both men and women will see—and plan, prepare for, and pursue—careers in subservient relation to their family.
We can offer our kids a better picture of flourishing: When we travel downstream from a biblically orthodox understanding of family and work, we don’t find “stay-at-home moms” or “stay-at-work dads”—as if their employment (or lack thereof) encompassed the sum of their vocation. Rather, we find heads and helpers who fulfill their particular responsibilities in every sphere in service of their household—and we’ll find a culture where young people dream of pursuing the same.
Vocations and Careers
But I have assumed the conclusion thus far. Where lies this supposed difference between career and vocation?
“Vocation” ultimately comes from the Latin verb voco (and its noun form, vocatio), which in the Vulgate corresponds to the Greek kaleō/klēsis. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:20, the ESV reads, “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” The English could be clearer on the relationship of “condition” to “called”; it could well be translated “each should remain in the calling [klēsis, implied from 1 Cor. 7:20] in which he was called [kaleō].”
Today, just as “What do you do?” usually means “What is your job?”, so too vocation is used synonymously with employment—it’s “what you get paid for.” But the biblical idea in 1 Corinthians 7 has a much broader meaning: it is “what you do according to God’s providential assignment of responsibility.” This includes work paid and unpaid. Paul was called to be an apostle (1 Cor. 1:1). Christians are called to mutual holiness (1 Cor. 1:2) and to fellowship with Christ (1 Cor. 1:9). Believers are called to God, even though they have many weaknesses (1 Cor. 1:26).[3] “Calling” has nothing to do with the subjective or the self-expressive, and it has everything to do with being obedient and honoring God in the providential circumstances in which you find yourself. Hence, if we ask, “What is the biblical concept of vocation?” we would be well within the bounds to use the ESV heading from 1 Corinthians 7: “Live as you are called.” It is faithfulness to God through fulfillment of our responsibilities to others in the circumstances to which we are sovereignly assigned.
3. Many thanks to my friend and fellow churchman, Nathan Moore, for his confirmation on the Latin and for his clarifying thoughts on “calling” in 1 Corinthians.
“Calling” is a prescription drawn from a description. Direction is derived from duty, and not the other way around. I was called to singleness while I was single. And for twenty-three years, I happily honored God as a single man, fighting to be satisfied in Christ and to maximize the strengths of my life situation for the sake of his kingdom. Then I married my wife. I was no longer called to singleness; I was called to marriage. How did I discover this new calling? Well, the wedding band on my finger offered at least a suggestion.
“But Andrew, doesn’t this argument undercut your point, and suggest we shouldn’t change our circumstances, since that would be like trying to change our calling?”
No. Paul is not being fatalistic here, and clearly, he has a category for godly aspiration. A little later, he tells the slave to honor God in his vocation of slavery, but to emancipate himself if possible. The application, then, is not “don’t change your circumstances,” but to be faithful in your circumstances while you are in them. Though we might read 1 Corinthians 7:27 and think Paul is against single people getting married, we have to balance his comments (e.g., “Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.”) with context. For immediate context, it is enough to observe that Paul was concerned with “undivided attention to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:35), against which, for some, marriage might be a hindrance. He was considering the reality of persecution and social instability (1 Cor. 7:26, 28), and he was battling the idea that either marriage or singleness necessarily brought one closer to God (1 Cor. 7:40). As for the broader context, fruitful marriages that yield godly offspring is God’s blueprint for humanity on earth (see Gen. 1:28; 9:1, 7; Mal. 2:14–15; cf. Heb. 13:4). Single-minded devotion to God is Paul’s goal in 1 Corinthians 7, and the hardwiring of humanity guarantees our average aspiration should be to marry and raise godly kids.
This is God’s good design; it should be an “opt-out” feature rather than an “opt-in.”[4] So the unmarried college student should be faithful in her current calling to singleness, and she would do well to prepare for a potential future calling to marriage, barring exceptions.
4. It is of course fine if someone does decide to opt out, if they are “made eunuchs” by birth (a biological effect of the Fall), by man (an effect of sin), or by themselves for the sake of the kingdom. But this is rarely the case. My argument still holds relevance to those in this condition if one substitutes “the household of faith” where I refer to one’s natural family.
Vocation and Gender
Too often, the complementarian effort to define gender roles is an exercise in question-begging. I have argued here that we should not only right-size our view of vocation to fit the biblical view of gender, but also to fit the biblical view of the household. If that foundation is set, we would do well to clarify those household roles.
When we embrace a biblical vision of vocation, we will enculturate the next generation so that young women prioritize pursuing a vocation in the form of being a “home-worker” (Titus 2:5) and raising her children. The way I help my daughters think about their future education, job experience, skill acquisition, and life decisions will assume the calling of marriage and motherhood as the norm and the priority. This does not deny the place for education, job skills, or employment, but it retains Paul’s definition of “good works” for women in 1 Timothy 5:10 (e.g., bringing up children, showing hospitality (in the home), washing the feet of saints, caring for the afflicted, etc.).
As we see in Proverbs 31, the biblical ideal of a home-worker and child-raiser is a robust vision of work–from-home moms, not merely stay–at-home moms. The distinction may seem subtle, but words reinforce our conception of reality. “Stay-at-home” does nothing to posit the actual occupation and labor my wife is called to. The garden stays at home; our Mediterranean gecko “Jorge” stays at home; the water filter stays at home. My wife, however, is an active, mobile-yet-home-based, creative, social, adventurous source of responsible productivity who may travel to more places on any given day than her office-bound husband! When people see a woman clearly stepping into her God-given calling as a domestic manager, they will not pity her and look on her husband with scorn. Rather, “her works [will] praise her in the gates” (Prov. 31:31), she will be her husband’s crown (Prov. 12:4), and he will be known by a good reputation in the community (Prov. 31:23).
Conversely, we must encourage men to pursue a vocation for the sake of providing for a family. This simply means that work is not mainly about us. It is not mainly about us advancing as far as we can in a career; if moving up the corporate ladder, or starting a local business, or pulling three or four jobs at once means you provide financially but don’t lead your family well spiritually, you’re missing it.
And, on the other side, if work is mainly a means of self-expression, a way for dad to spend more time on his hobbies and interests, to the point that he starts putting the burden to provide (even just in part) on his wife, that’s missing it too. I have plenty of hobbies I love, and plenty of interests I could invest in. And until the point that I am providing for my family in all the ways God has required, they are all dead to me.
We could run off either side of the road, idolizing either job or pleasure. Do you want to stay on track? Embrace your household as your most important work, unto the Lord. No man can read the commands of Deuteronomy 6:4–8 and Ephesians 6:4 and conclude that their paid work or their hobbies are their highest calling. We don’t need “stay-at-work dads” any more than we want “stay-at-home moms.” Rather, if the helper’s calling is to work from home, then the head’s calling is to work for home.
Conclusion
We need to frame conversations about the future for both young men and women so that they know that (1) God’s good and default design is for men and women to get married and raise children together, and (2) the father’s primary vocational aim is to protect and provide for his family financially, while the mother’s is to nurture and raise the children. This perspective sees familial responsibility as the main vocation of both mother and father, because it is their providentially arranged calling from the Lord.
For the mother, this homemaking and child-rearing is her primary career. Let it never be said of a homemaking mom that “She doesn’t work!” Therefore, wives and moms, strive to support your husband’s work in his career and his vocation as a father. Make your home-working your craft, and seek to make progress in managing resources and raising children.
And for the father, his income-earning career is undertaken in service to his primary vocation: the patriarchal duty of provision, protection, discipleship, and leadership in the home. There is no place for passive men in God’s households. So, husbands, strive to provide so your wife can fulfill her domestic responsibilities. Give her the tools, supplies, and biblical clarity she needs to fulfill her vocation well.
If you are the parent of a young person, put more thought and effort into what sort of spouse your child is preparing to become than what kind of career they are preparing to pursue. Encourage them to think about jobs, college degrees, careers, income, and financial goals in relation to their aspiration to raise a family as a faithful father or mother. Encourage them to acquire skills, earn wages, and embark on career trajectories that will best serve the establishment of a godly household. In your child-rearing, give your children a compelling vision of pursuing the vocation of husband and wife and father and mother. Help them order such things as education, finances, and jobs in the proper relation to that vocation.
Lastly, to young people: Make plans and aspire, under God, to marry and to raise a family. Put more thought into this than you put into developing a career. Think about your pursuit of education and a career in proper relation to the biblical vision for a family. And don’t be too put off when someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up. Some of us are still figuring that out ourselves.
