Last fall, my husband hesitantly mentioned that some guys from church were planning a weekend away to play golf, and they’d asked him to come. Before I could tell him I thought it was a great idea, he started to list all the reasons he probably shouldn’t go. He didn’t want to leave me to parent solo for a whole weekend. It was baseball season, and he’d miss our sons’ games that Saturday. He wouldn’t be able to help with this or that around the house.

I was grateful for him considering our family, but that conversation gave me pause. Why did my husband seem to think he’d be letting our family down if he spent a weekend with friends?

New Day for Dads

Over the last few decades, I’ve noticed growing emphasis in conservative evangelical churches on men demonstrating servant leadership through practical help in the home. Dads change diapers and rock fussy babies. They wash dishes and fold laundry. They spend their evenings and weekends at home with their families, playing with their children and giving their wives a break.

This tracks with wider cultural trends. Compared to dads in 1965, today’s dads spend about triple the time caring for their children each week and more than double the time on household chores. These are welcome changes.

But at the same time, male friendship has declined significantly. Men report having half as many close friends as they did 30 years ago. Of course, declining male friendship is multifaceted—men don’t have fewer friends simply because they’re helping more at home. But I wonder if there’s a connection. As both church and culture have encouraged men to take on more practical responsibilities in the family, have we unintentionally discouraged men from taking time to cultivate friendships?

An Unnecessary Love?

In some spheres of life, we affirm that a man being away from home is part of a larger good. It’s good for him to go to work and earn income to provide for his family or go to the doctor for a checkup to maintain his health. Those are assumed to be necessary uses of his time, worth being away from home for.

Have we unintentionally discouraged men from taking time to cultivate friendships?

But when a man takes time to go to a football game with his brother or play a round of golf with a friend, we tend to think of it as optional recreation. Sure, it’d be nice for Dad to have fun once in a while, but only if it doesn’t leave Mom with the kids too long. We can slide into thinking of a man’s time as a zero-sum game in which spending time with friends means taking something away from his wife and children.

Perhaps we instinctively understand C. S. Lewis’s observation in The Four Loves that friendship is the least “necessary” of loves. He explains, “Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship.” We understand that marriage and child-rearing are foundational to human existence and to our responsibility as believers to fulfill the creation mandate.

Without friendship, we may be able to physically survive, but that doesn’t mean we can spiritually thrive. Lewis goes on to explain that while friendship “has no survival value . . . it is one of those things which give value to survival.” He says that friendship is God’s “instrument for creating as well as revealing” beauty in us. And it exhibits a glorious nearness to heaven because it “increases the fruition which each has of God.” Friendship with other believers helps us become more like Christ and know him better.

And if that’s true, then a man spending time with friends has the potential to be a blessing to his family, not a burden, as Samuel James has argued:

Christian men need to see how their obligations of love and loyalty to one another are deeply connected to their roles as husbands and fathers. Your friends are not merely a “break” from home. Rather, in Christian friendship, love and solidarity are shaping you in a way that will reverberate in the hearts of your wife and children.

I would add that Christian wives, too, need to see the value of these connections. When our husbands spend time investing in friendship with other Christian men, we lose some of their time and help. But we can gain in other ways. As our husbands are spurred on in their faith and find rest and refreshment through friendship, Lord willing, they’ll lead and serve our families from a place of greater spiritual health.

Of course, wisdom pursues balance. Just because it’s valuable for men to make time for friendship doesn’t mean they should spend every Saturday on the golf course or in a deer stand. Plenty of men, even Christian men, need to spend more time at home. But the majority of Christian men I know aren’t neglecting their families; if anything, they’re neglecting friendship.

Necessary Correction

I don’t know what it’d take to reverse declines in male friendship at a societal level. But within an individual family, it might be as simple as a wife’s encouragement when her husband mentions meeting a friend for breakfast or joining a pickup basketball game. When I consider why my husband was hesitant to bring up the golf trip last fall, I’d like to blame it on messages from church and culture. If I’m honest though, it has a lot to do with messages he’s received from me.

Without friendship, we may be able to physically survive, but that doesn’t mean we can spiritually thrive.

Particularly when our children were younger, I conveyed in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways that when he spent time away from home, he was burdening me. Yet every time there’s a women’s ministry event at church, my husband gladly takes care of the kids so I can go. Every time a friend asks me to meet for coffee or invites me to a girls’ night, my husband encourages me to say yes. He’s never hesitated with his response or sighed and slumped his shoulders when I’ve wanted to spend time with friends. His sacrificial service is a wonderful example for our sons—and me.

My husband ended up going on that golf trip, and it has led to more opportunities to play with these guys from church. It’s led to more opportunities for connection when they see each other on Sundays and text in their group chat in between. These are guys my husband had known for years at a distance but now counts as friends.

So at the beginning of this year as we planned our family calendar, we reserved days for my husband to play golf. Playing a few more rounds this year will mean he spends a little less time with our family. It’ll mean that I care for our kids solo on a Saturday here and there. But that’s a small price to pay compared to the eternal value of Christian friends.