Where in the bible does it say that a man should put his wife 1st, before children?

Your question is of considerable interest to me, for personal reasons... so I did some digging, to see what I could come up with.

What I found were lots of *assertions* that spouse should come before children, but not one Bible verse to back this up. So I kept looking, and found that no one cites either the Catholic Catechism (of interest to you) or the Lutheran Confessions (of interest to me), nor are the church fathers cited. It's just something everyone says, and no one seems to give good grounds for it.

If you think of the family as the domestic church, the idea of wife before children doesn't really add up. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church...." Does Christ love the Church at the expense of us, her children? Does that dichotomy even make sense? If the Catholic faith tells us that children are a product of the love the husband has for his wife, can his love for his wife be against what that love produced?

I can only conclude that favoring one over the other inherently violates the sacrament of marriage. If it becomes utterly necessary (as it was in my case, to choose my children), then that is a consequence of the sinful condition we live in, and never part of God's perfect plan for us. It is a thing to repent for, not to try to justify with a scriptural proof-text.

Those are my thoughts, for whatever it's worth!

Meow

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."