Magister Theologiae - MTh / The aim of the study was to determine what the possibilities are that Ephesians 5:21-24 is misinterpreted when the conclusion is drawn from it that the husband today should be "the head of the wife" and that the wife should "submit" to him. The study assumes that many problems in Christian marriages arise because the biblical guidance with regard to the mandate that the male has in marriage is taken literally. The literature suggests that the average male in the context of the marriage is in crisis, because of the rise of feminism and the emancipation process from a previously male-dominated society. The study attempts to investigate the meaning of Ephesians 5:21-24, and to look for possible answers to questions posed by those who try to be obedient in a fundamentalistic way. To this end the problems of applying an ancient text to modem circumstances are investigated. The exegetical and hermeneutical investigation that follows reaches the conclusion that the passage in Ephesians cannot be used to justify complete male dominance in marriage. It does indeed imply a hierarchy within marriage, but this is relativized by clear statements in the rest of the epistle. There is a tension within the passage itself, but only one aspect has traditionally been emphasized. It is suggested that this one-sided emphasis amounts to a misinterpretation.

This study was done to determine whether maternal employment affected the child's perception of male roles. The study was designed to see if the child viewed the male in a more negative or positive way or if he perceived the male as taking more instrumental or expressive roles when the child's mother was employed. The hypotheses predicted that there would be no difference in the children's perceptions of male roles between mother-employed and mother-not-employed groups, and that there would also be no difference between the sexes on children's perceptions of male roles . The questionnaire was designed with some parts adapted from questionnaires used by Kagan and Lemkin (1960) and Aldous (1 967). The questionnaire made use of drawings of family members which the children pointed to in response to questions about adult roles and sex role perceptions. The children were from Cedar City, Utah . Twenty were children of employed mothers , and 20 were children of non-employed mothers . There were ten girls and ten boys in the employed group and the same in the non-employed group. The data did not permit rejection of the four null hypotheses. There was no significant difference found, with girls or with boys, on the frequency of negative and positive expression of attitudes on male role perception tests of children of employed and non-employed mothers . There was also no difference between the sexes on the frequency of instrumental and expressive responses between the employed and nonemployed groups. Each question was tested by chi square to determine if the distribution was due to chance. On only one question was the probability of a chance distribution rejected. The question dealt with who was the nicest between the mother and the father. When boys' mothers were employed, they viewed the father as the nicest, whereas girls viewed the father as being the nicest when the mother was not employed. When the results were analyzed With all the girls in one group and all of the boys in a different group without regard to maternal employment, some interesting differences were found. The boys perceived the father in a significantly more positive way than did the girls. This was a T-score test which was significant at the .01 level. The boys also viewed the father as taking many more expressive roles than the girls. This was significant at the . 05 level. It was concluded that sex had a greater effect on the child's perceptions of male roles than did maternal employment. (98 pages)