An unbiassed appraisal of the spiritual, moral, pyscho-emotional, social and educational condition of children under 11 in the 21st century West cannot avoid the conclusion that state-run orphanages or, in the case of the more affluent like the Thatchers, boarding schools are no substitute for the love of mum.

Stay-at-home mums in the West know this and their insight costs them. It costs them materially but arguably more painfully it costs them in terms of their social standing.

That is well illustrated by a recent incident at a clergy chapter in the Church of England. A stay-at-home vicar's wife with very busy family commitment prepared a delicious lunch in her home for the deanery clergy. Whilst she was busily serving the food and organising the kitchen, she was asked by one of the clerics present - yes, you've guessed it: 'What do you do?'

It is to be hoped that the GAFCON movement will eventually find its way to affirming the counter-cultural courage of stay-at-home mums. Its latest communique from its conference at Nairobi acknowledges 'differences' in the movement over the role of women in church leadership. But theological views on the ordination of women to the presbyterate and the episcopate do have a bearing on this issue.

Who can honestly deny that the ordination of women, which has mushroomed in the Anglican Communion since the emergence of feminism in the 1960s, affirms careerism rather than domesticity? The clue to its motivating ethos is surely in the timing of the innovation.

Whilst not forbidding married women with children to have a role outside the home, the New Testament unquestionably affirms the importance of female domestic commitments. For example, the Apostle Paul commands Titus, his apostolic delegate on the island of Crete: 'Bid the older women likewise (in equity with what he is to teach the older men in v2) to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited' (Titus 2v3-5 - RSV).

The social disorder that has resulted from Western societies' disregarding Paul's teaching shows that, far from being culturally limited and therefore dispensable, his exhortations to women are indispensable to good order both in the Church and in society.

Married Christian women who choose to serve the Lord Jesus Christ by staying at home and nurturing their young children are in the vanguard of biblical obedience. Whilst they would be unwise to expect socio-political vindication in their own lifetime, whatever system emerges from the collapse of the politically-correct West, if it aspires to be humane, would be wise to follow the trail they blazed and honour their self-sacrifice.

Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, UK and press officer of Reform Sheffield