Paul Carrington explains in this video that God tells us what the purpose of the family is. The family is to be a community of love whose members glorify and honor God. One way parents can do this is by instructing their children in the ways of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4 (NKJV) - "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord."

In Genesis chapter 18, when the Lord is speaking to Abraham, and he makes this comment, the Lord speaking of his servant, he says, For I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice." And so the Lord very clearly does tell us what the purpose of the family is. Right here you can hardly find a more clear understanding and teaching as to what the Lord thinks about the family and the purpose of the family. Really the family is a community of love even as something that's able to exist after the fall with the help of the Lord. It's a wonderful institution. And you think about how all of us really have our entire story really embedded and built around our family for good or for bad, depending on our experiences and the way that we've been brought up.

But the primary intention that God assigns and the real purpose is that we would honor and glorify God in our families. And the way that we do that as parents is that we instruct our children in the ways of the Lord, we teach them, we understand that we cannot save them, that they must be born again, but the Lord is pleased to use means to do that. And so he uses parents that he might have new creations growing up and going out into the world and glorifying Him in a variety of different ways.