My husband is a private criminal defense attorney who does a large number of contract cases for the local public defender, and at least 40% of his time is on abuse and neglect cases representing parents or children, depending on where the need is when he's called. It is good to know there are some who pray for his kind of work (I'm his secretary as well as his wife) because these are some very dark parts of the world to interact in. Thank you for that.

By the way, I think your thoughtful post about this issue is great. We all need to think of these things as we go through life - both as parents and as children. How to be righteous in God's eyes is always a good question to ponder.

God does not have grandchildren. Assuming rebellion means walking away from God and rejecting salvation through Jesus' work on the cross, we as parents cannot force our children not to rebel and to have a life-long heart for Jesus. God took the risk of the pain of watching his children rebel when he created us, and we have that same risk relative to the children he gives us.

It is a bit of the spiritual nature vs. nurture dilema. Every human being is born with a sinful rebellious nature (see Romans chapters 1 - 3). We know that as parents we have the responsibilty to teach them the ways of God (Proverbs, Ephesians 6, Timothy, and many other reference). But the righteousness of an individual is much more attributable to the work of the Holy Spirit in their life than to the influence of their parents. And the choice to invite the Holy Spirit in cannot be made for you, so your openness to being influenced by the Holy Spirit is purely an individual choice, not a parental choice.

If, however rebellion is defined as sin even in the presence of true faith, well, I refer to Romans 1 - 3 again, and say we are all raising rebellious children.