The lay form of the vow, svadara santosha or paradara tyaga depending on the text consulted, translates monastic celibacy into fidelity within marriage and restraint outside it rather than requiring abstinence altogether, following the same graded pattern the other mahavratas show between their full monastic and reduced lay forms, and Jain householder ethics treats this lay version as a genuine, demanding vow in its own right rather than as brahmacharya abandoned for ordinary life.
Padmanabh Jaini's account of gender in Jain spiritual literature notes that brahmacharya has also been a focal point of one of the tradition's most significant internal disputes, the historical division between the Digambara and Svetambara sects over whether a woman can achieve liberation, moksha, in a female body at all, a debate bound up with differing readings of asceticism, physical exposure and the nineteenth Tirthankara Mallinatha's gender across the two textual traditions.
Modern Jain teaching on brahmacharya for lay practitioners increasingly emphasises the vow's connection to self control and mental discipline more broadly, extending its relevance beyond marital conduct narrowly construed to a general orientation of restraint the tradition treats as continuous with, rather than separate from, the ascetic ideal the fully monastic vow represents.