Living Your Faith: Associations Between Family and Personal Religious Practices and Emerging Adults’ Sexual Behavior

Abstract

As emerging adults recenter (Tanner and Arnett in Debating emerging adulthood: Stage or process? Oxford University Press, New York, pp 13–30, 2011) their relationships with their family, they may retain some values and behaviors, while they disregard others temporarily or even for good. In the current study, we investigated whether emerging adults’ personal and family religious practices contribute to sexual intercourse within and outside a committed relationship cross-sectionally and over 1 year. College students completed questionnaires (NT1 = 779; NT2 = 538). Using hierarchical logistic regressions on sexual intercourse within and outside a committed relationship at Time 1, family and personal religious practices predicted sexual intercourse within and outside a committed relationship; the family × personal religious practices interaction was also significant. Hierarchical logistic regressions showed that for Time 1 virgins (N = 286), only sexual permissive attitudes predicted sexual intercourse within and outside a committed relationship at Time 2. Thus, the current study’s findings supported this important developmental shifting that promotes emerging adults’ individuation.