Parents’ and Children’s Religiosity and Child Behavioral Adjustment Among Maltreated and Nonmaltreated Children

Abstract

We investigated the role of parents' and children's religiosity in behavioral adjustment among maltreated and nonmaltreated children. Data were collected on 170 maltreated and 159 nonmaltreated children from low-income families (mean age = 10 years). We performed dyadic data analyses to examine unique contributions of parents' and children's religiosity and their interaction to predicting child internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. A four group structural equation modeling was used to test whether the structural relations among religiosity predictors and child outcomes differed by child maltreatment status and child gender. We found evidence of parent-child religiosity interaction suggesting that (1) parents' frequent church attendance was related to lower levels of internalizing symptomatology among nonmaltreated children with low church attendance and (2) parents' importance of faith was associated with lower levels of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology among nonmaltreated children with low faith. The results suggest that independent effects of parents' religiosity varied depending on children's religiosity and parent-child relationship.