Religious Parents Research Articles

Religion and earnings: Is it good to be an atheist with religious parental background?

Using German employee data, we find that being raised by two religious parents and having no current religious affiliation is associated with higher earnings. This conforms to the hypothesis that people who are raised religiously and reject religion as adults are economically more successful as they combine a strong internalized work ethic with an increased interest in present consumption (as opposed to afterlife consumption).

Joyful Moments of Sorrow

This autoethnography describes my coming out as an atheist to my religious parents. The joy and freedom of outing oneself is contrasted with the diffi culty of the process. This moment of outing is one of joy, though a joy not absent of sorrow. The experience of freeing myself from the religious closet offers an opportunity to refl ect on what a complicated (and autoethnographic) version of joy might look like.

Authoritative Parenting and the Transmission of Religion in the Netherlands: A Panel Study

This study was designed to explore the effect of authoritative parenting, over and above the effect of explicitly religious parenting practices, on the juvenile and adult church attendance of offspring. Data were collected as part of a panel study in which 474 Dutch respondents were questioned in 1983 as youths and in 2007 as adults. In 2007 the respondents retrospectively answered questions about how they were raised by their parents. Analyses revealed that juvenile church attendance depends mainly on parental and more specifically on maternal church attendance, whereas adult church attendance is largely an outcome of juvenile church attendance. No effects of an authoritative parenting style, that is, a simultaneous effect of responsiveness, strict control, and the granting of psychological autonomy as the three dimensions of authoritative parenting distinguished in this study, were observed. Only the dimension of strict control turned out to be a negative determinant of adult church attendance.

Socioeconomic Determinants of First Names

AbstractModern naming practices in the Netherlands between 1982 and 2005 were studied on the basis of 1409 popular first names, divided into fourteen name groups determined by the common preferences of parents for the names involved. Socioeconomic variables such as family income, parents' level of education, and lifestyle indicators were analyzed in relation to the names — and name groups — of the children in 281,751 households. Naming practices could be described on two independent dimensions. The first of these was education and family income: parents with lower incomes and levels of education preferred English, Italian, Spanish, and international names, while those with higher incomes and levels of education chose predominantly Dutch, Frisian, Nordic, Hebrew, and French names. A second dimension distinguished between conservative and religious parents with a preference for traditional names, and trendy parents who favored shorter and modern names. The complex nature of the relationship between social class and naming practice, and its dynamics, is discussed.

Social Networks and Parental Behavior in the Intergenerational Transmission of Religion

We analyze the intergenerational transmission of the strength of religion focusing on the interplay between family and peer effects. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that both peer quality and parental effort are of importance for the religious behavior of the children. We then bring the model to the data by using a very detailed dataset of adolescent friendship networks in the United States. We find that, for religious parents, the higher is the fraction of religious peers, the more parents put effort in transmitting their religiosity, indicating cultural complementarity. For non-religious parents, we obtain the reverse, indicating cultural substitutability. Concerning the success in transmitting the religious trait, we find that, for religious parents, the fraction of religious peers has only an indirect effect (through parental effort) while, for non-religious parents, there is a lower indirect effect and a statistically significant and sizeable direct effect of peers on the transmission of the non-religious trait.

Trance (review)

Reviewed by: Trance Claire Gross Gerber, Linda. Trance. Speak/Penguin, 2010. [308p.] Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-14-241415-6 $7.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-12. Following the car accident that killed her mother, Ashlyn struggles to put her life back in order in the face of her father's emotional distance and the disappearance of her older sister, Kyra. Ashlyn and Kyra have always shared premonitory "trances," visions of images and numbers that they can only decipher in concert, a skill that their religious parents have always regarded with unease. As Ashlyn searches for Kyra and sorts through her guilt over her mother's death, a new co-worker (who happens to be a numerology aficionado) gives Ashlyn the tools she needs to finally decipher her trances. The inherent mysteries of this setup—how did the visions fail to predict Ashlyn's mother's death? Where is Kyra? What does the latest vision mean?—drive the plot, but they are less interesting than the conflict between the girls' powers and the sense of stigma they've internalized from their parents and the world around them. Gerber convincingly portrays a family stretched thin by extraordinary circumstances, and the small ways in which Ashlyn attempts to connect to her father (in the present) and mother (in flashbacks) add depth to her character. Unfortunately, the narrative skims over the details of her grief and self-blame, focusing instead on the strain her secrecy places on a nascent romantic relationship and on her attempts at solo interpretation of a new vision which points its peril uncomfortably close to home. Still, the bait-and-switch ending neatly ties up numerous threads in a satisfyingly suspenseful resolution, and fans of secret-power fantasies will find fresh ideas throughout. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Who spares the rod? Religious orientation, social conformity, and child abuse potential

Objective Relatively little research has investigated the connection between religiosity and physical child abuse risk. Certain aspects, such as specific religious orientation or beliefs, and cognitive schema, such as socially conformist beliefs, may account for the connection that some have claimed increase religious parents’ abuse potential. The current study examined whether greater Extrinsic religiosity, but not Intrinsic religiosity, was associated with elevated physical abuse potential. Those who hold a literal interpretation of the Bible and attend church more frequently were also expected to evidence increased abuse risk. Additionally, the role of social conformity in mediating or moderating the association between religiosity and abuse potential was investigated. Methods Two hundred and seven regularly attending Christians of various denominations completed self-report measures of religiosity, social conformity, and child abuse potential. Results Findings indicate that Extrinsic religiosity was associated with increased physical abuse potential, with greater social conformity further moderating this association. Intrinsic religious orientation was not associated with abuse risk. Further, those who consider the Bible to be literally true were more socially conformist and evidenced greater abuse risk. Conclusions For those working with religious parents, the particular nature of religiosity needs to be considered when interpreting a connection between religiosity and abuse risk, as well as the potential attitudes the parent holds regarding the need for conformity. Given the complexity of religiosity, future research should explore other potential mediating and moderating factors that could further clarify its connection to physical abuse risk. Practice implications Clarifying how religiosity relates to child abuse risk has implications for professionals working with the vast numbers of parents for whom religion is a visible force in their daily lives. Findings from the present study suggest that professionals should consider the underlying motivation for an individual's religion as well as the importance the individual places on conformity. Religiosity per se may not be as critical to predicting physical abuse risk as selected approaches to religion or particular attitudes the religious individual assumes in their daily life.

Religious Charter Schools: Gaining Ground Yet Still Undefined

This article examines charter schools from the perspective of religious institutions and parents that may want to open such schools. Religion-based charter schools also pose unique policy and legal questions because charter schools are a singular reform method. It examines the relevant, recent and historical, legal cases, and relevant examples of charter schools that relate to religions in some way. It also provides a chart to provide the reader with a general understanding with what activities are and are not permitted by the United States Constitution. Because the Establishment Clause draws a line that is far from clear, any list of permissible and non-permissible activities of faith-based charter schools is discussed in broad strokes.

The Transformative Role of Religious Experience: The Case of Short-Term Missions

Sociologists have long sought to understand the relationship between collective experiences and individual commitments. This article examines the short-term mission as an institutionalized religious experience, assessing its prevalence, predictors and impact on the religious trajectories of the youth who participate in them. Religiously devout adolescents are more likely than others to go on a short-term mission as are younger adolescents and those with very religious parents. Applying propensity score matching to a nationally representative longitudinal sample of American adolescents, we find that adolescents who go on a short-term mission between interview waves report increased religious participation and solidified religious beliefs. We use the example of this experience to emphasize the importance of considering religious experiences to develop more nuanced understandings of the way religion shapes the beliefs and behaviors of individuals.

‘Religious Parents… Just Want the Best for Their Kids’: Young People’s Perspectives on the Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parenting

Challenging some of the current predominantly negative representations of the effects of religion on young people requires further research into faith and family life, particularly from the perspective of young people themselves. This article presents a preliminary report of a study of 40 young people, mostly Christians and Muslims, aged 13–15 years. Three themes – defining religion, religious parenting and life in a religious family – are illustrated with reference to data collected from discussion groups in six schools and recent research literature. We conclude that religion still provides a positive influence on family life and parenting from the perspective of young people.

Religion and the Daily Lives of LDS Families: An Ecological Perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore in detail how religion and family religious rituals affect the day‐to‐day activities of individual and family life. It includes qualitative analysis of interviews with highly religious parents and children in 67 families that belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints. Findings suggest that for this sample, religion was more than an external influence; it was viewed as an integral part of one's individual, familial, structural, and social systems. This finding warrants a closer look at traditional human ecological theory which suggests that religion is primarily an external influence. A conceptual model illustrates how this sample experienced religious integration into their everyday life. Limitations and implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.

Identity Agents: Parents as Active and Reflective Participants in Their Children's Identity Formation

The paper introduces the concept ofidentity agents. This concept refers to those individuals who actively interact with children and youth with the intention of participating in their identity formation, and who reflectively mediate larger social influences on identity formation. This contrasts with the focus of mainstream research in the identity field that tends to portray adolescents as the sole reflective agents involved in mature identity development. The paper presents a theoretical analysis presenting the importance of the concept for the formulation of a comprehensive contextual theory of identity formation. The particulars of this concept are illustrated through the presentation of a qualitative report of religious parents actively encouraging their children's processes of identification, co‐participating in their children's identity's formation, and reflectively deliberating their parental roles and goals in regards to this process.

Talking About Religion

This study builds on previous research regarding parent-child religious conversations to explore the transactional processes of these conversations. It employs qualitative analyses of interviews with highly religious parents and adolescents representing the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) from New England and Northern California. Variations in conversational processes are summarized in a conceptual model. Findings suggest that when parent-adolescent religious conversations are youth centered, the emotional experience is more positive for parents and adolescents than when they are parent centered. Parents from both traditional and progressive faith communities reported that they understood the value of transactional conversation processes over a more hierarchical, preachy, or parent-centered approach.

Accepting the Unacceptable: Religious Parents and Adult Gay and Lesbian Children

The study analyzed parental acceptance of adult gay and lesbian children. The sample (N = 59) included religiously oriented parents who had associated with groups such as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, affirmative parents who attended groups such as Parents, Families and Friends of Gays and Lesbians, and parents who had not affiliated with any support group. Results indicated that differences between groups vis-à-vis acceptance of sexual orientation were significant. Religiously oriented subjects nevertheless accepted their children. Parents in each group stated that the process of learning and speaking to others helped them cope and accept what they could not change. This paradox in acceptance calls assumptions about “anti-gay” groups and organizations into question.

Nomen Est Omen

Nomen Est Omen Warren S. Poland She was his granddaughter and he was her grandfather, but since her birth they had lived far apart and knew each other only from a distance. Then, when she was four, her parents brought her for a two-week family visit. For the first time they could get to know each other as "my granddaughter" and "my grandfather." They began what he hoped would become a happy lifelong conversation. After she returned to her own home, the grandfather telephoned her to keep the connection alive. "Hi, Beautiful," he began when first she took the phone. He called the following week, and again she remembered and welcomed him, engaging in another satisfying conversation. Again, with enthusiasm he greeted her, "Hello, Beautiful." But when a third week passed and yet again he called, the little girl refused to take the phone. It took several days before she revealed to her parents the reason for her refusal. "He calls me Beautiful," she said. "He doesn't know my name." Clinical analysis of manifest grandiosity in an adult often reveals an underlying sense of fraudulence in those persistently over-praised in childhood. Seeing oneself recognized as identifiably unique is crucial to the crystallization of a true sense of self. Everyone has a name, and that name carries a history. It is a history of those the name was meant to represent and those it excluded from representing, as well as being a history of those who gave the name and how they felt about the newly named person. One's sense of oneself is shaped in part by the influences behind the name. Indeed, as with the little girl who would not [End Page 129] take the telephone, the name can be a crucial aspect of one's coming to know oneself as a distinct person. It was only after I had known this English professor for many years, long after we had become good friends and confidants, that one evening after a few drinks he disclosed to me his feeling of alienation from his own name. Whenever someone called out, "Robert!," the name by which I always knew him, he turned in response, but he said this was only because he had trained himself to do so. Born in the middle of the last century, he was the first child of East European immigrants. His parents must have been torn between their love for their new world and their longings for their old, and in particular painfully gripped by missing their own parents and their own extended families left behind and lost behind in Europe. He had no doubt how deeply his parents loved each other, yet he knew that having to name him had awakened terrible conflicts in each, conflicts that spilled over between the two. Each wanted the beloved new son to have a name that memorialized and honored that parent's forebears, and the fight between the two could not be resolved by the time after delivery that mother and child were discharged from the hospital. As a result, the original birth certificate named the baby "Baby Boy Goldberg." The intensity of the feelings was reflected in the compromise finally accepted as a resolution to the parental dilemma. In English, the first name would be given to reflect one parent's family, with the middle name deriving from the other parent's family. Then in Hebrew, which mattered to the religious parents, the order would be reversed. And finally, to see that neither side had advantage over the other, on a daily basis the lad would be called "Buddy," a nickname neutral to all. The system worked well even when the boy started school, indeed for long afterward. Robert knew that teachers would call him by that name, but he took it as one of the many oddities of the school world, like sitting at his classroom desk with hands folded or like doing homework. It never went beyond that, for even his friends still called him "Buddy." [End Page 130] However, somewhere in middle or late adolescence, my then young friend decided he was no longer a mere "Buddy" but was a real...

Religion, Parental Choice, and School Vouchers in Urban Parochial Schools: The Case of Five Schools in Southern California

The purpose of this study is to investigate why parents choose parochial schools, whether parochial-school parents are likely to favor school vouchers, and what factors lie behind their support for vouchers. To this end, this study gives special attention to parents' personal religiosity. The sample of parents was taken from five large Protestant schools in the greater Los Angeles area. The results show that the parochial schools tend to serve families who are more financially secure and have higher educational status compared with families served by public schools. The parochial schools also mostly attract religious parents with strong doctrinal beliefs and regular religious practice. These parents seek out religious education due to their desire to provide their children with religious education, in addition to academic excellence and safe and drug-free schooling, and thus strongly expect the schools to give special emphasis to religious education. These parents tend to take neutral or, at best, moderately supportive positions toward school vouchers. This study also finds reason to doubt the claim that urban parents endorse the proposal for school vouchers primarily due to their aspiration for academic quality and safe and drug-free schools. Instead, parental perception of whether the church champions school vouchers takes precedence over the importance of all other factors.

In Defense of Conditional Funding of Religious Schools

The Article defends against various objections, the practice of funding religious schools and other faith-based social service providers, but only on condition that they comply with various public regulations and requirements. Critics of conditional funding—including Moshe Cohen- Eliya—argue that conditional funding is coercive and unfair to poorer religious parents, is often divisive or ineffective, and it threatens the autonomy and integrity of religious communities by putting a price on (or increasing the cost of) some of their religious practices; it would be better simply to prohibit the disfavored educational practices targeted by funding conditionalities. I argue that typical funding conditionalities are not objectionably coercive as long as they are designed to advance defensible public purposes. Unfairness to the poor should be addressed by general redistributive policies. The Article allows that funding conditionalities might undermine religious communities’ integrity, and cause social divisions, but that these concerns are speculative and not an adequate basis for disallowing in advance conditional public funding of faith-based institutions.

In Defense of Conditional Funding of Religious Schools

The Article defends against various objections, the practice of funding religious schools and other faith-based social service providers, but only on condition that they comply with various public regulations and requirements. Critics of conditional funding—including Moshe Cohen- Eliya—argue that conditional funding is coercive and unfair to poorer religious parents, is often divisive or ineffective, and it threatens the autonomy and integrity of religious communities by putting a price on (or increasing the cost of) some of their religious practices; it would be better simply to prohibit the disfavored educational practices targeted by funding conditionalities. I argue that typical funding conditionalities are not objectionably coercive as long as they are designed to advance defensible public purposes. Unfairness to the poor should be addressed by general redistributive policies. The Article allows that funding conditionalities might undermine religious communities’ integrity, and cause social divisions, but that these concerns are speculative and not an adequate basis for disallowing in advance conditional public funding of faith-based institutions.

Dynamic models of religious conformity and conversion: Theory and calibrations

This paper develops overlapping generations models to explain and simulate changes in the proportion of secular and religious people. The church is modeled as generating an externality associated with “conformity-enhancing” education. Observed changes in the number of nonbelievers are explained by different birth rates among secular and religious parents and the relative proportion of young nonconformists. Calibrations for the conformity rates among secular and religious people show that the observed long-run increase in the difference between percentage of secular people in Europe and the United States can be attributed to lower conformity rates prevailing in Europe.

Wildwood Flowers: The Carter Family

Wildwood Flowers The Carter Family Bland Simpson Click for larger view Figure 1 The Carter Family didn't sing or play anything that couldn't be put on at a church. The group's Old Family Melodies, courtesy of Wilson Library's Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Carters started small, singing in churches . . . Alvin Pleasant Carter, born in 1891, sang in a quartet with two uncles and a sister in churches around Clinch Mountain in southwest Virginia. People called him A. P., or Doc. He learned to play the fiddle, but his religious parents would not allow the devil's box at home. Sara Dougherty, born in 1898, lived right over Clinch from A. P. with an aunt and a fiddling uncle. She learned guitar and banjo and autoharp. A. P. came over Clinch on a selling trip, drumming for a fruit tree company, and there over the mountain he found Sara accompanying herself with an autoharp as she sang "Engine 143." In June of 1915, A. P. and. Sara married. A. P. had a brother Ezra. Sara had a singing, music-playing cousin Maybelle Addington. In 1926 Ezra Carter married the seventeen-year-old Maybelle. Sara sang a husky lead, Maybelle sang an alto harmony, and A. P. sang bass. These three were the original Carter Family of Maces Springs, Poor Valley, Virginia. The Bristol News Bulletin, Wednesday, July 27, 1927, announced that producer Ralph Peer from the Victor Record label would be in Bristol, the city split down [End Page 135] the middle by the Tennessee and Virginia state line, for a week to ten days, seeking local talent to make commercial recordings of country and mountain dance music and songs. Brunswick Records had already offered "Fiddlin' Doc" and Sara a contract to record square-dance tunes, but they'd turned it down—hadn't wanted to upset A. P.'s churchy folks. But that'd been years before, and the Carter Family didn't sing or play anything that couldn't be put on in a church. It was family singing, truth telling, heartstring tugging. It wasn't dancing. The Carters agreed. Yes, let's go. But Bristol was twenty-five miles away, over mud-holed, rutted dirt roads. Maybelle was seven months pregnant. Ezra Carter said no, but A. P. made a deal with him: you let Maybelle go with us to meet the record man and I'll nub out some new ground for you. Ezra gave in. They loaded up Maybelle, swollen belly and all, and A. P. and Sara's eight-year-old Gladys and baby Joe, still at Sara's breast, and A. P. and Sara themselves all in a Model A Ford. They lit out over the bad roads and the family car broke down in the middle of a stream on the way. But it being summer and the streams being down that time of year, A. P. got out and got his feet wet and got the car to running again. Take more than a busted Model A to stop strong mountain stock like the Carters came from. They made it into Bristol and met Peer, who took them into his makeshift studios at 410 State Street, the old Anderson & Carr building, where he'd hung rugs on the walls for soundproofing . . . In the first days of August 1927, they recorded "Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow" and "The Storms Are on the Ocean." That was the beginning. A. P. scoured the hills looking for tunes for the Carters to record. Some folks outright gave A. P. tunes. Others sold him tunes for a few dollars—old tunes, pieces of tunes, ideas for tunes. And A. P. carried with him on these collecting jaunts a guitarist friend from Kingsport, Tennessee, a black man named Lesley Riddles. Riddles helped Maybelle as she developed her thumb-brush, hammer-on, pull-off guitar style that became the instrumental stamp of the Carter Family's music. Maybelle...