An analysis of the Communio data found that higher levels of religious involvement and positive family experiences during childhood were associated with increased religious participation in adulthood. Children who frequently discussed their faith with their parents tended to attend religious services more often as adults and were more likely to pass on their faith to their children. The paper was published in. Religious Science Research Journal.
Religion and spirituality are central parts of many people’s lives. They form people’s moral frameworks, inform their commitments, and guide their actions, while supporting many aspects of their health and well-being. As concepts, religiosity and spirituality are related but not the same. Religiousness refers to the extent to which a person believes in, practices, and identifies with an organized religion. Spirituality is broader and typically refers to a person’s search for meaning, connection, transcendence, peace of mind, or a relationship with something larger than themselves.
Religiosity and spirituality both help people make sense of suffering, anxiety, loss, and major life transitions. They can provide comfort, hope, emotional regulation, and a sense that life has meaning. Religious and spiritual communities can also provide social support, shared values, identity, and practical assistance during difficult times. Although they can be psychologically beneficial, they can also cause distress when combined with guilt, fear, exclusion, or conflict.
Study author Julia S. Nakamura and colleagues investigated how religious and family experiences in childhood shape religious and relationship outcomes in adulthood. Researchers focused on seven early childhood factors: parental marital status, conversations about faith with parents, attendance at religious services during childhood, attendance at mother/father’s religious services, and quality of relationship with mother/father.
They also examined conversations with their children about five adult outcomes: attendance at religious services, faith, forgiveness, belonging, and marital status. The study authors hypothesized that strong religious involvement in childhood, a healthy family structure, and a positive relationship quality with parents would be associated with increased religious involvement and better relationship outcomes in adulthood.
Researchers analyzed data from Communio, a faith-based nonprofit organization focused on strengthening relationships and families within church communities. Data were obtained from 16,548 members of 32 Catholic and Protestant congregations across the United States, with approximately 54% of study participants being Protestant and 60% of participants being female.
Study participants reported their parents’ marital status (“Were your biological mother and father married to each other?”), how much they talked about their faith with their parents as children, how often they attended religious services with their parents around the age of 12, and the quality of their relationship with their parents (“Think about your relationship with your mother/father when you were a child. Would you say that relationship was very good, somewhat good, somewhat bad, or very bad?”).
Study participants also reported how often they currently attend religious services (“How often do you attend Mass/church services?”), how often they have open conversations with their children that encourage their Christian faith, their sense of belonging to their church community (“How would you describe your sense of belonging to your church community?”), and their marital status. They also answered a single-item question to assess dispositional forgiveness (“I have forgiven those who have hurt me”).
Results showed that 71% of participants reported growing up in an intact family (or 83% of participants who responded to that specific question). 40% reported attending religious services once a week as children, and 25% reported attending at least once a week. 23% reported having conversations about faith with their parents once or a few times a year, and 16% said they had conversations monthly or several times a month. 41% said they had a “very” good relationship with their father, and 51% said they had a “very” good relationship with their mother.
Additionally, participants whose parents were never married to each other were less likely to have conversations about faith with their children later in life and less likely to marry as adults. Interestingly, those whose parents divorced before the age of 18 reported higher levels of tolerance.
Further analysis found that participants who attended religious services more frequently as children tended to attend religious services more frequently as adults. However, parental religious attendance showed contrasting patterns by parent. Although frequent father attendance was associated with more frequent attendance among participants in adulthood, frequent maternal attendance was actually associated with slightly “less frequent” attendance among adults.
The researchers noted that communication was the strongest predictor of outcome in adults. People who had more frequent conversations about faith with their parents as children tended to talk about faith more often with their children, attend religious services more often as adults, and report higher tolerance and a stronger sense of belonging to the church. Finally, results showed that people who reported good relationships with their fathers tended to report higher forgiveness and a stronger sense of belonging to their church community, but talked less frequently about their faith with their children.
“Our findings contribute to a growing body of research showing that the transmission of faith is not just a matter of early childhood RSA (religious service attendance), but is also deeply embedded in interpersonal and experiential contexts. The role of faith conversations with parents is particularly influential. “This may be a contributing factor, potentially reinforcing the importance of early-life kinship factors in shaping later religious involvement and future relationships, but further research is needed to confirm these findings,” the study authors concluded.
This study contributes to scientific knowledge about the intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs and practices. However, it should be noted that all data in this study were self-reported, leaving room for reporting and recall biases to influence the results. Additionally, all study participants were members of current congregations and therefore may be more religious than the general population. This limits the generalizability of our findings.
The paper, “The Association between Early Childhood Experiences and Religious and Relational Outcomes in Adulthood Among Protestants and Catholics in the United States,” was authored by Julia S. Nakamura, J.P. de Gance, Isaiah Contu, Katherine C.H. Yang, Rachel S. Lyon, Richard G. Cowden, Caitlin N.G. Long, and Tyler J. Vanderweele.
