Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Value of Walking the Walk: The Relation between Family Faith Activities and Emerging Adults' Religiousness

2013; Christian Association for Psychological Studies; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

0733-4273

Carolyn McNamara Barry, Jason M. Prenoveau, Colter L. Diehl,

Religion and Society Interactions

This study investigated the relation between family religious socialization processes (namely, faith activities carried out in the home) during childhood and adolescence and emerging adults' religious practices and beliefs. Using data from a multi-site one-year longitudinal study (N = 551), we found that emerging adults' retrospective view of the frequency of faith activities in the home during their upbringing (reported at Time 1) predicted their religious practices and beliefs one year later at Time 2, above and beyond the contribution of their practices and beliefs at Time 1. This finding varied across gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation group, such that frequency of faith activities predicted religious practices and beliefs for women, Caucasians, and Protestants. This study highlights the continued importance of the primary religious socialization context in emerging adults' religious practices and beliefs, as well as the stability of religious practices and beliefs across one-year during a time that is typically marked by instability.Research has long documented parents' socialization of their children's (Francis & Brown, 1990) and adolescent's faith (Ozorak, 1989), but less work has been done to examine parents' socialization of their emerging adults' (i.e., 18 - 29 years of age) faith. These emerging adults are engaged in heightened exploration of identities, worldviews, relationships, and career paths (Arnett, 2004). As they move out of their childhood home, they enter a multitude of contexts ranging from social to work to school (e.g., local frequented bar, office, and classroom; Settersten & Ray, 2010). In these settings, emerging adults can be exposed to other people's values, beliefs, and behaviors that may sharply contrast with those of their family of origin (Arnett, 2004). The present study investigated how family religious socialization processes growing up may continue to be related to emerging adults' religious practices and beliefs.Emerging adults claim that their religious beliefs are important (Barry & Nelson, 2011), yet these beliefs become more individualized rather than doctrinal (e.g., Arnett & Jensen, 2002). While they claim their beliefs are important, emerging adults often show reduced rates of participation in formal activities (e.g., regular religious service attendance). For the current study, we defined religiousness as involving a search for the sacred within an institution established to promote spirituality, which can be manifested in religious beliefs as well as practices (Pargament, Mahoney, Exline, Jones, & Shafranske, 2013).Despite changes in religiousness across the emerging-adult years, it is likely that previous experiences from childhood and adolescence, including their family experiences, have contributed to emerging adults' current levels of religiousness. According to Vaidyanathan (2011), various resources-such as parents, church communities, religious schooling and youth groups-contribute to sustained religious participation over time. Vaidyanathan (2011) delineates that these various religious resources can be viewed in a differential return framework, whereby some resources may be essential to development of persistent religious participation in one religious affiliation group but matter little in another group.By the third decade of life, emerging adults have encountered a large array of religious socialization agents. However, since families are the primary contexts for religious socialization (Smith, 2003), the current study focused on the way in which family context during childhood and adolescence may continue to play a role in emerging adults' religiousness. There are both concurrent (Smith, 2009) and retrospective (Arnett & Jensen, 2002) studies that document the relation between parents' religiousness and their emerging adults' religiousness. However, scholars have examined the developmental processes outside of the home (e. …