Dr. Val FarmerDr.Val
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Rural Mental Health & Family Relationships

Parents Teach Religion Through Bonding

April 7, 2002

How do parents raise their children to internalize and value religious beliefs?

They don't do it by staying home from church. Regular church attendance by the family when the children are young is the greatest predictor of church involvement when children reach adulthood.

Is that it? Just go to church and the children will embrace the religion? Well, not exactly.

The quality of parent/child bonding makes a big difference in religious attitudes. Brigham Young University psychologist Allen Bergin and his colleagues found this truth in a study of family influences and college student church participation. When parents meet their children's needs, show high warmth and acceptance, and foster mutual affection and involvement, they have greater ability to persuade and influence their children.

Children identify with their parents and with their parent's beliefs and values. They accept discipline, values and structure from parents when bonds are strong. Students who had internalized religious values described their parents as being both high in warmth and high in control. Their parents had firm and clear standards about right and wrong actions.

Students reported that their parents did not use physical punishment but used verbal reprimands, explanations and consequences as their discipline technique. Mistakes were regarded as developmental and normal. Consistent family worship and tradition had created meaning and taught values.

What turns kids off to religion? What kind of parenting has a negative impact on a child's adoption of religious values?

- Overzealous parents whose obsession with religion carries with it rigid expectations that their children should be perfect.

Children's needs are subordinated to the needs and demands of the parents and/or the church. Open expressions of feelings and honest self-disclosure are not encouraged. Parents are highly critical and punishing of mistakes and weaknesses.

Dropping out or openly rebelling would have too many social costs. Children raised in such an environment are more likely to be rigid or passive, less able to deal with an emotional crisis and have difficulty with intimacy.

- Parents whose harshness or neglect fosters anger, conflict or alienation in their children.

Without an emotional bond, children are more likely to resist parental discipline, teachings and values. Children who grow up in homes observing conflict between their parents are less likely to have strong internal religious beliefs as adults.

Children reap the social rewards of conforming while privately chafing under the standards so rigidly imposed on them. They are angry. They identify with other church youths who are less inwardly committed while maintaining their outward image. It is hard for children to identify with a religion when they don't see or feel the benefits in the family.

- Parents whose own involvement with religion is based on status, security, image, social opportunity or other surface reasons.

They teach their children that the opinions of others matter. Appearance is more important than substance. Children take the same external approach to religion as their parents. At critical points in their life they will bend to social pressures rather than display moral courage based on internal values.

- Parents who struggle to live up to their religious tenets but try to keep their image by keeping family secrets.

The children also adopt their parents' "looking good" strategy of hiding shame and imperfections from community and church members. What is happening in the home and family doesn't come out. The children are confused. Honesty and openness are sacrificed in the interest of appearances.

Other factors that influence children. The best tool parents can use to help children internalize religious belief's and attitudes is their own approach to religion, mutual affection and bonding, and modeling a contented and happy marriage.

Here are some other ideas that might help children identify with religious values:

- Identification and participation with friends of the same standards within the church.

- Exposure to parental and adult conversation about religious values, ideas and experiences.

- Exposure to positive adult role models within the church who care about them individually and take an active interest in their lives.

- Participation in service and spiritual activities with other youth.

- Participation in religious education programs that teach basic gospel understanding.

Benefits of bringing up children in the faith. In a companion study, Bergin found that college students who came from backgrounds of benevolent child rearing, continuous religious development and mild religious experiences show greater mental health and have backgrounds without common adolescent turbulence.

When religious values are transferred through benevolent child rearing practices, children have greater emotional security and lifetime coping skills that enhance meaning, growth and adjustment. They have a sense of direction, destiny, purpose and meaning that is helpful in coping with stress and trauma.

Religious college students perceive their families to be more happy, warm and accepting than do non-religious students. Religion helps their self-esteem if the students’ religious belief is internal and not based on conformity. They show greater concern for moral standards, conscientiousness, discipline, responsibility and consistency than those whose involvement is either out of conformity or non-religious.

When college students practice their faith, they enjoy greater personal growth, achievement, stability, avoidance of a harmful lifestyle, and family cohesion. Religion encourages sensitivity to others, empathy, and more openness to emotions. Finally, in terms of adjustment, young adults who have internalized their religious values have less trait anxiety, more ego strength, more self control, better personality functioning, less paranoia and insecurity, and more integrated social behavior than those who have not.