Religious Bestowment: The Effects of Parenting Style on the Religiosity of Children in Adulthood

Abstract

Adolescents and young adults live in a battlefield of social pressure. One aspect that has been shown to reduce destructive behavior in adolescents and young adults is religion. For this reason, parents list religious commitment in their children as a parenting goal. However, they struggle with knowing which parenting approach will lead to a religious commitment in their children. The goal of this project will be to investigate whether parenting style during adolescence is associated with religious involvement in young adulthood. Following four parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved) included in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this project uses secondary data analysis to look at which parenting style leads to the most religiosity in young adulthood. We find that adolescent children who perceive their parents as authoritative show a greater degree of religiosity as a young adult.