Religion is Good for Kids?

Roisin Dubh
Roisin Dubh's picture
Posts: 428
Joined: 2007-02-11
User is offlineOffline
Religion is Good for Kids?

Study: Religion is Good for Kids

Melinda Wenner
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Tue Apr 24, 10:45 AM ET

Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development.

The conflict that arises when parents regularly argue over their faith at home, however, has the opposite effect.

John Bartkowski, a Mississippi State University sociologist and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 kids, most of them first-graders, to rate how much self control they believed the kids had, how often they exhibited poor or unhappy behavior and how well they respected and worked with their peers.

The researchers compared these scores to how frequently the children’s parents said they attended worship services, talked about religion with their child and argued abut religion in the home.

The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents.

But when parents argued frequently about religion, the children were more likely to have problems. “Religion can hurt if faith is a source of conflict or tension in the family,” Bartkowski noted.

Why so good?

Bartkowski thinks religion can be good for kids for three reasons. First, religious networks provide social support to parents, he said, and this can improve their parenting skills. Children who are brought into such networks and hear parental messages reinforced by other adults may also “take more to heart the messages that they get in the home,” he said.

Secondly, the types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family, Bartkowski told LiveScience. These “could be very, very important in shaping how parents relate to their kids, and then how children develop in response,” he said.

Finally, religious organizations imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance, he said.

University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who was not involved in the study, agrees. At least for the most religious parents, “getting their kids into heaven is more important than getting their kids into Harvard,” Wilcox said.

But as for why religious organizations might provide more of a boost to family life than secular organizations designed to do the same thing, that’s still somewhat of a mystery, said Annette Mahoney, a psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, also not involved in the research. Mahoney wondered: “Is there anything about religion and spirituality that sets it apart?”

Unanswered questions

Bartkowski points out that one limitation of his study, to be published in the journal Social Science Research, is that it did not compare how denominations differed with regards to their effects on kids.

“We really don’t know if conservative Protestant kids are behaving better than Catholic kids or behaving better than mainline Protestant kids or Jewish kids,” he said.

It’s also possible that the correlation between religion and child development is the other way around, he said. In other words, instead of religion having a positive effect on youth, maybe the parents of only the best behaved children feel comfortable in a religious congregation.

“There are certain expectations about children’s behavior within a religious context, particularly within religious worship services,” he said. These expectations might frustrate parents, he said, and make congregational worship “a less viable option if they feel their kids are really poorly behaved.”

"The powerful have always created false images of the weak."


itsjustinf
Posts: 19
Joined: 2007-03-18
User is offlineOffline
what about kids whose

what about kids whose parents don't attend any church, but also don't argue over faith?  did they neglect to think about that instance?  also, any frequent arguing between parents is going to affect the children, not just arguing over religion.


djneibarger
Superfan
djneibarger's picture
Posts: 564
Joined: 2007-04-13
User is offlineOffline
i suppose threatening your

i suppose threatening your child with eternal suffering and damnation in the flaming pits of hell might keep them in line. until they wise up and hate you for scaring them with such ridiculous bs.

www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens


Edger
Posts: 104
Joined: 2007-01-14
User is offlineOffline
"the types of values and

"the types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family"

lol. Sure, like telling little Billy that he doesn't need to hate homosexuals because God already has it covered, or that he should feel sorry for non-Christians because they're all going to Hell.

"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the most over-used example of tacit Christian bigotry. Not what I'd call self-sacrificing, pro-family, or morally sound. 


RationalSchema
RationalSchema's picture
Posts: 358
Joined: 2007-02-12
User is offlineOffline
I have responded to this

I have responded to this article before.

Two major flaws.

1. They did not compare the parents to parents who were involved in secular organizations that stressed similar belief systems (i.e., the golden rule, love thy neighbor and so forth). So for the professor who poses the question about the differences between this groups, they have not shown any difference.

2. A large confound is parental monitoring. Parental monitoring has been shown in multiple developmental and parenting studies to be a predictor of adjustment. It would make sense that these parents are highly involved with their children's lives and therefore the actual variable that is having the effect is just good old parental involvement, not religion.

 

Also, the fact that this is in the media and other studies have not been in the media points to the politics involved in the research. I wouldn't be suprised to find a huge experimenter bias in this study.

"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."


Susan
Susan's picture
Posts: 3561
Joined: 2006-02-12
User is offlineOffline
I think that's pretty much

I think that's pretty much a crock.

It comes down to adults spending TIME with kids and everyone treating each other with respect. 

This article implies there is no social network outside of church, it doesn't delve into parents arguing about non-religious matters, it assumes that religious people make better parents, blah blah blah.

Besides, how does one "rate" behavior and working well with others?  Who draws the fine line between a child that is far ahead of his/her peers and can work independently and a child that can't get along?

 

Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server.


RationalSchema
RationalSchema's picture
Posts: 358
Joined: 2007-02-12
User is offlineOffline
Susan wrote: I think

Susan wrote:

I think that's pretty much a crock.

It comes down to adults spending TIME with kids and everyone treating each other with respect. 

This article implies there is no social network outside of church, it doesn't delve into parents arguing about non-religious matters, it assumes that religious people make better parents, blah blah blah.

Besides, how does one "rate" behavior and working well with others?  Who draws the fine line between a child that is far ahead of his/her peers and can work independently and a child that can't get along?

 

 

I agree with your first comments.

However, there are very scientifically validated measures of rating child behavior. My guess is they used measures of various types of child behaviors that would also include measures of psychopathology. We can assume that children who are likely to be Conduct disordered, Defieant, and isolated are not as well ajusted as those who are not.

"Those who think they know don't know. Those that know they don't know, know."