New Study Confirms the Importance of Parents in Fostering Kids’ Adult Faith

NEW STUDY CONFIRMS THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS IN FOSTERING KIDS' ADULT FAITH

For millennials who grew up attending church, having a strong Christian faith and practice today is linked to the quality of their relationship with their parents.

That’s a conclusion from a new online survey of young adults between the ages of 18 and 38 who attended church as children or teenagers. The survey also found that frequent church attendance and homeschooling were linked to stronger Christian beliefs and behaviors as adults, including believing Jesus is divine and avoiding co-habitation.

Young adults who said their fathers explained “biblical principles” to them on a daily or weekly basis growing up were significantly more likely to say they lived by typical Christian behavior as adults by praying, volunteering, reading the Bible, and attending church frequently and avoiding pornography, marijuana use, abortion, and co-habitation.

“If you had to ask for a mixture of things that overall are correlated with strong Christian beliefs and strong Christian orthopraxy, you’d be looking at making sure mom and dad developed a relationship with their teens, … that they’re regular participants in a local church, and they practice home-based, parent-led discipleship,” said Brian Ray, the researcher behind the survey and the president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Oregon. “I don’t want to pretend it’s a formula. I’m just saying, statistically, there’s a pattern.”

The survey was an effort to shed light on a major problem recognized by evangelicals in America: Many millennials aren’t staying in church. Americans aged 30 and under are less likely to value church attendance than previous generations, and 59 percent of millennials who grew up in church have dropped out at some point, according to Barna Group. (Other research has concluded many millennials have simply switched churches, and that only 18 percent drop out permanently).

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