How to Pass Down Your Faith to Your Children

Family policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program. It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fold better equipped to be a voice of persuasion, family values in your community, state and nation, and now here's our house to family policy matters Tracy to bedrooms. Thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Wonder if there's a magic formula for passing along the heritage of faith to your children. Well, Dr. Christian Smith Prof. of sociology at the University of Notre Dame has written about this.

The title is handing down the faith. How parents pass their religion onto the next generation ways here to talk to us today about this very important topic which is every Christian parents longing for their own children. Dr. Christian Smith. Welcome to family policy matters right so to start off talk about how on earth you would conduct research for a book like this you personal 235 parents all around the country.

They were from an old tradition all major Christian traditions and also Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and not religious analyzed four different existing server data sets for parents with questions about religion and the children very extensive. It sounds like any surprises. Yeah, we were surprised there were a few things that I can mention one of the parents were connected, one way or another to religious congregation. We are really involved in some that are much less about personal surprise was how much religious parents really do understand themselves to be the primary performers of their children socialize with their children religiously. A lot of people in ministry. Most parents to drop their kids off for summer school member go to the coffee shop almost all the parents we interviewed really understood my job, my responsibility. It's not a surprise, but it really strongly a lot of parents group feel really caught between wanting to form their codes and their faith, but that really terrified, scared, at least with their kids will propel the true heart they don't want to be overbearing and so unlike a lot of other errors in life like homework and sports and practice when it comes to faith. Parents are very reluctant to be too heavy-handed once we talk to almost universally are pretty low expectations of the congregation, but most of what they want. Other congregations are pretty just worldly things with the doctrine or the afterlife are missing has to do with the no friendly place a nice community.

There are programs for kids and the kids will have friends there. So, have you seen the cultural shifts that we been experiencing the last few decades revolutionized the role of parents overall what we are doing the book is that culture is gone where local community. The congregation of the parish center of faith formation to a much more individualistic plug-in pluck out model where the household is a place where faith formation really takes place.

The parents are the most important pastors and someone and I think this is partly driven by a lot of factors that I can't get into here, but also the adventure and the widespread takeover of digital technologies, handheld devices, cell phones, social media and all really hard for parents to navigate these waters because there just so many other distractions and also kids have so much more access to any amount of information about any religion or spirituality or anything they want right at their fingertips. They don't need to rely on the authorities and nobody sorting out which that information is legitimate or validator makes any sense. So it's a different world technologically for parents to try to take on this task, I'm assuming from the title of your book that you feel like there is hope for us.

So tell us what some of the takeaways are that you found again the person whose parents are the most important factor in helping to turn out later in life religiously. A lot of parents, especially of teenagers may not believe that we have a cultural script after age 12, maybe parents don't matter change that was some of the parents. It's actually not true. Parents are tremendous influence are much more important than youth group peers media school whatever and how their kids turn out what really matters is that parents are themselves authentically committed to their faith and practice it regularly are involved in the religious congregation talk to their children. During the week about their faith and religion and why it matters to them and try to set up relationships between the children and other responsible adults in the congregation for the children including no other people in their and their churches more of a sense of community than just show up you worship in your home. There's a number of things that the empirical research show make it different, please spell them out in the book. One of the things that emerged as one of the most important of all is that we wouldn't just upfront is talking to children during the week about matters of religion. So the difference here is between families were just living their lives. One or two hours a week to go to church.

That's when they do the religious thing in the clover and nothing else during the week ever addresses or gauges that it raises questions that doesn't really work very well.

It's the parents who are successful in passing on the other children tend to talk about their religious practices and ethics and what it means and what valuable to them and what they hope their children will carry it on its way by preaching right. It's not the lectures.

It's just family discussions. It just comes up naturally. For those, families who will pass on their face, so making an effort to raise questions or topics to talk about the other than the quoted quote religious our huge factor. It really communicates to children. The parents care about this this matter for life. This is implications preparing poem folks. That's one of the that's one of the most powerful factors. There is having to parent together united front in this also makes a difference when there's just a single parent when one of the parent says that you're in charge of the religion. I'm checking out a lot about them. Not that greatly reduces the probability that children will carry on religious practice in the future and another way to put that is the involvement of fathers is really important if it's just left up to mom to take care of the religious Sunday school stuff whatever that's it's kind of a script like you have mounds in charge of parking home and is other priorities and especially for that sends a signal light doesn't really matter in the family. Mom is checking off boxes but if a father and mother both together. This kind of united front.

Know this is true regardless of their family or household.

This is our commitment and that's much more likely to keep children in the faith as they get older is also something else called channeling intricate talk about if you wanted to but chuckling the main hub like being a medium for somebody else's spirit or what they would say in this case of parents, proactively and intentionally tried to set up opportunities and relationships in connection for their children that will be good for them. So introducing them to other adults in the church are inviting other church families over for you for thinking of summer camps where the kids might go with other kids from their congregation over service trips and so on. Some of the parent can reinforce their messages and their practices by intentionally channeling their children into the right directions into the right relationship and to the right experience of negative channeling is it's not overbearing by forcing some pump it up if the child with the parent has arranged it just requires being proactive, being thoughtful, being intentional about what would be good for my chair than sort of arranging that in a way that it happens without it being forced I will you been talking a lot about parenting style right we don't necessarily like chair and all these other things. So how does parenting style impact a lasting influence of parents face on their children to think this is another very important variable, and independent of how religious and commitment. The parent are not is how well they get along with their kids and how they approach parenting artichokes obviously parents who have strained like really strange unresolved anger, alienation, ugly for Parker to everything else I can do. It's going to be probably short-circuited by those troubled relationships so simply strengthening relationships with children getting closer getting more bonded spending time working through whatever bad feelings. There may be from the past and quickly. So that's in general and more specifically in psychology. This is a theory of parenting styles and there's four different parenting styles authoritative authoritarian, permissive and disengaged or just not even connected and what's clear from the analyses as its authoritative parents who were the one not the others were most likely to pass on the religious type. So what is authoritative me. It means the combination of having standard expectations of children like being in authority saying here that we expect to hear. Here's how you need to be having consequences kids that live up to that.

So the kids know their parents are expecting something about minute matters. At the same time, however, combining that with warmth, openness, closeness, availability emotionally and relationally so that combination really helps children feel invested in your family feel bonded to their parent to want to do what to learn how to do with their parents month of them.

That is the parenting style authoritative that is most likely to succeed. And if you parent. If this is a little too much in a short time the listeners into the Google parenting style authoritative authoritarian law, so being authoritarian about it that works but it doesn't work as well as being authoritative, and parents were just disengaged or permissive microchips do whatever you been up or close to them. That really doesn't work at all human action in your book the glass ceiling what you mean by that is forest parents and children in our public discourse. Normally that's applied to things like women moving up in executive positions and so on. In its class because it's not it's not official what's not visible, but it's hard to rise up above that we use that metaphor to describe the level of the practices and commitments and beliefs and the seriousness about the parents. So to set the glass ceiling above which their children are almost certainly not going abroad. That is, children are not in the turn out to be more religious than their parents and so parents want their children for whatever reason to be seriously Christian say they need to be seriously Christian and probably their kids or some other kids at least will be less religious, but not very much agree for the parents works for various reasons in the culture and challenges of being young these days so I think the take away from all this is person to note a they really matter that should empower them believe they can control it's not determinative that they have a significant influence see their whole set of things we know parent can prove and do that really are much more effective than not doing them, but we can't sort of hope like I will do a halfhearted effort at this and hope remarkable turnout of strong glamour even stronger to be that the glass ceiling above which mobilized almost certainly maybe 1%, but not to the family. They do through truth, a university or religious group on campus or some print very rare experience.

That's a pretty sobering statement for soft frame where our influences. Parents just stops mattering try children in our study. I did previously call the national study of youth and religion. He published a bunch of books about that we follow teenagers from age 13 to 17 for 10 years until they were somewhat more in the latter 20s and then that study ended.

So quickly we can only my data that we can only say it definitely matters into the 20s, even including like the way not the religion, but their risk behaviors, etc. for performance in life makes a big difference. Other studies, however, show this stuff carries through lifelong for most people. What gets formed early in life people moral people's political belief in someone for most people it gets formed early in life, and it carries on your life with the people marrying into a different kind of religion that many things can come up with 10 changed but the fundamental trajectory of people's lives is formed early and we have every reason to expect in some studies of Sharon will carry on for the rest of their lives but were just about at a time for this week before Miguel Dr. Christian Smith.

Where can we follow your work and get a copy of your new book, handing down the faith. How parents pass their religion onto the next generation published by Oxford University press. Probably for most people.

The easiest way to get it would just go online and search for the title on Amazon or from world and if you're not there is a number of other books that we've done related to this, so there's a lot out there to dig into people are interested.

Dr. Christian Smith, thank you so much for being with us today on family policy matters.

You been listening to family policy matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plenitude in again next week to listen to the show online and to learn more about NC families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across Carolina go to our website it NC family.award that's NC family.org.

Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family