Exploring the similarity between parents and children’s reality status judgments for god across three domains of religious experience.

Abstract

Though parents are a central source of religious education, research has shown that secular parents are less likely to transmit their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to their adolescent and adult offspring. Importantly, religiously non-affiliated adults are remarkably diverse in their religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations. This brief report presents the findings from a study on the correspondence between parents (90% mothers) and their children’s reality status judgments for God. Parents filled out a questionnaire that measured five indicators of how religiously secular they were. Children were interviewed separately to measure their belief in God, theory of mind (ToM), and executive functioning (EF). One hundred sixteen religiously and racially diverse parent–child dyads from the Pacific Southwest participated. Children were between 5 and 9 years of age (51% female, 78% non-White). Two sets of findings emerged. First, parents and children corresponded most about God’s reality status when parents were religiously affiliated and more religious in their beliefs and behaviors; however, the magnitude of the effect of these forms of religiosity on parent–child correspondence varied. Second, children’s ToM and EF were unrelated to correspondence and unrelated to whether children believed God was real or pretend. Taken together, this study supports a broader conceptualization of “secular” and lends support to the hypothesis that what differentiates believers and non-believers are differences in socialization experiences during early childhood. The socialization dynamics that may account for the findings among relatively secular parent–child dyads as well as recommendations for future research given the demographic composition of the sample are discussed.