The Effects of Religiousness on Parenting Stress and Practices in the African American Family

Abstract

Despite numerous anecdotal assertions and budding empirical evidence, the profession of social work continues to ignore the influence of religiousness on parenting practices in the African American family. This study expands on what is already known and asks two related questions: Does religiousness influence parenting practices, and does religiousness influence parenting stress in the African American family? Moreover, this study uses a multidimensional measure of religiousness, allowing for an analysis of what specific aspects of religiousness (service attendance, private worship, or subjective/intrinsic religiousness) influence parenting. Results reveal that private worship and intrinsic religiousness (i.e., spirituality) positively influence parenting practices, but that attendance at religious services was not related to parenting. Moreover, religiousness had no influence on parenting stress.

Intimate Partner Violence, Spiritual Well-Being, and Parenting Stress in African-American Women

“…These findings are in line with the body of literature focused on relational spirituality, which suggests that an individual's level of religiousness or spiritual engagement also affects relationships within the family system (Mahoney, 2010). It appears that spirituality may be a more positive predictor of parenting stress than religious involvement, which does not seem to influence parenting stress (Cain, 2007). For African-American women, spirituality is critical to meaning-making and adaptive coping (Mattis, 2002), and through this process may serve to reduce parenting stress.…”

Neighborhood disorder, spiritual well-being, and parenting stress in African American women.

“…Spirituality is a critical resource that can serve a protective function against a range of negative outcomes (Paranjape & Kaslow, 2010; Yonker, Schnabelrauch, & DeHaan, 2012). Especially for the low-income African American women in the study, spirituality represents a non-financial resource with important implications for parenting (Cain, 2007). Given the cross-sectional design, we cannot draw causal conclusions.…”

Do maternal stress and home environment mediate the relation between early income‐to‐need and 54‐months attentional abilities?

“…Continued research that includes very high-risk and low-income children is needed to explore the possible roles of both parenting and global stress on children's neurocognitive competencies. A recent report of comparable levels of parenting stress among very high-risk, low-income single-mothers compared to mothers with lower sociodemographic risk (Cain & Combs-Orme, 2005) suggests that this is an important future direction.…”