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Strictly for Evangelical Parenting Support? The Case of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS)

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Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Parenting poses a unique set of opportunities and challenges for both mothers who work for pay and for those who stay at home across the United States today. Specific types of “work-family” mothers’ groups have thus emerged as a way for these parents to provide support, information, and advocacy to one another in friendly communities. This study analyzes the boundary work undertaken by one national Christian mothers’ group, Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), to maximize its membership base and distinguish it from other work-family mothers’ organizations. In this article, I first probe how MOPS engages in a particular presentation of self that I call “open evangelism” to market its organization. Open evangelism combines both an open (nonreligious) and evangelical philosophy to appeal to a diversity of mothers across the country. I then use data collected from 25 in-depth interviews with MOPS members in 2009 in order to assess if and how this open evangelism is, in fact, experienced by members at the chapter level. I find that both open and evangelical themes emerge when members describe the benefits that they receive from joining the group and the challenges presented by parenthood, thereby suggesting that MOPS is successful in its self-presentation. I conclude with MOPS’ prospects for survival and growth in the competitive world of both religious and nonreligious mothers’ organizations.

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Notes

  1. Another reason why the majority of MOPS members are stay-at-home mothers is the meeting time scheduled by the chapters. Many chapters hold their meetings during weekday mornings, which would preclude many mothers who work for pay from attending.

  2. It is important, however, not to overstate the extent to which non-church, religious groups tend to attract persons from completely different religious traditions (or none at all) into their membership bases. These groups have clear, faith-based philosophies. Individuals at least open to these views—including those without a religious preference but still holding some type of spiritual beliefs (Hout and Fischer 2002)—are probably more likely to self-select into their membership bases than atheists, agnostics, or adherents to relatively small religious traditions.

  3. MOPS is the only national, religious mothers' group with a centralized list of members; it is Christian in orientation. There are no national, non-Christian religious mothers' groups with a centralized membership list in the country today.

  4. The respective percentages of mothers who stay at home in MomsRising, NAMC, Mothers & More, and Mocha Moms are 26.2 %, 47.3 %, 47.7 %, and 48.2 % (Crowley and Curenton 2011).

  5. These data were collected from the MOPS website on April 26, 2012.

  6. As described in the “Research Methodology” section of this analysis, as part of the larger project on mothers' groups in the United States, I also conducted a random sample survey of MOPS members. While the challenges of parenting question was not asked in the survey, the benefits of participation question was asked, with members able to select up to two benefits. In the survey, MOPS members identified "emotional support" and "friends for me" as most important. It should be noted, however, that a “spiritual benefit” was not an option on the survey since the instrument was designed to query the preferences of mothers in multiple groups, including nonreligious ones (Crowley and Weiner 2010).

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Patricia Sheffield, Kelly Dittmar, and M.B. Crowley for their assistance with this manuscript. In addition, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Michael J. and Susan Angelides Public Policy Research Fund provided generous financial support.

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  1. The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    Jocelyn Elise Crowley

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Correspondence to Jocelyn Elise Crowley.

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Crowley, J.E. Strictly for Evangelical Parenting Support? The Case of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS). Rev Relig Res 54, 421–444 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-012-0082-1

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