Abstract
National trends show that African American adolescents, relative to most other demographic groups, are more religious, and show fewer declines in religiosity, despite drastic decreases in religiosity among youth over the past 25 years. These broad findings are limiting because they fail to acknowledge religious heterogeneity among African American teens. Further, there are few empirical investigations of the transmission of religiosity within African American families. Building on a recent study that identified three distinctive profiles of intrinsic religiosity in a sample of low-income African American adolescents who were followed over four years (N = 326; Youth Mage = 12.1, SD = 1.6 years; 54% female), the present study examined contributions of maternal religiosity and family emotional climate in distinguishing these profiles. Univariate analyses revealed that maternal religious attendance and commitment, adolescents’ felt acceptance from mothers and the emotional climate in the home differentiated youth who retained high levels of intrinsic religiosity (41%) from youth who declined in religiosity (37%) or who had low levels of religiosity (22%). Multivariate analyses showed that after accounting for demographic covariates, felt acceptance from mothers differentiated adolescents with high versus low levels of religiosity; both maternal religious attendance and felt acceptance from mothers distinguished adolescents who retained high levels of religiosity from youth who declined in religiosity. Implications for family dynamics in African American adolescent religious development and well-being are discussed.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the families who participated in this study and the research staff who supported this work. Dr. David Sosnowski is now at the Johns Hopkins University.
Authors’ Contributions
W.K. conceived of the study, performed the statistical analyses, and drafted portions of the manuscript; M.W.N., J.S.Y., and D.W.S. participated in the study design, conducted literature reviews, and drafted portions of the manuscript; A.W.W and K.M. participated in the study design and edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grants K01 DA015442 01A1 and R21 DA 020086-02 awarded to Wendy Kliewer.
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All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of Virginia Commonwealth University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
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Written informed consent was provided by the maternal caregiver and assent was provided by the adolescent prior to initiating the data collection.
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Kliewer, W., Washington-Nortey, M., Salifu Yendork, J. et al. Maternal and Family Correlates of Intrinsic Religiosity Profiles Among Low-Income Urban African American Adolescents. J Youth Adolescence 49, 323–334 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01095-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01095-y