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Is Urban Fathers’ Religion Important for Their Children’s Behavior?

  • Original Paper
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Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Previous research suggests that many men increase their religious involvement after the birth of a new child. Using data on low-income urban fathers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW), this study extends this research by examining whether fathers maintain a higher rate of religious participation as children get older and how fathers’ religiosity may influence children’s behavior. Results suggest that although many urban fathers slightly increase their religious involvement after the birth of a child, most fathers attend religious services at a fairly consistent rate during the early years of their child’s life. Although there is only limited evidence suggesting that fathers’ religious involvement directly influences children’s behavior, there is evidence that fathers’ religiosity moderates the influence of other family characteristics on children; parental relationship quality and mothers’ religiosity are associated with fewer problem behaviors among children when fathers believe that religion is important to family life. Results also suggest that having a Black Protestant father is associated with fewer externalizing problem behaviors among young children. Overall, this study suggests that religion may be a source of support that encourages urban fathers to be engaged in their family life and promote positive development among children.

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Notes

  1. The full scale ranges from 0–45, but the measure used here is capped at 31 to reduce the problem of outliers.

  2. The full scale ranges from 0–25, but the measure used here is capped at 18 to reduce the problem of outliers.

  3. Using baseline indicators of religious affiliation and controlling for religious switching in later waves produces similar results as presented here.

  4. Controlling for family transitions between the three and five-year follow-up surveys does not change the results of this study.

  5. This category includes fathers who completed some type of trade school.

  6. Variables for income, hours worked, and the religious attitude measures are missing in approximately 2% of cases. Mother’s religious participation and the scale measures (father involvement and parental relationship quality) have a slightly higher number of missing values, ranging from 3 to 7 percent of cases. For the dependent variables, there are some cases (less than 4% of cases) in which one of the scale items are missing. These are included in the imputed models; sensitivity analyses suggest that there are no significant differences between the models presented and the models in which the imputed cases are dropped, and models using listwise deletion are similar to those presented here.

  7. Other diagnostic tests suggest that this is a good-fitting model. For example, Nagin (2005) suggests that the average posterior probability (the average probability that each individual assigned to that group actually belong to the group based on their pattern of religious participation) for each group should be at least .70. The average posterior probabilities in this study are .92, .92, .81, .82, and .93.

  8. Supplementary trajectory models were examined to test whether there were differences between first-time fathers and fathers who already had children prior to the FFCW study. The shapes of the trajectories were almost identical for each group, although the percentage of fathers within each trajectory group varied between first-time fathers and fathers with other children.

  9. Supplementary models using non-attenders as a reference group produced similar results as those presented.

  10. Supplementary analyses suggest that multicollinearity is not a problem in any of the models.

  11. Supplementary analyses suggest that the mean income in this sample is approximately $5,000 higher than average income for all families at the three-year follow-up interview.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Amy L. Holliday, Marjorie Gunnoe, and feedback from anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Ball State University, North Quad 205, Muncie, IN, 47306, USA

    Richard J. Petts

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Correspondence to Richard J. Petts.

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Petts, R.J. Is Urban Fathers’ Religion Important for Their Children’s Behavior?. Rev Relig Res 53, 183–206 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-011-0010-9

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