The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published a new report exploring the influence of faith and different religions on family life.
The report, published on Friday, questions the negative link commonly made in the media between religious beliefs and parenting practices, warning that “the positive benefits of a religious upbringing are in danger of at best becoming minimised and at worst being ignored”.
It also noted that religious beliefs and practices “do not appear to be disappearing as predicted” but are instead shifting in construct from institution to ‘believing without belonging’.
“If this is the case, it is inevitable that religious beliefs and practices, whether focusing on the beliefs themselves or practices including active membership of a faith community, have influenced and will continue to influence family life.
The report said that the influence of religious beliefs and practices on family life was particularly significant in adolescence, when young people start to form their own identity and beliefs.
The Joseph Rowntree interviewed 151 parents and children from a variety of faith back grounds, including Christian, Muslim and Hindu, and also those of no faith.
The majority of young respondents expressed a belief in God, although older teenagers were more likely to describe themselves as religious, while those aged 13 to 14 were more likely to be unsure or describe themselves as not religious.
A higher proportion of young people at non-faith schools expressed a belief in God and described themselves as religious than respondents who attended faith schools. Similarly, a higher number of young people at non-faith schools said they attended worship regularly than those at faith schools. The young people attending regular worship tended to belong to the older age brackets.
Young people who belonged to a religious family were, however, more likely to be believe in God and describe themselves as religious than those from non-religious families.
The report found that the strongest influence on belief appeared to be the faith community with which the young person identified. Although of the young Muslims interviewed identified themselves as religious, the young Christian respondents varied in their self-categorisation from religious to not religious.
Among the 77 parents taking part in the research, only one said they did not believe in God, and another, a Catholic, admitted they were not sure.
Most of the parents described themselves as religious, with the exception of a large proportion of the non-Catholic Christians who tended to describe themselves as ‘not religious’, and most of the parents said they engaged in private prayer on a daily basis.
“Overall, both the young people and parents sampled described a high level of religious behaviours, beliefs and practices, with the parents reporting higher levels of belief and practice than the young people. In contrast to the sample of young people participating, there was a higher degree of certainty about religious beliefs, affiliations and practices among the parents,” the report said.
For most of the religious parents and some of the religious children, their religion was a way of life that should be transmitted between generations.
