The rate given by the pastors for the relationship with their children is very close to that for their spouse; with the average of 4.2 and 44 percent commented extremely healthy. Relationships with grown children tend to be healthier than relationships with adolescent children.
Interestingly, evangelicals are again more likely than mainline ministers to rate their relationships with their children as extremely healthy.
Most of the Protestant pastors have the worry of spending not enough time with their spouse and children. Only 18 percent of ministers feel they spend an extremely healthy amount of time with their spouse and just 10 percent feel they spend an extremely healthy amount of time for their children. Evangelicals are comparatively more confident than mainline church leaders that they have done well on this aspect.
Protestant pastors tend to have significant worries about the health of other ministers' families while they are fairly satisfied with their own family life. Statistics shows the average rating they give to their own family health is a 4, the average they give to the health of pastors' families throughout their denomination is just a 3.2. This trend is clearer among the Methodists and Southern Baptists.
Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, has particularly pointed out this interesting phenomenon, "One of these perspectives probably is wrong - either things are not as bad with other ministers' families as the typical pastor believes, or things are not as healthy with their own family as the typical pastor believes."
He warned that Protestant clergy in the US need to take a careful look at whether they have too much optimism about their own family situation, or too much pessimism about the situations of others.
"Even though only five percent of pastors report a very unhealthy relationship with their spouse, that means there are over ten thousand individual pastors with serious marital problems right now. In fact, the study projects that around 20,000 senior pastors nationwide ...recognise that they have serious family problems right now," he said.
Almost nine out of ten evangelical ministers involved in this study are on their first marriage, with 3 percent widowed, 8 percent divorced, and only 1 percent never married. However, among mainline Protestant ministers interviewed, 69 percent are on their first marriage but as many as 23 percent have gone through a divorce.
