Social Class and Cultural Conceptions of Religious Parenting

• In Event: 1283 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Families, Culture, and Media

Abstract

Research on social class, culture, and parenting shows that middle class Americans tend to value self-direction, choice, and independence, whereas working class Americans tend to value conformity to expectations, and that these orientations shape how parents approach childrearing. Extending this work into the domain of religious parenting, I ask whether American parents’ approaches to passing on religion to their children also vary by social class in these characteristic ways. Based on abductive analyses of in-depth interviews with twenty-three White Catholic parents in the Midwest, I find evidence of two cultural conceptions of religious parenting that do not fit neatly with my expectations based on prior literature. Rather than emphasizing conformity, the working class parents in my sample emphasize the importance of self-direction with regard to religion on the part on their children, and about one-third of the middle class parents do so as well. In contrast to this self-directive conception of religious parenting, the other two-thirds of middle class parents share what I call a “scaffolding” conception. These parents think it necessary that children have a foundation of religious knowledge, imparted by parents, to be able to make “good” choices about religion for themselves. In light of prior research, these findings of similarity across the working and middle classes regarding conceptions of religious parenting, and of variation within the middle class, are puzzling. Thus, I conclude by raising questions for future research to help make sense of the relationship between social class and cultural conceptions of religious parenting.

Author

• Bridget J. Ritz, University of Notre Dame