Poster #41 - Parent-Child Religious Differences and Parenting Styles as Predictors of Connectedness

• In Event: Poster Session 11

Abstract

Religiousness is an important domain of human functioning and development of increasing interest to developmental scholars. Historically the rate of people leaving religion is rapidly increasing, and often religious deconversion happens during adolescence (Hardy & Longo, 2019). Additionally, the typical developmental trend is that religiousness tends to decline across adolescence (Hardy & Longo, 2019). However, little is known about the impact changes in religiousness have on family relationships. It is likely that, as with many changes, the disruption could be a source of relationship strain. Nevertheless, it is possible that certain individual and family assets can buffer relationships against such strain. Parenting styles capture important aspects of family functioning that could play a role of how families respond to religious change, for better or worse. Specifically, we expect that authoritative parenting will buffer relationships against relationship change, while authoritarian parenting will exacerbate negative effects of religious change.
Our sample included 500 teen-parent dyads taken from the Flourishing Families Project. The project is a longitudinal study that includes measures for parent and adolescent religiousness. At Wave 3, the sample consisted of 459 children between ages 11 and 16 (M=13.32). We used data from waves 3, 4, and 5. At each wave, we have measures of religiousness, parenting styles, and parent-teen connectedness. Our items for religiousness assess prayer, religious importance, and worship service attendance for teens and parents. Religious incongruence was operationalized as the absolute value of the difference between teens and parents on each religiousness dimension. Parent-teen connectedness was measured using the Connectedness Scale (Lee et al., 2001). Lastly, parenting styles were measured using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire-Short Version (Robinson et al., 2001).
We conducted regression analyses of religious incongruence, parenting styles, and interactions between the two, predicting later parent-teen connectedness, controlling for earlier parent-teen connectedness (see Table 1). First, parent-teen connectedness was moderately stable across time, as indicated by the autoregressive coefficients. Second, in most cases the main effect of religious incongruence was not significantly predictive of later parent-teen connectedness. Third, the main effects of authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles were significantly predictive of later parent-teen connectedness, with the former being a positive predictor and the latter a negative predictor. Fourth, two of the interactions with authoritarian parenting were significant. The pattern was that religious incongruence had a more negatively relationship with connectedness at higher levels of authoritarian parenting.
In conclusion, parenting styles are linked to parent-teen connectedness over time, and such parenting styles also in some cases interact with religious incongruence. Essentially, authoritarian parenting styles can exacerbate tension in relationships that may exist due to religious incongruence.

Authors

• Parker Gardner, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author

• Emily Marie Taylor, Brigham Young University

• Sam A Hardy, Brigham Young University