Daily Religious Identity Mediates the Links between Religious Socialization and Muslim-American Adolescents’ Civic Engagement

• In Event: 2-018 - Explorations of Identity Development among Muslim Minority Adolescents in Different Contexts

Integrative Statement

Civic engagement (CE; voluntary activities that aim to address issues of public concern; APA, 2016) is particularly important for the empowerment of disenfranchised minority youth, such as Muslim-American adolescents (MAA). Parents can promote adolescents’ CE, but the contributions of maternal cultural socialization (the ways in which parents transmit cultural values) to adolescents’ CE is unknown (Evans et al., 2012). Importantly, studies examining the developmental mechanisms linking parenting and youth CE are also scant. Although bivariate links between cultural socialization, adolescents’ group identities, and CE are well-documented, no study has examined if adolescents’ group identity mediates the relations between maternal cultural socialization and CE. Moreover, studies on religious identity and religious cultural socialization are scarce despite their critical roles in the positive development of religious minority adolescents in Western contexts (Verkuyten, 2016). Although identity fluctuates daily (Wang et al., 2017), it is unknown if parents’ religious socialization affects adolescents’ daily identifications with their religious minority group, and if these daily identity experiences have implications for adolescents’ subsequent CE. Thus, we explored whether MAAs’ daily religious identity (private regard and centrality) mediated the associations between their perceptions of maternal religious socialization and their subsequent CE.
Participants included 13-18-year-old MAA (N=95; 51.6% male, Mage = 15.9 years, SDage=1.4) in Maryland or Virginia, who were primarily from South-Asian (e.g., Pakistan) or Arab/Middle Eastern (e.g., Turkey) middle-class backgrounds, and born in the U.S. (90%). Data collection occurred in 3 Phases: T1 at the beginning of the study, T2 daily diary period across 14 days, T3 14-days after the daily diaries period. MAA reported on their: (1) stable perceptions of maternal religious socialization (Hughes & Johnson, 2001) at T1, (2) momentary religious identity when randomly prompted 6 times per day across the 14-days (Yip et al., 2013) at T2, and (3) stable civic behaviors and civic attitudes (Andolina et al., 2003; Flanagan et al., 2007) at T3.
Analyses were conducted using Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (Asparouhov et al., 2018) in Mplus. Results revealed that T2 daily religious private regard mediated the associations between T1 maternal religious socialization and T3 adolescent civic attitudes, and adolescents’ T2 daily religious centrality mediated the links between T1 religious socialization and T3 civic behaviors (see Figure 1). Direct effects between T1 religious socialization and T3 civic attitudes were not significant, but more T1 maternal religious socialization predicted less civic behaviors at T3.
Our findings suggest that maternal religious socialization had differential effects on MAAs’ civic attitudes and behaviors through specific aspects of their Muslim identity. Maternal religious socialization led to more civic attitudes by increasing MAAs’ positive daily attitudes about their religious group, and to more civic behaviors through increasing how much religion was central to their daily self-concept. Interestingly, religious socialization did not directly promote civic attitudes and even undermined civic behaviors, suggesting that maternal religious socialization may promote adolescents’ CE only when youth internalize these messages and adopt a positive sense of religious identity in their daily lives. Implications of these findings for fostering MAAs’ CE will be discussed.

Authors

• Merve Balkaya, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Charissa S. L. Cheah, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lisa Kiang, Wake Forest University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Madiha Tahseen, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author