146-01: Authoritarian Parenting Style and Adolescent Religious Involvement: The Mediating Role of Doubt

Religious beliefs are formed largely within family contexts. The purpose of this study was to examine how parenting relates to religious doubt in adolescents, how that affects religious involvement, and if that relationship is moderated by church support. Specific social influences, such as church support, have been shown to diffuse religious doubt. Based on longitudinal quantitative data collection from adolescent (ages 11-17) and parent participants in Utah (N = 611), this study found that adolescents with authoritarian fathers had less church involvement which was mediated by religious doubts. These findings suggest that parenting styles play an important role in the religious development of adolescents even when adolescents have dependable church support. 

Objectives

- To evaluate the effect of parenting styles on adolescent religious doubt.
- To analyze the interaction of parenting styles and church support.
- To determine if church support can moderate religious doubt and improve religious involvement.

Keywords: religion, family relations, religiosity

146-02: The Impact of Verbal Hostility and Family Religious Practices on Adolescent Negative Religious Coping

Our purpose is to examine how parental verbal hostility and family religious practices affect feelings of abandonment by God (often referred to as negative religious coping) among adolescents. Although there is a significant amount of research on adolescents and religion, a minimal amount of exploration has been devoted to the impact of negative religious coping and its influence on mental health, especially among Latter-day Saint adolescents. This study focuses on the following research questions: 1) how does a parent’s verbal hostility affect feelings of abandonment by God?   2)  How do family religious practices affect feelings of abandonment by God? 3) How do verbal hostility and family religious practices combine to affect feelings of abandonment by God?

Objectives

- Verbal hostility.
- Family religious practices.
- Negative religious coping.

Keywords: adolescence, religiosity, parent-child relationships

146-03: Familial Religious Importance and Practices: A Triadic Exploration of Religiosity Within Family Processes

Recent research has highlighted how intricate and multilayered faith transmission is within family processes (Dollahite, Marks, Babcock, Barrow, & Rose, 2019). Particularly salient is the need to explore familial intergenerational processes adjoining religious importance and religious frequency practices (Lambert & Dollahite, 2010; Marks & Dollahite, 2017). This purpose of this cross-sectional study focused on intergenerational transmission of religion by incorporating triadic analysis is to examine the role of husbands, wives, and adolescents. The cross-sectional findings suggest that the importance that families place on familial religious practices relationally influence the frequency in which all family members engage in religious practices. Future longitudinal work is needed to better explicate the directionality of these relationships.

Objectives

- To examine the interplay between importance and frequency of familial religious processes.
- To show the usefulness of triadic data analysis.
- To display how multilayered and intricate the intergenerational transmission of faith is.

Keywords: religiosity, family processes, dyadic analysis

146-04: Perceived Parental Influence on Emerging Adults’ Sexual Attitudes: A Factorial Vignette Approach

This study investigated the influence of parent-child relationship factors on emerging adults’ sexual values through a factorial vignette design. Hierarchical logistic regressions were conducted on data from 811 emerging adults to determine predictors of the acceptability of having premarital sex in a hypothetical vignette. Overall, relationship quality, and not communication frequency, was a statistically significant factor. The influence parent’s sex depended on respondent’s sex and vignette context. Generally, respondents perceived fathers as playing an equally influential role as mothers. Findings highlight the importance of maintaining quality relationships with children as it relates to shaping their sexual decision-making in college. Implications for parents, especially fathers, as well as for researchers interested in utilizing factorial vignettes, are discussed.

Objectives

- Describe potential parental factors that influence socialization of sexual values.
- Describe the different perceived effects of parent sex and sex of child on socialization, and how fathers may be situated to play a larger role in this process than is presumed.
- Consider possible future uses of factorial vignettes for studying difficult to measure systemic issues.

Keywords: sexuality, emerging adulthood, parent-child relationships