TruthBook Religious News Blog

Posted on Mar 17, 2009 |
by Mark Kelly

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--The vast majority of parents hope their children grow up to live good lives but, for many, parental success does not include faith in God -- even among parents who are evangelical Christians, according to a new study from LifeWay Research, the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources.

The national survey of 1,200 adults with children under 18 at home found the most common definitions of successful parenting include children having good values (25 percent), being happy adults (25 percent), finding success in life (22 percent), being a good person (19 percent), graduating from college (17 percent) and living independently (15 percent). Being godly or having faith in God is mentioned by 9 percent of respondents.

Parents who attend religious services weekly are particularly likely to emphasize faith in God, but only 24 percent of them identify that as a mark of parenting success, the research found.

INFLUENCES AND GOALS

While the vast majority (83 percent) believes parents should be most responsible for a child's spiritual development, only 35 percent say their religious faith is one of the most important influences on their parenting, according to the study. This leaves nearly half (48 percent) who acknowledge their role in their child's spiritual development, but fail to consider their own religious faith among the most important influences on their parenting.

Pushing out to either end of the religious spectrum, the study found that almost a third of all parents either have no religious faith or say religious faith has little or no influence on their parenting. Conversely, among born-again Christians, 29 percent say faith is not among the most important influences on their parenting.

Asked if they have a written plan or goal for what they want to accomplish as parents, a full 33 percent say they have no plan or goal at all. Among those who attend religious services weekly and evangelicals, 76 percent say they have a plan, either written or unwritten.

FEARS AND REGRETS

In contrast to visions of success, many parents are fearful for their children's futures and some harbor regrets about their parenting, according to the research. A full 82 percent agree they feel fearful when they think about what kind of world their children will face as adults. Asked if they feel a lot of regret about what they've done as parents, 28 percent of parents agree, although only 5 percent feel strongly about it.

Almost six in 10 parents (59 percent) indicate they want their children to experience pain and disappointment so they can learn from it, but about three in four parents (74 percent) say they try to keep their own pain hidden from their children. More than one in three parents (34 percent) say they worry when they think about their children 'leaving the nest.' A full 15 percent say the prospect of their children growing up and leaving home is simply too painful to think about.

Only 14 percent of all parents say they feel they are very familiar with what the Bible has to say about parenting, even though 77 percent identify themselves as Christians. Among those who attend religious services weekly, that number rises to 36 percent.

Labels: children, faith, God, LifeWay Research, Mark Kelly, parenthood

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Survey: Parents Rely on Personal Experience Over Biblical Guidance

By Elena Garcia
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Feb. 27 2009

Although most parents say they are trying to improve their parenting skills, few look to the Bible or church for guidance, a new study shows.

A majority of parents (60 percent) heavily rely on their own experiences growing up for parenting guidance but only one-fifth say they receive a lot of guidance from sacred text such as the Bible or Koran, the latest study by LifeWay Research found. Even fewer parents (15 percent) look to church as a source of guidance for parenting.

The vast majority (96 percent) agree they consistently try to be better parents but more than 6 in 10 completely ignore parenting seminars and over half don't care for books by religious parenting experts, according to the study.

The study also found that few (14 percent) say they are familiar with biblical teaching on parenting. Among Christian parents, those with evangelical beliefs are more familiar than Protestant parents on the Bible's parenting advice, 52 to 27 percent. Only 7 percent of Catholic parents are very familiar on what the Holy Book says about parenting.

"Christians are routinely neglecting biblical guidance and encouragement in their parenting today, relying instead on their own personal experience," McConnell commented.

When it comes to the home environment, around 7 in 10 parents describe it as supporting, positive, encouraging and active. However, an estimated 6 in 10 do not find their home environment peaceful, nearly 5 in 10 do not describe it as relaxed, and around 4 in 10 do not say it is joyful.

They study also showed that although parents spend time with their families on a daily basis, many do not engage in spiritual activities.

A modest majority of parents (57 percent) usually eat dinner together with their families everyday and 45 percent indicate they watch television together each day.

Prayer is a more common family activity than religious study, with 53 percent of parents indicating they pray together at least once monthly compared to 31 percent saying they hold religious devotionals or studies together at least monthly.

Over 80 percent of parents say they have an excellent family life but 30 percent rate their family's spiritual life as only fair or poor.

Overall, 92 percent of parents say they need encouragement but not many receive it from the Bible or church, the study showed.

Approximately 38 percent of parents who attend religious worship services weekly say they do not receive any encouragement from reading the Bible and 24 percent report not being encouraged from church.

Among Christian parents, Catholics (85 percent) are more likely than Protestants (43 percent) to not find encouragement in the Bible. Catholic parents (71 percent) are also more likely than Protestant parents (39 percent) to say church is not a source of encouragement.

Lifeway Research findings are based on a national survey conducted among 1,200 parents with children under 18 at home.

Labels: Bible, children, Elena Garcia, LifeWay Research, parenthood, religious experience

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Are we robbing our children of their childhood?

By Joseph M. Cachia
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Mar 13, 2008

‘The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.' --Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today children are under increasing pressure to grow up quickly and are not being allowed to enjoy their childhood. Children are entitled to a proper childhood and parents need help to realize this right. This is as much their right as giving them food, shelter and education.

‘The boundaries between adulthood and childhood are definitely becoming eroded,’ says Dr. Karen McGavock, an expert on childhood. Children are being seen as miniature adults. We are making them more miserable by forcing them into a premature adulthood. Childhood itself is disappearing in our society and the media, foremost the TV, are to blame. We need cultural safeguards against the erosion of childhood as this poses a threat of damaging effects of the mental and sexual health of our children.

Considering the time spent in front of a screen -- whether TV or computer -- and the tender age of our children, one is constrained to confess that to allow children to continue to watch this much screen media is an abdication of parental responsibility -- a truly hands-off parenting.

Perhaps it’s time to enact a legislation punishing failing mothers and fathers for bad or negligent parenting, as this is not simply a private matter and consequences of such are constantly being shouldered and suffered by all of us.

It is now an accepted fact that the vast majority of contemporary families cannot get by without women’s income. Unfortunately, this is the bitter choice! Parents are compelled to choose work and money over family time. If we really love our children, we should establish a formula by which parents work shorter hours for pay which may be lower, but still allows a higher living standard overall.

As a matter of fact, I see no sense or reason in those trying to discourage mothers taking up work. We can never turn back the clock to the good old village life. Of course, we must be careful of not becoming abusers of our own children by succumbing to the vice of greed and profit to the detriment of the proper upbringing of our children.

And what’s wrong with working mothers? Really, I mean those women who have a job outside their homes, as actually most women do, whether at home or outside, are engaged in some kind of work. And I don’t mean only the women who have toiled, alongside their husbands, in the fields and cattle farms. At that time, younger children were brought up much closer to nature -- romping around in the countryside. Of course, older children stayed home helping their grandmothers to cook, do the cleaning and caring for the younger siblings.

Children being cared for by someone besides their mothers is nothing new! Researchers on this issue have found that there was virtually no difference in attachment whether children were at home, cared for by a mother or father, or in day care or cared for by a relative. Although this did not cause any big stir, at least it did dispel the scare stories about day care. However, it must be admitted that parents have a far more powerful impact on children than being in day care does. I do not think that non-maternal childcare is about to disappear very soon.

But what ‘values’ are we transmitting to our children? Probably that money and power are top priorities. However, the spiritual (not necessarily religious) formation is the utmost and indispensable obligation. We ensure that they do not fall out with society and keep them in line with fashionable social conceits of the mob. Peer pressure is having the better of us. Religious stories should never be told to children to frighten them into behaving themselves so as to achieve this ambition. We never seem to realize that indoctrinating children into religion is a form of psychological child abuse. Parents could encourage religious literacy, and teach their children what they believe to be true, but definitely without any indoctrination.

The bigger concern should be about the quality of parenting. We should be more conscious of raising moral and ethical children than we are with teaching them a particular religious tradition. Teaching children about peace-making and non-violence is the most important component of spiritual development. Raising our children to think and decide for themselves is what really works for us!

Praise your children by letting them know what is good. Never encourage them to act impudently in any situation. No example of mature conduct is manifested by approving or complimenting your child for being a ‘smart-alec.’ Why isn’t discipline what it used to be and why can’t we let children be children for a while longer?

Joseph M. Cachia resides in Vittoriosa, Malta.

Labels: children, Joseph M. Cachia, parenthood

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

And a Child Shall Lead Him

And a Child Shall Lead Him

Published: February 20, 2008

We celebrated the baptism of our fourth on Sunday. He’s the one without the beard in my head shot. As with our other three kids, the ceremony was a family-only matter at the log chapel on Notre Dame’s campus. Being in such familiar surroundings, the baptism gave me the chance to think about my own spiritual state and what an influence my children have had on it over the last eight years—even though I’m the one who is supposed to be influencing them.

I believe that parents are as responsible for their children’s spiritual well-being as they are for their children’s physical, intellectual, and emotional health. Having gone from calling myself an “agnostic” to a “faithless Catholic” and now being in a state of what I’ve dubbed “surrender,” I often wonder how qualified I am to teach my kids about spiritual matters. Even now, I don’t have much of a plan for maintaining my own spiritual health. Gone are the days when I could strike out hiking on a whim with friends, spend the summer reading thought-provoking books, or just take time to reflect on my life. My days are now consumed with the billable hour, dirty diapers, Bionicles, trucks under feet, and third-grade book reports. What little time I can steal for myself is more often spent on movies and sports than anything truly fulfilling.

Despite the busy-ness of my life, I still owe it to my kids to give them some spiritual guidance. They don’t need to share my own beliefs. But without some spiritual foundation, how can I expect them to live fully? So we’ve turned to what we know, what we grew up with. It was a practical compromise—for me especially. We agreed that we would get our kids through their first Communion. It would allow them to participate in the Catholic mass. At the time, the bargain was made in the context of our kids going to mass with their grandparents. But I now wonder if it wasn’t really for our own sakes.

Taking a child that far into religious education requires a big commitment from her parents. My wife and I had to make more of an effort to make it to church. And of course children have questions. I have pondered—and I believe given reasonable answers to—questions such as “Why is church boring?” and the very direct, “Is God real?” I have also had to conform my own behavior to what we are asking our children to do. I now sing in church. Even if I’m just going through the motions, the fact is, I am minding my own spiritual health more diligently than I likely would have without kids.

And the payoff has been surprising. The thankfulness I often feel has a context. The details of it all may be fuzzy, but I understand that I have been given gifts in the form of each of my children. Often the gifts are moments from my children themselves. The peace of lying next to my daughter as we both read books quietly on the couch. The amazement of watching my five-year-old assemble a complex new Lego toy with focus and determination. The mirth of my three-year-old’s singing and dancing. The pure joy of seeing my baby boy smile at me for the first time. Each of these things fills my soul. And every hug, kiss, and unsolicited “I love you” from my kids sustains me.

So, as I dutifully committed to the religious upbringing of my newest child on Sunday, I had to wonder if we don’t have it backwards. Shouldn’t I have been asking this vibrant innocent baby to lead me, if only a part of the way, on my spiritual journey before he strikes out on his own?

Labels: baptism, children, family, parenthood, religious education, spirituality

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Monday, May 07, 2007

Guess What Troubles Young People The Most?

By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
Last update: May 06, 2007 – 8:27 PM

What issue most concerns young people today? A new survey from hip, racially diverse California -- home to 1 in 8 of the nation's youth -- provides a startling answer.

What does this generation of baggy pants-wearers and body piercers view as "the most pressing issue facing your generation in the world today"? Racism, environmental problems, the war in Iraq?

An answer closer to home tops the list: family breakdown. Pundits may find it fashionable to sneer at Ozzie and Harriet, but kids are longing for a harmonious home with mom and dad at the dinner table. Almost 90 percent of survey respondents expect to get married or enter into a life partnership and have children themselves.

The survey, titled "California Dreamers," assessed the hopes and fears of young people ages 16-22. Three-fifths of respondents were minorities, and half were immigrants or children of immigrants.

The survey was commissioned by New America Media, an association of over 700 ethnic media organizations.

"California Dreamers" revealed another surprise. Almost three-quarters of the young people questioned said that religion and spirituality are important to them. In this respect, California's new generation differs substantially from their parents. "Previous polls rank California as having the highest percentage of 'agnostic' adults in the United States," according to the report.

"California Dreamers" summarizes its findings this way: "The poll reveals a deep yearning among 16- to 22-year-olds for traditional structures - marriage, parenthood [and] religion."

Do Minnesota's young people share these yearnings? Absolutely, says the Rev. Efrem Smith of the Sanctuary Covenant Church, a multiethnic congregation in north Minneapolis. Smith has spent his life working with youth, and speaks nationally on the subject.

"This generation is deeply marred by family breakdown," he told me. Many young people are victims of our society's epidemic of out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce, he says. Even children from intact families often feel neglected by busy or preoccupied parents.

"Kids understand that a strong, loving family is the core, the base, of what it takes to develop a moral compass, a sense of purpose, an identity," says Smith, even if many self-absorbed older folks have forgotten this inconvenient truth.

Smith's own parents never missed his football games or school talent shows, he says. So he first experienced young people's anger over family breakdown as a varsity basketball coach at Minneapolis' Roosevelt and Patrick Henry high schools, where a substantial number of kids are in poverty.

Smith sees a connection between kids' anxiety over abandonment and neglect, and their spiritual hunger. As a longtime youth worker, he says, he's convinced that "this void, this hole from having no moral compass or guidance at home, can only be filled spiritually."

Kids' interest in religion may seem surprising, given the debased popular culture they inhabit, and the fact that religious expression is frowned on in the public square. "But they're so hungry for love, for a sense of purpose, that they are very open to filling the void spiritually," says Smith.

"I've never seen a young person sold down the road to atheism," he adds. "That comes later in life."

"If you believe that you are beloved of God," Smith says, "that you are made in his image, it doesn't matter if you have two parents or one parent, or if you're being raised by your grandmother or by foster parents. You believe you're on Earth for a purpose, and you can make it."

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain

Labels: family, Katherine Kerston, marriage, New America Media, parenthood, religion, spirituality, youth