Most American parents pass on their religion and politics to their children

What are American parents more likely to pass on to their children: their religion or their politics?

It turns out that most parents pass on both types of affiliation, and do so at equally high rates, according to a new analysis of multiple surveys from the Pew Research Center.

This may be surprising, given that parents are more likely to prioritize conveying their religious views over their political views. In a Center fall survey, 35% of American parents said it was extremely or very important that their children grow up sharing their religious views, while less than half (16%) said the same about their political views. Notably, parents considered religious and political transmission to be much less important than the transmission of other values, such as honesty and ethics, hard work and ambition.

Yet members of some religious groups placed a high priority on raising their children to continue their faith. For example, 70% of white born-again or evangelical Protestant parents said it was extremely or very important that their children have similar religious beliefs, compared to only 8% of religiously unaffiliated parents.

But as every parent knows, to want doing something to a child is not the same as get a child to do something. How successful are American parents, overall, in passing on their religious and political affiliations to their children?

One way to answer this question is to compare American adolescents and their parents. This is what we did in a 2019 survey of more than 1,800 adolescents aged 13 to 17, each of whom was interviewed with a parent. In most cases, the parent was the biological mother or father, but sometimes it was an adoptive parent, step-parent, foster parent, grandparent or another tutor.

The survey found that the vast majority of parents of teenagers passed on their political loyalties. About eight in ten parents who were Republican or leaned toward the Republican Party (81%) had teens who also identified as Republican or leaned that way. And about nine in ten Democratic or Democratic-leaning parents (89%) had teens who described themselves the same way.

The transmission of religion through American families seems just as effective. In the same 2019 survey, 82% of Protestant parents had teenagers who also identified as Protestant, 81% of Catholic parents had Catholic teenagers, and 86% of religiously unaffiliated parents – those who described themselves as atheists, agnostic or nothing in particular – had teenagers who were also “none”.

The survey sample was not big enough to estimate transmission rates among parents belonging to non-Christian religious groups, such as Jews and Muslims. But there were enough parents from certain Christian subgroups to estimate their “success” in transmitting their faith. Among evangelical Protestant parents of all races and ethnicities, for example, 80% had teenagers who identified as evangelical, and an additional 7% had teenagers who identified with other Protestant traditions. Only 12% had unaffiliated teens and 1% had Catholic teens.

In other words, even though evangelical Protestants place a much greater emphasis on passing on their religion to their children than do religiously unaffiliated parents, both groups are about equally successful in doing so, at least up to ‘at the age of around 17.

Yet many people change religious affiliation or leave organized religion altogether between the ages of 18 and 29. So another way to assess the transmission of religion is to look at how American adults describe the religion of the person(s) who raised them, and then compare it with their own religious affiliation today. This is what we did in another survey in 2015.

The survey found that most people raised in a single religion – either by two parents sharing the same faith or by a single parent – ​​have retained that religion. About eight in ten people raised Protestant (79%) were still Protestant. About six in ten people raised Catholic were still Catholic (62%), and a similar proportion of those raised with no religious affiliation were still unaffiliated (62%).

There was significantly more flow among about one in five American adults (21%) who grew up in interfaith households. Among people raised by two people, one Protestant and the other unaffiliated, Protestant identity was found to be more “sticky”: 56% identified as Protestant, while 34% were unaffiliated, 3% were Catholic and 7% were owned by other people. religions.

Among those raised by two people, one of whom was Catholic and the other unaffiliated, 42% were unaffiliated as adults while 32% were Catholic, 20% were Protestant, and 5% identified to other religions.

Meanwhile, among those who were raised by two people, one Protestant and the other Catholic, the outcome was close to confrontation. As adults, 38% identified as Protestant, 29% were Catholic, 26% were unaffiliated, and 7% belonged to other religions.

Note: Here are the questions used in the 2019 survey of parents and adolescentswith the answers, and its methodology.

Alan Cooperman is director of religion research at the Pew Research Center.