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Religious influences on parenting

Chapter · January 2004

DOI: 10.4135/9781848608160.n7

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 Religious Influences on Parenting1

Stephen Frosh

• Religion is a major influence on the lives of many parents, possibly increasingly so in

the light of migration and an upsurge in fundamentalism. Nevertheless, religious

influences on parenting is a very poorly researched area.

• The religious world view is distinct from that of most professionals working in, and

writing about, parenting, including child protection and mental health specialists. In

particular, there is an opposition between a liberal humanist culture giving priority to

the welfare of the individual child, and a religious culture in which adherence to the

‘proper path’ of religion and maintenance of the faith tradition is of a higher priority.

• To complicate matters, the degree of heterogeneity of beliefs and practices within

religious communities is poorly recognised and researched.

• These issues have practical implications in areas such as parenting (and mental health)

interventions, child protection and education. There is some evidence for higher levels

of punitive discipline amongst religious parents, but more for a greater degree of

warmth even in the face of adversity caused by economic privation, large families and

similar factors.

• Professionals and researchers need to support community initiatives and cultivate

strong and positive relationships with religious authorities in order to understand

better the requirements of religious parents and their attitudes and practices, and the

possibilities for helpful intervention when required.

Introduction

In recent years, it has become commonplace to acknowledge the importance of religion as a

1
Frosh, S. (2004) Religious Influences on Parenting. In M. Hoghughi and N. Long (eds) Handbook of Parenting
London: Sage

1
force in people’s lives. In the context of the Iranian revolution, the fatwa against Salman

Rushdie, and most recently the ‘September 11th’ atrocities, this acknowledgement has also

taken on the panicky aura of a potential ‘clash of civilisations’ between the liberal, mainly

secular West and the (Islamic) fundamentalist East. It is a mostly unvoiced irony that ranged

on the ‘secular’ side is one of the most religious countries in the world, the United States of

America, in which (Christian) religious fundamentalism is a very significant reactionary

force, an irony which parenthetically reveals how easily appeals to religious values can be

colonised in the service of racism and xenophobia. More generally however, despite

postmodernism, global capitalism and the rhetoric of multiculturalism, religion retains a

powerful hold in most cultures, including those of the West. The effects of this can be seen in

many areas, but most significantly in the discussions on moral and ethical issues which erupt

periodically, and which centre particularly on family life. These issues include the regulation

of sexuality and the transmission of moral values, but they also permeate a range of questions

around parenting, for example the inculcation of beliefs, modes of discipline, educational

priorities and citizenship. Religion of various kinds and to varying degrees is consequently a

major influence on the lives of many parents, possibly increasingly so in the light of

migration and the effect this has on polarising, or at least highlighting, the alternative lives

available for living in contemporary society. The rise of fundamentalism fuels this, but it is

not only at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum that real questions arise about the place of

religion in parenting. These questions include those of whether religious influences on

parenting are harmful or beneficial, for example in the spheres of education and mental

health; more broadly, the issue of what difference it makes to be a ‘religious’ parent is one of

social and psychological significance.

Although the importance of religion might seem obvious, one of the most striking aspects of

this area from an academic point of view is the paucity of the literature on the subject,

particularly from a psychological perspective. This is despite a plethora of materials from

religious organisations giving parenting advice, plus increasing concern over the wilder
shores of religious indoctrination (including post-September 11th questions about the

2
socialisation of ‘terrorists’ or ‘martyrs’) and, more academically, a long history of

anthropological interest in the religious activities and symbolism of non-Western cultures,

including initiation rites. Indeed, it is quite clear that coming to grips with the issues around

religion and parenting is important for numerous reasons. Socially, as noted above, the

context is one in which, despite the secularisation of western society, religion continues to

have a significant influence on major sectors of the population and in some respects is even

growing in importance. For example, fundamentalist renderings of religion, notably within

Christianity (especially in the USA) and Islam, have received major boosts from events in the

Middle East, patterns of migration, and the activities of the political Right. It is perhaps these

versions of religious orthodoxy which pose the most radical problems for conventional

Western secular understandings of normative parenting. In addition, the espousal of multi-

culturalism in professional and political circles makes the comprehension of value differences

and their roots immediately pressing. Conceptually, the number of questions is legion around

relationships between communal and belief values and child rearing and how these intersect

with what might be termed the ‘liberal consensus’ amongst mental health and child care

professionals, in which the welfare of the individual child is paramount. Practically, too, there

are powerful implications in terms of understanding and learning from the impact religious

belief has on what parents do, the effects on child development and mental health, and the

appropriateness of different forms of intervention around parenting in religious families.

Finally, there would seem to be potentially rich pickings for researchers here in areas similar

to those outlined above, most especially perhaps in tracking the developmental trajectories

for children in religious families.

Why, then, is there such a paucity of academic literature on the subject? In this chapter, I am

going to suggest that this situation is not an accident, but rather is symptomatic of a deep

divide between some values of religious parenting and Western psychological assumptions.

That is, the challenge posed by religious world views to the liberal position of most child care

professionals and academics is at times so unexpectedly and embarrassingly profound, that

most members of the academic community do not know what to do with it. Instead, they have

3
tended to treat religion as a kind of voluntary or neutral ‘add on’ to the important issues

determining quality of parenting -for example, marital harmony or attachment relationships.

My argument is that while this view of religion might be true for many Westerners who

espouse a rather mild religious affiliation, what the new strands of religious fundamentalism

appearing in the West have revealed is that for those parents for whom religion is a central

element in their lives, its effect is not neutral at all, but is constitutive of some of the basic

values and assumptions of the parenting process. In order to explore this argument, I am

going to focus in on some of the issues surfacing in Western constructions of religious

orthodoxy, beginning with material connected with the community I am most familiar with,

the orthodox Jewish community, before looking briefly at some of the research that does exist

on the effects of religion on parenting. My aim here is to lay some groundwork for a

consideration of the assumptions about what parenting is for and of how these assumptions

might have specific content amongst religious parents. One objective is to convey the

importance of recognising the way religious values operate in Western contexts, both for

clinical and research purposes.

Core Issues

Perhaps two very brief personal clinical examples will be a useful way in here, relating to

work with members of what is ostensibly my own community, the Jewish community in

London. The first arose after allegations of sexual abuse surfaced in an ultra-orthodox Jewish

boys’ school. A colleague and I were asked to see several of the boys involved to assess their

therapeutic needs and although we had long been inured to the ambiguities of sexual abuse

work, it still came as a surprise and disappointment to encounter quite the hostility we did in

a situation in which we were nominally the purveyors of help. On the whole, this was politely

and respectfully done; the parents (here, fathers) brought their sons to see us because their

Rabbi, with whom we had done quite a substantial amount of previous work, told them they

had to do so (incidentally, this reveals both the necessity and the limitations of obtaining the
support of religious authorities for work with such communities). Each father would say to us

4
that he had come with his son because the Rabbi had ruled that he should, but there was

really no problem and we need not waste our time with them, so preventing the very needy

people who were no doubt clamouring for our expert attention from receiving it. In this way,

they both obeyed their Rabbi’s injunction and saboutaged it. One father, however, something

of a marginal in the community, expressed great and direct anger at us. In his view, which

was deeply and intensely held, we were not just mistaken in our attempt to raise the issue of

possible sexual abuse with himself and his son, but we were actively doing damage. Talking

about these things would stir up trouble, not just in terms of the emotional consequences for

this particular boy, but also because of the way it would reveal something distasteful going on

in the community, thus bringing it into disrepute and damaging the advance of religion.

Because of this, it was clear to this father that we had departed from the correct way of acting

in such circumstances: ‘The Jewish way,’ he said, ‘ is to sweep it under the carpet’.

(Parenthetically, at about the same time we had come across an article on a child protection

initiative in Israel, entitled ‘There is no more room under the carpet’ [11], so this phrase had

special resonance for us.) It seemed clear at the time that while this father was unusual in the

openness of his hostility, his attitude was very much in line with the general view of the

parents involved: that however good our credentials might be, even with their Rabbi, our

attempt to talk about sexual abuse openly was mistaken and possibly religiously wrong.

The second example was from an earlier piece of work with a sophisticated ultra-orthodox

family in which both parents were involved in professional work. Faced with a highly

resistant and at times delinquent adolescent daughter, they had sought help on their own

initiative, albeit subsequent to seeking the approval of their Rabbi in America. Family work

with them went reasonably well and quite a lot of tension was eased, but what impacted upon

me was one small interchange which could be interpreted as a signal not to cross a significant

boundary. In one session, having listened to a catalogue of criticisms of the daughter’s

behaviour (she wanted a radio to listen to pop music on, she wanted her ears pierced, she was

saying that she might want to go to college), I felt myself to be in something of an alliance
with the daughter, who was articulating her own wishes more openly than usual. Trying to

5
normalise the situation, I commented that the family were negotiating a common adolescent

crisis, in which a child starts to make bids for independence whilst remaining attached. This, I

opined, was something we saw very often in families. The parents looked at each other; then

the mother said, ‘Independence is not a term we use, it’s not something we look for in our

children.’

There are a number of features of these examples which are paradigmatic for some of the

core issues in thinking about religion and parenting. Both these cases reveal me being tripped

up by the sudden arrival of a set of assumptions about child rearing, community life and

religious values which seem to come from somewhere else, despite (particularly in the second

example) the apparent cultural similarity between myself and the families concerned. Some

basic ideas which Western professionals usually assume to be shared were not in fact agreed

upon -for example, that helping a child overcome a possible trauma is a more important goal

than preserving the good name of the community, or that achieving autonomy and

independence might be an appropriate developmental aim. Two world views are clashing

here: one derived from a Western focus on the needs and well being of the individual, which

might at its most benevolent be called a ‘humanistic’ view, the other relating to the priority

given to the collective, the community, and through that to a very specific view of ‘the proper

path of life’.1 Perhaps it is not too speculative even to think that the relative neglect of
1
One particular passage in the Bible, from Deuteronomy 21, 18-21, is of especial interest in relation to the
priorities of parenting.
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, that will not hearken to the voice of his father, or the
voice of his mother, and though they chasten him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and
his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of the city, and to the gate of his place; and
they shall say unto the elders of his city: ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he doth not hearken
to our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones,
that he die; so shall you put away the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
According to the most important Jewish commentator on the Bible, the eleventh century French rabbi, Rashi,
the word ‘stubborn’ in the passage above refers to ‘one who deviates from the proper path of life’, while the
word ‘rebellious’ means ‘one who is disobedient to the words of his father’. Rashi (22) goes on to comment,
The refractory and rebellious son is put to death on account of the final course his life must necessarily
take (not because his present offence is deserving death); the Torah has fathomed his ultimate
disposition: in the end he will squander his father’s property and seeking in vain for the pleasures to
which he has become accustomed, he will take his stand on the crossroads and rob people, and in some
way or other make himself liable to the death penalty. Says the Torah, ‘Let him die innocent of such
crimes, and let him not die guilty of them.’ (p.107)
Clearly, the death penalty is seen here as appropriate both to the son who opposes the religious way of life, and
to the son who opposes his parents (or at least, his father); and having so gone off the rails, it is in his own
interests that he be put to death, before he commits the crimes made inevitable by his recalcitrant attitudes. The

6
research in this area might be due to Western professional and research assumptions that the

value systems of all cultures are similar when it comes to child rearing. But these

assumptions are spurious and actively misleading, and themselves represent a mode of

imperialism which is being challenged by religious families throughout the West. Liberal

academics espouse critical, rational modes of thought; orthodox religious groups replace

these with revelation and authority-based directives. Liberal humanism is based on a

democratic urge, however well or badly one thinks that might have been achieved. Religious

orthodoxy is not democratic: one cannot vote on religious practices, one can only obey the

teachings as these have been passed down through religious authorities, who lay claim to

their authority on various bases (charisma, learning), but mostly on the basis of who (what

previous authority) has conferred it upon them. This is particularly the case in the context of

the rise of fundamentalist versions of religion, where what is privileged is the maintenance of

traditional authority structures and beliefs -and this is seen as more important than the welfare

of individuals. In this view religion is not about anyone’s ‘best interests’, but is about

following certain laws, laws which are immutable, literally God-given. Faced with the choice

between authority and insight, the fundamentalist chooses authority every time.

This should not be taken to mean that all religious affiliations are the same, and especially not

that the only religious influences requiring consideration are those deriving from

fundamentalism. Indeed, the common failure to imagine the multiplicity of religious positions

may be one of the factors contributing to support for genuine fundamentalist authoritarianism

in religion, in the sense that outsiders (the state through its funding agencies, the media,

professionals in health and social services) relate to minority communities through

representatives of religious orthodoxy rather than, for example, dissenting groups (23). What

extremity of this action will also serve to warn others and maintain religious correctness: ‘all Israel shall hear,
and fear.’ A child who goes astray is a cancer in the body politic, to use the conventional image, and it is a
religious duty to wipe him out. While this position is not actually held to in contemporary religions, it does
symbolise a real clash of sympathies in relation to parenting priorities. Religion often aims to enforce the
‘proper path’ (witness, for example, the violence of the so-called ‘right to life’ movement) and if this means
making the sensitivities of individuals secondary, it might well do so. Given a secular social context for
parenting in which the happiness and, specifically, the ‘welfare of the child’ is of paramount legal and
pedagogic concern, this makes for interesting and often uncomfortable dilemmas.

7
actually exists in many religious communities -what differentiates them from homogeneously

fundamentalist, authoritarian structures- is a healthy uncertainty about truth, whereby many

community members are connected through primarily cultural and ethnic affinities rather

than firmly-held religious beliefs. Thus, the degree to which even orthodox religions maintain

a hold over their adherents is enormously varied, from a rigidly enforceable fundamentalism

at one extreme to picking and choosing amongst cultural life-style options at another. One

problem professionals have had is in keeping at bay their tendency to lump together all

modes of religion, often seeing them as the same as (mainly exotic) ‘cultures’ without

recognising real divergences and conflicts.

In this context, it is very difficult for researchers and practitioners to hold onto a coherent

notion of what might be meant by ‘religious’ influences on parenting. Nevertheless, it is

important for secular professionals to recognise the degree to which religion manifests itself

not just as the espousal of certain values, but as the regulation of action -a position shared by

orthodox Judaism through the detailed legal code of the Halachah (rabbinic law) and Islam

through the Sharia, both of which are complex sets of rules for conduct with little parallel in

Western secular law. Much of this regulatory and prescriptive legislation relates to parenting:

indeed, about a third of the legal injunctions in the Quran are concerned with the family and

appropriate relations within it (1). Muslim parents traditionally have had enormous moral and

quasi-legal authority over their children, effectively including the right to manage their affairs

and direct the course of their lives in all its moral, social and religious detail (2). The

guidance that parents offer must, however, conflict neither with the explicit dictates of the

Quran nor with the prophetic exemplar (the normative conduct of Mohammed). There are

also some specific circumstances in which children may legitimately rebel against a misuse

of parental powers; importantly, these are religious circumstances -in particular, if parents try

to bring up their children to be idolaters (2). This has relevance (although it is not the same

occurrence) to the situation in which a child adopts fundamentalist practices against the

wishes of a more liberal parent, something which is not infrequent in the Jewish community
and, as parents of the next generation become more secularised, will potentially become more

8
common amongst Western Muslims. Under these circumstances, finding ‘the proper path of

life’ involves going against the authority of the parents, who, at the extreme, may even be

discarded.

On a more familiar level, there has been a pained debate within religious communities about

the extent to which the Biblical injunction to ‘honour your father and mother’ holds when, for

example, a parent tries to encourage a child to engage in illegal activities or makes them the

victim of (particularly sexual) abuse. While it may seem obvious to outsiders that such

occurrences mean that a parent be held to have relinquished the claim to moral authority, not

all religious leaders have seen things that way, particularly in uncertain cases. In some

religions, children are not even supposed to speak of their parents to outsiders, whether for

good or ill; several family therapists trying to work with orthodox Jewish families, for

example, have come up against interpretations of ‘loshon horah’ (speaking evil) which mean

that nothing can be said about parents without their explicit permission and their presence.

Although religious authorities, for example the main London orthodox Beth Din (rabbinical

court), have tended to rule that children whose parents abuse them should be exempt from the

requirement to show them honour, there are very strong inhibitions against revolt, and some

of the court’s own practices (for example, their refusal to give evidential weight to the

testimony of children and women) militates against a more liberal approach to dissenting

from parents’ views.

To summarise the argument so far: despite the significance of religion sociologically and

psychologically in the lives of families, there is a strikingly weak literature on the topic of

religious influences on parenting, particularly from a psychological point of view. This may

be partly based on a failure amongst secular Western professionals and researchers to

appreciate the diversity of religious life and, at its extremes, the radical discontinuity that may

exist between Western humanist perceptions of the role of parenting and those held by

religious believers. Specifically, the Western tradition places the welfare of the individual
child at the centre of its concerns and tends to assume that this will be true in all contexts,

9
despite variations in cultural practices. For religious parents, however, it may be that

promoting the continuity of the community and upholding the truth of the religious path is

more important than maximising the freedom, autonomy and independence of the individual

child; that is, their approach to parenting is likely to be religion-centred rather than child-

centred. This does not mean that they have a free hand for example to discipline children as

harshly as they like, and certainly not to abuse them; more to the point, there is a very strong

commitment to the idea of the well-being of children in these communities, and a treasuring

of them. Kate Loewenthal, a professor of social psychology and a member of the strictly

orthodox North London Jewish community, writing about the pressures of bringing up a large

family, comments (15), ‘The believing Jew (and believers of other religious traditions) feels

that each soul that is brought into a human body is precious; each has spiritually significant

tasks to accomplish; the parents are privileged to be the means of enabling this... Each child

is precious, a spiritual gem’ (p.9). There can hardly be a more forceful and beautiful

statement of the value of the individual child. Nevertheless, the idea that each child has

‘spiritually significant tasks to accomplish’ and that parents are ‘the means of enabling this’

is not a common notion directing the work of Western psychologists and child care

professionals. That is to say again, despite some similarities of outlook, child rearing

practices in religious communities are organised and priorities established by religious rules

of conduct rather than by those apparently shared in secular cultures.

The more strongly held the religious position, the more complex all this becomes. The

various tensions here involve the active wish of parents of all kinds to transmit something of

their own allegiances -their identities- to their children, measured against a set of liberal

values which emphasise the freedom of every individual to make some kind of choice. Apart

from the general difficulty that this choice is always constrained at least by the social forces

which give it its context, there is the additional and specific problem that fundamentalist

cultures do not recognise the legitimacy of ‘choice’, let alone of liberal values. Indeed, each

framework is in part built around the repudiation of the other through a process of scrutiny,
judgement and ostracism. Liberals refute the authoritarianism of fundamentalism either as

10
something ‘primitive’ or as an understandable but pernicious defensiveness; fundamentalists

reject the secular, pluralistic, fragile morality of the West, which (they argue) so often fails to

provide any sense of roots. In this debate, it is not at all clear that the rigid morality of

fundamentalist religion produces children with less robust mental health outcomes than does

the loose framework of anomie characteristic of pluralist Western society, whatever the

discomfort of liberal professionals with this idea. Even in areas where the oppressive nature

of the religious outlook seems obvious, for example in sexual repressiveness and the

subjugation of women, there are many speaking from within fundamentalist communities

who claim otherwise. However, these questions about whether religious views are reactionary

or overly restrictive of the potential for individual development are not the main point. It

might seem obvious that a fundamentalist community’s failure to educate a child so that she

or he has the widest possible capacity to choose between the array of careers and lifestyles on

offer in the West is a constraint on freedom; but there are many to argue that there can be a

similar loss of freedom when one does not instil in a child the religious and communal values

which are part of her or his family tradition. For example, it has often been pointed out that

male circumcision carried out for religious reasons contravenes some moral principles

governing standard Western social work and child protection activities, in particular the

rights of children to physical integrity and the rights of women to equality. Importantly, these

values are accepted as being universal and not culturally bound, and are enshrined in UN

resolutions and charters (14). From the child protection perspective, therefore, male

circumcision should provoke prevention and intervention. However, from a religious

perspective, circumcision itself may be seen as a fundamental moral injunction; not to

circumcise a male child will therefore be wrong on religious grounds, as it contravenes the

explicit command of God. It also carries a variety of perceived risks and consequences, both

for the individual child and his family, who might find themselves excluded from the

community, and for the community itself, which might experience a defining feature of its

way of life as under siege (14).

What this suggests, is that there is a basic incommensurability between the professional

11
discourse of child protection and the religious world view. This means that the argument

between them cannot be resolved on anything but value grounds; that is, by asserting the

superiority of one set of values over the other. Appealing, for example, to mental health

outcomes (even if they could be shown to be different in the two systems) is not the point:

secularists will not adopt religious beliefs simply because it makes their children less likely to

go off the rails (although they might adopt some cultural practices); and religious believers

will certainly not give up their ideologies in order to make someone else happy, whether that

someone else be the representatives of the state or their own child. On the whole, however, it

is Western liberal perspectives that dominate in the area of parenting and normative child

development, especially in terms of interventions. That is, the expectations of cultural

‘sensitivity’ derived from multiculturalism are very one-way: from the point of view of the

West, it is always the other who has to change. Even when multiculturalism leads to the

relaxing of Western value systems in order to make room for the existence of ethnically and

religiously diverse citizens, these value systems are not themselves usually pressured to

change by other cultural positions; that is, they retain their assumption of superiority. Ilan

Katz (14), staying within the debate over child protection, gives the example of how in many

Muslim communities in the UK it is viewed as abusive not to send children to a religious

school, but not at all abusive to physically chastise a child who refuses to go to school. ‘It is

quite likely,’ he notes, ‘that physical chastisement will result in the intervention of child

protection agencies, but very unlikely that a parent not sending a child to religious school

would be deemed to be an appropriate trigger for a child protection enquiry’ (p.95). Again it

needs to be reiterated that the assumption that all cultures have the same developmental aims,

for instance to promote autonomy, independence and individual happiness, is simply

unfounded. Western professionals and researchers are caught up in a long history of

imperialist reasoning when they take their own culture as the measure by which all others are

to be judged. The purpose of a religious upbringing is to serve God, usually by ensuring that

children carry on the tradition, even if this means severely restricting their life styles and

developmental, not to say career, possibilities. The idea, for example, that a Muslim girl
might be sent away to be married to a Muslim boy she has never met before seems anathema

12
to the western consciousness, organised as it is around notions of individual choice and

romantic love; but if it preserves the girl’s religious (and sexual) integrity, then it might well

be seen from within the community as justifiable. The child’s individual rights to self-

determination may be respected at the extreme, in the sense that she or he can usually choose

to cut themselves off from their community. But they are not accepted as a principle, because

the individual human subject is not the basic unit of the moral order. The community and,

behind it, the religious truth inscribed in its texts and authorities, is more primary, more

‘fundamental’. Whilst most religious cultures allow specific laws to be transgressed in order

to save life, and as noted above while they do place strong value on the preciousness and

even holiness of the individual souls with which they have been entrusted, they do not

organise themselves to promote individual development or happiness, but to maintain order

and tradition.

The idea that the community’s needs and entitlements might be more important than those of

the individual child is a considerable challenge to the liberal view that places the rights of the

individual at the centre of moral systems, and makes development of the child’s individuality

the goal of parenting. Indeed, in the classic ‘rights versus duties’ tension of citizenship,

fundamentalists quite straightforwardly privilege duties. The ‘best interests of the child’ are

less significant than the best interests of the community; it can often be argued that these two

things go together (it is in the ‘best interests of the child’ to be acceptable to the community),

but not always. Under the latter circumstances, preservation of the community and its

traditional religious values is of paramount concern -passing down the truth to the next

generation. One thing which it is very important to note here is that while this privileging of

the community occurs particularly strongly in totalitarian, authoritarian systems (of which

religious fundamentalism is the most vibrant contemporary example), it cannot be dismissed

a priori as an irrational or pernicious occurrence. All religious and most other communities

have this concern; the differences lie in the degree to which they are willing to subjugate the

wishes of individuals. Fundamentalist leaders might not step back from the demand that
children are sacrificed in the interests of the social-religious order, as many recent examples

13
show, and in so doing they reveal their extremism; but it is not only fundamentalist cultures

that from time to time demand such steps.

Practice of Parenting

An important qualification needs to be made here, in order to ameliorate any sense that

religious parents can and will do anything to preserve the integrity of ‘the proper path’. Not

only do all the major religions lay down stringent rules about decent behaviour towards

others, including children, but there is also a good deal of dissent within communities which

from the outside might look quite homogeneous. These can be made more acute in the

Western setting in which religious cultures come into close contact with a more secular wider

society, especially through children. For example, the following is a list of common anxieties

apparently felt by Muslim parents bringing up children in non-Muslim societies -anxieties

undoubtedly shared by other religious groups, including religious Christians (2).

1. The monitoring and ‘control’ of juvenile sexuality in a permissive culture.

2. The technology and morality of contraception -themes that are, incidentally, part of the

biology syllabus in British schools and must therefore be taught by law, and which may also

be taught as part of the sex education curriculum if the school governing body so decides.

3. Drug abuse.

4. Some kinds of contemporary music which might encourage certain beliefs and attitudes

such as, for example sexual experimentation and defiance of parental authority.

5. Lapses in strict religious observance, especially when children leave school to go to

university and live independently for the first time in a secular environment for a prolonged

period of time.

These anxieties may indicate a genuine ‘generation gap’ between elders who place most

emphasis on the preservation of a religious culture and who seek to ‘protect’ young people

from the corrupting influence of the wider society, and the young people themselves who

might see their religious heritage as one amongst many possible paths which they could take,
or as something to be held onto only to the degree that it does not constrain their other

14
choices too severely. Given their immersion in a modern society, which they are willy-nilly

exposed to whatever the constraints of the home and community environment, young people

in religiously orthodox cultures will have to grapple with choices which simply might not

have been available to their elders. However, some material suggests that, particularly

amongst Moslem children, the impact of religious values is to strengthen notions of proper

conduct and family and community ties. This does not necessarily mean that the children

‘buy into’ all aspects of the religious values (e.g. some Moslem boys will go out with non-

Moslem girls but would not consider marrying them [12]), but it may give a sense of greater

cohesion to their lives.

Alternatively, the entwining of religion and notions of correct conduct may provoke more

conflict, as in the many examples of difficulties surrounding arranged marriages. One

response of parents under such circumstances has been to attempt to become coercive in ways

which are clearly counter-productive not just from the point of view of a Western child-

centred discourse, but in its own terms. For example, it is claimed (2) that Muslim

adolescents in Britain are often coerced into marriage or engagement in order to legalise and

control their sexuality before the freedom of the surrounding culture gets to work. However,

this can result in the disintegration of the extended family, with children increasingly making

their own decisions about marriage partner, place of residence and personal liberty. There

may even be a ‘disintegration of faith-based identity’, particularly amongst girls, under the

pressures of parental expectations in regard both to academic achievement and acceptance of

unfairly arranged marriages. The word ‘unfairly’ is important here from a religious

perspective, suggesting not only that coercive arranged marriages can lead to disintegration

of family and faith, but also that they are religiously wrong. In the case of arranged

marriages, the Quran makes it clear that these need to be fair and appropriate, which means

that parents do not have complete control over their children’s destinies. An important point

here, from a professional point of view, is that only a religious authority would be able to rule

on whether a parent was behaving unfairly, an issue which often arises in clinical work when
one is trying to establish the boundaries of appropriate parenting.

15
The factors described above have considerable practical importance in numerous areas

central to parental activities and decision-making, for instance in education, child protection

and psychological intervention. In psychological therapies, there is the obvious problem of

working within strict authority structures, understanding the complexity of the culture, being

curious about yet not subverting deeply held religious beliefs, understanding community

pressures, and working with intra-family conflicts related to belief (17). In particular, strictly

religious communities turn to their religious leaders on matters relating to religious law,

including its impact on a wide range of features of daily life. In any intervention, whether

therapeutic or research based, participants are likely to ask whether the religious authority has

given approval, and most would refuse to cooperate if this approval had been withheld. This

is one reason why it is worth recommending to psychologists and others serving populations

with religious communities that they make strenuous attempts to form working alliances with

the religious authorities who govern and are respected within these communities. Sometimes

the ‘bluff’ of an appeal to religious authority needs to be called; more frequently, guidance on

what, from a religious point of view, is reasonable and what not needs to be obtained.

It is worth noting that there is some evidence that religious parents are more likely to have

harmonious family relationships rather than the converse, and less likely to use physical

punishments against their children -findings contrary to what might have been predicted

from some of the discussion above and from suggestions that religious parents are likely to be

more punitive and engage in harsher discipline than do secular parents (16). For example, in a

study of ninety African-American families in the rural South of the USA, Brody et al found

higher religious activity among the parent to be associated with lower levels of conflict

between parents, more cohesive family relationships and fewer problems among adolescent

children (3). Dollahite, reviewing the literature on the relationship of fathering and religious

belief, argues that religion generally has a positive influence on men and supports

‘responsible’ fathering, specifically through moral persuasion, personal examples,

community support efforts, and explicit teaching of marriage and family life (7). The research

16
he quotes suggests that American men know that a sense of meaning, direction, solace, and

involvement with a caring community are important in raising children, and that religious

practice can provide them. Dollahite claims that ‘religion, consisting of a covenant faith

community with teachings and narratives that enhance spirituality and encourage morality, is

the most powerful, meaningful, and sustained influence for encouraging men to be fully

involved in children’s lives’ (p.3). Dollahite and his colleagues have also reported research

suggesting that religious attitudes, and perhaps the structures of communal support that often

accompany them, are helpful in the parenting of children with specific difficulties and

disabilities. For example, Marks and Dollahite (19) carried out interviews with Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (‘Mormon’) fathers of children with special needs in order

to examine the meaning of religion in relation to responsible, involved fathering for these

fathers and their families. These interviews showed that although the fathers’ experiences

with religion were sometimes challenging, religion was meaningful and influential in

supporting them in their efforts to be responsible and relational. Religion was an important

resource for these fathers, affecting how they coped, the perspective they took, the way they

experienced their fathering, and the way they created their life stories (8). Skinner et al

similarly interviewed parents of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin living in the USA who had

young children with developmental delays, to determine the role of religion in their lives.

These interviews indicated that parents largely viewed themselves as religious, were affiliated

with a formal religion, and participated in religious activities. Most parents viewed both

church and faith as supportive, but faith was shown to provide more support, suggesting that

the important factor for them was not simply connection with a community (26).

Wilcox, describing the culture of American ‘conservative Protestantism’ argues that religious

values are an important predictor of child rearing attitudes and practices in more than one

way (28). Specifically, while it is the case that conservative Protestant parents maintain strict

discipline, they also show an unusually warm and expressive style of parent-child interaction,

and this is supported by the parenting advice given by religious leaders. In addition, data
from the 1987-1988 U.S. National Survey of Families and Households shows that parents

17
with conservative theological beliefs are more likely to praise and hug their children than are

parents with less conservative theological views. Christian and Barbarin (5) examined the

effect of parental religiosity and racial identity on parental reports of child behavior problems

in a sample of low-income African American children. Results from interviews and

questionnaires administered in the early 1990s showed that children of parents attending

church at least weekly had fewer problems compared to those whose parents attended less

frequently. Christian and Barbarin argue that these data confirm the importance of religion as

a socio-cultural resource in African American families, one that potentially contributes to the

resilience of children at risk for behavioral or emotional maladjustment as a function of

growing up in poor families and communities. A study by Merrill et al of young people from

a very religious and homogenous community, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-Day Saints attending Brigham Young University, also shows a protective effect of

parental religiosity on mental health, this time in regard to drug use, which had a very low

(self-reported) incidence. The most commonly reported reasons for abstention from drugs

were that drug use would violate the young person’s religious beliefs and personal moral

code. Protective factors against drug use included parental positions of responsibility in the

church and frequent family discussions involving religion and Christian conduct. The

mother’s view of religion was a stronger indicator of previous drug use than the father’s view

of religion, positions of church responsibility held by the parents, or arguments about

religious teachings with parents. Discussion on topics of Christian conduct was a stronger

indicator of previous drug use than were either church attendance or discussions on topics of

religious doctrine (20). Taken together, these findings suggest that cohesive family life

attached to religious belief, and a context in which religiously informed behaviour could be

discussed, are of preventive value in this area of major parental and mental health concern.

This is all admittedly very limited data, but it does suggest that the structure of religion, both

in terms of its inculcation of beliefs and ethics and its community organisation, can have a

beneficial effect on parenting processes. However, there are drawbacks too. For instance, one
significant point is the large size of many religious families which results from the

18
prohibition of contraception (except for strict medical reasons) and the advocacy of (often

youthful) marriage as a state of spiritual completion. In some of these communities there is an

average of five children per family, with families of ten or more children being commonplace

(18). In these circumstances, with the added problem of the economic privation produced by

large families, maternal depression is quite common (albeit offset to some extent by

community organisations and by the benefits of living in a close relational environment); the

mental health effects of this on children in these communities has not been researched, but

given the strength of the general link between maternal depression and children’s difficulties,

it is likely to be substantial (18).

In child protection, issues of physical punishment, neglect of children’s wishes over arranged

marriages and circumcision have already been mentioned, as has the intractable problem of

the ‘closed’ nature of many religious communities to outside scrutiny. There have been

suggestions in the literature that religion promotes child abuse, at least to the extent that it

endorses physical means of punishment. For example, Capps (4), in an article entitled

‘Religion and child abuse: Perfect together’ quotes a number of Christian sources advocating

the use of corporal punishment ‘for the good of the child’ and suggests that this can easily

drift into child abuse. De Jonge (13), in a similarly provocatively-titled paper (‘On breaking

wills: The theological roots of violence in families’) outlines a history of rationalisations of

violence and coercion which continue to exist in contemporary Christian perspectives on the

family and suggests that these are linked both to physical and psychological abuse and to a

cycle of violence which results from shaming and humiliating child-rearing practices. Danso

et al (6), studying undergraduates and their parents, found a relationship between

fundamentalism and support for corporal punishment, although right wing authoritarian

attitudes were at least as important in their study as were religious beliefs. Ellison and

Sherkat (10) provide some evidence that conservative Protestants (and to a lesser extent

Catholics) are prone to endorse authoritarian parenting orientations disproportionately (i.e., to

value obedience at the expense of autonomy), linked to three core religious beliefs: biblical
literalism, the belief that human nature is sinful, and punitive attitudes toward sinners.

19
However, Ellison (9), though noting that studies like this demonstrate that conservative

Protestant parents support corporal punishment more strongly and use it more frequently than

other parents, argues that it remains unclear whether this form of religious conservatism is

linked with actual child abuse, unless one extends the term to imply all physical forms of

discipline. Similarly, Loewenthal (16) quotes a study of 120 British adults who asked for

their recall of the use of physical punishment by their parents, and their parent’s religious

activity. The main conclusions of this study were that: there was no relationship between

recalled parental religiosity and the use of physical punishment with children under 13; more

religious parents were less likely to use physical punishment on adolescents (over 13); when

parents did use physical punishment, the more religious were less likely to use negative

communication (shouting, saying damaging things), and more likely to be recalled as having

a child-oriented motive; and the more religiously active parents were recalled as having a

more positive relationship with their children (27). Other studies also support the general

claim that ‘religiosity’ amongst parents is positively related to harmonious relationships

with children, irrespective of particular religious denomination, and this is probably due

primarily to the way most religions promote strong family ties (21).

When child abuse and protection does become an issue in religious communities, there can be

very substantial difficulties for secular state agencies in trying to gain access (25). Given that

the good standing and reputation of the community is itself seen as an attestation to the work

of promoting religious belief, then anything which brings shame on the community can be

seen as an anti-religious act. When problems occur, this can mean that the community turns

silent in order to prevent outsiders knowing of its troubles. As several high-profile instances

in the Catholic and Jewish communities have shown, this can act solidly against child

protection work, even when these nominally have the support of religious authorities. As in

the clinical vignette given earlier, the community can be seen virtually to shut down in the

face of child protection investigations from outside; in extreme cases, forms of

excommunication have been exerted on those who use the secular, state system as a port of
call for protective activity. Very commonly, particularly in the case of sexual abuse where an

20
abuser is known within the community, the religious authorities will take responsibility for

intervening; the consequence is often that the suspected abuser moves out of the community,

with the risk that the problem is ‘exported’ elsewhere. All this can be extremely frustrating

for child protection authorities, who may find themselves unable to establish the standing of

accusations or the protective and therapeutic needs of children who may have been involved.

In the area of education, there is a substantial and very visible impact of religion on what

parents will tolerate. As noted above, the biology and sex education curriculum of state

schools is often problematic for religious parents, and in the USA this is one reason why the

largest group of ‘home educators’ are Christians wishing to ensure that their children are not

exposed to education on sexuality -as well as wishing to inculcate in them minority attitudes

such as creationism. Research on fundamentalist Christian parents in the USA (24) suggests

that such parents significantly boost the educational attainment of male children who follow

their beliefs, but also that they are deleterious to the educational attainments of girls,

particularly those who eventually move away from fundamentalist attitudes themselves. More

generally, most religious parents wish to have single-sex schooling for their children, at least

once they get to adolescence, which can mean that they have great trouble finding anything

suitable within the state sector (1). There is also the broader question of what is taught, how

much of the curriculum can be devoted to religious instruction, and how to ensure that this is

only of the right kind. For all these reasons, schooling in religious communities is usually

private: children go to single-sex schools where the curriculum is heavily loaded towards

religious instruction and sometimes (though by no means universally) where secular studies

are relegated to secondary importance. (However, it is also of interest here that religious

schools often top the [British] ‘league tables’ for secular outcomes despite the fact that a

good proportion of children’s time is spent on religious study.) There are several further

consequences of this pattern, varying somewhat across different religious groups. For

example, in the strictly orthodox Jewish community schooling follows a distinctive pattern:

parents wish to give their children a ‘Torah education’, involving single-sex schooling and a
very high proportion of time spent in studying religious texts such as the Torah and Talmud.

21
Few of the schools meeting the requirements of strictly-orthodox parents receive state or

local authority funding, meaning that parents have to use unsubsidised private schools, thus

adding to the economic pressure also caused by having to provide for large families This in

turn may be an important risk factor for psychiatric morbidity among adults in this

community (18). It is also probably linked to child mental health difficulties, although very

little is known about psychiatric morbidity among children in the strictly-orthodox Jewish

community since there is reluctance to admit to problems and to seek help, especially outside

the community. Fear of stigmatisation is a powerful factor driving the widespread view that

‘she or he will grow out of it’.

Implications for Practice

Many of the major implications for research and practice of the considerations above have

already been broached. In practice terms, there is a need to grapple with the educational and

psychological issues arising out of religious thinking and beliefs. These have implications in

the design of schools and curricula (as well as in general educational policies, for example

towards state-aided ‘faith schools’) and in methods of psychological work with parents who

are affiliated to religious communities. In particular, issues such as authority and

independence, beliefs about gender roles and correct behaviour, and questions of

transmission of religious values need to be understood and worked with, rather than against.

Support from professionals for community based initiatives is of great importance, despite

difficulties of confidentiality and expertise, because without this there is likely to be a

substantial shortfall between the needs of the community and their take-up of provision. As

should be clear from the discussion above, there are many ways in which parents in religious

communities might feel misunderstood by secular professionals, and whilst cultural

awareness educational programmes are of value here, they cannot always address the radical

gulf between the ideological standpoints of religious and secular cultures. Moreover, simply

feeling comfortable enough to accept help is a major issue when it comes to parenting and
mental health provision, something which is more likely to occur when services are provided

22
from within communities than from outside (15,17). However, the most significant move

forward will perhaps be achieved when parenting and child mental health professionals

recognise that religious beliefs and practices are not best understood as an optional add-on to

the mores of Western secular culture, something exotic to be learnt about and acknowledged

but not taken seriously; rather, they represent, at least at their extremes, an ideology which in

important and relevant respects is opposed to the one almost universally adopted by those

who populate health and education services and act, significantly, as agents of the state.

In research terms, it will also be apparent from the paucity of empirical data in this chapter

that very little is known about the extent of actual variations in parenting behaviour between

members of different religious and secular groups. In addition, the degree of heterogeneity

that exists amongst parents who are members of religious communities is worthy of research,

as it will allow some calibration of ‘normality’ in those communities as well as increased

understanding of the degree to which variations from apparently accepted or prescribed

practices are themselves normative. The degree of conflict represented by this heterogeneity,

whether it varies across cultures, and how much it is changing over time are all relevant

concerns. There is also a real opportunity to examine the relative mental health outcomes of

radically different sets of parenting values, particularly in relation to fundamentalism. So

little is known about the frequencies of parenting difficulties and mental health problems in

children in religious communities, that it is not even possible at this stage to say with

confidence whether current services are meeting the needs of such communities

appropriately. Some basic research is required, but in order to do it researchers will have to

work industriously to cultivate good relationships with community organisations and

religious authorities-and this takes imagination, diplomacy and commitment.

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