Research on “growing up godless” says it’s pretty okay.

via WikimediaA few weeks ago, the LA Times ran an op-ed by sociologist Phil Zuckerman on the growing number of kids who are “growing up godless” – raised by the “nones,” the 23% of Americans who don’t claim any religion in particular.

So how does the raising of upstanding, moral children work without prayers at mealtimes and morality lessons at Sunday school? Quite well, it seems. …

[Secular families had] high levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness between parents and nonreligious youth, and strong ethical standards and moral values that had been clearly articulated as they were imparted to the next generation.

Vern Bengston, author of the study whose results are described in the quote above, went on to note that “Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious’ parents in our study.”

Jezebel writer Tracy Moore, with many caveats that she knew Christians who were fine parents, summed it up: “But it’s SOOOO satisfying so don’t take it away from us.” Commenters on the LA Times website agreed – one respondent called the studies “secular catnip,” with findings like these:

Studies have found that secular teenagers are far less likely to care what the “cool kids” think, or express a need to fit in with them, than their religious peers. When these teens mature into “godless” adults, they exhibit less racism than their religious counterparts, according to a 2010 Duke University study. Many psychological studies show that secular grownups tend to be less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.

The thing I’m most curious about is what it is about secular parenting that causes the good outcomes, particularly Bengston’s observation that secular parents were often more coherent and passionate about their moral systems than religious ones. For example, at first I thought maybe the unaffiliated might be tend to be more educated, which might lend itself to teaching kids to clearly articulate moral standards – but nope, Pew Forum reports that on education and income, the nones are about average.

Another possibility that occurred to me was that the “nones,” existing in a predominantly-Christian environment, might have to be more articulate about their moral systems – the kids might ask why they don’t go to church like the neighbors do, for instance. Christian families might not face those kinds of questions, making it easier to drift towards “moral therapeutic deism.” (aka generic vague-monotheism.) As far as I know there haven’t been any international comparison studies on outcomes for secular kids, but I’d be curious to see if that finding held in countries where the “nones” make up a bigger share of the population.

Readers, have any of you “grown up godless,” or raised your children that way? How does your experience line up with the sociology?

One comment on “Research on “growing up godless” says it’s pretty okay.
  1. A less robust idea might be that some parents might be “lazy” and think that church is there to provide moral instruction, so they don’t have to do it as directly, or they can assume their children are learning the proper Christian values from their Sunday school. Except that Sunday school probably isn’t as effective as actual engagement from parents about that. But that might be hard to quantify and, as I said, is not super robust, and is maybe a little flippant.

    Another thought I have is about the correlation with “more tolerance.” I would think that’s more of a coincidence than meaning that people who are religious are inherently less tolerant. That is, if instead of thinking about one’s “religion” we think about their “worldview,” everyone has one. And those who hold a more secular or naturalist worldview in our society are probably more likely to be more left/liberal in other ways anyway, politically, etc. Whereas while there are certainly tolerant religious people, the less tolerant people are probably more often the religiously conservative, which could skew the data to show that the “religious” are less tolerant.

    Lastly, I’d echo what you say about non-religious people living in a predominantly religious society. I would guess that most people of religious or “worldview” minorities, like those in most minorities, tend to understand what that’s like a little more and try to teach their kids to be more tolerant toward others. So again, in a country where everybody is godless, those people would probably behave more like any other majority, and just float along on the majority bus not having to worry as much about people who might be different. Whee generalizations.

    Certainly, it’s good to have science to show people “look, godless kids turn out just fine.” It’s also not surprising to me or probably any non-religious people or liberal religious people like UUs. I’m just waiting to facepalm when angry atheists will use this to say that religion is harmful and being non-religious is categorically superior.

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