New Study Reveals Religious Upbringing Better for Kids’ Health, Well-Being
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A recent Harvard study reveals that children who had a religious upbringing are likely to be healthier and have a higher degree of well-being in early adulthood than those who did not.
The study, conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and released last month, shows a link between a religious upbringing and better physical and mental health in young adults.
Researchers found that people who attended religious services weekly or who practiced prayer or meditation daily in their youth reported having a higher life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s.
Individuals were found less likely to smoke, have symptoms of depression, use illicit drugs, or have sexually transmitted infections than people who engaged in less regular spiritual practices.
“These findings are important for both our understanding of health and our understanding of parenting practices,” said first author Ying Chen in a university press release . “Many children are raised religiously, and our study shows that this can powerfully affect their health behaviors, mental health, and overall happiness and well-being.”
The researchers followed 5,000 young people for between eight to 14 years, controlling for variables such as maternal health, socioeconomic status, and histories of substance abuse or symptoms of depression.
Results show that those who went to religious services at least once a week as children were about 18 percent more likely to report higher levels of happiness as young adults between the ages of 23 and 30 than those who didn’t. They were also shown to be 29 percent more likely to volunteer in their local communities and 33 percent less likely to engage in the use of illicit drugs.
Those who prayed or meditated at least once a day in their youth were shown to be 16 percent more likely to report higher levels of happiness as young adults and were 30 percent less likely to have become sexually active in their adolescence. These individuals were also 40 percent less likely to have contracted a sexually transmitted infection than those who never prayed or meditated.
Emilie Kao, the director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, said she was not surprised by the researchers’ findings, noting that the Harvard study joins a long list of studies showing a positive link between religion and well-being.
“I think they’re consistent with other research that we’ve seen that shows religious beliefs give people spiritual strengths that lead to healthy habits and build their social networks and gives them the ability to overcome obstacles in their lives,” Kao said.
Though the positive effects of growing up in a religious household is clear, religiosity in America is declining, particularly among millennials.
Gallup data show s that the number of Americans regarding religion to be “very important” in their lives is at a 24-year low, at 51 percent.
In addition, data from the Pew Research Center shows religiosity among Americans consistently declining for the past five generations, with 36 percent of millennials born between 1990 and 1996 unaffiliated with any religion.
By contrast, only 11 percent of those in the “Silent Generation,” born between 1928 and 1945, according to Pew, were unaffiliated with a religion.
Jon Cadle, a senior from Minnesota at George Washington University, said he thinks the decline is because young people today are too distracted, and he blames technology as the source of the problem.
“Where once it was a family activity every Sunday, now it’s about football and ‘Fortnite,’” Cadle said, referring to a popular online video game for children and teenagers that parents even started hiring tutors for their kids to play. “There’s so many more distractions in our culture today than in past generations.”
Hunter Wilson, another student at George Washington University, agrees that the decline in the importance of religion among young people is a result of changing values between generations.
“With the combination of religion not being taught as much in the home, in addition to its declining presence in the public square, it’s easy to understand how religion is declining in importance among my peers,” said Wilson, who hails from Michigan.
Kao warned this decline in religiosity among Americans could drive up the unhealthy behaviors that religious upbringings are shown to reduce, such as drug and alcohol addiction and depression.
“Whether it’s drugs or suicide, it’s the strong personal connections and social networks that insulate against addictions and unhealthy behaviors and suicide,” she said.
Kao said there is a lesson for policymakers to be learned from studies showing the positive influences that growing up with a religious upbringing can have.
“What policymakers need to do is allow religious institutions to operate in the public square without trying to force them to change their beliefs,” she said. “I think there’s a movement to push religious organizations out of the public square because people don’t share their values or think their values are too traditional.”
The Harvard study, “Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis,” was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Tags
Who is online
219 visitors
Forcing kids to believe something of which there is not a shred of evidence is called....brainwashing, and no it's not healthy.
all 3 of my happy, healthy, and productive adult children have thanked me for not imposing any religious bullshit upon them when they were young. I was also honest with them about santa claus, the easter bunny, the great pumpkin, and the tooth fairy when they were old enough to ask me.
"Religious upbringing better for kids' health and well being." ? ?
Of course. And the absolute proofs are the children's and the general societies where religion is the main and only focus in daily life. Such as the Theocratic governments in the Islamic World.
from the study itself:
ah.. so it mainly studied rich white kids ? interesting.... and it might not be generalizable to the broader population ? well.. it seems that this seeded article is suggesting it to be generalized to the broader population.. plus it didn't look at the influence of parents and peers on the participants religious decision.. interesting they would leave that out... what others think is a big deal for many adolescents and does shape how they act/behave and view things later on, especially if those people are parents or close friends of the person making the decision
from the study itself:
wait.. what ? the Templeton Foundation ? here's some information for them:
from:
gee.. i'm told all the time by the conservative minded that scientists and such have their own agenda and just "follow the money" ... yet now they are totally on board with science since it's funded by a religious foundation ? .... i'm almost shocked.. ( do i really need a /s tag ? ) ... at best this seeded article is misleading with a pro religious agenda.
E.A Excellent Point!
Tell us about ALL Tribal System world wide.
How many Tribal Systems are YOU aware that are not " Faith. Religion " Based?
In Tribal System why is " Religion/faith " a Fundamental Part and how at Pheromones what might well be the same mechanism in other lifeforms?
rich white kids are now a Tribe ?
E.A is that what I said?
what was MY Question?
and YOUR response is?>
well if that's not what you are stating - then your reply to my post is irrelevant since i didn't mention anything about "Tribal Systems". Next ?
That alone shows there is going to be a religious bias and any "conclusion" from them should be suspect in the least.
I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but it did not work well for me. As a adult, I married outside the church and was threatened with excommunication by a particularly pompous and hypocritical priest when my mother informed him that I was marrying outside the church. My wife and I raised two children whom we took to a Baptist church with us until they became teenagers. At that point I told them they were old enough and free to make their own choice on whether to believe and/or go to church. The older one became pretty much of a agnostic and I never criticized him for it. My younger one considers herself a Christian but does not follow and particular organized church. My children both grew up to become fairly normal and well adjusted adults as a result, as are my four grandchildren. I am the same way, although I have not followed much in the way of any organized religious belief system since my with and son both passed away in the last two years.
I was raised in one of the protestant cults. Never missed a sunday or vacation bible school until I was 12 or 14 years old. Then one sunday the preacher invited my mom to a private bible study group. That was the last sunday we ever went to church. Long story short, a few months later in our small farm town, a local scandal broke about the wife swapping club that was going on at our former church. It took down a few pillars of the community, including my scout master. No more boy scouts for me. My opinion is that a big percentage of the in your face devout attend church out of the guilt they feel for something else going on in their lives. They hide it by thumping on sunday.
God should just get rid of Satan. Seems like a troublemaker.
...especially the born again madrasas.
God has not already decided Satan is trouble?
God is certainly taking his sweet time. Theists have believed Satan to be trouble for thousands of years. God supposedly knew that since day 1. So what's taking him so long to deal with it? Perhaps your god is lazy? Or just doesn't care.
Guess "religious upbringing" didn't work for these killers:
I had some holy roller asshole on my sales team years ago. He used church as an excuse to remove himself from the work schedule when it was convenient. He was always babbling on and on about his strict religious beliefs. Then I caught him stealing from his peers. He had hacked the phone system to steal sales appointments, was stealing customer referrals from the other sales people, and was post dating contracts to qualify for sales prizes and monthly bonuses. I fired his bible thumper ass.
He tried to go over my head to the owners and they were about to give him a second chance, until I informed them that they would likely be losing $2 million in sales while they trained a new sales team after word got out, or if I informed those that had been his victims if they asked, and that I would not be held responsible for any acts of retaliation against that POS. He got hired by a competitor and pulled the same sales stunts. They fired him.
He had imposed his strict religious beliefs on his 2 children. They had been home schooled and isolated from social interaction with non-church children their own age until high school. They did not adapt well. His daughter went to college and ended up with an illegitimate child and dropped out. She didn't know who the father was and is raising it with her mother. His son went through drug rehab 3 times and was getting ready to go again when his dad, who had been black balled in the industry and was no longer employable in it, decided to suck on a shotgun in the barn. His son OD'd less than a month later. I found out later that the thumper POS had been accused of molesting his own daughters child and had pulled the trigger 1 day before his interview by child protective services.
Guess they didn't add this family to their "bs scientific study".
first funeral that I was asked by more than one person not to attend. as if I would have. very sad what he did to his kids though. met his mom once, thumper wacko that had been married 4 times.
sorry it's not as colorful as your stories
that's not true. just most of the self righteous born again scum.
Never said I was a secularist, don't assume, you know what they say about assuming things you have no clue about.
[deleted]