Further, the study reported that a child is more likely to adopt parental beliefs when they know that the beliefs are vitally important to the parents. In other words, if parents think something is unimportant or if parents say that many different religious attitudes and positions are equally important, the child is unlikely either to have strong religious beliefs or have those beliefs influence their behavior.
Religious Attendance: Abundant research -- from various top-level universities and government agencies to research institutions like the Barna Research Group -- documents that active church participation is the key to raising well-adjusted, happy children who have a life-long moral compass and avoid the typical pitfalls of the teenage years. When researchers try to isolate "what works" in terms of raising children, invariably they find this key: "active participation" in a "faith community." In an analysis of the Adolescent Health Survey last year, the Heritage Foundation's Patrick Fagan found that girls from intact families who attended church regularly averaged only .47 sex partners, whereas girls from broken families that never attended church averaged 1.55 sex partners.
Religious Activities: The aforementioned Barna study found that a "symbiotic partnership" between parents and the church is essential for children's well-being. According to a study published in the American Journal of Sociology, the rate of couples living together without marriage is seven times higher for those who never attended church services than for those who attended church several times a week. Young people who are affiliated with a church have higher rates of marriage than those who substitute cohabitation for marriage.
Denominational Affiliation: A unique finding of the Child Trends and National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy study is that denominational affiliation is an important factor in delaying teen sex. Perhaps it should be obvious that churches and denominations with carefully delineated theology and worship rituals, including hymns that have stood the test of time, would more effectively impact families than churches or denominations that have more emphasis on feelings and emotions than doctrine, are driven more by a strong, dominant personality than by Biblical beliefs, and use less theologically orthodox music in worship.
Peer Religious Attendance: Numerous studies indicate that teens acquire friends based on similar sexual behavior. Numerous studies also indicate that peer influences are pivotal during the teen years. Obviously then, having a network of friends with similar values reinforces attitudes and behaviors consistent with those beliefs. But there are also studies indicating that the strength of peer influence is determined by the teen's relationship with his or her parents. In fact, a 1993 study of seventh-graders showed that when the parent-child relationship is characterized as "distant," the teens are more likely to associate with friends who are sexually active and to have sexually permissive attitudes and behavior. The Journal of Adolescent Health revealed that women who did not attend church in their adolescence were more than twice as likely to report having multiple sex partners compared with those who attended services regularly.
