There are many reasons to celebrate dads on this Father’s Day. We have a big impact on our children’s lives, and we can have a huge impact on their faith. There is plenty of evidence to show what fathers can do—if they do it.
But the data consistently shows that while fathers can shape their kids’ faith, mothers are more likely to step up.
For example, the Barna Group—a for-profit research group with an emphasis on faith and culture—surveyed 2,347 Christians who say their faith is important to them and who attend church at least once a month. These practicing Christians were more frequently influenced by mothers than fathers: “Two-thirds (68%) say they were most influenced by the Christian model of their mothers, compared to less than half (46%) who point to their fathers.” Barna Group identified this influence as particularly strong during their teenage years:
Practicing Christians in their teen years consistently identify mothers as the ones who provide spiritual guidance and instruction and instill the values and disciplines of their faith in the household. Moms are their foremost partners in prayer (63%) and conversations about God (70%), the Bible (71%) or other faith questions (72%). This is consistent with Barna data through the years that show mothers to be the managers of faith formation (among other household routines and structures). Mothers are also the ones encouraging church attendance (79%) or teaching kids about the Bible (66%), God’s forgiveness (66%) and religious traditions (72%).
This survey includes all Christians, but the same trends appear in data focused on Catholics.
Perhaps nobody has studied religious formation in youth as much as Professor Christian Smith, who has conducted multiple in-depth surveys (the National Study of Youth and Religion) and published books on the topic. In Souls in Transition, Smith and his co-author note that among young Catholics, 65% had religious views very or somewhat similar to their mothers, but a slightly less 58% said the same about their fathers. The mother’s impact was even greater as they moved into what Smith calls “emerging adulthood.” So mothers are doing more and passing on their faith, but fathers can have a bigger impact.
Professor Vern Bengston conducted thousands of longitudinal surveys over a thirty-five-year period with thousands of respondents from hundreds of three-generational families and published a book on it. In short, he measured the successes and failures in transmitting religion across the generational lines of multiple specific families. In his book Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down across Generations, Bengston noted that “what is really interesting is that, for religious transmission, having a close bond with one’s father matters even more than a close relationship with the mother.”
Mothers matter, but fathers can matter a little more for passing on the faith. A father who is “close” with his children had a 67% percent rate of transmitting his religious tradition and a 56% rate of transmitting his religious participation. Mothers were about five points lower (though the difference was less for Catholics).
Closeness to one’s father also shows up as a powerful factor in Smith’s book Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church. Among young adult Catholics who actually practiced their faith, 73% reported feeling extremely close or very close to their father. Less than half of disengaged Catholics reported the same. Practicing Catholics were almost twice as likely to report that their “father understands them very well.”
Similarly, practicing Catholics were 2.5 times more likely to talk to their “father about personal subjects very often” than disengaged. Smith’s data, though, shows that mothers were more engaged and more likely to talk about these personal subjects with their kids. More broadly, Smith concludes that parent relationships matter: “The larger point is that practicing the Catholic faith and enjoying better relationships with parents seem frequently, although not inevitably, to come linked together.”
Mothers are doing great work, but it’s not enough. We’ve all seen the warnings among tens of millions of people leaving the Catholic faith or the prediction that America will become a majority non-Christian country.
Simply put, fathers need to do more. We cannot leave it up to the moms to do all the faith formation.
If you’re a regular reader of CWR or similar sites, chances are you already take your kids to Mass, pray with them, and the like. Even if your wife is doing a better job, you may be doing a pretty good job. But we men need to encourage and challenge each other. My Catholic dad group text is far more likely to discuss Chesterton’s Fence than calming crying kids during the consecration. I’ve probably talked more frequently with guys about taking my kids fishing—and I am not a serious fisherman—than I have about my prayer routine with my kids. This prayer routine is based on que-and-response strategies from books on habits: we pray in the car after I face a slow down or a stop sign.
It’s hard to forget to pray together when it’s a habit. We fathers need to do more, we need to do it together, and we need to share what works. Mothers are great, but they are not enough. I cannot consider a one-third attrition rate as acceptable among my kids.
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Received a call from someone wishing me a happy Fathers Day. Then he told me had wept at Mass, that he wouldn’t have a son to carry on his posterity. For whatever underlying reason he’s suffered psychologically during his life, perhaps a genetic disorder. I’ve been counseling him for some years as his friend and priest father.
A Catholic priest, and I emphasize Catholic because of the intimacy conveyed by the real presence of the Holy Eucharist that creates bonds of compassion otherwise unavailable in this world. If the priest, whatever his imperfections, and I think of the Apostle who recognized his own makes himself available he comes a father of many. I also have daughters. Women who are successfully married with several children and strong in their love of Christ. And women who are struggling with their marriage finding solace in substances. Nevertheless offering themselves to Christ and his Church.
During our great darkness of the faith, and it seems other Christian bodies, the Eastern Catholic Rites, the Orthodox fault us Latins for all our absorption in theological matters, creating issues that shouldn’t exist, so they say, like the Filioque Clause. Many of us priest fathers are discouraged, many indifferent not allowing ourselves to be available to the children of God, the effort which would merit Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit, the transformative flame of divine love.
Interesting picture to use on an article about fatherhood by picking easily the worst father the Church has had in its history.
St. Joseph would be a better inspiration and the model of his life should be used to offer more solutions.
This is an article that points out a problem with no clear steps forward or solution.
Interesting that you would fixate on Pope Francis when the focus should be on the father on the child, the father on the right, and baptism.
Despite his prominence in the picture, why not disregard that earthly and flawed Church father? If we focus instead on the good, perfect, providential, all powerful, all loving Father in heaven, we rest assured that all is right with the world–in spite of dishonorable dads blindly leading the blind.
Fathers and mothers should be united in loving God more than anything, aiding one another in that union, having that loving union with one another, and raising the fruit of that union to love God in the same manner. Then we’d have a world full of saints.
But we can’t have that, can we? It would interfere with too much else we love.
On Father’s day it is of value to humbly review the progress or failure of fathers. For complete interogation of our role, we must look at the health of the modern family. A curious beast it has become indeed. One can’t help but wonder if progress, in its relentless march, hasn’t trampled a few crucial familial roles underfoot. Now, I wouldn’t dream of denigrating the fairer sex. But can we, in good conscience, ignore the role absent fathers have played in this domestic disarray? Where once a father was the sturdy oak, sheltering his brood from life’s storms, today we see… well, shadows, perhaps. Men slipping in and out of the family structure, leaving the emotional and spiritual heavy lifting to mothers, often admirable women, but burdened, nonetheless.
Is it any surprise then, that pernicious cry for “women’s rights” and feminism has long-since been yelled from every quarter? Feminism became a war cry against men, fatherhood, patriarchy, and motherhood altogether. The family, once a haven built on complementary strengths, now resembles a tug-of-war contest. Children, caught in the middle, have clearly become adrift without a clear anchor. I say, progress must consider the whole ship, not just the sails! A strong family needs both a sturdy mast and a following wind. For those whose vocation is that of fatherhood, let us humbly strive to emulate Christ as we serve as heads of our families. Let us strive to assist young fathers in their role as we must also teach our sons by our example how to lead best by serving. Let us be men with chests, consciously aware of our role to protect, guide, serve our spouse and children. Let us be first to hit our knees to pray with our families every day.
Three cheers for everybody promoting Catholics spending time with their kids and seriously trying to raise them! In addition to what is recommended above, I recommend the site “How to keep your kids Catholic.” I don’t know if you allow links, Carl, but the link is this: http://www.howtokeepyourkidscatholic.com
Three cheers for everybody promoting Catholics spending time with their kids and seriously trying to raise them! In addition to what is recommended above, I recommend the site “How to keep your kids Catholic.”