When faith divides family: Religious discord and adolescent reports of parent–child relations

What happens to family relations when an adolescent and her parent do not share the same religious convictions or practices? Whereas previous work on religion and intergenerational relations looks at relationships between parents and their adult children, we shift the focus to younger families, assessing how parent–child religious discord affects adolescents’ evaluation of their relationship with their parents. Exploring data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find several interesting patterns of association between religious discord and parent–child relations. Overall, religious discord predicts lower quality intergenerational relations. When parents value religion more than their teens do, adolescents tend to report poorer relations with parents. Relationship quality is not lower, however, when it is the adolescent who values religion more highly. We also find that religious discord is more aggravating in families where parent and child share religious affiliation and in families where the parent is an evangelical Protestant.