Transmission of Religiosity from Parent to Child: Moderation by Perceived Parental Psychopathology

Parents influence their children’s religiosity through many factors including parenting practices, parental religiosity, and parental psychopathology. Little research, however, has been conducted on how different parental psychopathologies, such as anxiety, depressive, and antisocial problems, affect the transmission of religiosity from parent to child. Participants reported the psychopathological behaviors of their parents via the Adult Behavior Checklist as well as personal and parental religiosity using a new religious scale. Structural equation modeling was used to measure whether parental psychopathology, parent gender, and participant gender would moderate the relationship between perceived parental and emerging adult religiosity. Results indicated that maternal interactions were significant for depressive and antisocial problems but gender analyses revealed that the interactions were significant only for females; similarly although no overall interaction occurred, the maternal interaction was significant for anxiety problems only for females when gender analyses were conducted. The results did not suggest a 3-way interaction among variables