The influence of fathers

A reader sent in one of those pieces of sociological research that you know expresses a deep truth about families and fathers. It’s just that you’re not sure whether you should believe it entirely, or what you should do with it.

It was a survey conducted in Switzerland (more than two decades ago) in conjunction with their regular census. The survey looked at whether a person’s religious convictions carried on into the next generation. In particular, it charted how the church attendance pattern of fathers and mothers influenced the subsequent attendance pattern of their children as they grew to adulthood.

Look at the following incomplete set of results, and (as some of you might remember Bart Simpson saying) set your faces to stun:¹

There are multiple reasons for these figures to be treated with caution. We aren’t sure of the exact methodology, the religious or theological assumptions made, the Swiss cultural factors that may have affected the result, and so on. But even factoring in a discount for uncertainty, these are startling figures about the influence of a father on the church-attending patterns of his children.

Notice, for example, the extraordinary contrast between lines 7 and 3. A faithful, regularly attending mother with a non-attending husband will (on average) see only 2% of her children become regulars themselves, but a regular father with a non-attending wife will see 44% of his children become regulars at church. An even more bizarre reversal is seen between lines 4, 5 and 6, where an irregularly attending father is much more likely to see his children become regular church-goers than if his wife doesn’t attend—as if the mother’s non-attendance in some way sparks a greater identification of the children with the father’s faith.

What the figures would be like if only evangelical churches (where the gospel is preached and people are genuinely converted, as opposed to merely adopting the attendance patterns of their parents) were surveyed would be interesting to speculate. However, regardless of what these statistics really indicate about the way faith is formed, they do show one startling truth: the influence of fathers on the behaviour of their children. Fathers take note. Mothers, don’t despair. Pass this article on with an appropriate jab of the elbow to the ribs.

1. These figures were originally quoted from an article in Touchstone magazine, which is no longer online. They are instead available from the Council of Europe's European Population Committee (p. 38). ↩

This article was first published in Briefing #340, and has been slightly updated.