Cross-cultural perspectives on adolescents’ religiosity and family orientation

Abstract

Th is chapter explores the cultural and the individual religious roots of adolescents’ family orientation on the basis of multi-level analyses of data from 17 cultural groups. Religion and the family are seen as intertwined social institutions. The family as a source of social support has been identifi ed as an important mediator of the effects of religiosity on adolescent developmental outcomes. The results of the current study show that religiosity was related to different aspects of adolescents’ family orientation (traditional family values, value of children, and family future orientation), and that the culture-level effects of religiosity on family orientation were stronger than the individuallevel effects. At the cultural level, socioeconomic development added to the effect of religiosity, indicating that societal affluence combined with non-religious secular orientations is linked to a lower family orientation, especially with regard to traditional family values. The authors suggest that individual religiosity may be of special importance for adolescents’ family orientation in contexts where religiosity has lost some significance but religious traditions are still alive and can be (re-)connected to.