Atheists: what do you think of this article?

Question

http://www.livescience.com/health/070424_religion_kids.html

Answer 1

Their 'study' in no way leads to the conclusion of the headline. I don't question their finding just their methodology and the articles conclusions. It basically says if the parents get along the kids will benefit.

"But when parents argued frequently about religion, the children were more likely to have problems. “Religion can hurt if faith is a source of conflict or tension in the family,” Bartkowski noted."

Did anyone doubt that parents arguing caused behavioral problems in their kids?

Answer 2

Just because it's written down doesn't make it true. I don't know where they get their statistics from but that is no where near the truth. How children behave depends on the core values that parents teach their children, not religion. You can still be religious and teach your children to be hateful bigots and have twisted values. I'm not saying that that is what religion or religious people do but, like all walks of life there are different types of people. Not all religious people are the same as each other and the same goes for atheists.

Answer 3

All studies are easy to skew if you look at this one it will be the same as people are always try to use studies to prove their point . In this case I personally have noticed that anyone who brings children up properly no matter a believer or not will have good children in fact most believers children in the area I live tend towards the " little bastard " end of the scale everything from drug abuse to gang membership { skinheads most of them } ! It has also be a observation of many famous people for a long time now that university professors are those that if they were any good at what they taught would be in the private sector earning 2 to 4 times as much !

Answer 4

And what do Christians think about the article in Newsweek reporting that teens who have sex earlier are less delinquent than those who wait. Doesn't that mean that Christianity's stance of abstinence is promoting delinquency?

The study in the link you posted fails to take into account any other factors that might have affected the child's behavior, for example basic parenting style, economic status, etc. It also never mentions atheists. For all I know, every last family was to some degree christian, some just more shiftless than others.

Answer 5

Maybe you should also tell something about the person who made that study :

John P. Bartkowski is Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin in 1997. Much of his work examines the connections between religion, family, and social welfare. His most recent works include the books
Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post- Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003)
The Promise Keepers: Servants, Soldiers, and Godly Men (Rutgers University Press, 2004).
He is also the author of Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families (Rutgers University Press, 2001). Bartkowski is currently working on two books -- one on Latter-day Saint teen religiosity and another on evangelical parenting. He has published articles in Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Religious Research, Social Forces, Sociological Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Marriage and Family, Gender & Society, and Qualitative Sociology, among other journals. He has served in various officer roles for the American Sociological Association Section on Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Religious Research Association.

I'd wonder if the study isn't a bit slanted.

Answer 6

this has no bearings... let's say the kids that were used in the experiment that were brought up with religion came from middle to high class families and were seemingly destined to be healthier, and on the flip-side the kids used for the non-religion were from lower class and poorer regions then of course they would not be as healthy.. who is to say this article is not biased... look research has also proven that atheists are actually smarter than people with a religion.. is there any bearings to that? No, i would guess that if the 10 smartest atheists and 10 smartest ppl w/ a religion would score nearly identical on a test so to me, this has no bearings... one individual differs from another... some people need to have religion because in my opinion are too weak to go through life with out someone telling them how to live.. when i raise my kids it will be up to them whether or not they want religion, but to me it is astonishing to me that people need stories from the bible etc etc to show how one should live. shouldn't we as people know what's right from wrong? the same would go for raising children w/ or w/out religion

Answer 7

the article is flawed because it compares kids who are religious and to those who's parents fight over religion, not to atheists. I was raised in an atheistic household and I did fine. My sister graduated in the top 2% of her class in biology at the University of Iowa. How a child does in school depends on the parents and has absolutely nothing to do with religion

Answer 8

It's probably true. Religious communities can have a positive impact on a child's social development.

I still don't believe in God though, if that's what you're asking. This article really doesn't relate to us, because the study had nothing to do with children with atheist parents. It either included "religious" or "non-religious."

Answer 9

I'm not an atheist, but the article made good sense to me. Kids with religious parents ARE better behaved and adjusted than other children.

Note that the key factor is actual attendance at services:
"The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents."

I was also impressed by the likely reasons for the benefits of religion:
1. Religious networks provide social support to parents, he said, and this can improve their parenting skills.
2. The types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family.
3. Religious organizations imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance.

Cheers,
Bruce

Answer 10

Why does he assume that non-believers argue about religion all the time ? Holies seem to think that religion is on everybody's mind 24/7 .
In many very happy homes , religion is talked about as often as the price of putty in Peru is discussed .