Monday, June 20, 2005
Fathers and Church effects
The stats from Switzerland on regular attenders of fathers vs mothers and the effects on their children are very interesting. The surprising numbers are:
As Queen of Carrots sugggests, I also think that lower percentage is accounted for passive or unwilling regular attending fathers.
What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father's commitment grows in proportion to mother's laxity, indifference, or hostility.So the message is, for those families with a mother and a father, if you dad's attend church regularly, you need to make your wife stop attending church! For the children's sake, of course. (GRIN) Seriously, the difference between 33% and 44% is 1/3 (33% better chance your children will remain regular attenders if the mother was a non-attender).
As Queen of Carrots sugggests, I also think that lower percentage is accounted for passive or unwilling regular attending fathers.
