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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Child Abuse & Neglect
Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare Jill C. Schreiber a,∗ , Michael J. Culbertson b a b
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, USA University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 11 January 2014 Received in revised form 19 March 2014 Accepted 29 March 2014 Available online xxx
Keywords: Religion Socialization Child welfare NSCAW
a b s t r a c t Increased religiosity is associated with a variety of improved outcomes, especially for youth in disadvantaged contexts. Although youth involved in child welfare may experience protective effects of religious participation or values, little is known about the impact of maltreatment on religious development. Using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, a nationally representative study of child welfare involved families, correlates of religious attendance and importance of religion for youth were investigated using weighted logistic regression at two waves 18 months apart. Youth self-reports of religious attendance and their ratings of its importance were associated with religious attendance of their caregivers, whether birth-parents or foster parents. Foster parents were more likely to attend religious services than birth parents. Increases in youth attendance from Wave 1 to Wave 2 were associated with high youth religious importance at Wave 1, whereas decreases in attendance were associated with moving between home and foster placements. Increases in religious importance from Wave 1 to Wave 2 were associated with religious attendance at Wave 1 and with the youth being Black. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Child welfare goals of cultural continuity and child well-being often include language about the importance of religious affiliation (not prescriptive of any specific faith or tradition). For example, the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), a Children’s Bureau tool for periodic monitoring of state child welfare systems, includes faith as part of the discussion about continuity in foster care and lists one of the goals as “preserving important connections for children in foster care, such as connections to neighborhood, community, faith, family, tribe, school, and friends” (CFSR item 14, Children’s Bureau, 2006, p. 56). Additionally, religious affiliation has been shown to be a protective factor for abused youth (Perkins & Jones, 2004). However, religion has rarely been included in child welfare research, and very little is known about how maltreated youth experience religion or if they experience it at all. Maltreated youth who have religious connections may experience them positively (e.g., religious rituals or communities may help them cope with their abuse and neglect) or negatively (e.g., differences in religion may be a source of conflict between parents and youth). A better understanding of the religious experiences of maltreated youth could help child welfare practitioners support the positive aspects of religious participation and affiliation and minimize negative aspects and conflicts about religion. Religiosity is “an active personal devotion and passionate quest [for meaning] largely within the self-acknowledged framework of a sacred theological community” (DeHaan, Yonker, & Affholter, 2011, p. 193) and encompasses a variety of dimensions such as participation, practice, coping, commitment, and salience (Cotton, Zebracki, Rosenthan, Tsevat, & Drotar, 2006). Religiosity includes external factors, including a connection with a sociocultural-historical system (King & Roeser, 2009; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005), and internal factors (often called spirituality), which are associated with an individual,
∗ Corresponding author address: Southern Illinois Univeristy at Edwardsville, Social Work, Box 1450, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021 0145-2134/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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personal quest for meaning, happiness, and wisdom (Hill et al., 2000). Although there is distinctiveness between religion and spirituality, failure to integrate the two may inaccurately reflect each (Good et al., 2011), and a wide range of empirical research supports the considerable overlap between them (Hill & Pargament, 2003; Hyman & Handal, 2006; Zinnbauer et al., 1997). The primary reason to consider the effect of religiosity in child welfare is the plethora of studies with youth in the general population that have shown that religiosity affects adolescent outcomes. Most researchers have found that religiosity was associated with improved outcomes, including decreased psychopathology (Dew et al., 2008), improved health (Cotton et al., 2006), reduction in crime (Johnson, Li, Larson, & McCullough, 2000; Salas-Wright, Vaughn, & Maynard, 2014b), decreased family conflict (Mahoney, 2005), higher levels of education (Caputo, 2004), reduced substance use and violence (SalasWright, Vaughn, Hodge, & Perron, 2012), and decreased risky sexual behavior (Landor, Simons, Simons, Brody, & Gibbons, 2011). Religious involvement may contribute toward these improved outcomes by increasing children and youths’ access to moral order, learned competencies, and social and organizational ties (Smith, 2003b) or increased self-control (Laird, Marks, & Marrero, 2011). Particularly relevant for child welfare-involved youth is research that has shown that religiosity can support resilience, buffering the negative effects of poverty and poor neighborhoods. In a review of the role of religiosity for low-income youth, Joshi, Hardy, and Hawkins report that “religiosity is a significant moderating factor between risk factors and negative life events” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009, p. 4–10). Youth religious involvement has also moderated the effect of neighborhood disorder on psychological problems (Cook, 2000), criminal involvement for Black youth (Johnson et al., 2000), and drug use (Jang & Johnson, 2001). Few studies have directly examined the relationship between religiosity and outcomes specifically for youth involved with child welfare. Perkins and Jones (2004) found that religiosity was a predictor of reduced use of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sexual activity, and antisocial behavior, but not suicide or purging, for a large sample of abused youth from Michigan; and Kim (2008) found an association between higher religious importance and reduced internalizing symptomology for a sample of younger maltreated girls. Scott et al. (2006) found that higher scores on religious measures were associated with reduced alcohol and cigarette use and reduced sexual behavior in a regional sample of older youth in foster care, but White et al. (2007) did not find a relationship between religious beliefs and mental health for youth in foster care. The results from these child-welfare samples along with those cited earlier from the general population emphasize that religiosity may be an important factor for youth involved in child welfare. Further research that clarifies the religious experiences of youth in the child welfare system would help provide guidance for social workers, who may be able to support the positive aspects of youths’ religiosity in order to maximize benefits and minimize trauma (Bryant-Davis et al., 2012). One crucial step toward this goal is to better understand the religiosity of youth involved in child welfare. Religious socialization of youth Not all people are religious. How does religiosity develop? Religious socialization refers to the influence of social agents (including parents) on an individual’s religious beliefs and understandings. One form of social learning theory proposes that religious socialization occurs via spiritual modeling, in which youth observe and imitate their spiritual exemplars (models), who may be peers or adults (Ebstyne King, 2003). This suggests that parental religious attendance and attending services with parents should be associated with increased youth religiosity, because both would provide opportunities to model spiritual behaviors. Parents strongly influence their children’s religious development (Myers, 1996; Smith & Denton, 2005); and in the general population, youth religiosity is associated with parental religiosity (Regnerus, Smith, & Smith, 2004), strong parent–child relationship (Smith & Denton, 2005), marital status (Wilcox & Wolfinger, 2007), and high family satisfaction (Regnerus et al., 2004). Research has also shown that youth religiosity is strongly positively associated with attachment (Desmond, Morgan, & Kikuchi, 2010) and negatively associated with family disruption (Denton, 2012; Zhai, Ellison, Glenn, & Marquardt, 2007). Religious homogeny occurs when parents and their youth share similar religious experiences. It is common in the general population because many youth are socialized into their parent’s religion (Pearce & Thornton, 2007). Families with religious homogeny experience additional sources of support due to shared values, activities, and network closure (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001; Martin, White, & Perlman, 2003; Smith, 2003a). Conversely, youth in families with faith-related differences (religious heteronomy) have exhibited increased delinquency (Pearce & Haynie, 2004; Petts & Knoester, 2007) and lower quality parent–child relations (Stokes & Regnerus, 2009). Understanding how internal and external religiosities develop separately may be important because recent research suggests that either form of religiosity on its own may not provide protective factors as robust as both together. SalasWright et al. (2014) found that religious service attendance in and of itself may not be a particularly robust protective factor. Similarly Cheung and Yeung (2011) found private religious involvement to be a stronger protective factor than public religious involvement. However, private religiosity alone may not protect youth from problem behavior (Salas-Wright et al., 2012). In fact, Jang and Franzen (2013) found spirituality that is not combined with religious participation to be a risk factor for crime. Child welfare-involved youth and religiosity The religiosity of youth involved in child welfare may differ from youth in the general population because of several factors: (a) demographic characteristics, such as race, that are associated with involvement in religion and child welfare, Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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(b) the disruptive experience of maltreatment, and (c) possible placement in foster care and the subsequent religious influence of foster parents. Youth involved in child welfare are not representative of the general population and thus may not reflect the overall religiosity of youth in the general population. For example, African American youth are disproportionately involved in child welfare and are also more likely to attend religious services (Cross, 2008; Smith & Denton, 2005), potentially increasing religiosity among child welfare-involved youth on average relative to the general population. On the other hand, because maltreated youth may come from families with more disruption, weakened parent–child relationships, lower family satisfaction, and lower parental religiosity, studies from the general population suggest that maltreated youth may exhibit lower levels or no religiosity. Youth who have been abused or neglected may have delayed spiritual development, just as they experience delays in cognitive or physical development (Weaver, 1999). Abuse and neglect could impair religious socialization in a number of ways. For example, maltreatment could interfere with the cognitive and emotional capacity to develop spiritually; it could impact the quality of the relationship with the parent needed for spiritual modeling; or it could lead children to question God’s beneficence. In a review of retrospective studies of the religiosity of adult survivors of child abuse, Walker et al. (2009) found that the majority of studies indicated a decline (or a combination of growth and decline) in religiosity for adults who had been abused. Moreover, in some cases, specific religious beliefs have been linked with maltreatment. For example, in one study, parents who were disposed to use religion for their own ends (extrinsic religious orientation) or had conservative ideology were more likely to physically punish or abuse their child (Socolar, Cabinum-Foller, & Sinal, 2008). In a minority of cases, maltreatment itself has been religiously based or religiously justified (Kvarfordt, 2010). Youth who are removed from their families also experience relationship and community disruptions, which could affect their religious development. Removing children from biological homes may decrease biological parents’ impact on their child’s religious development. In addition, they may not be able to maintain participation in their religious community or relationships with religious mentors or peers that were present when they were in their family of origin. Moreover, youth may experience new sources of religious influence in their foster homes. The strength of the foster parents’ influence on the youth’s religiosity may depend on a variety of factors, such as the age of the youth, the length of time in care, foster parent–youth relationship, and how much religious congruence there is between the foster family’s faith and the biological family’s faith. Religious homogeny can occur for youth in foster care if they are placed in families that share their religious experiences or if they develop similar religious beliefs to their foster families. Although there has not been research on religious matching in foster care placements, two recent news stories (Pepper, 2011; Price, 2011) about Muslim children placed in Christian foster homes exemplify the problems that can result when there are mismatches. Purpose of the current study Very few studies have explored the religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. This study begins to fill the gaps in the literature by investigating religious socialization as evidenced by relationships between measures of religiosity (the product of religious socialization) and indicators of factors that may affect religious socialization process (as described conceptually above and operationally below) in a nationally representative sample of youth whose parents were investigated for maltreatment. This study is consistent with Walker and colleagues’ call for “research utilizing child and adolescent participants reporting on their [religious] experience close to the time of the abuse” (Walker et al., 2009, 142). This study additionally investigates changes in religiosity over the 18 months after the youth’s child welfare case began, with particular attention to the effect of the youth’s placement stability on their religious attendance and importance, because instability in placement could affect the quality of the relationship with the parent needed for spiritual modeling. Method Sample and participant selection NSCAW II. This paper analyzes the restricted data set of the second round of the National Study of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II). NSCAW II is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of children involved in child protective service (CPS) investigations from February 2008 through April 2009, including 5,873 children and youth ages 0 to 17.5 at the time of the initial sampling. Data were collected between March 2008 and May 2009 for Wave 1 (4 months after the CPS investigation) and between October 2009 and December 2010 for Wave 2 (18 months after the close of the investigation). The interview protocol made use of Audio Computer-Assisted Self Interview to protect confidentiality and decrease responses based on social desirability (NSCAW Research Group, 2002). Sampling procedures are described elsewhere (NSCAW Research Group, 2002). If the child remained in the home following an investigation, the child’s parent was interviewed; these were primarily biological parents, although a few were adoptive parents. If the child had been removed from the home and was in kinship (relative) or traditional foster care, the foster or kin parent was interviewed. The cohort includes both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations and families that did and did not receive child welfare services following investigation. Although all participants in this study were investigated for maltreatment, some parents may not have maltreated their children. As in this study, substantiation is often used as a proxy for maltreatment occurrence; however, it is not always accurate (Cross & Casanueva, 2009), and many children whose cases are not substantiated nevertheless experience risk Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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or harm and are often the subjects of future CPS referrals (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2003). Thus, all youth with an investigation were included in the sample. Infants and children in substitute care (out-of home placements) were oversampled to ensure adequate representation of high-risk groups. In order to compensate for the oversampling, weights were applied to all analyses to facilitate generalizing findings from the sample to the population. Sample. In NSCAW II, only the children who were 11 and older (n = 1,054) answered questions about religious attendance and religious importance; therefore children under the age of 11 were excluded from this analysis. Youth were classified into 3 groups based on caregiver type: biological parents (BIO, n = 675, 71%), kinship foster parents (KIN, n = 147, 15%), and traditional foster parent (FC, n = 130, 14%).1 Other types of placements (group homes, step parents, residential facilities etc.) were excluded from the analysis (n = 102) because religious socialization would likely be different in congregate care settings. Cases were excluded if they had missing data for any of the variables in the final model for youth weekly attendance; excluded cases comprised less than 7% of the targeted sample. To determine whether the 63 excluded cases varied systematically with any of the variables of interest, logistic regression was used to investigate whether included and excluded cases differed on any of the variables included in the main analysis. Exclusion from the final sample was not significantly associated with any of the variables, except caregiver race: Excluded youth were about twice as likely to have White caregivers as caregivers with race “other.” There was no evidence that the excluded White and “other” caregivers and their youth were more or less likely to attend religious services weekly than included caregivers and youth. Moreover, the number of excluded White and “other” caregivers was very small (n = 15,
ARTICLE IN PRESS Child Abuse & Neglect xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Child Abuse & Neglect
Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare Jill C. Schreiber a,∗ , Michael J. Culbertson b a b
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, USA University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 11 January 2014 Received in revised form 19 March 2014 Accepted 29 March 2014 Available online xxx
Keywords: Religion Socialization Child welfare NSCAW
a b s t r a c t Increased religiosity is associated with a variety of improved outcomes, especially for youth in disadvantaged contexts. Although youth involved in child welfare may experience protective effects of religious participation or values, little is known about the impact of maltreatment on religious development. Using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, a nationally representative study of child welfare involved families, correlates of religious attendance and importance of religion for youth were investigated using weighted logistic regression at two waves 18 months apart. Youth self-reports of religious attendance and their ratings of its importance were associated with religious attendance of their caregivers, whether birth-parents or foster parents. Foster parents were more likely to attend religious services than birth parents. Increases in youth attendance from Wave 1 to Wave 2 were associated with high youth religious importance at Wave 1, whereas decreases in attendance were associated with moving between home and foster placements. Increases in religious importance from Wave 1 to Wave 2 were associated with religious attendance at Wave 1 and with the youth being Black. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Child welfare goals of cultural continuity and child well-being often include language about the importance of religious affiliation (not prescriptive of any specific faith or tradition). For example, the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), a Children’s Bureau tool for periodic monitoring of state child welfare systems, includes faith as part of the discussion about continuity in foster care and lists one of the goals as “preserving important connections for children in foster care, such as connections to neighborhood, community, faith, family, tribe, school, and friends” (CFSR item 14, Children’s Bureau, 2006, p. 56). Additionally, religious affiliation has been shown to be a protective factor for abused youth (Perkins & Jones, 2004). However, religion has rarely been included in child welfare research, and very little is known about how maltreated youth experience religion or if they experience it at all. Maltreated youth who have religious connections may experience them positively (e.g., religious rituals or communities may help them cope with their abuse and neglect) or negatively (e.g., differences in religion may be a source of conflict between parents and youth). A better understanding of the religious experiences of maltreated youth could help child welfare practitioners support the positive aspects of religious participation and affiliation and minimize negative aspects and conflicts about religion. Religiosity is “an active personal devotion and passionate quest [for meaning] largely within the self-acknowledged framework of a sacred theological community” (DeHaan, Yonker, & Affholter, 2011, p. 193) and encompasses a variety of dimensions such as participation, practice, coping, commitment, and salience (Cotton, Zebracki, Rosenthan, Tsevat, & Drotar, 2006). Religiosity includes external factors, including a connection with a sociocultural-historical system (King & Roeser, 2009; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005), and internal factors (often called spirituality), which are associated with an individual,
∗ Corresponding author address: Southern Illinois Univeristy at Edwardsville, Social Work, Box 1450, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021 0145-2134/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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personal quest for meaning, happiness, and wisdom (Hill et al., 2000). Although there is distinctiveness between religion and spirituality, failure to integrate the two may inaccurately reflect each (Good et al., 2011), and a wide range of empirical research supports the considerable overlap between them (Hill & Pargament, 2003; Hyman & Handal, 2006; Zinnbauer et al., 1997). The primary reason to consider the effect of religiosity in child welfare is the plethora of studies with youth in the general population that have shown that religiosity affects adolescent outcomes. Most researchers have found that religiosity was associated with improved outcomes, including decreased psychopathology (Dew et al., 2008), improved health (Cotton et al., 2006), reduction in crime (Johnson, Li, Larson, & McCullough, 2000; Salas-Wright, Vaughn, & Maynard, 2014b), decreased family conflict (Mahoney, 2005), higher levels of education (Caputo, 2004), reduced substance use and violence (SalasWright, Vaughn, Hodge, & Perron, 2012), and decreased risky sexual behavior (Landor, Simons, Simons, Brody, & Gibbons, 2011). Religious involvement may contribute toward these improved outcomes by increasing children and youths’ access to moral order, learned competencies, and social and organizational ties (Smith, 2003b) or increased self-control (Laird, Marks, & Marrero, 2011). Particularly relevant for child welfare-involved youth is research that has shown that religiosity can support resilience, buffering the negative effects of poverty and poor neighborhoods. In a review of the role of religiosity for low-income youth, Joshi, Hardy, and Hawkins report that “religiosity is a significant moderating factor between risk factors and negative life events” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009, p. 4–10). Youth religious involvement has also moderated the effect of neighborhood disorder on psychological problems (Cook, 2000), criminal involvement for Black youth (Johnson et al., 2000), and drug use (Jang & Johnson, 2001). Few studies have directly examined the relationship between religiosity and outcomes specifically for youth involved with child welfare. Perkins and Jones (2004) found that religiosity was a predictor of reduced use of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sexual activity, and antisocial behavior, but not suicide or purging, for a large sample of abused youth from Michigan; and Kim (2008) found an association between higher religious importance and reduced internalizing symptomology for a sample of younger maltreated girls. Scott et al. (2006) found that higher scores on religious measures were associated with reduced alcohol and cigarette use and reduced sexual behavior in a regional sample of older youth in foster care, but White et al. (2007) did not find a relationship between religious beliefs and mental health for youth in foster care. The results from these child-welfare samples along with those cited earlier from the general population emphasize that religiosity may be an important factor for youth involved in child welfare. Further research that clarifies the religious experiences of youth in the child welfare system would help provide guidance for social workers, who may be able to support the positive aspects of youths’ religiosity in order to maximize benefits and minimize trauma (Bryant-Davis et al., 2012). One crucial step toward this goal is to better understand the religiosity of youth involved in child welfare. Religious socialization of youth Not all people are religious. How does religiosity develop? Religious socialization refers to the influence of social agents (including parents) on an individual’s religious beliefs and understandings. One form of social learning theory proposes that religious socialization occurs via spiritual modeling, in which youth observe and imitate their spiritual exemplars (models), who may be peers or adults (Ebstyne King, 2003). This suggests that parental religious attendance and attending services with parents should be associated with increased youth religiosity, because both would provide opportunities to model spiritual behaviors. Parents strongly influence their children’s religious development (Myers, 1996; Smith & Denton, 2005); and in the general population, youth religiosity is associated with parental religiosity (Regnerus, Smith, & Smith, 2004), strong parent–child relationship (Smith & Denton, 2005), marital status (Wilcox & Wolfinger, 2007), and high family satisfaction (Regnerus et al., 2004). Research has also shown that youth religiosity is strongly positively associated with attachment (Desmond, Morgan, & Kikuchi, 2010) and negatively associated with family disruption (Denton, 2012; Zhai, Ellison, Glenn, & Marquardt, 2007). Religious homogeny occurs when parents and their youth share similar religious experiences. It is common in the general population because many youth are socialized into their parent’s religion (Pearce & Thornton, 2007). Families with religious homogeny experience additional sources of support due to shared values, activities, and network closure (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001; Martin, White, & Perlman, 2003; Smith, 2003a). Conversely, youth in families with faith-related differences (religious heteronomy) have exhibited increased delinquency (Pearce & Haynie, 2004; Petts & Knoester, 2007) and lower quality parent–child relations (Stokes & Regnerus, 2009). Understanding how internal and external religiosities develop separately may be important because recent research suggests that either form of religiosity on its own may not provide protective factors as robust as both together. SalasWright et al. (2014) found that religious service attendance in and of itself may not be a particularly robust protective factor. Similarly Cheung and Yeung (2011) found private religious involvement to be a stronger protective factor than public religious involvement. However, private religiosity alone may not protect youth from problem behavior (Salas-Wright et al., 2012). In fact, Jang and Franzen (2013) found spirituality that is not combined with religious participation to be a risk factor for crime. Child welfare-involved youth and religiosity The religiosity of youth involved in child welfare may differ from youth in the general population because of several factors: (a) demographic characteristics, such as race, that are associated with involvement in religion and child welfare, Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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(b) the disruptive experience of maltreatment, and (c) possible placement in foster care and the subsequent religious influence of foster parents. Youth involved in child welfare are not representative of the general population and thus may not reflect the overall religiosity of youth in the general population. For example, African American youth are disproportionately involved in child welfare and are also more likely to attend religious services (Cross, 2008; Smith & Denton, 2005), potentially increasing religiosity among child welfare-involved youth on average relative to the general population. On the other hand, because maltreated youth may come from families with more disruption, weakened parent–child relationships, lower family satisfaction, and lower parental religiosity, studies from the general population suggest that maltreated youth may exhibit lower levels or no religiosity. Youth who have been abused or neglected may have delayed spiritual development, just as they experience delays in cognitive or physical development (Weaver, 1999). Abuse and neglect could impair religious socialization in a number of ways. For example, maltreatment could interfere with the cognitive and emotional capacity to develop spiritually; it could impact the quality of the relationship with the parent needed for spiritual modeling; or it could lead children to question God’s beneficence. In a review of retrospective studies of the religiosity of adult survivors of child abuse, Walker et al. (2009) found that the majority of studies indicated a decline (or a combination of growth and decline) in religiosity for adults who had been abused. Moreover, in some cases, specific religious beliefs have been linked with maltreatment. For example, in one study, parents who were disposed to use religion for their own ends (extrinsic religious orientation) or had conservative ideology were more likely to physically punish or abuse their child (Socolar, Cabinum-Foller, & Sinal, 2008). In a minority of cases, maltreatment itself has been religiously based or religiously justified (Kvarfordt, 2010). Youth who are removed from their families also experience relationship and community disruptions, which could affect their religious development. Removing children from biological homes may decrease biological parents’ impact on their child’s religious development. In addition, they may not be able to maintain participation in their religious community or relationships with religious mentors or peers that were present when they were in their family of origin. Moreover, youth may experience new sources of religious influence in their foster homes. The strength of the foster parents’ influence on the youth’s religiosity may depend on a variety of factors, such as the age of the youth, the length of time in care, foster parent–youth relationship, and how much religious congruence there is between the foster family’s faith and the biological family’s faith. Religious homogeny can occur for youth in foster care if they are placed in families that share their religious experiences or if they develop similar religious beliefs to their foster families. Although there has not been research on religious matching in foster care placements, two recent news stories (Pepper, 2011; Price, 2011) about Muslim children placed in Christian foster homes exemplify the problems that can result when there are mismatches. Purpose of the current study Very few studies have explored the religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. This study begins to fill the gaps in the literature by investigating religious socialization as evidenced by relationships between measures of religiosity (the product of religious socialization) and indicators of factors that may affect religious socialization process (as described conceptually above and operationally below) in a nationally representative sample of youth whose parents were investigated for maltreatment. This study is consistent with Walker and colleagues’ call for “research utilizing child and adolescent participants reporting on their [religious] experience close to the time of the abuse” (Walker et al., 2009, 142). This study additionally investigates changes in religiosity over the 18 months after the youth’s child welfare case began, with particular attention to the effect of the youth’s placement stability on their religious attendance and importance, because instability in placement could affect the quality of the relationship with the parent needed for spiritual modeling. Method Sample and participant selection NSCAW II. This paper analyzes the restricted data set of the second round of the National Study of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II). NSCAW II is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of children involved in child protective service (CPS) investigations from February 2008 through April 2009, including 5,873 children and youth ages 0 to 17.5 at the time of the initial sampling. Data were collected between March 2008 and May 2009 for Wave 1 (4 months after the CPS investigation) and between October 2009 and December 2010 for Wave 2 (18 months after the close of the investigation). The interview protocol made use of Audio Computer-Assisted Self Interview to protect confidentiality and decrease responses based on social desirability (NSCAW Research Group, 2002). Sampling procedures are described elsewhere (NSCAW Research Group, 2002). If the child remained in the home following an investigation, the child’s parent was interviewed; these were primarily biological parents, although a few were adoptive parents. If the child had been removed from the home and was in kinship (relative) or traditional foster care, the foster or kin parent was interviewed. The cohort includes both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations and families that did and did not receive child welfare services following investigation. Although all participants in this study were investigated for maltreatment, some parents may not have maltreated their children. As in this study, substantiation is often used as a proxy for maltreatment occurrence; however, it is not always accurate (Cross & Casanueva, 2009), and many children whose cases are not substantiated nevertheless experience risk Please cite this article in press as: Schreiber, J. C., & Culbertson, M.J. Religious socialization of youth involved in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.021
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ARTICLE IN PRESS J.C. Schreiber, M.J. Culbertson / Child Abuse & Neglect xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
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or harm and are often the subjects of future CPS referrals (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2003). Thus, all youth with an investigation were included in the sample. Infants and children in substitute care (out-of home placements) were oversampled to ensure adequate representation of high-risk groups. In order to compensate for the oversampling, weights were applied to all analyses to facilitate generalizing findings from the sample to the population. Sample. In NSCAW II, only the children who were 11 and older (n = 1,054) answered questions about religious attendance and religious importance; therefore children under the age of 11 were excluded from this analysis. Youth were classified into 3 groups based on caregiver type: biological parents (BIO, n = 675, 71%), kinship foster parents (KIN, n = 147, 15%), and traditional foster parent (FC, n = 130, 14%).1 Other types of placements (group homes, step parents, residential facilities etc.) were excluded from the analysis (n = 102) because religious socialization would likely be different in congregate care settings. Cases were excluded if they had missing data for any of the variables in the final model for youth weekly attendance; excluded cases comprised less than 7% of the targeted sample. To determine whether the 63 excluded cases varied systematically with any of the variables of interest, logistic regression was used to investigate whether included and excluded cases differed on any of the variables included in the main analysis. Exclusion from the final sample was not significantly associated with any of the variables, except caregiver race: Excluded youth were about twice as likely to have White caregivers as caregivers with race “other.” There was no evidence that the excluded White and “other” caregivers and their youth were more or less likely to attend religious services weekly than included caregivers and youth. Moreover, the number of excluded White and “other” caregivers was very small (n = 15,
