Couple Religiosity and Well-Being Among Older Adults in the United States.

Objectives: This article evaluates whether couples' religious similarity is consequential for the health of older married men and women. Alternatively, we examine whether women's religiosity alone is health-protective to their husbands.Methods: Using dyadic data from the US National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, a representative sample of 913 individuals ages 62-91 plus their marital partners, we perform latent-class analysis to separate older couples into classes based on religious characteristics. Ordered logistic regression models are then used to assess whether different combinations of religious (dis)similarity are associated with married men and women's well-being. Results: We find that older women in highly religious, homogamous marriages report better mental and physical health relative to women in heterogamous and secular (non-religious) marriages. No significant associations were observed for men. Discussion: Our results emphasize that religiosity is not only an individual trait-dis/similarities within a couple have important implications for older women's well-being.

Breastfeeding and the Role of Maternal Religion: Results From a National Prospective Cohort Study.

Background: Recent research on religion and breastfeeding from a low-income, urban sample in the USA found that religious affiliation and religious attendance were associated with breastfeeding initiation. Purpose: We assessed the relationship between religion (religious affiliation and religious attendance) and breastfeeding (initiation and duration) in a nationally representative prospective cohort study. We examined whether education and other sociodemographic characteristics mediated or moderated relationships. Methods: Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (n = 3,719), we regressed breastfeeding initiation and breastfeeding duration for first births on religious affiliation and religious attendance, comparing conservative Protestants with other religious groups. Sociodemographic characteristics were explored as potential mediators or moderators of relationships. Results: Other than black Protestants, all religious groups reported higher odds of breastfeeding initiation compared to conservative Protestants (odds ratios = 1.43-3.01; p < .01 for all). All groups also breastfed longer than conservative Protestants, with the exception of black Protestants and Catholics. Educational attainment explained breastfeeding initiation differences with the exception of nonaffiliates and "other" religious affiliates. Educational attainment also explained religious group breastfeeding duration differences with the exception of nonaffiliates. In our final models, regular religious attendance was not directly associated with breastfeeding, but it magnified the breastfeeding duration advantage seen among mothers who had a later age at first birth. Conclusions: The role of educational attainment in explaining breastfeeding differences between conservative Protestants and other groups suggests that educational interventions may be beneficial within this population.

Forgiveness, Attachment to God, and Mental Health Outcomes in Older U.S. Adults: A Longitudinal Study.

We analyze a sample of older U.S. adults with religious backgrounds in order to examine the relationships among two types of divine forgiveness and three indicators of psychological well-being (PWB) as well as the moderating role of attachment to God. Results suggest that (a) feeling forgiven by God and transactional forgiveness from God are not associated with changes in PWB over time, (b) secure attachment to God at baseline is associated with increased optimism and self-esteem, (c) feeling forgiven by God and transactional forgiveness from God are more strongly associated with increased PWB among the securely attached, and (d) among the avoidantly attached, PWB is associated with consistency in one's beliefs, that is, a decreased emphasis on forgiveness from God. Findings underscore the importance of subjective beliefs about God in the lives of many older adults in the United States.

Exposure to science, perspectives on science and religion, and religious commitment in young adulthood.

Social scientists know very little about the consequences of exposure to scientific knowledge and holding different perspectives on science and religion for individuals' religious lives. Drawing on secularization and post-secular theories, we develop and test several hypotheses about the relationships among exposure to scientific knowledge, perspectives on religion and science, and religious commitment using panel data from the National Study of Youth and Religion. Our findings indicate that religious faith is strongest among young adults who: (1) accommodate scientific knowledge into their religious perspective, or (2) reject scientific knowledge that directly contradicts their religious beliefs about the origins of the world. Young adults are also more likely to have lower religious commitment when they view science and religion as independent institutions, lending support to secularization ideas about how social differentiation secularizes individuals. We further find that mere exposure to scientific knowledge, in terms of majoring in biology or acknowledging conflict between the teachings of religion and science, is usually not sufficient to undermine religious commitment.

CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANTISM AND HORIZONTAL STRATIFICATION IN EDUCATION: THE CASE OF COLLEGE SELECTIVITY.

College selectivity is associated with numerous positive life outcomes, but research on the antecedents of college selectivity, including religion, is limited-despite a long tradition of religion and stratification research. Using survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N=2,093) and semi-structured interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion (N=46), we test for and seek to explain differences in the college selectivity of students from conservative Protestant (CP) religious backgrounds compared to others. Based on prior literature and theory, we hypothesize that CPs attend less selective colleges than other young adults, and that this may especially be the case among women. Our quantitative findings suggest CPs do attend less selective colleges, and the difference is greater among those with better high school GPAs. These differences vary by gender: They are nonexistent for men once background factors are controlled, but CP women attend less selective colleges-a difference that is even larger among women with higher academic ability. Our qualitative findings suggest that these differences stem from young women's different understandings of the purposes of college (general self-betterment versus human capital investment) which relate to unique strategies for balancing work and family, enacting altruism, and achieving self-satisfaction. These findings show the continued link between religion and stratification and, more broadly, culture and stratification.

Religious Background and Gambling Among Young Adults in the United States.

Despite the rapid growth of the gambling industry over the last 40 years, there have been few large-scale, nationally representative longitudinal studies of gambling among young adults. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate whether and how the gambling behavior of young adults is associated with their religious beliefs and practices during adolescence. We find that young adults who grew up as conservative Protestants, mainline Protestants, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses; those were raised in a community with a higher percentage of conservative Protestants; and those who attended religious services weekly are less likely to have ever gambled. Among gamblers, young adults who attended religious services up to three times per month as adolescents are more likely to experience gambling problems than those who never attend. Notably, accounting for a young adult's propensity for risk-taking behavior does not explain the associations between religion and gambling.

Social context and sexual intercourse among first-year students at selective colleges and universities in the United States.

Most examinations of sexual behavior ignore social context. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen, a panel study of 3924 students at 28 selective colleges and universities, I examine how institutional and peer-group characteristics influence the incidence of sexual intercourse among students during their freshman year. Students who enter college as virgins are more likely to have sexual intercourse on campuses where women comprise a higher proportion of the campus population and on campuses that are more academically rigorous. Students who had sex prior to college are less likely to have sex in college when campuses are more residential. Moreover, having friends who value religion and partying affects the likelihood that a student will have sex irrespective of their prior virginity status. These findings highlight the importance of social context for sexual behavior among college students and in the general population.

Marital characteristics and the sexual relationships of U.S. older adults: an analysis of national social life, health, and aging project data.

We tested several hypotheses regarding the relationship between marital characteristics and sexual outcomes among 1,656 married adults ages 57-85 years from the 2005-2006 National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. Results showed that individuals in their first marriage had more frequent sex than remarried individuals; marital duration had a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship with frequency of sex; and a linear relationship between marital duration and frequency of sex varied by gender such that men had more frequent sex than women in younger marriages. We speculate that relationship permanency may drive the greater sexual activity in first marriages and sicker men in younger marriages may drive frequency of sex for women in younger marriages.

The Four U's: Latent Classes of Hookup Motivations Among College Students.

College students' "hookups" have been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years. Motivations for hooking up have been linked to differences in well-being after the hookup, but studies detailing college students' motivations for engaging in hookups focus on single motivations. Using data from the 2010 Duke Hookup Survey, we consider how motivations for hooking up cluster to produce different classes, or profiles, of students who hook up, and how these classes are related to hookup regret. Four distinct classes of motivations emerged from our latent class analysis: Utilitarians (50%), Uninhibiteds (27%), Uninspireds (19%), and Unreflectives (4%). We find a number of differences in hookup motivation classes across social characteristics, including gender, year in school, race-ethnicity, self-esteem, and attitudes about sexual behavior outside committed relationships. Additionally, Uninspireds regret hookups more frequently than members of the other classes, and Uninhibiteds report regret less frequently than Utilitarians and Uninspireds. These findings reveal the complexity of motivations for hooking up and the link between motivations and regret.

Marriage and mental health among young adults.

Marriage is widely thought to confer mental health benefits, but little is known about how this apparent benefit may vary across the life course. Early marriage, which is nonnormative, could have no, or even negative, mental health consequences for young adults. Using survey data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 11,695), I find that married young adults exhibit levels of psychological distress that are similar to those of young adults in any kind of romantic relationship. Married and engaged young adults also report lower frequency of drunkenness than those who are not in a romantic relationship. Married young adults, especially those who first married at ages 22 to 26, report higher life satisfaction than those in other type of romantic relationships,those in no romantic relationship, and those who married prior to age 22. Explanations for these findings are examined, and their implications are discussed.

Parental Divorce, Parental Religious Characteristics, and Religious Outcomes in Adulthood.

Parental divorce has been linked to religious outcomes in adulthood. Previous research has not adequately accounted for parental religious characteristics or subsequent family context, namely whether one's custodial parent remarries. Using pooled data from three waves of the General Social Survey, we examine the relationships among parental divorce, subsequent family structure, and religiosity in adulthood. Growing up in a single-parent family-but not a stepparent family-is positively associated with religious disaffiliation and religious switching and negatively associated with regular religious attendance. Accounting for parental religious characteristics, however, explains sizable proportions of these relationships. Accounting for parental religious affiliation and attendance, growing up with a single parent does not significantly affect religious attendance. Parental religiosity also moderates the relationship between growing up with a single parent and religious attendance: being raised in a single-parent home has a negative effect on religious attendance among adults who had two religiously involved parents.

No Money, No Honey, No Church: The Deinstitutionalization of Religious Life Among the White Working Class.

PURPOSE: We examine trends in religious attendance by educational group, with an emphasis on the "moderately educated:" individuals with a high-school degree but not a 4-year college degree. METHODOLOGY: We conduct multivariate ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression models using data from the General Social Survey (from 1972 to 2010) and the National Survey of Family Growth (from 1982 to 2008). FINDINGS: We find that religious attendance among moderately educated whites has declined relative to attendance among college-educated whites. Economic characteristics, current and past family characteristics, and attitudes toward premarital sex each explain part of this differential decline. IMPLICATIONS: Religion is becoming increasingly deinstitutionalized among whites with moderate levels of education, which suggests further social marginalization of this group. Furthermore, trends in the labor force, American family life, and attitudes appear to have salient ramifications for organized religion. Sociologists of religion need to once again attend to social stratification in religious life.

The role of religion in shaping sexual frequency and satisfaction: evidence from married and unmarried older adults.

This study assesses the role of religion in influencing sexual frequency and satisfaction among older married adults and sexual activity among older unmarried adults. The study proposes and tests several hypotheses about the relationship between religion and sex among these two groups of older Americans, using nationally representative data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. Results suggest that among married older adults, religion is largely unrelated with sexual frequency and satisfaction, although religious integration in daily life shares a weak, but positive, association with pleasure from sex. For unmarried adults, such religious integration exhibits a negative association with having had sex in the last year among women, but not among men.

Protestant Clergy and the Culture Wats: An Empirical Test of Hunter's Thesis.

This study instead focuses on culture wars among religious elites-clergy-and tests three aspects of the culture wars thesis: (1) whether cultural wars exist at all among religious elites, (2) whether clergy attitudes are polarized on these issues, and (3) whether religious authority or religious affiliation is more salient in creating culture wars cleavages. Using data from a large random sample of Protestant clergy, we find a substantial amount of engagement in culture wars by all types of Protestant clergy. The amount of polarization is more attributable to views of religious authority (i.e., biblical inerrancy) than to religious tradition. Moreover, polarization among clergy is somewhat more evident on culture wars issues than on other social and political issues. These findings are generally supportive of the culture wars thesis and should help return examinations of culture wars back to where they were originally theorized to be waged: among elites.

Higher Education and Religious Liberalization among Young Adults.

Going to college has long been assumed to liberalize students' religious beliefs. Using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Youth and Religion, we compare change in the content of religious beliefs of those who do and do not attend college. We find that, in general, college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs than nonstudents. In some cases, collegians actually appear more likely to retain their initial beliefs. Change in religious beliefs appears instead to be more strongly associated with network effects. These findings indicate that college's effect on students' religious beliefs is both weak and fragmented, and suggest that the multiplicity of social worlds on college campuses may help to sustain religious beliefs as well as religious practice and commitment.

Bare market: campus sex ratios, romantic relationships, and sexual behavior.

Using a nationally representative sample of college women, we evaluate the effect of campus sex ratios on women's relationship attitudes and behaviors. Our results suggest that women on campuses where they comprise a higher proportion of the student body give more negative appraisals of campus men and relationships, go on fewer traditional dates, are less likely to have had a college boyfriend, and are more likely to be sexually active. These effects appear to stem both from decreased dyadic power among women on campuses where they are more numerous and from their increased difficulty locating a partner on such campuses.

Later first marriage and marital success.

The research reported here used measures of marital success based on both marital survival and marital quality to assess how well first marriages entered at relatively late ages fare in comparison with those entered younger. Analysis of data from five American data sets indicated that the later marriages fare very well in survival but rather poorly in quality. The greatest indicated likelihood of being in an intact marriage of the highest quality is among those who married at ages 22-25, net of the estimated effects of time since first marriage and several variables that might commonly affect age at marriage and marital outcomes. The negative relationship beyond the early to mid-twenties between age at marriage and marital success is likely to be at least partially spurious, and thus it would be premature to conclude that the optimal time for first marriage for most persons is ages 22-25. However, the findings do suggest that most persons have little or nothing to gain in the way of marital success by deliberately postponing marriage beyond the mid-twenties.

Going most of the way: "technical virginity" among American adolescents.

Reports from academic and media sources assert that many young people substitute non-vaginal sexual activities for vaginal intercourse in order to maintain what could be called "technical virginity." Explanations for technical virginity, however, are based on weak empirical evidence and considerable speculation. Using a sample of 15-19-year-olds from Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth, we examine technical virginity and its motivations. The results suggest that religious adolescents are less likely than less-religious ones to opt for non-vaginal sex over total abstinence. Abstinence pledgers who are virgins are neither more nor less likely than nonpledgers who are virgins to substitute non-vaginal sex for intercourse. Moreover, religion and morality are actually the weakest motivators of sexual substitution among adolescents who have not had vaginal sex. Preserving technical virginity is instead more common among virgins who are driven by a desire to avoid potential life-altering consequences, like pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Religious and Spiritual Responses to 9/11: Evidence from the Add Health Study*

Despite a great deal of public discourse concerning the effect of the September 11(th) attacks on Americans' religious and spiritual lives, social scientists know very little about the nature, size, and duration of this effect. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study analyzes the influence of 9/11 on the religious and spiritual lives of American young adults. The results suggest that the 9/11 attacks exerted only modest and short-lived effects on various aspects of young adults' religiosity and spirituality, and these effects were variable across different groups. These findings suggest that no remarkable religious revival occurred among young adults after September 11(th), and researchers interested in analyzing religious development across the life course or religious change over time need not worry about sea changes in religiosity and spirituality brought on by 9/11.

Alternative Schooling Strategies and the Religious Lives of American Adolescents.

I analyze the effects of Catholic schooling, Protestant schooling, and homeschooling on adolescents' religious lives and test three mechanisms through which these schooling strategies might influence religiosity: friendship networks, network closure, and adult mentors. Data from Wave 1 of the National Survey of Youth and Religion suggest that Catholic schoolers attend religious services more frequently and value their faith more highly than public schoolers, but attend religious education classes and youth group less often. Protestant schoolers' involvement in their local congregation is similar to public schoolers', but their faith plays a more salient role in their life and they are more active in private religious activities. Homeschoolers do not differ significantly from public schoolers on any outcome considered. Moreover, friendship networks, network closure, and adult mentors play a very limited role in mediating the relationships between schooling strategies and adolescent religiosity. Interpretations of these findings are presented and discussed.