Presence of children in home
creates big challenge, study finds
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___WACO--The presence of children in a home creates the most common challenge facing families of all types, according to the final summary of a national study of family life in religious congregations.
___Blended families, single-parent families and traditional nuclear families all share a common challenge in dealing with issues of parenting, according to the Families in Congregations study by Diana Garland and Pam Yankeelov.
___Garland, chairwoman of the School of Social Work at Baylor University, and Yankeelov, a professor of social work at the University of Louisville, completed the study with funding from the Lilly Endowment. They interviewed 1,977 people in 32 U.S. congregations, including National Baptists, Presbyterians, Southern Baptists and United Methodists.
___Meanwhile, the study also rebuts a common stereotype that single adults are mainly involved in congregations as a means of finding social interaction. "Single adults participate in a congregation not because they are just looking for a social gathering with other singles but because they want to grow and commit themselves to a life of faith," Garland said in an interview.
___The national research project identified seven types of family structures commonly found in American congregations--nuclear families, blended families, single seniors, empty-nest couples, married seniors with grown children, single-parent families and married couples with no children.
___Given this array of family situations in most churches, "ministry with families in congregations needs to be sensitive and responsive to the diversity of families in which persons live and define themselves as family members," Garland and Yankeelov assert. Across this broad spectrum, however, the challenge of child-rearing is the most common link between family types.
___"The fact that the greatest stressor in the lives of families is the presence of children and not the 'kind' of parents--single or married or blending--is really something," Garland noted. "Raising children is stressful, and parents of all kinds need the support and involvement of a caring community."
___The research report adds: "It appears that the most significant challenge to the cohesion, companionship, ability to avoid conflict dominating the family's communication and adaptability of families is the presence of dependent children, whether the adults in the family are in a first marriage, second or later marriage or single.
___"Thus, attempts to strengthen congregational families can emphasize that different kinds of families are indeed more alike than different. The challenges they face are more likely to be related to the developmental needs of child and adult members in interaction with one another and less to the varying structures of adult relationships."
___The one significant exception to this finding is that blended families "tend to be less cohesive," Garland and Yankeelov note. "Trying to develop the same level of cohesion and commitment of family members in step-relationships with one another may be unrealistic and self-defeating."
___The researchers also discovered that most church-going families believe they give greatest expression to their faith through family experiences rather than through private devotions.
___"These families appear to be saying that the daily activities of family life are the canvass for experiencing and sharing their faith life with one another and that activities that call them as a family beyond their own boundaries are also significant," Garland and Yankeelov explain. This finding should have significant impact on how congregations attempt to minister to families, they add.
___"Most ministry activities of congregations have involved persons as individuals, not as families," the report. "These families seem to be saying that these activities are important to them as families, but perhaps they are missing from their lives. The answer may be to emphasize more the ways families together can serve."
___The "Church Census" instrument is available from the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian ethics and public life section. For information, contact Mike Lundy at (214) 828-5195 or Janice Neece at (214) 828-5409.
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