July 22, 2002
Churchgoing leads urban mothers to marriage
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Urban mothers who attend church often are much more likely to be married when their children are born, a new study has found.
___"Religious institutions are bulwarks of marriage in urban America," wrote Bradford Wilcox, author of the report titled "Then Comes Marriage? Religion, Race and Marriage in Urban America."
___"By fostering values and virtues that support marriage, these institutions--especially black churches--help urban parents make the transition to marriage in communities where the practice of marriage has become increasingly infrequent," he explained.
___The report was issued July 8 by the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania.
___Wilcox found that urban mothers who attend church several times a month or more are 100 percent more likely to be married when they give birth to their children, in comparison to urban mothers who are not frequent church attenders. He also found that single urban mothers are 90 percent more likely to marry within a year of the birth if they are frequent church attenders, compared to those who do not attend church frequently.
___The report was based on analysis of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national examination of births and parents in large U.S. cities. That study tracked the experiences of 3,700 children born to unmarried parents and 1,100 children born to married parents.
___"An urban mother who is integrated into the life of a religious congregation is more likely to be exposed to beliefs and behaviors conducive to marriage and thereby come to hold these beliefs herself and to encounter them from her romantic partner," said Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.
___But he also notes that church attendance does not provide a guarantee of marriage for urban mothers. He found that 70 percent of urban mothers who frequently attend church are married at the time of their children's birth, compared to 56 percent of mothers who don't attend church or do so infrequently. Ten percent of frequent attendees who are single at the time of birth get married within a year, compared to 7 percent of those who are infrequent attenders or non-attenders.
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