The children of religious couples are more likely to abandon religion if their parents divorce, but it doesn’t have as big an effect as previously thought, a new US study suggests.  

The study, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, found that children who had two religious parents who divorced are twice as likely to become estranged from their church as adults compared to people whose parents didn’t get divorced.  

“When both parents are religious, the effect of divorce has a negative effect on religiosity,” says Jeremy Uecker, a professor at Baylor University and the lead author of the study.  

“They might think their parents’ marriage was ordained by God or something and that breakup can have more of an effect on their religiousness in adulthood.”  

The main reason parental divorce affects religious outcomes, Uecker argues, is that children are separated from one of their parents, and parents are usually considered the primary source of religious training for children.

Other factors after the divorce also may influence children during their formative years and ultimately, affect their religious outcome as adults, he said.

A parent who has been divorced may feel stigmatised or uncomfortable in some congregations and less likely to attend than previously. Typically, a child of divorce stays with his or her mother, who may become depressed or angry with God, and “that may rub off on the child,” Uecker said.

Previous studies have found a link between divorce and a child’s future beliefs, but Uecker says that the “effect has been overstated” because those previous studies did not take into account the parents’ religious beliefs.  

“You have to take into account the context,” he said.  

“People who are less religious are more likely to get divorced. And if the parents are of different religions or differing levels of religiosity from one another, they also are more likely to divorce. So if we ignore that, we’re overstating the effects of divorce itself on religious outcomes.”  

Uecker says the effect of divorce on a child’s future religious beliefs was seen across all religions. In the future, he hopes to study why children of divorced parents seem more likely to be less religious.  

“I think it’s this idea of the loss of socialisation and teaching of the religion when parents separate,” he says.

“The next goal is to identify the mechanisms and reasons why parental divorce matters-to follow a group of children over time and ask them about religious training and that sort of thing.”