A new study by Public Religion Research Institute found that Americans who grew up in divorced homes were more likely to move away from religion.
A new study found that millennials who had divorced parents were more likely to have moved away from the Christian faith than those whose parents were together in their formative years.
The research notes that divorce rates were highest in the 1980s, when about 50 percent of the marriages were likely to end in divorce.
"Previous research has shown that family stability -- or instability -- can impact the transmission of religious identity. Consistent with this research, the survey finds Americans who were raised by divorced parents are more likely than children whose parents were married during most of their formative years to be religiously unaffiliated," says the study, which is a part of a broad landscape survey conducted by Public Religion Research Institute.
About 35 percent of Americans raised by divorced parents identified as religious nones as compared to 23 percent of those who grew up in households where their parents stayed together.
About 31 percent of the religious Americans who had divorced parents attend church services at least once a week, while 43 percent of the adults raised by married parents reported going to church frequently.
Other studies have tried to establish a correlation between the church's inadequacy in reaching out to people with homosexuality, and religion's apparent disconnect with science. This research adds to the probable factors which can be correlated to Americans' religious life.
"A lot of the narrative around the rise of the nones, or the rise of the non-affiliated, has focused on how there's changing cultural preferences, that people are choosing to move away from religion," said Daniel Cox, one of the co-authors of the study told The Washington Post. "I think there's also a structural part of the story that has not gotten as much attention. We wanted to focus on the way millennials were raised, which is different from any previous generation. And part of that is they're more likely to have grown up with parents who are divorced."
