What to do if your adult child has a different spiritual path than you Are we in the midst of a great religious recession? A number of recent studies show that younger people are less religious than older people, and religiosity has declined with each successive generation. In the 2012 Pew Research Centerreport on religion and public life, one-fourth of 18- to 29-year-olds are classified as unaffiliated, a far higher proportion than among their parents (15 percent) or grandparents (9 percent). In extensive interviews with parents and their 18- to 29-year-olds for our book, Getting To 30: A Parent’s Guide to the 20-Something Years, we found that religious questioning is part of the identity explorations woven into this life stage. Most emerging adults feel that it would be wrong for them simply to accept what their parents and others have taught them about religious issues. Their inquiry sometimes leads to a confirmation of their childhood beliefs, but more often to modifying them, and sometimes to a wholesale rejection. Rather than holding to traditional beliefs, the majority of twenty-somethings typically have a vague but inclusive belief in a God who watches over the world and wants people to be good to each other. For some parents, their children’s religious choices are a hot button topic; for others, the subject is almost a non-issue. If parents don’t have a strong religious affiliation or commitment to spiritual seeking, then what their twenty-somethings believe is of little interest or concern to them; they may not even know. But when parents’ religious beliefs are central to their worldview and daily lives, their emerging adult’s beliefs may be one of the most important measures of their success or failure as parents: success if their children...
