Justin Taylor pointed to a 2003 essay by Robbie Low in Touchstone magazine discussing a 1994 study in Switzerland on how the church attendance habits of moms and dads affects the future attendance of their children:
- If dad does not go to church = only 1 out of 50 kids will become a regular churchgoer
- If dad is a regular churchgoer (regardless of mom’s attendance) = 66-75% of kids will become regular or irregular churchgoers
- If dad is an irregular churchgoer (regardless of mom’s attendance) = 50-66% of kids will become regular or irregular churchgoers
- If dad is a regular churchgoer but mom is not = >66% of kids will become regular or irregular churchgoers
- If dad does not go to church but mom is a regular churchgoer = only 33% of kids will visit a church
- If neither mom nor dad go to church = only 20% of kids will visit a church
While I suspect American cultural differences could mean these statistics are not entirely transferable to America, clearly a lot rests on our shoulders dads!
Thinking to Believe 
December 29, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Those are some telling numbers. Thanks for sharing this study!
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January 4, 2011 at 4:13 am
Indeed.
I remember being in a seminar aimed at men and they were comparing evangelising and converting the various groups.
The whole thing bore down to the fact that men are harder to convert, but you get the whole family, whereas the children are easiest to convert but that is just 1 person. Converting the women were in the middle.
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