Dimension One: Religious Community and Family

Chapter 18: Faith in Family Life

"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith and prayer."

"A man with serious religious commitment and involvement, on average, is more likely than one with little or no religious involvement to:

• remain sexually chaste before marriage and faithful to his marriage vows and thus not endanger his wife and children with sexually transmitted diseases nor father a child out of wedlock;
• be and remain committed to marriage and children even during times of difficulty and thus not bring the trials and challenges of divorce upon his wife and children;
• be highly involved in the lives of his children and parent with higher degrees of emotional warmth;
• practice kindness and mercy in his relationship with his children and be less likely to abuse his children;
• remain involved with his children in the face of challenging circumstances such as dissolution of marriage or disability of a child;

• avoid practices that harm family relationships such as substance abuse, crime, violence, child abuse, pornography, gambling, and idleness (p. 431)."

 

Successful marriages and families: proclamation principles and research perspectives

By: Hawkins, Alan J..
BYU Studies and School of Family Life, Brigham Young University
2012