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Recently Christianity Today posted the online version of this month’s cover story, “The Myth of the Perfect Parent: Why the best parenting techniques don’t produce Christian children” by Leslie Leyland Fields, author of Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths That Trap Us in Worry and Guilt
Plenty of research does point to the importance of parents in kids’ faith development, like Christian Smith and the National Study of Youth and Religion team’s data. To paraphrase something Smith said in a panel here at Fuller, when it comes to the faith of their kids, parents basically get what they are. The faith of parents tends to be the strongest predictor of faith of kids.
Yet, that can—and does—create all kinds of unnecessary anxiety for parents. Most of us walk around thinking that there’s some long list of things we can and should do that will result in our kids growing up to love, follow, and serve Jesus too. Fields calls this “spiritual determinism”—the Christianized cultural myth that good Christian parenting produces godly children. But it just doesn’t (necessarily) work that way.
Here’s a great quote from the end of her article:
It is faith rather than formula, grace rather than guarantees, steadfastness rather than success that bridges the gap between our own parenting efforts, and what, by God’s grace, our children grow up to become.
What do you think? How can we help parents be intentional while also freeing them from the pressure to, well, be God?
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April 5th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
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