-Harvard Study: Religious Upbringing Better for Health and Well-Being of Children

Here’s a study from 2018 showing that raising children in a religion and attending weekly religious services produce young adults with greater overall happiness and well-being. From Charisma:

The study, conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and released last month (October 2018), shows a link between a religious upbringing and better physical and mental health in young adults.

Researchers found that people who attended religious services weekly or who practiced prayer or meditation daily in their youth reported having a higher life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s.

Individuals were found less likely to smoke, have symptoms of depression, use illicit drugs or have sexually transmitted infections than people who engaged in less regular spiritual practices.

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Response: This research supports what most Christian families have believed and experienced for years. One can bet that these were not the results that the university researchers were expecting or maybe even going for.

This research runs counter to the prevailing academic notion that religious training leads to problematic conservative views and maladjusted students and adults ill-equipped to be part of the 21st century and the ‘progressive’ American culture. 

Many in academic circles today are trying to combat the religious training of their students which they consider to be dangerous and something to be overcome. In fact, quite a few are pushing for finding ways to prohibit parents from raising children in a religious environment, particularly traditional Christianity which they believe produces ‘haters’ and bigots.

Fortunately, we still have freedom of religion in this country but already parents are being over-ridden in what their children are being taught in school. Particularly in California where children are being instructed to accept homosexuality and transgenderism starting as early as First Grade. Also, in that state, children are free to choose their own gender any given day without any parental notification or consent.

There have also been instances in America where children have been taken away from their parents by authorities who considered the religious training to be unhealthy ‘child abuse.’  Last year in Ohio, the legal custody of a 17 year old girl was taken away from her Christian parents because they blocked her from taking transgender treatments to become a boy and ‘forced’ her to attend Bible studies and ‘Christian therapy.’  Also in Canada, a Christian couple was recently rejected as potential foster parents because of their ‘outdated Biblical beliefs.’             *Top