Abstract
BOOK REVIEW
Religious Parenting: Transmitting Faith and Values in Contemporary America,</p><p>by Christian Smith, Bridget Ritz and Michael Rotolo, Princeton, NJ, Princeton</p><p>University Press, 2019, 312 pp., $35.00/£28.00 (hardcover), $24.95/£20.00 (paperback),</p><p>ISBN: 9780691194967 (hardcover), 9780691228075 (paperback), 9780691197821</p><p>(e-book).
In this fascinating book, Christian Smith and colleagues set out to investigate qualitatively parents’ perspectives on the process of passing on their religious faith and practice to their children. The work draws on a national study conducted in 2014-15 on religious and non-religious parenting in the United States, which involved 215 in-depth interviews (averaging two hours) with parents affiliated to places of worship from a range of religious backgrounds, along with 20 additional interviews with non-religious parents for comparison. The religious groups represented in the study include ‘white conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, black Protestant, white Catholic, white Latino Catholic, Conservative Jews, Mormon, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist’ (p.3). The participant sample is stratified in nature, reflecting variations in religious and ethnic background, social class, family type, level of religious commitment, and regional and urban/suburban/rural geography.