Study: Fathers are Key to Their Children's Faith

June 16, 2010
S. Michael Craven

I am afraid that our culture in general (and as a result, many fathers themselves) has reduced the role of fatherhood to something nonessential or unnecessary. Many men today regard parenting as being primarily the mother's role and somehow no longer associated with masculinity or “real” manhood.

Instead, many have succumbed to modern cultural caricatures—along with radically feminist psychology—and the label of hunter-gatherer, and thus assume this is their primary contribution to the family. As a result too many men, including professing Christian men, express their role as father exclusively in terms of financial provider. The fact is children are not looking for financial provision; they are looking for love, guidance, and a role model for what it means to be a man. the rest

In short, the study reveals that “It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.”