How Moms of Children with Disabilities Pass Down Their Faith

For my class Family Culture and Christian Discipleship, we chose a people group to research and interview about how they pass down their faith to their children. We read Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation (affiliate link) by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk. We modified their questions to work for our contexts. Below I will list the questions we asked and then share observations from the 9 interviews I conducted with moms of children with disabilities.

The questions we asked:

Overview: So my goal here is to learn about you, your family, and your experience as a parent—especially as it relates to passing on (or not) of your religious or spiritual faith and practice to CHILD.

1. So how would you describe your family in general terms? What words or ideas best tell someone what your family is like, what you are all about?

2. How is religious faith or spiritual life expressed especially in ordinary, everyday life? Why are these important to you?

3. Why are you part of a CHURCH? How important is that? What does it do or mean for your family/child?

• What specifically do you look for in a CHURCH? What are the most important things to you in deciding where to attend? (Music, location, style of service, size, children/youth program?)

• What specifically, if anything, do you look to church to provide to child in religious influence, teaching, support, or whatever?

4. How important is it to you that CHILD grow up believing and practicing the same religious faith as you?

5. Do you have conversations with CHILD about significant things like God, spiritual matters or religion? Can you give an example? How often?

6. What role do you think that parents ought to play in helping to form the religious faith and practices of their children? That is …

• Do parents have the right or obligation to influence children to accept and practice their own faith?

• Or should they just expose children to different religious options and leave choosing up to them?

7. Are parents or CHURCH more responsible for passing on religious faith and practice to children? Why?

8. What are the most important things, if any, that you as a parent have intentionally done in the past or do now to try to pass on religious faith and practices to CHILD?

• Reading scripture or other religious texts together?

• Praying together at meals?

• Family devotions or prayers apart from meals?

• Play spiritual/religious music/talk radio in home?

• Watching religiously oriented TV shows or movies together?

• Enrolling CHILD in catechism class/confirmation/other sacramental prep programs?

 9. Is there anything you have decided definitely not to do as a parent in passing on your religious faith or practices to CHILD? Anything you avoid? What and why?

10. What about CHILD’s friends and peers? Are they a positive or negative influence on CHILD’s religious faith or practices?

11. Does your church have a youth group? (IF SO) Does CHILD participate in it? Do they like it? What kind of influence do you think it might have on them?

12. Are there other adults beyond your immediate family who play a role in the formation of CHILD’s religious faith (e.g., grandparents, family friends, school teachers, etc.)? What do they do?

13. Do you have any visual or material religious objects (e.g., pictures, statues, icons, candles, wall hangings, etc.) or media (magazines, music, TV, CDs, radio, literature) in your home?

Method for collecting data:

I asked for volunteers from my social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. They could click a link to a Google document that asked questions about their availability. Because I wanted to do all the interviews within a 5 day span, it narrowed down who was able to participate. I needed to do 8-10 interviews. 21 moms responded by filling out the Google doc. I sent 12 of them a Calendly link to the times and days I was available. I didn’t get enough responses from those 12, so I resent the link to more moms until I had 10 interviews scheduled. I then sent them Zoom links for the time they signed up for. One mom didn’t log in during our scheduled time, so I conducted 9 interviews total. I asked the scripted questions during a Zoom interview with video turned on that was being recorded.

Characteristics of the families interviewed:

Their children ranged in age from 1 year old to late twenties.

• One family had 1 child

• Four families had 2 children

• Four families had 3 children

The families with multiple children had at least one child with a disability but could include typical siblings in their answers on passing down their faith. I didn’t ask about specific diagnosis for their children, but the ones they mention included a rare genetic disorder, autism (multiple levels), Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy.

Although I didn’t ask about marital status, in their descriptions of their families, all 9 were currently married. One said she had been previously divorced and had remarried. They all lived in the United States. All 9 said they currently attended church. 8 of the 9 attended evangelical churches. The churches ranged in size from 30 people to close to 1,000 people.

The results:

Question 2, How is religious faith expressed in everyday ways?: Answers included modeling Jesus’s love, practicing spiritual disciplines, including biblical principles in daily conversations (like memorizing a verse about fear at bedtime).

Question 3, Why are you part of a church?: Most answers were about community, fellowship, and accountability. Other answers: “Jesus loved the church, so we do too,” using our gifts, biblical teaching, support system. What do you look for your church to provide? Essentially their answers were that their child would be known and safe. This is when they mentioned either starting a disability ministry that included their kids or the efforts they put into helping the staff/volunteers support their children.

Question 4, How important is it that your children grow up to have the same faith?: They all agreed it was very important for their children to have the same faith they have. The parents of older teens/young adults were more nuanced about what that would look like, saying things like, “I know it will look different from my faith, but I want them to hold on to their faith in Christ.”

Question 5, What conversations do you have with your child about God or spiritual topics?: Many are unsure of what their children are able to understand about God, sin, salvation, and other topics. But they are all committed to praying for and with their children. Many of the mentioned reading books or the Bible together and listening to Christian music. They also have conversations about God’s purpose for them that includes their disability (both social and functional aspects of disability).

Question 6 on parents having the obligation to pass down their faith or if they should expose them to a variety of beliefs: They all said obligation to pass down their own faith. Many used the word “duty.” Parents of older teens/young adults included that they wanted their children’s faith to be their own though and weren’t afraid to talk about other religions with them.

Question 7, Are parents or the church more responsible for passing down faith and practice?: Every mom agreed that the primary responsibility for passing down their faith was on the parents (not the church). Although one mom said during a time of crisis in her family, she relied more on the church for the spiritual instruction of her typical son because she was unable to do so at home.

Question 8 on spiritual disciplines and question 13 on visual representations of faith: All the moms said they read Scripture and prayed with the children either now or when their children were younger. Not everyone prayed at meal time (not everyone had meals together). Many did not have a family devotion time (since their kids had different levels of understanding and application), but did read the Bible with their kids. They all said yes to listening to Christian music, watching movies or shows with religious themes (The Chosen, Veggie Tales, Christian concerts), and having visual religious items in their homes (artwork with Bible verses was the most popular answer).

Question 9 on anything they would not pass down to their children: Most answers were more general and about how their upbringing was different from their parenting because of the needs of the kids with disabilities. Two of the moms didn’t grow up in Christian families. Two of them grew up in more strict, fundamentalist homes.

Question 10 on friendships: Most of them reported that their children with disabilities didn’t have true friendships either at church or at school with their same-age peers. A few said their children have zero friends (others said a few friends or some casual friends). One mom whose daughter has started going to another youth group said that no one from their church’s youth group reached out to ask why they hadn’t seen her in weeks on Wednesday nights. Those with younger children were hopeful that friendships would develop at church.

Question 11 was on youth groups, but I modified it to ask if they had a ministry that met the needs of their kids, whether that was children’s ministry, youth ministry, or disability ministry: All but one of the moms who were interviewed either started a disability ministry or met with the children’s/youth ministry staff about a plan for inclusion for their child. (The one exception attended the biggest church where a ministry already existed.) They each had to create a plan for their child(ren) to be included. Some led the ministry or taught the class for their child. Others communicated often with the teachers and ministry leaders about how to best include their children. A few mentioned the challenges in moving from children’s ministry to youth ministry. A few took breaks from church when it felt especially challenging (either as a whole family or just the mom and the child with a disability).

Question 12, Are there other adults who play a role in your child’s spiritual development?: Grandparents were the top answer, although often in a general way. Others said pastoral staff (either the lead pastor or the youth pastor). A couple mentioned family friends.