Marriage + Religion = Healthy Kids

Virginia is one step closer to forcing faith-based adoption agencies to compromise their ability to place children in a loving home with a married mother and father that honors God. This morning the Virginia Senate Committee on Rehabilitation and Social Services advanced HB 1932 to the full Senate on an 8-7 vote.

Most of us intuitively know that children raised with a married mother and father who attend church regularly have the best chance at success in life. For those that might need a little more convincing, it is helpful to have an organization like the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI), which analyzes federal social science data to report on the correlation between family structure, religious attendance, and various social outcomes for children. Having worked with MARRI for a few years when it was housed at Family Research Council (now at Catholic University of America), I appreciated how our research demonstrated the vast majority of the time that children who grow up with a mother and father and attend religious services at least weekly tended to have the most positive outcomes. Whether it’s child behavioral problems, quality of parent-child relationships, children’s social development, ADHD, adolescent arrests, grade point average, early sexual activity, number of adolescent sexual partners, learning disabilities, theft, or a variety of other measures, the data show a correlation between children with a mother and father who attend religious services at least weekly and positive social outcomes.

Let’s keep all this in mind as the Virginia assembly moves toward putting faith-based adoption agencies out of business.