David Morgan referenced the New Yorker article on peer influence
that argues for the declining influence of parental authority while peer
influence is central to persons of the teen age group. I admit I haven’t
read it yet but have already heard about it from several sources so it
must be intriguing. Apparently Harris (the author of the study)’
original research won an award from the APA so perhaps this marks the
first time psychology takes seriously what a lot of people who have
teens or know them tend to recognize about peer influence and cultural
autonomy in the teen years.

Yet there is another sociological dimension worth noting in the
issue of young people and the challenges of "church culture,"
and that has to do with the changing structure of the family that
today’s young people grew up with.

I just read this really interesting piece by Penny Marler, a
sociologist of religion here in the U.S., who discussed the
"family-friendly" atmosphere of most U.S. Protestant churches.
She argues that "as the family goes, so goes the church,"
pointing out that churches still get the same percentage of members of
nuclear families attending as they did in the ’50s – it’s just that the
number of people in two-parent homes has gone from about half to *less
than a quarter.* The "family-friendly" tone of churches is
reinforced as older members feel nostalgic about their now-grown
families and hence provide services for the young families who seek
them. There’s not much interest or perceived need in serving other
groups because the two most strongly-represented groups in churches
today (two-parent families, and those who once were members of
two-parent families) are pretty satisfied.

So, there are fewer young people in church in part because there are
fewer of them who grew up in the traditional families most welcome in
church, and hence fewer of them (or their peers) had church experiences
to begin with. Thus not only will young people not see many other young
people in church, but they’re less likely to see single parents or
"chosen families" or never-marrieds or mixed-race couples or
gays or lesbians or adults without children if they *do* go. This
suggests that if trends in plural forms of family structure continue,
today’s young people will be less likely to attend religious services at
any time in their lives, and less likely to bring kids who will
eventually be teens, etc., etc.

I agree that families may have diminished influence on young people,
but maybe that makes it all the *more* challenging for a church culture
with a "family" orientation to really seem relevant to young
people whose own experiences are so different from the "norm"
they see there.

          ******************************************************
          *      Lynn Schofield Clark, Ph.D.                   *
          *      Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate   *
          *      Center for Mass Media Research                *
          *      School of Journalism and Mass Communication   *
          *      Campus Box 287                                *
          *      Boulder, CO  80309                            *
          *      (303) 492-5007                                *
          *                             *
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