Penny Edgell Becker

Work, family, and religious involvement for men and women

Do family formation and social establishment affect religious involvement in the same way for men and women, given increasing individualism and rapid changes in work and family roles? Using a random sample of adults from upstate New York (N = 1,006), our research builds on previous work in this area by using multiple measures of religious involvement, using multiple measures of individualism and beliefs about work and family roles, placing men and women in their work context, and looking at the relationships separately by gender. Men’s religious involvement is associated with marriage, children, and full-time employment, signaling social establishment and maturity. Women’s involvement is higher when there are school-aged children in the home, but it is also more intertwined with the salience of religion and with an assessment that religious institutions are a good fit with their values and lifestyles, including egalitarian views of gender. For men and women, views of religious authority and the role of religious institutions in the socialization of children are associated differently with religious involvement at different life stages. We call for further research to understand the gendered nature of religious involvement and the role of beliefs about work, family, and religion in explaining why individuals choose to be involved in religious institutions.

Contemporary American religion : an ethnographic reader

chapter 1 Penny Edgell Becker and Nancy L. Eiesland, Introduction chapter 2 1. Shoshanah Feher, Managing Strain, Contradictions, and Fluidity: Messianic Judaism and the Negotiation of a Religio-Ethnic Identity chapter 3 2. Matthew Lawson, Struggles for Mutual Reverence: Social Strategies and Religious Stories chapter 4 3. Edward R. Gray and Scott L. Thumma, The Gospel Hour: Liminality, Identity, and Religion in a Gay Bar chapter 5 4. Janet Stocks, To Stay or to Leave?: Organizational Legitimacy in the Struggle for Change Among Evangelical Feminists chapter 6 5. Penny Edgell Becker, What is Right? What is Caring? Moral Logic in Local Religious Life chapter 7 6. Elfriede Wedam, Splitting Interests or Common Causes: Styles of Moral Reasoning in Opposing Abortion chapter 8 7. Tim Nelson, The Church and the Street: Race, Class, and Congregation chapter 9 8. Nancy L. Eiesland, Contending with a Giant: The Impact of a Megachurch on Exurban Religious Institutions chapter 10 9. Mike McMullen, The Religious Construction of a Global Identity: An Ethnographic Look at the Atlanta Bahai Community chapter 11 Robert Wuthnow, Conclusion chapter 12 References chapter 13 Index