Frequent church attendance strongly predicts whether a woman will marry before having a child

An analysis of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data investigated the types of family-forming transitions people experience. They found that women who attend religious services frequently or belong to a conservative denomination were the most likely to marry before cohabiting with a partner or giving birth. The paper was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Family-forming events are life events through which people create, expand, or redefine a family unit. They usually include marriage, cohabitation, and childbirth. Decades ago, most U.S. women married without ever having cohabited. However, more recently, approximately 75% of young women live with their partner sometime in young adulthood. Many also give birth to a child before entering into a union with a partner.

“Research by demographers has shown an increase in the proportion of women who cohabit before marriage,” said Paula England, professor of social research and public policy at New York University Abu Dhabi. “In studying this using one survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, on those born between 1980 and 1984, it was really only a very small minority of women—about 15%—who married without having either cohabited or had a child first. The most common pattern was to cohabit first. The paper was an attempt to understand who the unusual group of women were who married with no cohabitation first.”

What a person’s first family-forming event will be depends on many factors. These include cultural norms, personal values, relationship opportunities, education, and various life circumstances. One important factor is religion. Many religions encourage early marriage and discourage cohabitation and nonmarital births.

England and her co-author Man Xu wanted to examine how religion might affect marriage as a first family-forming event. More specifically, they wanted to know whether religiosity (represented by how often one attends religious services) and belonging to a conservative denomination predict marrying as one’s first family-forming event.

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The authors analyzed data from waves 1 to 19 (1997 to 2019-2020) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Data came from 4,333 women born between 1980 and 1984 who were followed for a total of 615,451 person-months. From this survey, the researchers used data on participating women’s marital or cohabitation status, childbirth histories, religious service attendance, and religious denomination.

Religious denominations that were considered conservative included Baptist, Holiness (Nazarene, Wesleyan, Free Methodist), Pentecostal (Assembly of God, Pentecostal Holiness), Nondenominational Christian (including Bible Church), Mormon (LDS), Orthodox Jewish, and Muslim.

Results showed that only 14% of participating women had marriage as their first family-forming event. Of the women who married before cohabiting or giving birth, 51% reported attending religious services at least once a week in their youth. Among women who reported cohabiting first, only 20% attended religious services at least once a week. This percentage was 23% among women who had a birth first (i.e., before either marriage or cohabitation).

Of the women who married first, 49% belonged to a conservative denomination, compared to 29% of those who cohabited first. (Interestingly, 47% of women who gave birth first also belonged to a conservative religion). Overall, women belonging to conservative religious denominations and those attending religious services frequently were more likely to marry before cohabiting or giving birth, and to do so at an earlier age—typically around age 22 or 23, compared to ages 24 to 27 for those who cohabited or had a birth first.

Importantly, the researchers found that while religion delays the age of first sexual intercourse, it does not prevent premarital sex for the vast majority of women. Among the women who married first, 82% still had sex before marriage. Overall, more than 90% of highly religious women and 94% of women in conservative denominations reported having premarital sex. Because religion was found to encourage marriage even after women become sexually active, the authors suggest that religious communities instill strong “pro-marriage” cultural ideals that go beyond simply prohibiting premarital sex.

“We showed that religiosity (frequency of service attendance) and adhering to a conservative denomination encourage marrying without having ever cohabited or had a birth, and doing so at a relatively young age,” the study authors concluded. “Religiosity and religious conservatism also discourage premarital sex, which is probably part of how they encourage early marriage. However, most religious and religiously conservative women do have premarital sex, and religion encourages marrying even after women have had sex, suggesting that some of the effect of religiosity and religious conservatism on marriage probably reflects explicit pro-marriage cultural schemas in religious discourse and practice.”

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of factors associated with the ways in which people form families. While the researchers used extensive background controls to make causal inferences plausible, they note that unmeasured factors could still influence both religiosity and marriage, meaning strict causal relationships cannot be definitively proven.

While the current findings focused on female participants, the researchers hope to explore similar trends among men in the future.

“One thing that could be analyzed is whether it is also true for men that those who are more religious marry earlier and are more likely not to cohabit before marriage,” England said. “The data we used contains both men and women, but we just analyzed the women’s data.”

The paper, “Religion Affects Whether US Women Marry Early, Without Cohabiting or Having a Nonmarital Birth First,” was authored by Man Xu and Paula England.