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| Collaborating on a study of the
role of spirituality in family life are (left to
right) Drs. Annette Mahoney and Kenneth Pargament,
psychology, and Alfred DeMaris, sociology. |
Spiritual DNA?
BGSU researchers seek sacred building block to family
life
Marriage has been known as “holy” matrimony
and childbirth as a “blessed” event for as
long as there have been weddings and newborn babies. But
is there something more to those spiritual terms?
Dr. Annette Mahoney, psychology, calls religion’s
role in marriage and parenting an aspect of family life
that’s been overlooked by social scientists. Few
researchers have studied it, let alone shown how spirituality
impacts families over time.
Now, with $1.2 million in funding from the John Templeton
Foundation, Mahoney and colleagues Dr. Kenneth Pargament,
psychology, and Dr. Alfred DeMaris, sociology, will embark
on what is believed to be the first in-depth, long-term
study of the part religion plays in couples’ transition
to parenthood.
“This is state-of-the-art social science research,”
according to Dr. Arthur Schwartz, vice president for research
and programs in the human sciences at the Templeton Foundation,
based in suburban Philadelphia.
The foundation “is very interested in areas of spirituality
and religiosity that have yet to be examined or understood
scientifically,” Schwartz says, adding that sanctification
of pregnancy and parenthood fits that description. “We
know so little about this area of human life that we wanted
to fund something that was scientifically rigorous.”
The four-year project is designed to examine the impact
of sanctification of marriage, pregnancy and becoming
a parent, and will involve 160 couples in the Toledo area.
Sanctification is defined as perceiving aspects of life
to have divine character and significance, or seeing life
“through a sacred lens”—the title of
the project led by Mahoney.
In addition to belief that an aspect of life has sacred
qualities—that it’s holy or blessed, for instance—sanctification
entails conviction that God, or a Higher Power, is manifested
in it. An example would be the belief that a baby is a
gift from God, says Mahoney.
Spiritual emotions such as gratitude, awe and humility
are among the implications of sanctification, as are investment
in and commitment to that particular aspect of life and
access to other spiritually based resources that help
people cope effectively with stress.
“If pregnancy’s a spiritually meaningful event
both emotionally and mentally, we think it’s going
to lead to better outcomes for the parent and the child,”
according to Mahoney, a BGSU faculty member since 1994
and co-adviser, with Pargament, of its Spirituality and
Psychology Research Team (SPiRiT).
The researchers also speculate that the more the transition
to parenthood is “viewed in a sacred light, the
more people will turn to their relationship with God and
other believers to cope with their struggles,” Mahoney
says. Those adjustments, including parental reprioritization
of activities and sacrifice of personal desires, make
the transition among the most stressful ones in family
life, she adds.
In addition to utilizing interviews and questionnaires,
researchers will observe marital and parent-child interactions.
They then hope to determine if greater sanctification
of marriage, pregnancy and parenthood by first-time parents
promotes better prenatal care, marital adjustment, parenting
and child outcomes during the baby’s first year.
“The more people view the emergence of family through
a sacred lens, the more they’ll invest in the family,”
hypothesizes Mahoney, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology
from the University of Houston.
A pilot study will be done this summer, with data collection
for the full project starting this fall. The statistician
for the study is DeMaris, a social statistician and a
family social psychologist interested in marital quality
and stability.
A Web site will be dedicated to the project, which is
part of a broader commitment to spirituality and family
life research—an area in which BGSU has been a leader.
Pargament and Mahoney have helped lead studies that have
appeared in scientific journals and been referenced in
the media. SPiRiT, meanwhile, has attracted the attention
of a growing number of graduate students applying for
BGSU’s clinical psychology program, especially since
the American Psychological Association’s Monitor
on Psychology featured the research group in a December
2003 story.
“There’s just a lot of interest in the ‘real
world’ in this research,” says Mahoney.
The foundation’s hope, Schwartz adds, is that regardless
of their findings, Mahoney and Pargament, already “so
well established in their field,” will be regarded
in future years as having “blazed a new trail”
in research of sanctification of parenthood.
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