Longitudinal Associations and Interactions of Adolescent Religious Deidentification and Parental Sanctification on parent-Adolescent Relationships

In many religious families, shared religious identity is a strong source of intergenerational solidarity. However, when adolescents deidentify from their family faith, normative parent-adolescent conflict, which heightens in mid-adolescence and normally subsides in late-adolescence, may intensify and damage parent-adolescent social cohesion. Many religious parents view parenting relationships as sanctified, which typically leads to adaptive parenting, but in the context of deidentification may lead to greater distress. To understand how adolescent religious deidentification influences parent-adolescent relationships, we examined the longitudinal associations and interactions of adolescent children’s religious deidentification and parental sanctification on parent-child religious conflict and parental warmth (N = 1,391 parent-child dyads). Deidentification was associated with increased religious conflict and short-term decreases in adolescent-reported parental warmth, with stronger associations observed in adolescent-reported outcomes. Structural equation models indicated that sanctification was associated with increased parental warmth but partially supported that sanctification may also exacerbate religious conflict when adolescents deidentify from religion.