The Evangelical Family Paradox

Conventional wisdom suggests that evangelical Protestants are a uniform force for reactionary politics when it comes to "family values."

Two years ago, the 15-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination, passed a resolution calling on wives to "submit" to their husbands. Evangelical parenting experts, led by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, are some of the culture's most vociferous defenders of a traditional disciplinary child-rearing style that incorporates corporal punishment. And more than 85% of evangelicals believe that "the husband should be the head of the family," compared with 48% of all other Americans, according to the 1996 Pew-funded Religious Identity and Influence Survey.

This conservative family rhetoric has prompted a vigorous response from feminists and mainstream media. Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, accused Promise Keepers of being "radical-right religious activists" bent on keeping women in the "back seat." Journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts suggested that the Southern Baptist position on marital submission "can clearly lead to abuse, both physical and emotional."

But the conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong. The reality is that evangelicals'

family practice confounds the rhetoric of left-leaning cultural elites as well as conservative evangelical elites. We call it the "evangelical family paradox." It turns out that evangelical men and women act in ways that parallel--or are in fact more progressive than--other Americans.

First, when it comes to parenting, evangelicals--especially evangelical men--are in many ways more progressive than other Americans. The single exception to this pattern is that evangelical parents spank their toddlers and preschoolers more often than other parents, according to a research team led by Christopher Ellison at the University of Texas.

However, the kind of warm, expressive parenting style first advocated by Dr. Spock is also deeply entrenched in this subculture. We find that evangelical mothers praise and hug their children more often than do other mothers. More surprisingly, we also find that evangelical fathers are more likely to practice this kind of expressive parenting.

In fact, current evidence suggests that evangelical fathers are more involved with their children than other fathers. They have dinner with their children and volunteer for youth activities like soccer and Scouts more than other fathers. Evangelical fathers report monitoring their children's chores, homework, and TV-watching regimen more closely than other fathers. And evangelical fathers are no more or less likely than other fathers to help out their wives with such basic child-care tasks as feeding, clothing, and bathing preschoolers.

In many ways, then, evangelical men more closely resemble the iconic "new father" of the 1990s--the expressive, involved, and egalitarian family man--than do other men.

So, why is a religious culture that has championed gender-role traditionalism leading the way in fathers' family involvement? How can we explain the evangelical family paradox?

Continued on page 2: »