Competing Priorities? Testing Multiple Mechanisms That Connect Adolescent Religiosity to Marriage in Young Adulthood

Abstract

Abstract Religion and family remain tightly linked institutions, but the increasingly varied period of emerging adulthood, which includes delays in marriage transition and reduced religiosity overall, calls for additional research into this relationship. Religious involvement continues to be associated with earlier age at first marriage, for example, but the specific mechanisms responsible for this connection are often only implied or untested. Accordingly, we build on prior literature and hypothesize about three mechanisms that could explain the link between adolescent religiosity and marriage transition in young adulthood: the importance of completing milestone goals prior to marriage, such as completing one’s education and establishing a career, the importance of cohabitation before marriage, and the ideal age of marriage. We use longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to investigate each of these mechanisms for a recent cohort of young adults. Using structural equation modeling and measures for adolescent religious attendance, importance, and affiliation, we find that adolescent religiosity is related to the marriage transition primarily through the mechanism of cohabitation. Specifically, religious attendance and importance in adolescence are associated with less support for cohabitation, which in turn is associated with a higher likelihood of marriage transition during young adulthood. Findings for religious affiliation were not as consistent. In the context of demographic shifts in marriage patterns and religious involvement, these analyses provide an important illustration of how these social institutions are still connected.