Go Forth and Multiply: Revisiting Religion and Fertility in the United States, 1984-2008

Journal Title: Religions - Year 2011, Vol 2, Issue 4

Abstract

Many studies on the fertility differential by religion have considered both Catholics and Protestants to be equally homogenous groups. Contrary to these studies, we contend that Protestant fertility must be studied in the context of heterogeneous groups. Specifically, conservative Protestantism, with its beliefs about artificial birth control mirroring Catholic teaching, should be examined separately from other Protestant traditions. Using data from the General Social Survey we find that conservative Protestants and Catholics had about the same level of fertility, while mainline Protestants have a fertility rate that is significantly lower than that of Catholics. We also examine the changes in these differences over time.

Authors and Affiliations

Casey Borch, Matthew West and Gordon Gauchat

Keywords

Related Articles

Loving the Many in the One: Augustine and the Love of Finite Goods

This is an essay in comparative ethics within the Platonist tradition. Although the primary focus is on Augustine’s account of rightly ordered love of neighbor in De vera religione, it analyzes Augustine’s account of t...

Faith Unchanged: Spirituality, But Not Christian Beliefs and Attitudes, Is Altered in Newly Diagnosed Parkinson’s Disease

In this study, we aimed at investigating the validity and characteristics of the concept of hyporeligiosity in Parkinson’s disease. Twenty-eight newly diagnosed, never-medicated patients with Parkinson’s disease and 30...

The Effects of Provincial and Individual Religiosity on Deviance in China: A Multilevel Modeling Test of the Moral Community Thesis

This paper examines the moral community thesis in the secular context of China. Using multilevel logistic regression, we test (1) whether both individual- (measured by affiliation with Islam, Buddhism and Christianity)...

Contemplation, Subcreation, and Video Games

This essay asks how religion and theological ideas might be made manifest in video games, and particularly the creation of video games as a religious activity, looking at contemplative experiences in video games, and t...

Hermeneutic and Teleology in Ethics across Denominations—Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth

This study arises from the context of current debates in the Catholic Church on the place of rule and law in moral reasoning. I suggest that ethics may be best served by approaches that place the human subject in a tel...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP25210
  • DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel2040469
  • Views 391
  • Downloads 15

How To Cite

Casey Borch, Matthew West and Gordon Gauchat (2011). Go Forth and Multiply: Revisiting Religion and Fertility in the United States, 1984-2008. Religions, 2(4), -. https://www.europub.co.uk/articles/-A-25210