Prior research exploring differences in religiousness (and/or secularity) between parents and their teenage children suggests that there are not substantial differences, with differences increasing during emerging adulthood. However, previous efforts to examine differences in religiousness between parents and their teenage children have relied upon single-item measures, have used self-reported differences, or have only asked either the child or the parent but not both to evaluate religious distance. In this study we use a robust scale measure to calculate the religious distance between parents and children in an upper-middle class high school in New York state (students n = 196; parents/caretakers n = 328). We find that teenage children in our sample are, on average, about 12% less religious (or more secular) than their fathers and about 17% less religious (or more secular) than their mothers. Our study improves upon measures of religious distance between parents and teenage children and provides support for recent research suggesting that the transmission of religiousness from parents to children can function as a mechanism of secularization.

中文翻译：

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宗教/世俗距离：青少年和他们的父母相距多远？

先前探索父母与其十几岁孩子之间宗教信仰（和/或世俗）差异的研究表明，没有实质性差异，差异在成年期逐渐增加。然而，之前检查父母与其十几岁孩子之间宗教信仰差异的努力依赖于单项措施，使用自我报告的差异，或者只要求孩子或父母而不是两者来评估宗教距离。在这项研究中，我们使用稳健的尺度测量来计算纽约州一所高中（学生 n = 196；父母/看护人 n = 328）中父母与孩子之间的宗教距离。我们发现样本中的青少年儿童平均而言，比他们的父亲宗教信仰（或更世俗）少约 12%，比他们的母亲宗教信仰（或更世俗）少约 17%。我们的研究改进了父母和青少年儿童之间宗教距离的衡量标准，并为最近的研究提供了支持，表明从父母到孩子的宗教信仰可以作为世俗化的机制发挥作用。