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    Spiritual Disclosure Between Older Adolescents and Their Mothers

This study examines the role of spiritual disclosure within older adolescent–mother relationships.

Spiritual disclosure is defined as mutual disclosure of personal religious and spiritual

beliefs and practices. Three hundred 18- to 20-year-old college students and 130 of their

mothers reported on spiritual disclosure in their relationships. According to both parties,

greater spiritual disclosure was related to higher relationship satisfaction, greater use of

collaborative conflict resolution strategies, less dysfunctional communication patterns, less

verbal aggression, and increased general disclosure in mother–adolescent relationships beyond

global religiousness and demographics. Spiritual disclosure also predicted unique

variance in collaborative conflict resolution strategies beyond these factors and general

disclosure. The findings underscore the value of attending to the interpersonal dimension of

religion/spirituality. More specifically, the results suggest that spiritual disclosure is an

indicator of relationship quality, one that is tied to better relationship functioning, and one

that merits further attention in studies of family dynamics.

Keywords: religion, spirituality, family, mother–adolescent relationships

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.22.1.62.supp

Empirical studies indicate that 85% to 95% of American

adolescents believe in God, 69% view themselves to be

religious, and 42% pray frequently (G. Gallup & Lindsay,

1999; Smith, Denton, Faris, & Regnerus, 2003). Similarly,

national studies find that 77% of college students pray, 58%

view integrating spirituality into their lives as of high importance,

and 57% attend religious services occasionally to

frequently (Bryant, Choi, & Yasuno, 2003). Over 90% of

parents of older adolescents also indicate that religion is

personally relevant, and 75% claim family relationships

have been strengthened by religion (G. H. Gallup & Bezilla,

1992).

A handful of empirical studies support links between

greater parental or adolescent personal religious devotion

and more positive familial relationships (Brody, Stoneman,

& Flor, 1996; King, 2003; Mahoney, Pargament, Swank, &

Tarakeshwar, 2001; Wilcox, 1998). For instance, religious

similarity between mothers and children in later adolescence

longitudinally predicts better parent–child relationship

quality (Pearce & Axinn, 1998). Furthermore, youth

who more often attend religious services express greater

satisfaction with and more commitment to their families

(Smith, 2003).

However, studies that delve deeply into ways in which

parents and their adolescents relate to each other about their

respective religious practices and beliefs have been scarce.

Moreover, few theoretically based constructs are available

to investigate how religion may be integrated into parent–

youth relationships and facilitate or hinder relationship dynamics

(Mahoney et al., 2001). Instead, studies on the role

of religion in the family overwhelmingly rely on a few

common single-item variables (e.g., church attendance, denominational

affiliation, frequency of prayer, and self-rated

religiousness; Mahoney et al., 2001). Such items, even if

combined into a “religiousness index,” fail to capture the

rich nature that religion holds for many families. Thus, the

focus herein was to advance the study of religion in the

family by assessing a new construct labeled “spiritual disclosure”

and its ties to better functioning of older

adolescent–mother relationships.

Spiritual disclosure is defined as the disclosure of personal

religious and spiritual beliefs and practices between

two or more individuals. Within family life, this construct

reflects the degree to which two or more family members

reveal their personal religious beliefs, practices, or questions

to each another, irrespective of the degree to which the

parties agree or disagree about religious or spiritual issues.

Conceptually, spiritual disclosure may play two important

roles in family relationships. First, religious and spiritual

views represent a class of beliefs that are difficult, if not

impossible, to support with external evidence or verify as

factually correct. Presumably, then, individuals may feel

Gina M. Brelsford, Psychology Program, School of Behavioral

Sciences and Education, Penn State Harrisburg; Annette Mahoney,

Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University.

We express appreciation to Kenneth Pargament, Ernie Jouriles,

and Joseph Ciarrocchi for providing feedback on earlier versions

of this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Gina M. Brelsford, Penn State Harrisburg, 311W Olmsted Building,

777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057. E-mail:

gmy103@psu.edu

Journal of Family Psychology Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association

2008, Vol. 22, No. 1, 62–70 0893-3200/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0893-3200.22.1.62

study, a better relationship may be a prerequisite for sharing

thoughts and feelings about religious or spiritual issues. In

either case, spiritual disclosure is tied to relationship quality

between mothers and adolescents who are and who are not

similar in their individual level of religious involvement or

commitment (e.g., prayer or worship attendance). That is,

spiritual disclosure is linked to more positive parent–

adolescent relationships even if religion is salient for only

one party or is not particularly central in the lives of either

party.

Prior research has demonstrated that greater general disclosure

between youths and parents is strongly associated

with better relationship functioning in the family

(Finkenauer, Engels, Branje, & Meeus, 2004; Grotevant &

Cooper, 1986). Similarly, in this study general disclosure

was robustly tied to the relationship variables that correlated

with spiritual disclosure. In fact, most direct associations

between spiritual disclosure and relationship functioning

disappeared in a stringent test that controlled how much the

dyad shared other types of sensitive information. Thus,

disclosure of religious or spiritual issues appears to fall

within a more general ability of family members to reveal

their vulnerabilities to one another. An important exception

centered on the use of collaboration to deal with conflicts.

Specifically, the ability to nondefensively express oneself

and listen openly to another’s point of view when discussing

a conflict was consistently tied to greater spiritual disclosure,

after taking into account general self-disclosure. Collaborative

communication skills therefore appear to be vital

when it comes to discussing spiritual matters. The fundamental

subjectiveness, yet centrality, of religious/spiritual

beliefs (or disbelief) to people’s personal identities may

especially require family members to be respectful and

tolerant of others’ disclosures. Moreover, spiritual disclosure

may often involve nondefensively revealing one’s own

spiritual struggles; such revelations are more likely to be

made to open-minded listeners. Of course, reciprocally,

frequent spiritual disclosure between individuals may

deepen a sense of trust and reinforce the use of collaborative

strategies beyond what is necessary for conversations about

other sensitive issues.

In summary, this study found that the degree to which

mothers and adolescents share their thoughts, feelings, and

doubts in spiritual matters appears to be one good indicator

of relationship dynamics, and conversely, a positive relationship

increases the likelihood that such dialogues will

occur. Theoretically, these findings are supportive of the

call for studies of more positive, larger, and deeper constructs

in the marital and family literature (Fincham, Stanley,

& Beach, 2007). These findings also have implications

for clinical practice. Namely, therapists and clergy may find

it useful to assess whether and how family members share

their personal religious views with one another. This information

is likely to reveal the extent to which a dyad can

discuss many sensitive issues in a respectful manner, and

how they go about handling emotionally charged topics or

conflicts. Thus, assessing the level of spiritual disclosure

between family members can offer an efficient and meaningful

way to access key information about relationship

dynamics.

Limitations of this study highlight important future directions

in the study of religion and family psychology.

Specifically, this study involved a cross-sectional design

using a primarily Caucasian, female, Judeo–Christian sample

of mostly intact families who provided self-report data

on constructs. Longitudinal designs are needed in the future

to untangle whether spiritual disclosure between adolescents

and parents is merely a by-product of well-functioning

relationships or if spiritual disclosure between younger adolescents

and their parents operates as a protective factor as

adolescents enter adulthood. This study should be replicated

with families with non-Christian affiliations and more diverse

socioeconomic statuses and ethnic backgrounds to

foster a broader understanding of the interplay between

religion and family dynamics in various social groups. In

light of emerging research on strong links between paternal

religiousness and parental investment and better parent–

child relationships (Flor & Knapp, 2001; King, 2003), this

study needs to be replicated with fathers and with male

adolescents to determine if the findings generalize beyond

the predominantly mother–daughter dyads used in this

study. Another limitation of this study was that the participants

reported high levels of positive parent–child functioning

and low levels of dysfunctional communication.

Stronger findings for spiritual disclosure might emerge

within more distressed samples with wider variability on

key criterion variables. Finally, although attempts were

made in this study to increase the validity of findings by

obtaining self-reports from mothers and college students,

alternative methods beyond self-report (e.g., diaries, phone

calls, observations) would help rule out the influence of

social desirability.

In conclusion, this study will hopefully encourage researchers

to venture more often into the spiritual domain as

it applies to family life. Despite ample evidence of the

salience of religion and spirituality in the lives of families,

this domain is rarely addressed in depth in mainstream

psychology journals focused on families (Parke, 2001). The

limited attention given to religion and spirituality by researchers

in family psychology creates a chasm between

research and practice because clients often view religious

and spiritual issues as highly relevant to the cause or solution

of family problems (Frame, 2003). By examining spiritual

disclosure closely, this study illustrates one avenue to

delve more deeply into the ways that family members

incorporate religion/spirituality into their interactions, and

shows that such religiously based constructs offer insights

into relationship functioning.

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