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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