摘要：We examined the effects of marital status and parenthood on church attendance using panel data from the 1975 and 1992 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.Consistent with prior research, both cross-sectional and fixed effects ordered logit models indicated that marriageand parenthood were positively associated with church attendance.However,prior research has examined only adults in more "conventional" ages of family formation, and ourfindings indicated that the effects of parenthood extend into middle age.We also found support for prior notions that divorce/separation has negative effects on church attendance and that this effect is present among adults in their thirties as well as those in their fifties.However, using models that analyzed change over time while holding constant individual differences and prior church attendance, we found that the act of getting divorcedhad a significantly stronger negative impact on Catholics than Mainline Protestants.Similarly, with regard to parental responsibility, the act of becoming a parentwas associated with increased church attendance while holding constant individual differences.Thus, our work builds on existing research by utilizing a methodology that allowed us to assess the effects of both family structural statusand changesto family structure on church attendance
