A description of the lived experiences of young adults who grew up in religiously heterogeneous households

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study, religiously heterogeneous households refer to households where the parents practice entirely different religions. These households are becoming more common and whilst the literature focusses on what this means for the married couple in terms of marital satisfaction, marital conflict and religious participation it largely neglects the influence that growing up in such a household may have on the child. This poses a potential problem in the therapeutic setting because there is no existing knowledge to work with. This study sought to narrow the gap in the literature by describing the lived experiences of young adults who grew up in religiously heterogeneous households. Through the use of snowball sampling, six young adults (aged 18-24) who grew up in religiously heterogeneous households agreed to be interviewed for this study. Of the participants four were male and the remaining two were female. The semi-structured interview yielded many reports of the participant's experiences growing up in a religiously heterogeneous household. These experiences have been grouped into three types of themes. The themes include: (1) over-arching themes which deals with issues such as making sense of religion, making the decision as to which religion to affiliate with and idealizing the religiously homogeneous household whilst valuing the lessons gained from the religiously heterogeneous household; (2) an explicit theme which discusses how the experiences that the participants report about their households can be used to make tentative inferences about religiously heterogeneous marriages and divorce and; (3) peripheral themes include discussions about feeling judged and ostracised, negotiating a religiously heterogeneous background outside of the immediate family, tolerance and the value of a name. An Ecological Model is employed in the interpretation of these findings. Finally, the limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University