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Family Life Cycle Revisited: Age And Life Course Effects On Church Attendance At “Conventional” And Middle Age, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

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 marriage and parenthood were positively associated with church attendance. However, prior research has examined only adults in more “conventional” ages of family formation, and our findings 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 …