Childhood features associated with men’s Beliefs in God and/or a Divine Power in England

Research has linked childhood experiences with subsequent religiousness and/or spirituality, but this work generally focuses on general religiousness or worship service attendance. Very little is known about how childhood experiences influence individuals’ religious or spiritual beliefs (RSBs). We have investigated whether the childhoods of men who have such a belief (measured by the question ‘‘Do you believe in God or in some Divine power?’) differ from those of their peers without such a belief. We used data collected from partners of pregnant women with expected dates of delivery in 1991-2 residing in a specified area of south-west England. These men answered detailed questionnaires about their childhood. Of the 213 descriptors of their childhood, 48 were associated with RSBs at P<0.01, 23 times the number that would be expected by chance. A series of stepwise logistic regression analyses were carried out to identify the key independent variables that would need to be considered in studies assessing whether the RSB of these men was associated with their subsequent health. We found that the childhood features that distinguished the men with this belief from their peers fell into three groups: (i) indicators of a happy secure childhood; (ii) severe trauma (such as being abused or being seriously ill), and (iii) less acute childhood circumstances (such as their criminal behaviour, being expelled from school and having parents going through a divorce). The items in the first two of these groups were associated with increased likelihood of RSB, whereas the items in (iii) were associated with a reduced likelihood. These results need to be repeated elsewhere with different population groups before they can be generalised, but meanwhile they will form a basis for the choice of confounders, mediators or moderators in studies of the health and well-being of these men.