Religion as a basis for the intergenerational transmission of altruistic values to emerging adults

Research suggests that parents are effective transmitters of altruistic values to their children, and this transmission can flow through the route of religion. However, trends of weakening religious identification and strengthening prosocial values in contemporary emerging adults suggest a decoupling of religion from prosociality in the contemporary family context. This study examines the ways parents' religiosity influences their children's altruistic values, explicitly focusing on the religious pathways by which these values are transmitted in mother-child and father-child relationships. This study addressed the role of religion in the intergenerational transmission of altruistic values using data from 123 mothers, 76 fathers, and 233 adolescent/young adult children in 149 families who participated in the 2021-2022 wave of the Longitudinal Study of Generations. Results revealed a significant influence of mothers' and fathers' religiosity on the altruistic values of children but each through a different pathway. Mothers' religiosity influenced children's altruistic values by promoting their children's religiosity, while fathers' religiosity influenced their children's altruistic values by transmitting their own religiously formed altruistic values. Findings support that mothers inculcate altruistic values in their children through religious means, while fathers' religious influence on the altruistic values of children is potentially hidden from them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).