The impact of parental discipline on the image of God

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of parental discipline on men's and women's image of God – specially the degree to which they report perceiving God as loving, forgiving, trustworthy, and available. It compares the four major different parenting styles – authoritative, authoritarian, permissive/indulgent, and neglectful/rejecting – that people received during childhood on their perceptions of God when they are in college. Based on questionnaires completed by undergraduate students at a state university in Utah, this study found that parental discipline styles are related to individuals’ images of God to some extent. The results of a logistic regression show that parental discipline styles have differential impacts on the image of God between male and female respondents. For men, the image of God is significantly related to the parenting styles they received during their childhood, whereas for women, the relationship is not significant. Implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• parental discipline
• image of God
• gender differences
• Mormons

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on previous drafts of the paper.