Amy Adamczyk - Böcker

The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States. The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on 215 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting. Handing Down the Faith explores the background beliefs informing how and why religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children; examines how parenting styles interact with parent religiousness to shape effective religious transmission; shows how parents have been influenced by their experiences as children influenced by their own parents; reveals how religious parents view their congregations and what they most seek out in a local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque; explores the experiences and outlooks of immigrant parents including Latino Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Indian Hindus. Smith and Adamczyk step back to consider how American religion has transformed over the last 100 years and to explain why parents today shoulder such a huge responsibility in transmitting religious faith and practice to their children. The book is rich in empirical evidence and unique in many of the topics it explores and explains, providing a variety of sometimes counterintuitive findings that will interest scholars of religion, social scientists interested in the family, parenting, and socialization; clergy and religious educators and leaders; and religious parents themselves.

In many countries, abortion is a contentious public opinion issue. In nations like the United States, advocates on both sides of the debate have actively worked to amplify their voices and change legislation. In other parts of the world, such as China, abortion is not a major discussion topic because many residents may see it as a relatively settled issue. Legal developments often move in accordance with changes in public opinion, but not always. What explains differences in public opinion about abortion around the globe?Fetal Positions explores this question using large-scale surveys from most of the world's population, interviews with experts from two case study countries, the US and China, and an analysis of newspaper articles from over forty countries. The book examines the factors influencing cross-national abortion rates and individual abortion decisions, investigates the relationship between attitudes and laws, and explores how personal and national characteristics shape views on abortion. In Fetal Positions, Amy Adamczyk makes the case that abortion disapproval is not randomly distributed across the world. In fact, patterns can be found across nations. Adamczyk shows that cross-national differences in public opinion can largely be explained based on a handful of factors--overall levels of religious belief, Catholic proportion, economic and educational development, type of government and government history, and gender inequality. Latin America, for example, is dominated by Catholicism, has high levels of religious belief, and low levels of abortion support. Conversely, while France and Spain have strong historical connections to the Catholic Church, the proportion who feel that religion is highly important is much lower, and attitudes are more liberal. By offering important insights that can only be gleaned through cross-national analysis, Fetal Positions provides an international focus and fresh perspective on the abortion debate.

In many countries, abortion is a contentious public opinion issue. In nations like the United States, advocates on both sides of the debate have actively worked to amplify their voices and change legislation. In other parts of the world, such as China, abortion is not a major discussion topic because many residents may see it as a relatively settled issue. Legal developments often move in accordance with changes in public opinion, but not always. What explains differences in public opinion about abortion around the globe?Fetal Positions explores this question using large-scale surveys from most of the world's population, interviews with experts from two case study countries, the US and China, and an analysis of newspaper articles from over forty countries. The book examines the factors influencing cross-national abortion rates and individual abortion decisions, investigates the relationship between attitudes and laws, and explores how personal and national characteristics shape views on abortion. In Fetal Positions, Amy Adamczyk makes the case that abortion disapproval is not randomly distributed across the world. In fact, patterns can be found across nations. Adamczyk shows that cross-national differences in public opinion can largely be explained based on a handful of factors--overall levels of religious belief, Catholic proportion, economic and educational development, type of government and government history, and gender inequality. Latin America, for example, is dominated by Catholicism, has high levels of religious belief, and low levels of abortion support. Conversely, while France and Spain have strong historical connections to the Catholic Church, the proportion who feel that religion is highly important is much lower, and attitudes are more liberal. By offering important insights that can only be gleaned through cross-national analysis, Fetal Positions provides an international focus and fresh perspective on the abortion debate.

Public opinion about homosexuality varies substantially around the world. While residents in some nations have embraced gay rights as human rights, people in many other countries find homosexuality unacceptable. What creates such big differences in attitudes? This book shows that cross-national differences in opinion can be explained by the strength of democratic institutions, the level of economic development, and the religious context of the places where people live. Amy Adamczyk uses survey data from almost ninety societies, case studies of various countries, content analysis of newspaper articles, and in-depth interviews to examine how demographic and individual characteristics influence acceptance of homosexuality.