Christian family life in the United States includes a wide range of traditions, household arrangements and religious practices. Recent surveys measure who is raising children, how often families worship together, how religious identities continue from parents to teens, and how Christians view marriage and childbearing. The figures below are U.S. survey estimates, with each measurement period identified because older results are not 2026 estimates.
Table of contents
- Family size and parenting
- Marriage and religious matching
- Worship and shared family practices
- Passing Christian identity to teens
- Childhood formation and religious education
- Christian views on marriage and children
Family size and parenting
The latest figures in this collection come from the Religious Landscape Study fielded from July 17, 2023, through March 4, 2024. In that survey, 27% of U.S. Christian adults were parents or guardians of at least one child under 18 living at home. Among Christians ages 40 to 59, respondents had had an average of 2.2 biological children over their lifetimes. These are measures of current household responsibility and lifetime fertility, respectively, so they describe different aspects of family life. Pew Research Center, “Religion & parenthood: Fertility, religious activities with kids in US”.
Parenthood varies across Christian traditions in the same survey. The share who were parents or guardians of a minor child living at home was 29% among evangelical Protestants, 21% among mainline Protestants, 31% among adults in the historically Black Protestant tradition and 27% among Catholics. Latter-day Saints had a higher reported share at 37%.
| Christian tradition | Adults with a minor child living at home |
|---|---|
| Evangelical Protestant | 29% |
| Mainline Protestant | 21% |
| Historically Black Protestant | 31% |
| Catholic | 27% |
| Latter-day Saint | 37% |
Lifetime biological-child averages also differed among adults ages 40 to 59. Evangelical Protestant adults reported an average of 2.3 biological children, compared with 1.9 among mainline Protestant adults. The survey categories represent distinct traditions and should not be treated as interchangeable. These descriptive differences do not explain why the figures vary.
Marriage and religious matching
Religious matching is common among married U.S. adults. From the same July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024 measurement period, 74% of married adults said their spouse had the same religion, while 26% said their spouse had a different religion. Among married Latter-day Saints, 87% had a spouse who shared their religion. Among married Protestants, 81% had a Protestant spouse.
The Protestant and Catholic patterns show several forms of religious matching. Ten percent of married Protestants had a religiously unaffiliated spouse, and 7% had a Catholic spouse. Among married Catholics, 75% had a Catholic spouse, 12% had a Protestant spouse and 9% had a religiously unaffiliated spouse. The percentages shown for individual subgroups are reported survey estimates; they should not be combined into a new estimate without the underlying full categories.
Shared affiliation was also associated with reported levels of religious commitment. Among Protestants married to another Protestant, 62% were highly religious, compared with 27% of Protestants married to a non-Protestant. Among Catholics married to another Catholic, 46% were highly religious, compared with 24% of Catholics married to a non-Catholic. These are comparative associations, not evidence that one spouse arrangement causes a particular level of religious practice. Pew Research Center, “How many married Americans have spouses of the same religion”.
Worship and shared family practices
Among U.S. Christian parents or guardians with a minor child at home, 58% said they prayed or read scripture with their children during the July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024 study period. Another 48% said they sent a child to Sunday school or another religious education program, while 22% said they homeschooled or used a religious school instead of public school.
Seventy percent engaged in at least one of those three activities: praying or reading scripture, religious education, or religious schooling. The reported share was 82% among evangelical Protestant parents or guardians and 84% among Latter-day Saint parents or guardians. These measures indicate whether an activity was present, not how frequently it occurred or how meaningful it was to the family.
The 2019 family-practice survey gives a more specific picture of teens who attended religious services at least occasionally. Forty percent said they generally attended with both parents, 25% attended with one parent, 7% attended with other people such as grandparents, relatives or friends, and 1% attended alone. The remaining respondents are not represented by these selected categories, so these figures are best read as reported attendance companions rather than a complete household distribution.
Family conversations and mealtime practices were also common but not universal in 2019. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. teens said they talked about religion with their family at least sometimes, and 48% said their family said grace or a prayer before meals at least sometimes. Pew Research Center, “Family religious practices in the U.S.”.
Passing Christian identity to teens
The 2019 data show a strong relationship between a Christian mother’s identity and the reported religious identity of her teenage child. Eighty-three percent of teenage children of Christian mothers identified as Christian, 17% identified as religiously unaffiliated, and less than 1% identified with a non-Christian religion. These figures come from a modeling source and describe the reported or modeled relationship in that source; they should not be read as a guarantee for an individual family. Pew Research Center, “Modeling the Future of Religion in America”.
Parents and teens did not always describe the degree of shared belief in exactly the same way. In 2019, 53% of U.S. parents of teens said their teen held all the same religious beliefs as they did, 42% said the teen held some of the same beliefs, and 4% said the teen had quite different religious beliefs. In the teen responses, 48% said they and the responding parent shared all the same religious beliefs, 43% said they shared some, and 8% said the parent had quite different religious beliefs.
The difference between parent and teen responses is a reminder that family faith is experienced by more than one person. It also means that a statistic about parental expectations should not be treated as identical to a statistic about a teenager’s own view. Pew Research Center, “Shared religious beliefs between parents and teens”.
Childhood formation and religious education
Childhood experience provides another way to understand Christian identity in the United States. In the July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024 survey, 80% of U.S. adults said they were raised as Christians. Within the reported childhood identities, 46% said they were raised as Protestants and 30% as Catholics.
Among adults raised as Christians, 78% said they attended church at least monthly as children, and 63% said they attended at least weekly. Half said religion was very important to their family during childhood, while 41% said they received a lot of formal religious education while growing up.
The childhood pattern varied somewhat by tradition. Among adults raised as Protestants, 49% said religion was very important to their family during childhood. Among adults raised as Catholics, the figure was 51%. These measures concern remembered childhood experience and are not direct measures of the religious practices of today’s children.
One comparison connects childhood attendance and family importance with adult identity. Among adults raised Protestant, 80% of those who grew up attending church monthly in families where religion was very important still identified as Protestant. By comparison, 57% of those who grew up attending only a few times a year or less in families where religion was not very important still identified as Protestant. This is a descriptive comparison and does not establish that either childhood factor independently caused the later identity. Pew Research Center, “Americans’ childhood religious identities, practices, education”.
Christian views on marriage and children
Views about family structure are not uniform across Christian groups or across time. In a U.S. survey conducted March 17-May 6, 2015, 44% of adults said shared religious beliefs were very important for a successful marriage. The share rose to 64% among religiously affiliated adults married to someone who shared their faith. About 27% of married adults said their spouse’s religion was very important in deciding whether to marry that person, and about 67% of highly religious adults said shared religious beliefs were very important for a successful marriage. Pew Research Center, “Religion in marriages and families”.
More recent figures in the supplied comparison come from April 10-16, 2023. Among evangelical Protestants, 55% said fewer people getting married would negatively affect the future of the United States, while 4% said it would have a positive effect. Among mainline Protestants, 42% saw a negative effect and 7% a positive effect. Among Catholics, 37% saw a negative effect and 6% a positive effect.
Catholic respondents also evaluated a related family trend: 48% said having fewer children raised by two married parents would negatively affect society, compared with 12% who said it would have a positive effect. These results measure opinions about society, not the private circumstances or choices of every Christian household. Pew Research Center, “Across US religious groups, many see decline of marriage negatively”.
Taken together, these statistics show several dimensions of Christian family life: household parenthood, religiously matched marriages, shared practices, childhood formation and intergenerational belief. The underlying estimates rely on self-reported religious identity and family practice, and Christian categories include multiple traditions. The 2023-24 figures are the newest measurement period represented here, while the 2019, 2015 and 2023 figures retain their original dates and should not be presented as current-year estimates.