The time bind and God's time

Abstract

We address the question of whether family time constraints lead Americans in the 1990s to cut back on their religious activities. Using the 1988-1998 General Social Surveys, we looked at the answers to several questions about church membership and activities of married respondents, aged 55 or less, living in households with at least one employed spouse. We compared respondents by class, by whether or not they had children at home, and by how many hours spouses worked each week (and we controlled for several other factors – age, gender, ethnicity, income, and religion of origin). Having children and working many hours are the key indices of time pressure. In general, we found that Americans sustained their religious involvements despite high work commitments; and we found that parents were more involved than nonparents. Two notable exceptions arose: One, among middle-class couples only, high work hours – especially for wives' – depressed couples' church attendance (it is not clear why this was specific to the middle class). Two, long work hours reduced attendance and certain devotional activities among wives. The general pattern, however, suggests that religious activity was relatively inelastic to time pressures.