Akceptacja w rodzinie a postawa religijna młodzieży w świetle analizy transakcyjnej

Abstract

The paper seeks to show the relationship between parental acceptance, as it is experienced by adolescents, and their religious attitude. Accordingly, a study was carried out among 96 subjects (students from the secondary school final form) by means of two methods: a Questionnaire designed by the author and D. Hutsebaut’s Questionnaire worked out by W. Prężyna. The authors’ questionnaire served to select a group of adolescents due to the frequency with which they receive positive or negative support from their mother or their father. The Questionnaire was grounded on the theoretical assumptions of transactional analysis. Now Hutsebaut’s Questionnaire allowed us to determine the differences between the selected groups as regards the following dimensions of the religious attitude: dependence, autonomy, rebellious attitude, guilt, identification, humanitarian fellowship with others, ethical norms, acceptance of convictions, central role of religion and fear against incertitude. Our analyses take also into account sexual difference. The results we have obtained confirm our hypotheses. The subjects who experienced a positive acceptance from their mothers and fathers had higher scores as regards their religious attitudes; those subjects who did not experience such a support had lower scores. The adolescents who often obtain positive and rarely negative support, who at the same time are accepted in their families, feel concern, care and sense of safety, have a chance to open themselves up to God and to perceive Him in the other man. They are more able to receive and accept religious values and norms. The adolescents from that group identify themselves with Christ, seek to follow Him, keep God’s commandments and to approve of God as Someone who gives sense to their life. In the families where young people experience a negative support, i.e. they receive from their parents messages that they are not loved, they experience loneliness, for they feel that they cannot trust their close relatives, such as their parents, and draw back from the relationship with other people and with God. They rebel against God, doubt His justice, or even doubt His presence. The adolescents who rarely receive a positive support, and often they receive a negative support from their parents, do not experience God as Someone who gives them a sense of safety; and they regard themselves as the ultimate source of norms. The studies have confirmed that the family is a basic milieu in which man’s attitudes towards himself, to the world and God take shape.