Religious values, practices and pregnancy outcomes: A comparison of the impact of sect and mainstream christian affiliation

J. M. Najman, G. M. Williams, J. D. Keeping, J. Morrison and M. J. Anderson

Social Science & Medicine, 1988, vol. 26, issue 4, 401-407

Abstract: In this report 6566 women enrolled in the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) were separated into three groups; members of religious sects, Christians who attend church frequently and Christians who are infrequent attenders. These three groups, respectively labelled Christian sects, Christian attenders and lukewarm Christians were compared on a number of social background, lifestyle and pregnancy outcome variables. The sect members appeared to have the most favourable health, lifestyles and healthy babies at delivery, though this latter findings appears attributable to specific characteristics of the mother and her lifestyle. On most measures the children of lukewarm Christians appear to manifest the worst health while Christian attenders form a group whose children's health is between that of sect members and lukewarm Christians.

Keywords: religion; pregnancy; lifestyle; birthweight (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(88)90308-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:26:y:1988:i:4:p:401-407

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().