Attitudes toward childlessness have received little attention from social scientists even as childlessness as a family form has become more popular. One key predictor of childlessness attitudes is religious commitment, though few studies have examined this association in-depth. Using data from two recent, national datasets—the National Survey of Family Growth and the Survey of U.S. Catholics and Family Life—we assess the relationships between individuals’ religious characteristics and various attitudes about their own and others’ childlessness, as well as how these factors may vary across gender. We find strong associations between religious affiliation, religious attendance, and religious salience, and each of the outcomes such that religious commitment tends to be associated with more negative attitudes toward childlessness. Interactions across gender were rare and the direction of the interactions was mixed. Religion is a pivotal factor in perpetuating pronatalist attitudes in the United States among both men and women.

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Research repeatedly shows that stratification occurs through racial classification and systemic racism. Scholars have also shown that stratification in wealth, education, and occupational attainment for Americans varies by religious affiliation. In this article, we incorporate theories of intersectionality and complex religion to study the ways that religion stratifies status attainment within racial groups in the United States. We hypothesize that relational proximity to predominantly white denominations increases status attainment for racial minorities in the United States. Using data from the 2000-2016 waves of the General Social Survey, we find that Black Evangelicals have higher levels of occupational prestige than Black non-Evangelicals. We argue that this is because of networks of social capital via multiracial churches that allow Black Evangelicals access to increasing levels of occupational prestige.