Stability and Change of Spirituality following Childbirth: Longitudinal Evidence from Data of the Swiss Household Panel Using Multiple Propensity Score Matching Analyses

Abstract

The birth of a child typically transcends parents’ daily lives and is frequently described as spiritual experience in qualitative interview studies. Yet, little is known on medium- or long-term effects of becoming parents on individuals’ spirituality. Often defined as “search for the sacred” (Pargament, 1999, p. 12), spirituality is commonly conceptualised more broadly than religiosity. Its lifespan development and reactivity to life events are not yet systematically understood and existing evidence often does not allow for causal conclusions. Addressing this research gap, our study seeks to provide precise, robust and causal insights on spiritual stability and change following childbirth.We compared Swiss Household Panel (SHP) participants who had become parents for the first time between 2015 and 2018 to propensity score matched childless and multiparous parent controls using longitudinal pre- and post-birth spirituality data. Across multiple robustness conditions regarding covariate selection, manifest and structural equation modelling analyses suggested a large average medium-term stability in spirituality (r ≥ .87; ≥. 95) and no spiritual change following childbirth in the N = 138 first-time parents compared to the matched controls.Given this extreme average stability, future research should focus on differential trajectories rather than average effects when studying how spirituality evolves.