{"id":20822,"date":"2019-06-04T16:26:48","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T20:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=20822"},"modified":"2019-06-04T16:26:48","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T20:26:48","slug":"faith-family-and-research-intersect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/faith-family-and-research-intersect\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith, Family and Research Intersect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On<\/span>e of the darkest periods in the life of Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead led to some of his most recent nationally recognized research.<\/span><\/p>\n

That dark period occurred in 2014, after Whitehead and his family \u2014 his wife, Kelly, and their three children \u2014 moved to Clemson. Faith is important to the Whiteheads, but the family couldn\u2019t find a church that could accommodate the needs of their two sons, who have autism and don\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all suffered when we didn\u2019t have a community to belong to,\u201d Whitehead said. \u201cWe knew from experience that it\u2019s a difficult search. We just weren\u2019t ready yet to take the inevitable \u2018walks of shame\u2019 to retrieve our children from a church nursery because they were having a meltdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitehead began to turn his academic eye on what his family was going through. By viewing his family\u2019s struggles as a sociologist would \u2014 on a macro scale \u2014 he emerged with findings that revealed an unseen population and tragically underexplored issues in faith communities. Whitehead\u2019s yearslong examination of national data found that children whose disabilities affect social interaction are the most likely to be deterred from worship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hoped my research could serve as a wake-up call to religious communities,\u201d Whitehead said. \u201cIn many ways, this population is unseen because they never show up, or when they do, they have a negative experience and never return.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The likelihood of children with chronic health conditions never attending religious services is 14 percent higher than that of those without conditions, while physical conditions alone have almost no effect on attendance, Whitehead discovered.<\/p>\n

The difference becomes more pronounced in disabilities that affect social interaction. One in 4 children with developmental delays, learning disabilities, anxiety or conduct disorder never attend church. That ratio becomes 1 in 3 for children with autism, depression, speech problems or brain injury. Citing prior research, Whitehead notes that 1 in 3 parents of children with disabilities changed their places of worship because they felt the child wasn\u2019t sufficiently included.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitehead\u2019s findings related to attrition in church attendance confirmed a hypothesis and helped him put his own experiences into perspective. After publications in national journals and an article in The Washington Post,<\/i> he hopes his research can aid congregations in serving growing numbers of children with disabilities.<\/p>\n

The Whiteheads found a church near Clemson that has been open to their needs. Their sons have a \u201cbuddy\u201d during church whom they\u2019ve grown comfortable with, and Whitehead looks forward to working with the church to fold their sons more completely into worship activities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf congregations rarely have children with chronic health conditions who show up to worship, that doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t still be prepared,\u201d Whitehead said. \u201cHaving a system in place goes a long way toward preventing a religious community from becoming yet another bureaucracy that families have to navigate. Instead, these communities can become places of rest and refuge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the darkest periods in the life of Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead led to some of his most recent nationally recognized research. That dark period occurred in 2014, after Whitehead and his family \u2014 his wife, Kelly, and their three children \u2014 moved to Clemson. Faith is important to the Whiteheads, but the family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[986,2378,2788],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-20822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-disabilities","tag-religion","tag-summer-2019-in-these-hills"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/05\/Andrew-Whitehead.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20822"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}