ABSTRACT

Pastors’ kids endure a lot of expectations, pressures, and negative stereotypes regarding their behavior from their parents and others in their lives. Research has focused a lot on the expectations and pressures that pastors, pastors’ wives, and pastors’ kids face, as well as how these affect each group and the pastorate family. However, little research has looked closely at how the expectations that pastors’ kids face affect them in different aspects of their lives and well-being, and no research has done this while comparing the results to those of non-pastors’ kids. This study looks at how the expectations that pastors’ kids and non-pastors’ kids face affect their stress levels, depression levels, sense of identity, self-worth, personal faith, and levels of engagement in risky and rebellious behaviors, and how these effects may differ from each other. About 70 individuals were recruited through social media, the school newspaper, and word-of-mouth to participate in a short survey. Analysis of the survey answers do not appear to show a significant difference between the groups. However, a few significant differences appear in aspects related to stress, depression, identity, and personal faith, and risky and rebellious behaviors. The results for engagement in risky and rebellious behavior showed a significant difference in one factor. However, that factor was based on the parents’ perception of the participants’ behaviors, not on the behaviors themselves. The results do not appear to show a difference in the engagement of risky and rebellious behaviors among pastors’ kids and non-pastors’ kids, which could lead to getting rid of the negative stereotype that pastors’ kids are “bad” kids. The results could contribute to current knowledge of how expectations affect pastors’ kids by showing more specific aspects that are affected. Future research could focus on the highly affected aspects in pastors’ kids, and further confirm that there is no major difference between the levels of engagement in risky and rebellious behaviors in pastors’ kids and non-pastors’ kids.