Mothers are often acknowledged for cooking delicious meals or for cheering the loudest at soccer games. However, a Daily Universe man-on-the-street interview found it isn’t the food or cheers they are most appreciative of, but the religious values their mothers taught them.
Every Center Street pedestrian had similar answers when asked about their first introduction to religion: their mother taught them at a very young age.
“My mom worked when I was younger. But I remember, everyday before we went to school, as a family, we had daily prayer in the entry of our home. That was something very important to my mom,” Dan Carlile said, a husband and father from Heber City, Utah.
“There’s probably nobody that has influenced my life more than my mom,” Carlile said. “My mom has shaped who I am more than anybody else, for sure!”
Alyssa Hajjar, a UVU ballroom dance major from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was also taught by her mother at a young age.
“(My mother) taught me how to be a Christ like person, how to treat people right and how to care about myself too,” Hajjar said.
According to Dave C. Dollahite, Ph.D., professor of family life at BYU, studies prove that mothers have a direct impact on their children’s beliefs. Mothers have more influence on their children’s religious beliefs because they spend more time with their children.
Studies support that when the parent-child relationship is stronger, children are more likely to live by the values their parents taught Dollhite explained.
BYU student Rachael Griffen, from Auckland, New Zealand, admirers her mom’s example during hard times.
“She had a lot of health problems when I was growing up,” Griffen said. “But she was still so strong in the gospel. She showed me that it isn’t always easy to believe in God, but when I do believe in God, I can get through anything.”
Griffen said her mother has had a powerful influence on her beliefs today, teaching her the gospel and how to live her life, citing it’s because of her mothers example throughout her life that she can be an example for her own children one day.
