Preachers’ kids, or PKs, are the children of Protestant clergy. The stereotype is that they’re far more likely to rebel, get into trouble, smoke, drink, fall away from the faith and disappoint their parents, supposedly in reaction to their disciplined/repressive upbringing and the high expectations their families and the community have for them. Like any other stereotype, it’s probably about 95.3% jive.
Do PKs in other faiths have the same reputation - the imam’s son, the rabbi’s daughter, etc.?
There’s a longstanding joke in the neopagan community (where 90% of practitioners consider themselves Priests or Priestesses) that our kids are going to rebel by becoming Baptists.
And there’s some kernel of truth in it, as many of the kids do begin investigating Christianity when they’re teens, to see what they’re missing out on and maybe to find answers their parents haven’t given them. There was one adorable group a few years ago at one of the pagan festivals who literally snuck off into the woods - away from the dancing and drumming and naked people - for unauthorized Bible study together. The parents found it quite hilarious, actually. But it did seem to be a good demonstration that kids raised in strong religious traditions need to do their own investigating, and feel the need to do so clandestinely and rebelliously, even in a spiritual community which is as eclectic and open as is humanly possible.
There’s a running meme in Unitarian Universalism that almost no one in any given congregation was raised in the faith. UU kids are encouraged to think for themselves and find their own way; the vast majority end up finding their way somewhere else.
I remember an article, which my google-fu is too weak to find, that suggests between 20% and 35% of U.S. children will change away from their parents religion, and that number holds true of pretty much every religious preference including atheism and agnosticism.
Not faith-based, but I had a student whose history cracked me up. Born in Spain, American father, Spanish mother; the father was an artist, won a grant to spend several months in Spain, got nabbed by a local girl. So how did their firstborn rebel against his so-laid-back-they’re-horizontal, bohemian parents?
At the time I met him, he was a US Army Lieutenant on his way to Dentistry school, a vocation he’d discovered while working as a dentist’s assistant in the Army. Makes perfect sense to me!
I was good friends with a PK growing up. His father was a liberal Prebysterian minister in our church. He was only slightly wild, joining a fraternity in college. He is now far more conservative than his father ever was and a lawyer in Southern California. One of his sister’s was easygoing and last I checked probably also going into clergy. The other sister was a tiresome stuck up young woman.