This is a data-heavy sociological survey and quite good.

Spoiler alert: parents' religious practices are more likely to be maintained by the children if the parents are (1) Mormon or Black Protestant, (2) themselves actively religious, especially the father, (3) daily family religious discussions, (3) grandparents who believe.

Least likely: (1) Jewish, (2) parents themselves are disengaged.

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I'm actually only halfway through but I'm giving up on the book lol. It's an academical work on sociology. I don't think it really discusses "handing down the faith," just "handing down religious practices." The authors don't really look at faith as a set of value and beliefs, just customs and practices. They did strongly re-emphasize previous research's findings on how parens play a major role in influencing an individual's religious practices, and how talking to children about religion in her daily life influence children in continuing on these religious practices. I thought this was going to be a book that informs me "how" to hand down my faith to my children. So there's a gap in expectation and I don't think I'm going to continue with this book lol ( )

The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave
home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of
religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States. The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on 215 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting. (Publisher's Comments)