Relationship research · 7 min read
Missionary kid relationships: what growing up on the field does to how you love
A childhood spent moving for a parent's calling, raised across cultures and sometimes across a faith you didn't choose, leaves a particular mark. Here's what the (limited, mostly qualitative) research says about it - honestly, including where the evidence runs out.
1. What “missionary kid” means here
A missionary kid (MK) grows up as the child of parents serving abroad for religious reasons - usually moving countries, often attending boarding school for part of childhood, and growing up inside a close, tight-knit missionary community that doubles as an extended family. In the research literature, MKs are one of the three classic subtypes of third culture kid, alongside military brats and diplomat kids [3].
What makes the MK experience distinct within that group is the layering of a faith identity on top of the cross-cultural one - and, for many, boarding school separation from parents during formative years, which the research below treats as a significant variable in its own right.
2. The one study on MK marriages
The most direct source here is a doctoral dissertation at Tennessee State University, which surveyed 58 MKs - mostly alumni of a single boarding school in Côte d'Ivoire - about their marriages[1]. Two findings stand out:
- MKs' marital satisfaction was only partly similar to that of peers who grew up in one culture - meaning the MK experience showed up as a real, distinguishable factor, not nothing.
- The strongest predictor of marital satisfaction wasn't the childhood variables at all - not years overseas, not age at the time, not whether a spouse was also an MK. It was simply how long the couple had been married.
The caveat is important: 58 people, mostly from one school, is a narrow sample. The dissertation's own framing is that MKs bring “a richness of experience, both positive and negative” into marriage - not that the MK background predicts an outcome either way.
3. The “benign disengagement” pattern
A separate, more detailed study interviewed 16 adult MKs - average age 47, from 13 different evangelical missions, raised across three continents - about why they had left their parents' faith[2]. It wasn't a study about romantic relationships, but its central finding speaks to how closeness worked inside these families: a recurring pattern the researcher called benign disengagement - a low-conflict, non-hostile emotional distance between parent and child, rather than an openly difficult relationship.
Alongside that pattern, the study identified concrete stressors specific to missionary life: frequent relocation, disrupted or difficult schooling, and - for some participants - trauma or abuse during their upbringing. The researcher's framing, drawing on wider research on religious doubt, is that family relationship quality, difficult life events, and noticed inconsistencies between what parents preached and how the family actually lived were the key ingredients.
4. Commitment and reticence in close relationships
A 2014 qualitative study - not MK-specific, but drawn from the overlapping third culture kid population - interviewed ten TCKs about how they made meaning of commitment and holding back in relationships, during both childhood and adolescence [5]. Thematic analysis found a recurring struggle building intimacy, companionship, and deep friendships, alongside real difficulty maintaining relationships over time and - the study's words - “a possible fear of commitment.”
The researchers' explanation lines up with the foundational TCK framework: repeated cycles of forming close relationships and then losing them to a move teach some children to protect themselves by not fully investing the next time [3]. Add to that the unprocessed grief many TCKs carry from childhood losses that often go unrecognised by the adults around them [4], and a learned wariness about closeness becomes easier to understand - not as a character flaw, but as a reasonable response to a childhood built on repeated goodbyes.
2-minute self-check
How TCK are you?
13 statements drawn from research on third culture kids. Get a score from 0 to 100.
Get my TCK score →5. What the research suggests helps
Separate the childhood pattern from the person in front of you
- Benign disengagement and learned reticence are patterns, not sentences - naming them is usually the first step past them, according to the framework this research sits inside.
- A partner who moves slowly and stays curious, rather than needing instant depth, can be a genuinely good fit for this pattern - not a mismatch.
Give the relationship time on purpose
- The MK marriage study's strongest finding was mundane: satisfaction tracked years married, not backstory. Time spent together, doing the ordinary work of a relationship, outweighed almost everything else measured.
Name the faith layer if it's there
- For MKs navigating a changed relationship with their parents' faith, that's often tangled up with family closeness generally - worth untangling with a partner, a counselor, or both, rather than assuming it has nothing to do with how you love.
What actually makes relationships last, with the full research →
Frequently asked questions
Does growing up as a missionary kid affect your marriage later?+
The clearest available study - a dissertation surveying 58 MKs, mostly alumni of one boarding school - found that marital satisfaction among MKs was only partly similar to peers who grew up in one culture, and that the strongest predictor of satisfaction was simply how many years a couple had been married, not childhood variables like years overseas. It's one study with a modest, single-school sample, so treat it as a starting point, not a verdict.
What is "benign disengagement" in missionary families?+
It's a term from a 2008 qualitative study of 16 adult MKs who had left their parents' faith. The study found a recurring pattern of low-conflict emotional distance between parent and child - not hostility, just a gap - alongside stressors specific to missionary life: frequent moves, schooling disruptions, and in some cases trauma. The study was about faith, not romantic relationships specifically, but the family pattern it describes shows up in how some MKs describe closeness generally.
Are missionary kids more likely to struggle with commitment?+
A small qualitative study of ten third culture kids (not MK-specific, but overlapping heavily) found a recurring theme of difficulty building intimacy and deep friendships, along with a possible fear of commitment - tied to the repeated experience of forming and then losing close relationships in childhood. It's a thematic finding from ten interviews, not a population-level rate.
Is there a lot of research specifically on missionary kids and dating?+
No - MK-specific research on romantic relationships is thin. Most of what applies comes from the broader third culture kid (TCK) literature, since the core experience (moving countries, a distinct family culture, repeated goodbyes) is shared with diplomat kids and military brats. This page is explicit about which findings are MK-specific and which are borrowed from the wider TCK research.
Why we built it this way: what the science says makes relationships last →
References
MK-specific research on marriage and romance is limited to one dissertation and one qualitative faith study - both named as such throughout, rather than treated as settled, population-level findings.
- [1] Gilliland, N. R. An Exploratory Study on the Impact of the Missionary Kid Experience on Marital Satisfaction. Doctoral dissertation, Tennessee State University. https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3061754
- [2] Pike, P. L. (2008). Lost MK: A qualitative study exploring the choice of some adult missionary kids to leave their parents' faith. Missiology, 36(4), 457-473. https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/faculty-articles/267
- [3] Pollock, D. C., Van Reken, R. E. & Pollock, M. V. (1999; 3rd ed. 2017). Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Nicholas Brealey. https://openlibrary.org/search?q=Third+Culture+Kids+Growing+Up+Among+Worlds
- [4] Gilbert, K. R. (2008). Loss and Grief between and Among Cultures: The Experience of Third Culture Kids. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 16(2), 93-109. https://doi.org/10.2190/il.16.2.a
- [5] Lijadi, A. A. & van Schalkwyk, G. J. (2014). Narratives of Third Culture Kids: Commitment and Reticence in Social Relationships. The Qualitative Report, 19(25), 1-16. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol19/iss25/1