Last night I was chatting with Telekinetic about my soon to be adventure in fatherhood. My wife is due to have our first child at the very beginning of August and we are atheists. Our grandparents are very much fundamentalist christian and/or catholic and we haven't quite had 'the' talk about it.
I seem to recall a higher than usual number of atheists on TFP and surely a few of you are parents. Even if you are not, your advice and thoughts are, of course, still welcome.
What experiences have you had raising a child without religion, not only at home, but school?
Have you found a replacement for the community provided by a church?
How to you approach the subject of religion with your children?
Have you found any resources that were very helpful in your endeavor?
Our (my wife and I) strategy when we do finally have our sit-downs, is to tell everyone that while we don't believe and are not going to raise our child as a believer; our main goal is really going to be raising him without an undue coersion into one belief system or another.
Beyond that I agree with much of what I found in the book
Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief.(
). I read it cover to cover over a weekend and really reccomend it.
Beyond that we are going to check out the local
UU. From their site it reads like a reasonable possibility to providing a replacement community different in belief from a church as well as a place to provide religious education. My concern is, after reading the local congregation's web page that it's Christianity in sheep's clothing. Does anyone have any experience in a UU church? Are they rather uniform?