Hektore

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?

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The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

genuinegirly

My best friends (sisters) were raised without religion.
Their mother focused on having healthy relationships with extended family and neighbors. They built their own support community, which has worked out wonderfully for them. Seems like their mother focused on finding friends of different faiths for her daughters to interact with, including: Jain, Hindu, Mormon, Jewish, Lutheran, Unitarian, Baha'i...

As teenagers, both of the girls chose to attend services of one kind or another. One felt comfortable in a generic Christian community church, the other went the Unitarian route. The one that chose Christianity has since become disgusted by the backbiting and bigotry, no longer attends services, and decided that being in nature is all she really wants. The other still attends Unitarian services.

Both are intelligent, well-educated women with happy, balanced lives and a strong sense of personal morals.

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

Baraka_Guru

The only experience I have myself is being raised non-religious. I have no children.

However, a cursory search revealed the following resources. It might help get you started:

Agnostic Mom
Humanist Network News — New Humanist Book for Children
Humanist Network News — Developing Empathy in Children for a Moral and Ethical Foundation

Also, if you want to ask me any specific questions as one who was raised non-religious, feel free.

As an aside, the humanist community might provide a "replacement" for a religious community; that is, if you believe in what they stand for.

Humanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American Humanist Association - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Charlatan

My wife believes in god but doesn't follow organized religion (rarely attends a church) and I am an atheist.

I take the approach that they are going to find or not find religion on their own. I am not about to indoctrinate them one way or another. When my son was very young, he was bothered that I didn't believe in Jesus and worried that I was going to hell if I died. I calmly told him why I didn't believe and that I didn't believe there was an afterlife. I treat him, have always treated him, like an adult when it comes conversations.

He's 16 this year and while I can't say definitively that he doesn't believe in god, I would wager he is now an atheist (I don't know because I really don't care... it's his choice).

As for the question of community... I grew up with very little religion in my life and always had friends to hang out with. There almost no going to church in my own family and my kids have very social lives. In fact, I find the question kind of odd. I can't imagine *wanting* to socialize with the people who I remember meeting at church when I was a kid.

School had no impact on me and has had no impact on my kids. They went to secular public school when they were in Canada and go to secular private school here. Not much difference. There is no religion in school.

I'm sorry, I don't have any resources to suggest other than my own experience of growing up with out religion.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

snowy

I've never been to a Unitarian service, but it's likely that my fiance and I are going to be married by a Unitarian lay minister this August. We're leaning that way because my boss (a Methodist pastor) told me that they would do whatever we liked, and as I'm a very liberal Christian and he is an agnostic, it sounded like a good middle ground to the both of us.

That said, I was raised by 1 atheist and 1 New Agey Lutheran. My dad, the atheist, insisted that we read holy texts beyond just the Bible. He wanted to ensure that we had a full picture of the spiritual world before we chose a path. Quite frankly, when I told him a number of years ago now that I was a Christian, he was shocked I think this is because he did such a good job that I don't seem like I am (I think most people equate Christians with fundamentalist nutjobs; for me, it's mostly a label of convenience). I only went to church for a few years as a kid--3rd through 6th grade, and now I work for a church. I liked the church community as a kid, but it wasn't something that couldn't be easily replaced by Scouting or some other group.

The most important things you can do for your kids as they grow is to 1) urge them to explore and research, 2) encourage them to evaluate their own opinions, 3) ask questions about the world around them, 4) let them go to find their own faith or lack thereof as they get older, and 5) model a moral, ethical life without religion. I'm sure my dad wouldn't have agreed with many of the churches I went to as a high schooler (hey, I just wanted to hang out with friends, I knew they were crazy) but he let me go anyway. Further, because I knew my dad was a moral, ethical person without faith, I knew from a young age that one didn't need that external pressure of religion to be a good person.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Baraka_Guru

If I had kids and they were asking me about the afterlife, I would in all likelihood simply tell them that one's afterlife is what they leave behind.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Jinn

Oh dag, you already suggested "Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief"; I just finished reading Parenting Beyond Belief and it's easily one of the best books I've ever read. I'll definitely be using it if I ever choose to spawn.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

LordEden

This is a topic I've run through my mind quite a few times. First off, I have no kids, so this is all just theory (and basing it on what *I* would do, not what an SO would do). I'd raise my kids without the involvement of church (not an easy thing to do in the deep south), but there would be sources of religious material around the house. I'd want the child to make his/her own choice and would support whatever choice that was.

The problem I would find with allowing the child to make a choice is, when is it about religion and not "the big brick building that you get to color pictures and eat cupcakes at on Sundays". When is a child old enough to really be able to make a decision on their spiritual beliefs without the "well, I've been going to church all my life, so I guess I'm a christian" dogma weighing down upon a educated decision. I just wouldn't want my child to blindly be led into Christianity without really looking hard at what they (as a person) truly believe in.

I am against organized religion, so a lot of that factors into my ideals and theory. I think that's a big question you should ask yourself; why am I raising my child with out religion? Is it to protect them from religion or is it to nurture them into making their own decision? What led yourself in to moving away from religion? Do I want to pass that onto my child?

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Hektore

Thank you for your replies, to be more clear than I feel like I was initially. I mean for this thread to cover the many aspects of secular parenting. From religious education (as opposed to indoctrination), to creating a secular ethics (I do find the humanist ethics compelling), to interacting with believers. Feel free to pose your own questions. In short: it isn't all about me.

I have been told by multiple sources that the community a church provides is very beneficial to the development of a child. Reasons vary but include the extra safety net, to the social interaction with people of all ages, the extra resources for the parents as well. Probably one of the most notable was a Big Brothers/Sisters Rep who had a list of all kinds of things that are shown to result in more successful children.

I also think religious education is important. I didn't learn the 'lord's prayer' until I was 14 which is a very basic thing, and I had no idea where/how all these people had learned it. My own lack of religious education left me with a huge ignorance of a significant part of my peers' lives. I don't want my son to have that same experience. My fear of just taking him to church is the emotional blackmail(if you don't believe; you're going to hell!). Not to mention, a basic understanding of the contents of the Bible is essential to the study of English Literature.

My fear is that they're going to get that from the family anyway. Do any of you have a parent or grandparents who just didn't get it? How do you deal with that?

I'm somewhat familiar with humanism and I've searched high and low but there is no local group or meeting. The UU church seems like it might be an alternative, but I don't know much about it which is why I asked.
Scouting is right out. BSA has a somewhat infamous stance against homosexuality, as well as the belief that a person cannot be moral without a deity. I realize that depending on your local chapter these things may or may not come up, but I'd rather my child not be associated with it in the same way I'd rather he not be associated with the loonies who drink poison, speak in tongues and dance with venomous snakes.

__________________
The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

filtherton

Me and the lady are agnostic apatheists.

We've explained to our daughter (she's 4) that there are some folks who think Jesus was/is really special, and that these people's beliefs deserve a certain amount of respect. And we've also explained to her that we don't necessarily feel the same way about Jesus. When she gets old enough to be able to have more in-depth conversations about the nature of proof, I expect we'll have some more comprehensive conversations about the matter. She's free to make up her mind however she likes, as long as she doesn't decide to join a cult like scientology.

We do celebrate all the US Christian holidays, but we do so more in the spirit that they provide a good excuse to see people we don't see all that often. She thinks easter is about getting together with her cousins to find candy filled eggs, and she thinks that Christmas is about getting together with her cousins to get toys. We didn't delude her with Santa either; we explained him away the same way we explained Jesus.

As for the community provided by church, being the son of a preacher man, I've spent about a third of my life in the company of church communities. I think that like most communities, their salutary value really depends on the specifics of the community.

My family is supportive of our choices with respect to religion. The preacher man, along with most of the rest of the family, isn't the fire and brimstone type and the folks who are fire and brimstoney seem to know better than to start some shit.