I am an atheist. Wife is lapsed catholic from a very religious family. Daughter is 9 years old.
Yesterday daughter’s friend asked “What religion are you?” and she came and asked me what to say. She was a little embarrassed that she did not know the answer and I was a little embarrassed that I had not prepared her for this inevitable question.
It has always been my intention to allow my children to make up their own minds about religion and my older son did that at a very early age. My daughter is just not ready to do that yet.
The simple answer is to tell her to say “atheist” or “we don’t believe in that stuff” or some variant but that just opens her up to a bunch of follow up questions that she will be unable to answer.
We talk about freely about religion in our home and I am very open about saying that religious myths, though interesting and important, are not true. I just never prepared her to talk about this stuff with people who do believe them - other kids but, especially, other kids’s parents.
Fellow atheists, what did you teach your kids about religion?
I welcome opinions from non-atheists and non-parents of course, but please indicate your status accurately in the poll. Thanks!
I don’t remember anyone ever asking me what religion I was growing up. I don’t know where you live, but I grew up in the Bay Area, which is not a very religious place (I know I’ve read a study that says it’s the region with the lowest rate of affiliation with organized religion in the country, but I can’t find a cite right now). So it didn’t really come up a lot - hardly anyone I knew growing up regularly attended any kind of religious service, so we didn’t stand out much.
It was only when I got to be a bit older that I realized that while most of my friends didn’t go to church either, they all had churches that they theoretically belonged to. So it was a little weird that I didn’t even have that, but I can’t remember it ever troubling me particularly.
My parents didn’t talk much about religion, but I definitely picked up the idea that my dad found Christianity very annoying, probably because he was annoyed by our busybody Born Again neighbor. My mom was raised Catholic and could recite prayers that had no meaning to me. I thought it was fascinating when she told me about the nuns who taught her, and how they had to go to mass every Sunday, like she had grown up in another country where they spoke a different language and had different customs.
I don’t recall my parents ever specifically telling me that religion wasn’t true. It just wasn’t discussed. I even had a children’s bible as a kid that I read from front to back; it wasn’t til much later that I realized that some people believed those stories were true.
Growing up atheist wasn’t a big deal, I didn’t feel shunned, and no one really cared.
I am an atheist. When my kids were younger, I taught them about different religions and explained why I believe what I do. I also tried to teach them to think skeptically. At one time they both attended church, mostly as a social thing. They both eventually stopped, preferring to sleep in or do fun things on Sundays.
I am not religious and my husband was raised Catholic, no longer practising. My oldest is not quite four, and we have so far endeavored to teach her the basics of some of the major religions as it comes up (like what Christmas and Hannukah are about, why the man in the subway was wearing a turban, why her friend’s mom covers her hair, etc). Our goal is to teach her to be respectful and tolerant of the beliefs of others, and to have an understanding of the basic tenets of a variety of religions so she can make her own choices as she gets older. If someone asks us what religion we are, my standard answer (to strangers or people who don’t seem like they’d be up for some interesting conversation) is “We’re not really religious.”
Your upbringing was very similar to mine (in England). I didn’t know anyone who was properly religious until I was well into my teens. I too was surprised to find that people actually believed those stories were true.
But it’s very different for my kids growing up (in the Bay Area!). Almost all of their friends attend churches, mosques or temples.
That’s pretty much what I came up with yesterday plus a little echo of Roseanne’s joke to DJ - “we’re basically just good people - but we are not practising”.
I feel like I owe my daughter something more than that though. She will come across obnoxious people and she will come across well-meaning people who are concerned for her immortal soul. I want her to be prepared so that she does not feel intimidated or cornered.
My best shot so far is a variant of “here’s what I believe. You’ll have to make up your own mind when you learn more about it.”
I wonder if other people go further and teach a little atheist apologetics so their kids are prepared for more aggressive questioning.
The only people I knew who went to church were my grandparents. I think I had an idea that it was something only old people do.
That is surprising to me. I had a couple of friends from Christian families when I was in junior high, but that’s pretty much it. Oh, wait, no, I had some Mormon friends in high school, too. But certainly, actively religious people were in the minority of my friends and acquaintances.
I will let her figure it out for herself but I will not conceal any of my own opinions. I will state my opinion as opinion and not fact. I did the same while I was Christian. My oldest and I pretty much became atheist at the same time. It was hard for both of us so I really don’t want my youngest to have that to deal with.
I am a Unitarian Universalist atheist. My kids attend Youth Religious Education classes at our fellowship every Sunday. They are taught about the beliefs of different religions and they discuss all sorts of ethical questions (well, the older one does…the little one is still in the coloring and playing class). We have all sorts of different religious books in our house and a ton of books that cover atheist and secular subjects. For them, that consists of a ton of books on evolution, other science stuff, and a great book called Really, Really Big Questions. We freely answer any and all questions about religious ideas. We are very clear where we stand - Mom & Dad do not believe in god(s)/heaven/hell/sin/etc. - but we do not tell them what their beliefs should be.
Our plan is to give them a very deep religious literacy, make our (my husband’s and my) beliefs very clear, and allow them to choose the path that works best for them.
My parents raised me without religion. My mother was raised Catholic, my father Baptist. Religion was presented to me as “what some people believe”. My recollection is that the subject only came up when I raised it by asking. We celebrated Christmas, and my mother explained the basis for it to me at some point, but I don’t recall the context.
And for the record: I’m profoundly, deeply grateful. I’m disturbed by how difficult it is for people raised with religion to shed it completely. My mother is a perfect example: at the very end of her life she went back, and asked to be given Last Rites. Shocked the hell out of me.
I’m wondering where everyone is located? I grew up in Maryland, just outside of D.C. - religion wasn’t really discussed much in school or anywhere else. I had friends (and my parents had friends) of many different religions and no religion, but it wasn’t ever really brought up within my own family except in the most superficial way. My husband and I, and our kids, now live in the Bible Belt. Religion, of the Evangelical Christian flavor, is thick. I feel like I have to be very proactive with my kids and not just leave them to their own devices. My fear is that they will be rudderless and invited to some pray around the flagpole event and be sucked into the local Pentecostal thing going on. I had a meeting I needed to attend that was being held in a local “non-denominational” church. A youth group had met there before us and had left their pamphlets - “How to Proselytize to your High School Classmates” (not exact title, but along those lines). It was a strategy to find kids who were searching or unsure and get them to church. I don’t want my kids to be searching or unsure at 14 or 15, but I might not be so worried about it if we were in Metro D.C.
I’m wondering how your communities have influenced your strategies?
I haven’t taught my kids anything specific about religion, but we do discuss it occasionally. My youngest asks questions sometimes. Schools here teach half an hour of Scripture, once a week, with various denominations represented, and the option of working in the library instead. My kids sometimes go to the library, and sometimes go to whatever Scripture class their friends are going to. I think they sometimes pass themselves off as Christian to their friends. Although the youngest has invented her own religion, and preaches it in the playground.
Once, my daughter had a friend sleeping over, and the friend said her prayers before bed, then asked my daughter why she didn’t say hers. She said “er, um, ah” and changed the subject. I don’t remember if I may have told them not to argue with people about religion, or if she just didn’t want to answer.
There is such a diversity of religions around here that I am not worried about outright proselytizing. I am more concerned with my daughter being embarrassed or upset when someone starts asking difficult questions.
Of course there is! The world she’s growing up in is filled with people who hold passionate religious beliefs that in many cases profoundly influence their actions, in both good and bad ways, and could have a profound effect on her life. And even if it ultimately doesn’t have a direct effect on her (something you can’t predict), I’m sure you want her to be a well-educated person. And a well-educated person knows about religion in general and something about particular religions, especially religions common to people in their community-region-state-country.
Whether you are religious or atheist, religion is an enormous factor in human society.
Similar here, but I do teach my kids about different religious mythologies and the effects, both positive and negative, that religion can have on people. My mother goes to church and I’ll occasionally ask my kids if they’d like to go; the answer has always been no. I think they’ve been to a Buddhist temple at least once as Mrs Shibb’s family is Buddhist, but they don’t really approach Buddhism as a religion as much as a philosophy and we also don’t train the kids to be Buddhist.
My daughter has been to a couple of church social group related things, and has enjoyed those, but got annoyed when one of them started coming around and pestering her about the religion aspect.
I picked that I teach him to defend his beliefs - but that’s just close, not really it. I’ve taught him that he chooses what he believes, and he should be able to articulate why he believes it, and not just follow with the whole - these people are nice to me and therefore I believe what they do - thing.
I agree with RickJay, certainly at this point we don’t teach her anything at all. My daughter is only three, so I’m sure it will come up a bit more later, but at the moment it’s not a subject we bring up with her, and it’s not something she’s ever noticed. We celebrate Christmas and she’s picked up some of the story from a variety of places, but she’s misremembered some of the detail and I don’t choose to correct her. She has no concept of the religious aspect of it at all, nor of anything else as far as I can see.
I genuinely don’t wish to offend anyone with this, but to me it’s the same as a lot of other things I don’t make a huge point of bringing up with her. I don’t feel a need to explain to her that some people believe they can talk to the dead, or that they have a guardian angel, or that stepping on a crack will break their mother’s back, or that there’s a monster in Loch Ness - and I don’t feel a need to explain that some people believe in a god either. I don’t teach her to respect other people’s beliefs so much as to respect other people and understand that they don’t always agree with her or think the same as her - in so far as she can understand that at her psychological developmental stage. Whenever we discuss her beliefs or feelings about anything it’s us asking her what she believes, not telling her what to think. I have a friend for instance, who will tell her son, also three ‘We’re vegetarians’. Well no, you’re not - you’re a vegetarian, he just doesn’t eat meat - don’t tell him what he believes.
We’re in the UK and I’m sure that makes the whole thing different from parents in the US. Strangely, though, her childminder is a very committed Christian, and she and I have discussed religion a lot over the last couple of years. She is careful not to push her beliefs to the children in her care, but at the same time she is what she is and I don’t expect her to hide her beliefs particularly. My daughter did come home the other week and was telling me all about heaven, although she did her usual trick of rewriting things she’s told to suit her own requirements, so it was a strange sort of arrangement she described. I mentioned this to the childminder, not in a spirit of rebuke but just to share an amusing anecdote. It turns out that, as I’d assumed actually, the childminder hadn’t discussed this, it had been one of the other children.