But for people who do believe in a religion – telling their kids that what they believe in ‘isn’t real’ seems to me likely to provide a degree of dissonance that’s not going to work well at all. You’re expecting them to lie to their children about something that’s essential in their lives, which is never a good idea.
Telling them ‘we believe this is true. There are people who disagree. When you’re grown you’ll make up your own mind’ is something different than trying to teach them ‘we believe this and that it’s important but it isn’t real’.
The poll about imposing a belief system is not balanced. If I did have kids I would have raised them in my faith. I believe it is good. The kids would always have a chance later to change. My sister sure did,
The poll about childbearing is a good one. With those odds I would have no children. I decided that from two stories, back when I was approaching childbearing age. One was about the odds of having a child who was hemophiliac, and the other was based on a biography of the electtical engineer Charles Steinmetz. He was hunchbacked, as had been two generations before him, his father and grandfather. So he chose not to have kids, although he did adopt and got grandchildren to spoil that way.
Sonic? I took my cousin there and waited in the car while he got his food. I have had good and proper peanut butter shakes, but would not have any interest in going to Sonic for one. I have no specific objection to Sonic, but no particular interest either. There are other options (we have that closed-on-Sunday JesusChicken place around here, which also holds no interest for me).
I think the premise was that they were actual Belgian waffles made during the world’s fair, in their present condition.
I saw a documentary on Huntington’s Chorea a while ago and still remember a UK woman being interviewed who insisted that she would have a biological child even though she was her mother’s primary caretaker once the mother became unable to care for herself, and although she hadn’t shown any symptoms herself yet, she was at the age where they would start to appear. I thought she was one of the most selfish women I’d ever heard openly admitting it.
I did with my kids what my parents did with us. My mom was Jewish, and exposed us to the cultural aspects. Meanwhile, my dad exposed us to christian ideas. Santa brought us gifts and the easter bunny hid eggs. My mom lit menorah candles and made chopped liver. We’d go to church or shul with friends as a recreational sort of thing.
From the start all the different god beliefs seemed silly to me. My kids are likely agnostic or atheist, although it means so little to me that we’ve never discussed it.
I wonder if being exposed to the two somewhat different belief systems contributed to your being a non-believer. Although I went through Catholic elementary school, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and went to public high school where the student body was 60% Jewish at the time. I was exposed to several other cultures as well pretty early on. I think seeing how everybody believed they were right, and my thinking that they couldn’t all be true, was the beginning of my early disbelief.
Kids who grow up on a very religiously homogenous community would have to be very strong willed to break away from that.
Religion was never really discussed at that level. My dad would listen to evangelists, but he was laughing at them. It was entertainment. My mom lit her menorah and said a prayer as a way of remembering her grandparents who raised her. She never did kosher.
But my parents never went to church/synagogue, we never prayed before a meal, etc.
You raise your children in a belief system whether you recognize it or not.
There’s nothing wrong with bringing kids up to share your religious traditions and beliefs. I’d say there’s a lot of value in teaching them about the beliefs of the world’s major religions regardless of whether you share them. It may give them some insight into the reasons people behave the way they do.
We always have some tuna in the house. After all this discussion, I’m thinking maybe I should drop a hint that we have tuna salad sometime soon!
I was too young to remember the Apollo 11 landing. My earliest historical memory is listening to Nixon’s resignation speech in August 1974.
Our house faces northeast. The street doesn’t run directly in any cardinal direction.
Like WildaBeast, I’m an Eagle Scout. I still recall quite a bit of my outdoors training. I think I could make it to town in a week, still alive, although maybe not in great shape, given my age. One survival trick I remember is to go downhill when you can - that’ll often lead you to water, and if you follow a river downstream, sooner or later you’re going to find civilization.
I’d be happy to throw out the first pitch at an MLB game (I have a friend who did so once), but I can’t say I’ve been dying for the chance. I would definitely practice beforehand so as not to embarrass myself.
I love bacon and I love peanut butter, so sure, I’ll try a shake of that flavor. I’ll try just about any food once.
Just an aside, but the quote above makes a good point implicitly, but I wanted to expand. The first line is key, because while the discussion up until now has been about religious belief systems, our whole national / political / social belief system is just as (if not MORE) real and just as prone to abuse and departure from reality.
(non-American dopers, please feel free to sub in your own nation and cultural references!)
Do you raise your child as a Proud American ™ complete with Myths About Pilgrims, Manifest Destiny, The Lost Cause (if you’re southern), etc etc etc?
Do you raise your child with the myths, but as they age begin to introduce them to the feet of clay behind the myths, which still let’s them interact with their peers but prepares them for future critical thinking?
Do you raise your child that those concepts are all lies and leave them (prior to sufficient age in critical thinking) possibly unable to handle the discrepancy between what you teach and what the school and their peers share?
I was thinking also of such sorts of belief systems, but didn’t make that clear.
And the hardest ones to sort out are the ones everyone you know appears to take for granted – what I call the back-of-the-head assumptions. It can be really hard even to realize that they’re there.
I have a fan on at night, but only because my wife likes/needs it. It doesn’t bother me, but if I were in charge of the night, we’d have no noise maker.