For purposes of this poll, I’m abusing the word church so that it includes synagoges, mosques, Buddhist temples, and so forth. Parent includes any sort of legal guardian.
The poll will take me a moment to set up.
I didn’t answer 'cause I’m not a parent, but when I was a kid I had to go until I left for college. I lived at home for a few years in grad school and I was not compelled to attend then. Although Christmas Eve is expected even though I own my own home and am 30. Also my dad still thinks I don’t go to church because it’s too early in the morning and I’m lazy.
I’m not a parent, but it was never optional as long as we lived at home. Though I’m the only one of my siblings that has decided it’s not for me. Now they always ask me to go when I visit home, but it’s at my discretion.
My parents stopped going to church regularly when I was 13. So I started walking to church. Yes, I went to church more than my parents. They gave up on it. They didn’t make any of my siblings go when they stopped… which was fairly young for my little sister. When I was a little older, I could take the car to church and I’d take her. Some times when she was a little older, we’d walk to church together. When I went off to college, we’d go to church together when I came home on Sundays. My parents started going back to church when I was about 22.
Believe it or not, there are some kids that actually want to go to church, whose parents don’t need to “force” them…
[aside]Why do these always have to be polls? What’s wrong with just asking the question?[/aside]
Another non-parent who has plentiful contact with church families: most of the church-going families of my acquaintance, including my relatives, require children who live at home without paying rent to attend church. This extends into adulthood, and doesn’t just affect kids. I’m not a big fan of enforced church attendance, but have to admit it’s certainly within the parents’ rights as homeowners to require church attendance in lieu of rent.
I started to do it as a non-poll, then realized I was missing wisecracking opportunities.
Besides, you don’t have to vote. It’s not like I actually have hordes of lemon-juice-spitting lemmings to send after you.
I asked mine to attend with me until about age 12, after that they could attend at their whim.
I haven’t been a regular churchgoer now for about 10 years, but that’s what I remember from those days.
I was forced to go to church growing up, and I think that’s the primary reason that I now hate church and religion in general, and don’t believe in it anymore.
Very true. I’ve had friends who continued going to church throughout their teens after their parents quit. I always liked church anyway (and besides, there were cute guys there).
If my kids do not want to attend church in their teens, I’d let them quit around 14-15 if they had a good reason. “I stayed up too late last night and I wanna sleep” is not a good reason. “After studying these doctrines thoroughly, I can honestly say that I understand them and that I disagree with them because of X, Y, and Z” is.
I hope that won’t happen, but it could. However the majority of the teens at my church seem to enjoy it and attend of their own free will, and my kids enjoy church now.
I’m not a parent, but since my beliefs differ from my own parents, I’d like to think I’d be understanding of my kids and let them opt out after they were old enough to not only make their own decisions, but stay home alone without supervision.
We told the kids they had to attend up until the time they were Confirmed (which could be anywhere from about 11-15, depending on the church.) At that point, the church considered them to be full-fledged adults fully capable of making decisions about their faith, so who were we to argue.
What if they didn’t want to be Confirmed?
My siblings and I could not opt out as long as we were living at home and were not 18. Thus, I was dragged off to Catholic Mass every Sunday (sometimes to a Latin service), despite me not being Christian.
I don’t have kids. I stopped going when I was around 16.
To put things in perspective that is when the mass in the Catholic Church switched from being conducted in Latin (which I didn’t understand but to me it made the service feel very beautiful, ceremonial and special–the chanting, bell ringing before Communion and incense, etc.–where I was lost in my own thoughts reflecting upon the past week) to English. I hated it then. I was done. Frankly, so were my parents and, except for holy days or weddings or funerals, we just stopped going although we never expressed to each other the reasons and theirs were probably different from mine.
I don’t think religion should be forced down anyone’s throat, of any age. My kids have always been free to attend or not attend, and if they attend, they’re free to participate or just watch. The only requirement is that they sit still and be quiet when it’s appropriate if they do choose to attend.
My son (now 17) doesn’t “get” what I’m into at this point, but he still attends-to-watch sometimes. Whether out of boredom or what, I’m not sure, but I’m fine with it. He has his own spiritual path revolving around stuff I’m not into, and that’s fine, too.
My daughter (now 5) has attended all along 'cause she likes to be with Mommy, but this past week was the first time she chose to participate rather than stand silent. My heart 'bout melted when, as I was expecting her to be silent and let it skip to the next person as she’s always done, she reached up and grasped the hand of the person next to her, speaking her part perfectly. 
My brother and I were forced to attend the Methodist church with my mom until we each got to college. Then it became completely optional and nothing was said when we quit going. My mom later quit going as well and now dabbles in Unitarianism.
When my parents married, (mother Russian Orthodox, father Catholic), it was Decreed that the children MUST be raised Catholic. So my father, a silent lump, grudgingly hauled me to church on Sundays for a year. I had no idea what was going on in spite of the religious ed classes I had to go to. After a while it was decided since I knew where the church was, I was ordered to walk there all by myself every Sunday. First Communion time, I was given a wad of cash and told to walk 5 miles to a department store and buy myself a white dress. Confirmation time rolled around in 8th grade, and I was DONE with the f’ing Catholic church…That’s my background with religion. Oddly, we put our own daughter through the same rigamarole (she was an only child, she wanted to get the sacraments, and at least it all kept her busy and off the street). We all went to church most Sundays for a few years; it’s not like we had anything more pressing to do on late Sunday mornings. But like mother, like daughter. After she was confirmed, SHE was DONE with the f’ing Catholic church and seems to have become a bitter atheist. Whatever. I don’t, and never did, talk against god or religion. We still go to church on occasion, but I’m more open to it than anyone else.
My dad was a pretty intensive church-goer (although we were United Church of Canada, quite a liberal Protestant denomination); my mom wasn’t so much, although she did like to go, and would generally go if my dad was going and a fair amount of the time if he was away.
If my parents were going, my brother and I mostly didn’t have a choice about going to church until I was 15 or so, although the family didn’t go every Sunday, especially after we moved to Montreal and started going to a church that was a bit farther away than before and also up the mountain.
When I was 16, I converted to Paganism and flatly refused to go to any more church services. I was dragged to one or two more (my dad took my conversion way harder than my coming out) but that finally stopped after a while. I don’t remember the rest of the family going to services much after that.
The question was complicated by the fact that I (and later the rest of the family) sang in church choirs, which was an activity my parents wanted me to do just for the musical training. In fact, for a period of time in my early teens we went to an Anglican church instead of United because Dad liked the choir better for me.
Oh, I believe it. I even used to want to go at one point. I may not be the most militant atheist on this board (hell not even top 10%), because that would entail stoning religious people and shouting them down every time they bring up god(s), but I am definitely among the most militant you will meet in everyday, normal, real life. That out of the way, my parents are very religious, and my mother used to force me to go to church after I’d long stopped adhering to religion until I was 18.
I never understood that. I never understood a lot of the things my mother forced me to do. Making me wear pink dresses would not make me like pink dresses, and going to church would not make me like Jesus. Sure, you can force someone to wear this or go to that, but you can’t force people into thinking something.
Well you often can if your methods are correct, but we won’t go there…
No kids of my own, but my mom made me go regularly until I was about 12. At that point, “I don’t want to go” got me out of most weeks and I stopped going altogether around 14. Aside from a memorial mass for my dad a year after he died (when I was 16), I haven’t been to a Sunday church service since.
I took my kids till they made their sacraments. Then it is up to them. My son still goes sometimes and my daughter changed faiths in High School. As a parent I gave them the tools and then it is up to them to decide.