I don’t think I can ever let my parents know I’m an atheist and with that seems to go my chance of having kids.
Which got me curious: can any irreligious people on here who have kids while having religious parents share what thats like?
Would love to hear your stories or thoughts on this in general.
Just to add a view from someone living in a progressive-ish country:
Religion and differences of religion have never played a big part in my relations with anyone, nor am I aware it has affected anyone else towards me. There are very few fundamentalists here, so nobody seems to care all that much what you believe or don’t believe.
It’s strange that someone would worry about this. I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but most of my family are very deeply into religion. And my partner is priest by profession. Never has that played a role in our relations, and we do very openly talk about all this occasionally too. They are not trying to convert me, and I’m not trying to convert them. And if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction. All it takes is some understanding and empathy, and probably the humility to accept that any of us might be wrong, even one themselves. So nobody’s preaching to anyone, yet we can talk about these things very smoothly and openly if need be, like in regards to children and upbringing etc.
Disagreeing is healthy. Talking is healthy. Getting offended is not. Neither is trying to force anyone into anything, or even worse, unwarrantedly expecting something from someone.
So religion has played exactly zero part in this or anything else at least in my personal relations, or those who I know. I don’t think religion has anything to do with children either. Upbringing can be colorful and include everyone’s opinions and views, and the unique stuff just requires some open conversation and compromises from all parties, which is true for everything in life anyway.
But your partner is a priest, so if you had children, would your partner want to raise them religious? And how would you feel about that?
Right, so I’m not the biological father and as such have to consider the father’s side as well, but we are not really doing anything highly religious and defer education on different religions (and atheism, agnosticism) to the school system, which is neutral and goes education and variety first as a baseline. When they are older, they can find their own path. I suppose they might want to participate in the main religion’s confirmation stuff because most kids do, even if not in the (or any) church, since it’s something of a tradition, but that’s their decision; they’ll be old enough at that point.
We’ve talked about how we’d get married (or something alternative with similar purpose) and how we’d raise our biological kid if or when we have them, and it’s practically the same as how our school-age kid has been brought up. In regards to marriage, despite them being a priest and a theologian with master’s degree, the current idea is to do a secular gathering for the actual social side of things, no priests, no holy word of any variety, but we’ll get a blessing in private with only the very closest ones, no church. I suppose this is what most do anyway. Personally I am not going to participate in any prayers or do any holy vows, but I’ll of course be present there for her and take the blessing together and whatever they’d want in addition, as long as I don’t have to swear to any books or gods. This is hard to put into words without me sounding arrogant or dismissive of the religion, but it’s a compromise that we’ve ended up with. The blessing is important for her, and for me, I just want to dance in the woods and eat well, share the bounty and happiness with friends. So we do both.
With a kid it’d be the same. There’s already plenty of good education coming from our school system, and we’ve of course agreed not to make any decision for the kid before they are of age and capable of making their mind properly. And even then well not force anything on them. But on the other hand if they want to do some before-bed prayers, we’ll of course deliver. It’s something of a habit for the school-aged kid, and I always respectfully participate without binding my fingers or doing the actual amens or the like, but I find it cute and commendable that they wish so much good on everyone and want to make a point to form them into words, speak them out loud, even though I might question the medium.
But it’s all just compromises and honestly, this never seemed like something that’d bring friction. For us, at least. Maybe it’s different to others, but we just try to stay open and available to them, and each other, and avoid forcing anything on them, or each other. I really don’t know how to put it into words, but it just seems natural and comes itself.
Yeah this was the actual question op raised and this doesn’t seem to answer that
I think the main thing I might have problems conveying is I don’t see it as a binary. Neither is she. It’s not that they either get a religious upbringing or one without religion. There’s plenty of scale between the two ends and I don’t really feel any reason to try and go either way too deeply. Or restrict it to any one religion or philosophy. There can be many religions and different flavors of void of religions. Kids have a lot of questions and it’s fairly fun to describe the world to them, and that is never going to work just from one point of view. The world is vast and filled with many cultures and ways of perceiving the world and humanity, and it’d be a disservice to them if we tried to do black and white there; on or off. I think we can only so our best to give as honest a view of the world we can, with all it’s colors and shades of gray, and hope that some of it gives heureka moments or some illumination at least. It’s never possible to give an objective account or be detailed with all the different aspects and layers and whatnot, since at least me myself; I’m really not that smart honestly. All I can offer is my very best and hope it gives tools to process and understand this world. It probably won’t, as none of it did for me, probably not for anyone, but it’d be worse if we didn’t even attempt and just went with the current norms and limited, culturally claustrophobic takes that’d only serve to unknowingly shoving them down a singular pipeline that’ll only lead to identity problems later down the line.
Thanks for sharing! I find what you have is really interesting.
Something I’m very curious about is how your wife is alright with the risk of them not choosing to be Christian and getting an eternity in hell? Is she a Christian universalist?
That is actually a very good question. I think she simply has faith that things will work out for us, irregardless of how we might view the world in this precise moment. I’m not very knowledgeable about religion, so I had to look that term up, and I don’t honestly know. Somehow this has never come up. I can ask her later, but my initial thinking is she probably simply believes in some plan that god has, and that her god is good. She is Evangelical-Lutheran, if that matters; I simply don’t know enough if the different flavors of Christianity view these things in specific, different ways. She doesn’t force any of this on me, which shows, I now realize…