Should i raise my kids as atheists

They are actively seeking out a community of supportive fellow nonbelievers, as demonstrated by traveling to a humanist meeting fifty miles from home. Some very young kids are quite plucky, resilient, and capable of standing up for themselves. In the future, try to be a little kinder and gentler with your advice i. These people made the trip because they hoped to be reinforced in their commitment to an openly secular family—not to be admonished for it.

A study in Social Science Research found that religious discord affects intergenerational relations among younger families. When parents value religion more than their teens do, adolescents tend to report poorer relations with parents. This was especially true in families where both parents and their children shared the same religious affiliation, and in families where the parent was an evangelical Protestant.

Differences in religious belief cause the most harm in situations in which nonreligious kids live in moderately religious households, as opposed to those where moderately religious kids live in very religious households.

Overall, when there is a religious discord among families, or when some family members practice or believe differently than others, religion can do more harm than good. But for many younger families, religious institutions provide a support network, a system of beliefs and practices to instill their children, and a formal setting in which to share experiences and time with their kids.

Studies have shown that there is no moral difference between children who are raised as religious and those raised secular or non-believing. Moral intuitions arise on their own in children, independently of religious understanding: For example, as Jenny Anderson writes in Quartz , kids as young as four years old want to cooperate and intuitively dislike freeloaders. Studies have shown that even the youngest kids show signs of understanding the importance of being helpful.

A great example of this comes from indigenous families in Mexico and Guatemala, where children often volunteer to help around the house in ways that might well inspire envy among other parents. A lot of prominent atheists assume the opposite. My year-old daughter, A, has gone back and forth from atheist to theist. She has spent a lot of Sundays accompanying her beloved grandmother to an Episcopal church with a dynamic woman priest, a choice I support percent. M, too, has thought and felt different things about religion, and I expect him to continue to.

There are plenty of horror stories about what happens to children in extremely fundamentalist religions. Rape survivor Elizabeth Smart, who has remained a Mormon, has advocated against religion-based abstinence-only sex education.

But just as nobody should be ashamed to proclaim their religious beliefs, so too should atheists come out of the closet. I know many families in which religion is part of the glue that binds the children to tradition, to heritage, and to a system of morality that informs how they live every minute of their lives.

Especially those of us who are parents. Kate Tuttle is a book critic for the Boston Globe. She lives in Decatur, Georgia. Follow her katekilla. Talking to children about people of varying races, sexual orientations, and genders helps them become more inclusive—not less—and teaches them to defend the identities, experiences, and points-of-view of others, even if they differ from their own.

Another thing you can emphasize with your kids is that nearly everyone, whether they have faith in a particular religion or not, believes in the basic tenet that we should treat others how we want to be treated. You can formulate a plan for how to respond when they inevitably start asking questions, or you can prep them ahead of time.

As kids get better at discerning the difference, you can begin to tie the same concepts into different religious beliefs. Russell was kind enough to provide us with a list that she has personally vetted and enjoys:. That was a lot of information, Atheist.

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