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.
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.
I know at first it sounds difficult because you care for your parents. But this is your life and whether they choose to respect your choices or not is up to them. If you want kids, have kids. If you want to be an atheist, be an atheist. If you want to dye your hair blue, dye your hair blue.
Your parents don’t have to agree with your choices (as long as you’re not breaking the law or anything like that)… but they should respect you and your choices.
TL;DR: Don’t live for your parents, live for you.
as long as you’re not breaking the law or anything like that
unless it’s against the law to be atheist. Then fuck the law (but better be not so vocal about it)
I don’t have kids (yet, maybe never) but my mom has made it clear she will get them baptized against my wishes one way or another. Then she’s surprised when I remind her she won’t be allowed to be alone with them. My dad has been wishy washy enough I told him I don’t trust him not to fold to mom’s wishes so he’s under the same rules, and he just nodded and acknowledged that’s fair.
A lifetime of setting boundaries makes me jaded but prepared.
While I realize that hard boundry setting is the new norm sometimes harm reduction is a better strategy. While a lot of folk have religious trauma to deal with that makes them want to do exactly zero church stuff one aspect of not believing in God is that a lot of the ritual aspects are pretty low stakes once one you strip away the mysticism. One way to handle the worry of your Mom wanting to do something dangerous to essentially just splash water on your kid is to participate in the silly ritual safely so that it’s done with minimum risk.
There definitely are hills to die on but if you give an order you know won’t be obeyed because the stakes from your Mother’s perspective are incredibly high then one way to look at it is baby’s safety comes first. Not because of the possible existence of the soul but because risking kidnapping to perform at end of day a boring nothing ceremony that ultimately means nothing isn’t a good idea. If it is distasteful to participate because of trauma then recognizing that you can deputize somebody you trust to get the hurdle over with is an option but realistically, your kid will never gain that same trauma from this. They will grow up with a completely different belief system as their basic. If them simply being baptized is a personal trigger it is wise to unpack exactly why because whether they are or not isn’t something your kid is likely going to care about. Having grown up in an agnostic environment and having a number of friends in the same situation some of us were baptized for the sake of family peace but for everyone I know it’s a complete non-event. One advantage of these things actually meaning nothing is that there is no change of state. A baptized baby and a non baptized baby are the same.
To my crew anyway a lot of us our parents aversion or reactions to church stuff seems out of proportion due to them having a history. Theirs is a more volitile strongly opinionated atheism as opposed to the more passive naturalized one we developed because we do not feel betrayed by belief. Sometimes their aversion causes them to do things which from the outside display that they are still letting their rejection of religious upbringing effect their judgment in an outsized way because they didn’t ever really heal.
Allowing contact is the compromise position and harm reduction strategy. Hard line would be to cut religious zealot parents out entirely. If you think they would stop at splashing water on a baby, I have a bridge to sell you.
You do you. Everybody’s circumstances are different and if you think that they give no positive value to your family life then that’s the way to go. This would only be a potential strategy if you didn’t want to give them up.
Baptism is also a hard line a lot of Christians get on because they think it’s basic hell proofing moreso than the average rituals. It’s not like they will stop their general pressures if you agree… but on this particular point people have been known to risk it BIG because they believe the mortal soul is imperiled and it comes at a point when the kid is at their most physically vulnerable being practically newborn.
Risk assessment should be holistic. It’s not necessarily compromise and framing it that way risks it becoming more about a battle of egos. it’s about recognizing and having a real situation assessment free from personal emotional triggers about how best to respond to potential dangers that center the baby’s safety first in a way that can stop the police from getting involved because faith is not reasonable.
Why do you let your parents religious choices for themselves runyour life? Do you want to live that way? What would happen if you lived your own values? Would it really be as bad as you think it will be?
what parents.
wrote them off entirely. life is too short to surround yourself with people you dont like, blood relation is irrelevant.
My mother is fairly religious, and she occasionally offers to take the kids to Sunday school. We decline, but sometimes we go attend her church for Christmas and Easter or if she’s singing a solo. Our kids are 9 and 11 and are both familiar with Christianity, and have a general understanding of most other religions. We haven’t told them what to believe, but we explained what we believe and that everyone gets to choose what they believe. They know grandma is a Christian, and they know I’m not.
I know my mom is disappointed that we aren’t doing more to indoctrinate our kids, but she has enough faith in Jesus to reach them, and I have enough faith in them to make good decisions either way.
Same except ours are all adult atheists now. Doesn’t stop my mom from wringing her hands about all of us going to hell though.
When my grandma found out my parents decided to not get me baptized, she showed up at our place with a jar of holy water, and tried to baptize me (newborn at the time) herself. My dad managed to distract her from me, and eventually she left.
We are not angry at her at all; she was just really scared that I would go to hell if I suddenly died. For us, it’s more of a funny story that we tell from time to time.
I’m not sure why you let your parents be the deciding factor in whether you have kids or not? It’s not up to them.
If I have kids I won’t raise them by a religion or put them through the expected rituals, and my parents will notice that. Which would then force me to come out. So not ruining my relationship with them means not having kids.
I guess you just live in a very different world than me. I would never let my parents dictate my life like that. They either accept me for who I am or they don’t get to be part of my life. I would also never try to dictate life for my own kids like that when they are adult human beings.
If you don’t really want kids or care, you have a fine compromise here, but if you are sacrificing something you want in life, you should be honest with your parents about who you are and have kids for your own sake. You’re an adult, and you shouldn’t live your life based on what your parents would approve of.
I understand it’s scary. I’ve been there. However you have to understand how toxic it is to live this way. It will be hard but if being who you are means losing your family then maybe it’s time to let them go.
Focus on building yourself up and securing a good job. When you have enough to leave do so. You will feel so much better and you won’t have to walk on eggshells the rest of your life.
If you want to entertain having kids, you need to be ready for a radical shift in your life priorities. Your kids will take priority over just about everything – often even yourself. They’ll take priority over your parents entirely, let alone your personal relationship with them.
First, are the practical and logistical aspects of your life at all dependent on your parents? I.e. are you fully independent? You will need to be and then some, you’re going to entertain having kids.
Once you’re fully independent and additionally have resources to spare (time, effort, money, space, etc, usually b/c you’re with a partner you can trust and rely on), then choosing to have kids means starting your own family – not your parents’ family.
If the grandparents are supportive and helpful, that’s great! They’re extremely welcome to contribute to your kids’ lives (and lighten some of your parenting load!)
However, if they’re negatively impacting you or esp your kids, then they can lose that privilege. Again, your priority will be your kids. If this is a real concern for you, you’ll need to factor it into your “ready to have a kid” considerations.
Your relationship with yourself is screwed if you can’t come out as nonreligious to your parents.
This needs to stop, and if you can’t stop this lie you need to get a therapist.
I think I sort of get where youre coming from. But my relationship with my parents isnt the kind where it matters if they know Im irreligious. It also isnt important enough to me that I would want them to know.
Not my kid, but someone I was dating had a toddler. She was not religious, but her parents were Catholic. She tried to intercept any religious stuff before it took hold in the kid. Firm words were exchanged when the grandmother was telling the kid that her great-grandmother was in “heaven”.
We broke up so I’m not sure how it’s going.
They also told the kid that Santa is basically a fun game people play. It’s not literally true but don’t spoil it for other kids.
They also told the kid that Santa is basically a fun game people play. It’s not literally true but don’t spoil it for other kids.
If anyone thinks they are special, cause they were the kid who knew Santa wasn’t real at the young age, then I’m sorry to break it to you but all kids know that, they just play along to get gifts
When I was about 10 a kid on my block only found out that Santa wasn’t real when he was 13. This sent some ripples through the neighborhood families cause he was now also doubting God. So all the good little Christian parents sat down their kids and reassured them that Santa was fake but Jesus was real. 20 years later I’m an agnostic atheist.
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.
if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction
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?
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…
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.
There are a lot of moving parts here.
My parents and grandparents are fully aware of my lack of belief. So my parents won’t be shocked that my children don’t believe. I don’t mind letting e.g. my mother tell them about Jesus because realistically, humans believe what their environment believes and for my children, I am mostly their environment. So I don’t think some exposure to christian beliefs will have a bad influence and my counter-influence would be present, so my children can choose.
My so’s parents and grandparents don’t know about our lack of belief. Her mom is aware of my lack of belief in a religion. Now that makes the whole children thing more complicated but… We are a couple thousand kilometers away… So… I hope they accept that we don’t want to provide our children with any religious education until they are ready to understand it. So at an age at which children are able to lie in the worst case.
I view religion as just an isolationist form of tribalism or in other words social networking. It is generally a miserly overall negative form of conservativism in social networking. It demands exclusive prejudice to various extents. It is a system of shaming. Shaming cannot motivate positive behavior. Shaming is only capable of creating a fear of getting caught. Therefore it is not even a real code of morality but instead only a code of authoritarian obedience and outsourcing of real philosophy, moral thought, and character depth.
It is natural for your folks to want their extended family to be a part of their tribe. In this vein, you need to reassure your family that they have a place in your life in meaningful ways. The trick is to never try to change your family through logic about their beliefs. These are the primary barriers that will only make your life harder.
Beliefs have no logical basis and arguing logic will only alienate you from their tribe. Humans struggle to reassess things they accepted as gullible children. Even those that are capable within their self awareness are often unwilling to disadvantage themselves substantially in life by abandoning their exclusively prejudiced social network that they were raised with as this defies the tribal survivalist instinct. It is important to understand that it is only possible to inspire curiosity, self awareness, and learning. No one can force someone else to learn, understand, or seek out accurate information. You can only change yourself and no one else. So break down the fundamental elements behind their complex social behaviors and use that understanding to address the issues and conflicts that they are not self aware of and where they create problems.
I’m atheist, used to be a very active Jehovah’s Witness, am now physically disabled and stuck living with my Witness family. It is very challenging for me to tip toe around their prejudice. I’m confident that, if I was not disabled, I could live an independent and happy life, but I wouldn’t really involve my family a whole lot. Heck I moved 2k miles away from them the first chance I had quite a long time ago. Back then I didn’t have the self awareness of the underlying psychology. Now I view all of my family’s interactions in this light of tribalism. I know they will be more prejudice when they are around certain people or after various religious events, and I don’t let their prejudice bother me. It is just tribalism and complex human social hierarchy manifesting in primitive behaviors. I don’t take offense at those behaviors any more than my cats fighting to be beside me for a little lunch food scrap. I also have my own ethics and character depth that is wholely independent of pressures from others. That independence makes it easy to turn conversations around and steer them when confronted by people that have no real moral depth and only parrot and shame.
My parents don’t force their religion on anyone.
I’ve been openly criticizing religion since I was a kid. My mother and I have learned to avoid the topic. My father was also an atheist.
I get to sleep in on Sundays. Otherwise it’s basically the same as how I was brought up.
You count on them for support, I’m guessing. The only way cleanly getting out is to be able to accept the consequence they may set of cutting you off if you fail to uphold their beliefs. This is a people problem, not a religious problem, and religious people are as bad as the next person.
