Atheist Parents + Religious Mother-In-Law = Clash

I don’t make an issue of it in our family. Relatives take our children to church: they enjoy the activities, choir, etc. I have no objection to that side of things. When the kids do bring up religious matters around me, I just tell them the truth, usually explaining that the stuff they hear at church is fairy tales, like Handel and Gretal and such. I occasionally get a complaint from a relative, but I just brush it off – they know better. 🙂

If you leave the kids with the m-in-law, then I say fair enough then you trust the m-in-law to look after and care for them as she sees fit – it’s your choice, you don’t have to give her the kids for the w-end … but if you do, you can’t really tell the older lady where she should be for every minute, if you respect her enough to let her baby-sit your kids, respect her enough to not tell her what to do

however

you also have a right, perhaps a duty, to tell your kids that your m-in-law believes a ridiculous story that was made up centuries ago, that the belief spreads like a virus, that some people pick and choose words of wisdom that they believe is inerrant wisdom but actually appears to be a bunch of old stories

Read Parenting beyond Belief and visit http://www.parentingbeyondbelief.com forum and blogs for lots of great advice on handling these situations.

I had this situation with my own parents and my sons.
It came down to me telling my parents that if they insisted on taking my kids to church and reading them bible stories, telling them about jesus/god/etc, that they would no longer see the kids. I wanted my sons to be older, at an age of understanding, before they were introduced to those things so they could make up their own minds. When kids are taught those things practically right from birth, they tend to live most of their lives that way, it’s all they know.
But if given the opportunity to wait, to make an informed choice, most kids will choose rational thought.

It hurt me to do it to my parents, it hurt them, but they finally agreed and never did it again.
Now that the teens are older, they still try, but it doesn’t work, the kids just aren’t interested in god or any religions.

If Paul and his wife feel very strongly about this, then they must do what they feel is best for their kids, after all, they are their kids.

I second beckster – Parenting Beyond Belief is a truly fantastic book.

I have Christian religious parents, my inlaws are Unitarian Universalist. Both have church as a central part of their lives, while I reject ‘church’ as an institution.

My 3 year old is currently satisfied with the ‘different people believe different things’ answer. We teach her to be respectful of other beliefs and practices, but also speak for herself when something doesn’t make sense. It has put us in some sticky situations, but that’s par for the course in honest open parenting.

Some churchianity is so extreme, with talk of eternal burning an so forth, that exposing young kids to it is a form of child abuse. I think parents should definitely put the old kibosh on that type of exposure. And what about these outfits that suggests that non-believers should be killed?

My wife (who is Xian) and I agree that young children shouldn’t be told they or anyone else is going to Hell. IMO, anything else is fine in moderation. I’ll happily debunk Whatever Sunday School nonsense they learn.
If we ever have kids, I plan on raising thinkers so that I don’t have to worry about what the world throws at them. You can’t shelter them from this shit forever.

I would say it depends how how often the children is with her & is there a way you can change the days that it doesn’t fall on the days she goes to church.
I raised my children to have open minds & my son use to go over with his grandfather to the Canadian church & he formed his own opinion on what he believed. which as he told me he couldn’t believe what they were saying at church.
I grew up in a very strict Pentecostal religion where they scared the hell out of you & I’m talking about growing up everyday thinking the world would end that very day, that I would never have a chance to grow up, that I would never get the chance to marry, have my own children & yet I have done all of this.
Even as a child I had a lot of questions for my parents, which I never really got an answer & would give up.
Heck, I’m 45 years old & my daddy will say I’m rebellious…lol!!!
I did finally figure out why he always said I was rebellious, because I questioned everything.
I wouldn’t go to the extreme of keeping my children from their grandparents, but would try to work out different days for them to have time together.
I agree with what magdalune said, not to shelter them from it, after all your wanting to raise them to be free-thinkers.
By keeping them from her, you may cause them to hold a grudge against you & things may go in a direction you don’t want it to go in.
I wish you a lot of luck & hope things work out for all of you. Much Peace & Love!

I have more questions than answers.

How old are the kids? What do the kids want? Do they like church? Do they enjoy the fellowship, songs, play, etc?

Now, do they have secular alternatives to any of that? What is your reaction when they say that “Mimi said…”? Do you tell them what you believe? Do you tell them why you believe that?

What kind of church is it? Is it hellfire and brimstone, or more moderate?

All of that stuff would come into play for me. It’s all about context. As others have said, you can’t protect them forever -so at some point it makes sense to let them explore religion.

Sympathies to Paul, because I know that this will be an issue when we have kids, though less in a babysitting-includes-church way than in an gifts-will-be-Jesus-themed way, due to geographic distance.

I think it really depends on what kind of Christian the parents are dealing with. The dilemma is that, in my experience, liberal Christians tend to respect that parents don’t want their children to go to church, whereas conservative/fundamentalist Christians see it as righting a grievous wrong. If the grandmother in question is of the brimstone crowd, I would want to be careful in subjecting my children to that. My religiously brought up nieces and nephews talk constantly about their fears of Hell and the Rapture, and I do not consider it a good thing to inflict those (very real to a child’s imagination) thoughts and fears on them, whether in the name of indoctrination or free thinking.

(This is all based on personal experience, not on liberal/conservative Christians in general).

If you want to raise them to think for themselves, then let them think for themselves about things they’ve been exposed to.

I’m sure all these atheists here would be happy to supply you with some critical-thinking questions to ask about Christianity. For example: “People used to burn witches because of how they interpreted the Bible. How do we know we’re not interpreting it wrong today?”

Or, “What would happen to Jesus if he came to earth today? Would church leaders really know he’s not just some lunatic?”

We’ve told our daughter (who gets taken to church by my mother) that god is “like Santa Claus” and that “Nonna took you to fairy tale class”. When she realizes that Santa is not real, hopefully it will all come together for her. But she’s just 3 and we are moving away this summer, so I’m not too worried about lasting harm.

Like others, I think it depends on a few factors: how often this is happening, how old the kids are, and what kind of church (i.e., is it homophobic, misogynistic, heavily oriented towards hellfire and damnation).

If it’s not that often, and it’s not that offensive a church, and the kids are old enough to not be confused by the “what Grandma believes and what your Mom and Dad believe are different, and here are some critical thinking skills to help you decide for yourself” message, then I wouldn’t fret about it that much. I think it’s actually appropriate for kids to learn about religions. Maybe you could even take them on visits to synagogues, Buddhist temples, other churches, etc. — which might put the “visits to Grandma’s church” in a different perspective.

If the kids are pretty young still, and the visits are happening a lot, and the church is a nasty one… if it were me, I’d put my foot down. They’re your kids; it’s not right for her to be indoctrinating them against your wishes. And it’s confusing to the kids to be put in the middle like that, especially if they’re younger. (Although, as somebody else pointed out, it wouldn’t be fair to ask Grandma to take the kids on Sunday if you don’t want her to take them to church…)

you can’t stop relatives or friends or the whole of society from feeding their nonsense to your children. you can teach your children critical thinking skills so that they can see through the crap themselves.

shielding children from the opinions of others — that’s what fundamentalists do.

Greta Christina’s comment covers almost exactly what I was planning to say: it’s a good summary.

My own son used to get taken to church regularly and went to a religious school as well. And he was an avowed atheist by the time he was ten – with virtually no prompting from me. I just answered his questions as honestly as I could. But if it had been a hellfire church I would have handled it differently.

I also think it depends on a lot of things, and that Greta C. has pretty well summarized it.

I understand where people are coming from with the “Don’t shield your kid from other opinions, like the fundies do,” but I think this doesn’t properly appreciate how damaging some opinions are. I know someone who, because of various family differences, ended up spending the weekends at a fundamentalist southern baptist church, and her weekdays at a pre-Vatican-II Catholic school. The baptists would explain how her school was part of an organization run by the Antichrist (the pope). The Catholics would rush her into confession first thing Monday morning, and explain that if she had died in a car accident on the way back, she would have gone to hell. To hear her tell it, it sounds incredibly terrifying. These are opinions that kids should be shielded from.

Most of what I’d say has already been said. Censoring ideas is deeply problematic, and should only be done for the most offensive or dangerous ideas, like eternal torture. (That’s over the line for me too, as far as my daughter is concerned.)

But if the mother-in-law is aware of the parents’ atheism, perhaps a compromise is possible. Suggest taking the kids to a Unitarian church. It will have many of the trappings of religion – congregating on a Sunday, a sermon about how to live life well, hymns, etc – without any of the dogma.

If she’s willing, then this might allay some of the mother-in-law’s worries without compromising the parents’ principles and beliefs. Also, Unitarians often have good religious education where kids actually learn about different religions, without indoctrination.

If she’s not willing to compromise even this much, then I’d say the parents can impose more stringent restrictions with a clear conscience.

Even if she does agree to the Unitarian thing, they may still need to make it clear that she’s not to try indoctrinating them herself – which is independent of church-going.

I have to follow what many others have said here and tell them to immediately run out and buy Dale McGowan’s 2 books, and read them right away-and his blog!
Seriously though, they need to sit down with MIL and have a chat. It doesn’t need to be argumentative. They need to say that they are the parents, and they get to decide how to raise their children. She needs to be told to use the words “I believe” when she talks to the kids, and she should never ever be allowed to say the words “Hell” or “we don’t question that, it’s just what the Bible says!” Other than that, they should welcome what she’s teaching them about what many people believe, and they can follow up more strongly at home with what THEY believe. I use the words “some people believe” so often in my house I should have it printed on a t-shirt. They should see this as an opportunity not to dis grandma, but to crank up the conversations in their home about their own beliefs.

We are dealing with this right now. Our three year old gets taken to a Lutheren church by my mother-in-law often…I wouldn’t even say on a regular basis. We really don’t have a problem with it since she’s too young to understand what’s being said, enjoys hearing the music and seeing her grandma sing in the choir.

When we found out that she was taking her to Sunday School, however, we had a problem. Altering the approach to a belief that we adamantly disagree with in order to specifically indoctrinate little ones…that was too much.

So the husband told her no Sunday School, and she said, “But I was with her the entire time!” No, the problem wasn’t that you’d leave her there by herself with strangers. The problem is that we don’t want her brainwashed by Jesus puppets and sugar coated mass murder by singning about an “arky-arky”.

So, mother in law cried. We told her she could still take our kid to church since we think it’s good for her to be exposed to it, but no Sunday School. She cried some more. We didn’t budge.

And so far, the only thing that our daughter has talked to us about was how Grandma sings about god in church. We told her that we don’t believe in any of the gods, but a lot of people believe in all sorts of them and she’s free to make up her mind on her own once she learns about all her options.

And that’s been that.

Talk to Mimi and tell her she has no right to indoctrinate other ppl’s kids.

We expect that our 6-year-old son will get an Asperger’s diagnosis in the next 6 months or so. As such, he is a very logical thinker, but he has–and likely will have for some time–trouble making critical judgments about what figures of perceived authority tell him. We have done some activities with other atheist families in which we tell myths from different cultures and do various science experiments. Our plan is to continue to expose him to a whole variety of myths, slotting in some Judeo-Christian stories eventually. (Anyone know of Bible storybooks that approach the topic like a regular mythology book?)

It is very important to me to limit the manner of his exposure to religion until his reasoning skills are a little more solid. As someone else said above, it’s an issue of education over indoctrination.

I think the kind of church they are going to is the meat of the issue. I pulled my son out of the church I attended after they taught him the crucifixion story when he was 4. (he’s gotten over it by now but I haven’t yet! I suppose I could work on letting things go) But I let him go to an episcopal church with my friend — she knew why I left my church, and understood there would be no “bloody Jesus on a cross” for my little man. I let this go on until last Christmas, when my son told me he didn’t want to go anymore. I said OK. No problem.

If kids live in a religious culture (and mine does, in the deep south) I think they need a working knowledge of the prevalent belief systems. By the same token, next Kwanzza I want to walk through the process with my son, because his school has a high proportion of african americans. I also want to teach him something about hispanic cultural practices, because we have a growing hispanic population here. I want him to know the prevalent spiritual practices that he will encounter, so he will understand his friends better.

I am sure the hell thing will come up at some point. I’m toying with the idea of explaining to him that some people need the concept of hell to remind them to be good to others. Sort of like some of his friends need the fear of punishment to make them behave. He’ll be able to understand that. And then I’ll explain that I want him to be good to others, not because he’s afraid of getting in trouble, but because he cares about others feelings.

I had some good feedback the other week. He was watching “The Biggest Loser” with me and one team had won a day of luxury. The team that didn’t win was sad, but the winners were gloating, big time. Cody looked at me and said “gosh Mommy, that isn’t very nice. They should be saying “good job, we’ll see you tomorrow” and waited until they were alone to get all excited. I was really proud of him, because he showed he had internalized the value of considering others feelings,and the value of self control if free expression would make others feel bad.

And that’s the main goal — to get them to internalize caring for others. And one way to care is to learn about what they believe…how it works, and why they do what they do. So, the church, in and of itself, isn’t bad…in my opinion.

Siamang said:

I will bring my child to many, many more and varied religious experiences in her life outside of our belief system than any religious person ever would.

Here’s what I’d do: I’d allow grandma to take the kids to church, IF it was a church the grandma didn’t believe in. Because if it’s all about education and broadening the kids’ minds and all… there should be no problem with that… right?

Bingo 🙂 (i realize the above suggestion with grandma is largely facetious (because grandma would probably blow a gasket at the suggestion) but I think the idea is bang on:)

Exposing kids to a diversity of ‘worldviews’ (when it’s age-appropriate) is an essential part of educating-vs-indoctrinating……which, needless to say, includes sharing with your child what your opinion(s)/belief(s) are and how you arrived at them (which is probably more important than anything else). Plus, when you have a ‘people have different beliefs’ discussion with your child (when they’re old enough) no one can trot out the accusation of you being ‘anti’ anything (which so many seem to love to do).

Also, I just wanted to note (in case it needs clarification) that my comment about ‘setting a good example’ was in reference to being consistent, honest, open and yes, discriminating. I think being a good example in that way definitely contributes to not raising a fucked-up kid.

I’d let them go and experience things for themselves. I mean, you obviously had religious parents, and look how you turned out. I’m very strongly supportive of any parents who lay out the facts for children (that different people do different things, etc), then let the children experience life for themselves. Letting them see what’s out there and being supportive of it while they’re still young is a great way to avoid instilling prejudice in children.