We’re Ignoring Parents At Our Movement’s Own Risk

Perhaps
it is because so many of these topics are talked about, studied seriously and published
about in the scientific community. It seems logical to me that freethinkers, humanists,
skeptics, and other godless folk turn first
to the scientific community for information and ideas about these topics.

And
for those topics that are more “squishy” and don’t lend well to scientific inquiry
or perhaps someone drags some god or another into the fray, we just make up our
own minds and ignore the naysayers.  Without
a lot of discussion. Just my opinion, mind you.!

I write about many of these issues and plan to hit many of the rest of them in my copious free time 😉

That day care would give me a chance to come to a meeting and discussing these parenting issues would be a big ol’ draw to a mommy like me. I would love to see the atheist/humanist movement get interested in these issues and pushing people to understand the science.

The Parenting Within Reason podcast used to hit this sweet spot, but it’s been dormant for a few months. Does anyone know if it’s dead? http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/fbbpodcast/

As an atheist and a parent, I think the topics that matter to me the most are those involving raising my daughter as a freethinker. Like another commenter said, I look to science for issues like C-sections, nursing, and nutrition. It’s the other issues that bother me. How do I discuss religion with my child? How do I explain that we don’t think the way others do, that we are different? How do I raise my daughter without a church community to support us? Because I love the secular community, but I’m not feeling much support for atheist parents working on raising their children. The skeptic community is good for being able to be open and talk about things, but not for bringing a meal to the atheist mother of a newborn, offering a listening ear to an atheist mother who is overwhelmed with her toddler, or coming over to help when someone is sick. These are the things that a church community does. Being an atheist mother is challenging, let me tell you. I really wish parenting were more embraced by the skeptic community. I’m glad the local secular alliance lets us bring our toddler to movie nights and that atheist happy hour is held in a room where children are allowed (children are not allowed within sight of the actual “bar”). But that’s not the same as feeling supported in my parenting by the skeptic community. In many ways, I’m going at it alone.

“Liked,” and now pulling up your blog.  I’m past the pregnancy/childbirth/baby phase, but still would love to read more related to kids and developing skepticism.  My 3-1/2 year old son seems to be a natural skeptic, but my 7-year-old daughter has quite a fanciful desire for the fantastic in her life.

I don’t expect atheist groups to handle general child-rearing issues (other than the problem of raising freethinkers in a world full of woo) any more than I expect my knitting group to deal with atheism or my book club to deal with cooking.  It’s not as though there is any shortage of information about the topics listed above in plenty of other easily-accessible  places.  And frankly, as the mother of adult children, when it comes to this stuff, I’ve been there, done that, and have no desire to revisit it.  

I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens’s comment on motherhood:  “Is there anything so utterly lacking in humor as a mother discussing her new child?  She is unboreable on the subject.”  The same can’t necessarily be said of the rest of us.

As an atheist parent, only that last one (raising your children without superstition) is really of interest to me personally.  Under the more general umbrella of skepticism, the other main interest of mine is the peddling of woo – vaccines causing autism, the amber teething thing (which I’d never heard of before, but man is that stupid!) – things like that.  All the others on the list are things that either I just don’t care about or aren’t all that interesting to me.

I wouldn’t say that I feel at all ignored as a parent by the atheist movement.  I expect it to be generally more about stuff pertaining to atheism than anything else.  I do find that atheists as a whole are quite supportive of anything that falls under skepticism (including any parenting issues) – it’s just not the main focus.

No idea why you link to the post about raising kids without superstition. Her thesis is that we shouldn’t deny kids the “magic” of Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. It’s complete bunk. I have always told my son those are mythical characters, and that revelation hasn’t hindered his appreciation for storytelling and imagination. I doubt you’ve seen a kid with a wilder imagination than my son.

When you encourage your kids to believe in something that’s not real, you’re hurting them. You’re lying to them.When my son asks where we all came from, I’ll explain evolution. If he wants to go deeper, I’ll just have to say we don’t know. Because the science isn’t there yet. But we’re learning more and more every day, and he should keep his mind open.

But how can he trust verifiable truth if I’ve lied to him?

Disclaimer: I don’t have children.  I don’t want children.  I don’t particularly like them. Especially the ones raised by parents who are completely and utterly unable to grasp that their child might actually be misbehaving (or worse, who get it, but still refuse to discipline their child and instead just apologize over and over for it breaking something expensive I own, but not being able to afford to replace it, instead of stopping the child from the destructive behaviour in the first place).  I am a crotchety old crone.

That being said, I do strongly feel that children are precious and should be protected and encouraged to fulfill their hopes and dreams and abilities.  We need safe places for children, better resources for parents, teachers who are paid the fortunes they’re worth, nurses and doctors who practice based on science, and loads of fighting the asinine misinformation out there.  I am completely comfortable with the idea of doing physical harm to people who do physical or emotional harm to children, up to and including death in especially egregious cases (but I suppose that’s a discussion for a different time).

One of the reasons this is hard to discuss is because of how totally batshit insane parents (in general) are about their darling offspring. While it is certainly possible for an individual parent (or pair of parents) to be logical and base their parenting decisions on science and reasoning, bloody few of them actually DO that.  And FSM forbid should ANYone even DARE to suggest that they might be making a decision on anything less than stellar information.  Because that almost invariably gets turned into  (in the mind of the parent) a claim that one is saying “you’re being a bad parent” or “you don’t adequately love your child” instead of any sort of reasoned suggestion or *GASP* legitimate criticism of a choice they’re making. 

They are perfectly fine with discussing parental methods in the abstract, but the moment one of them gives birth, or they run into something that is actually about their specific child, their brains seem to get checked at the door and they make life-changing/threatening choices based entirely on how something feels or looks to them, rather than, oh, reality.

I got in a discussion once with a parent who said she bought a Ford Explorer because it made her feel safer driving her baby around in the larger vehicle.  I pointed out various studies that show SUVs in general (and Ford Explorers in particular) were more dangerous and LESS protective if there was an accident, and that there was a greater chance of her child dying in an accident in the SUV than in a safer and smaller economy car.  For her it had nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with how she FELT safer in the SUV.  That she and her baby weren’t ACTUALLY safer, and were, in fact, LESS safe, didn’t matter a bit.

I posit that parental freedom is way more of a sacred cow than religion is these days.  There’s no room for even good friends to make gentle suggestions for how something might work better (let alone actually flat out say “this is a mistake, please really rethink this, letting your child play with knives is not ‘allowing him freedom of expression’ it’s DANGEROUS”). 

Maybe that’s just for me, though.  Because I’m childless by choice, I don’t get to say a word.  Even when you’re endangering not just your dearest, most important thing in the world by not getting it vaccinated, but you’re endangering every OTHER PERSON that your precious bundle comes into contact with (not just other people’s precious bundles, but adults, too).

I highly recommend looking into your local Unitarian-Universalist congregation. Yes, there are Pagans, Buddhists, Jews and a dozen other belief systems represented, but every congregation our family has attended has had a very sizeable number of people who consider themselves Atheists, Humanists, Freethinkers or Agnostics.

You know, I’ve heard this argument time and time again, from both sides of the fence.  The fundies that I know locally do not endorse Santa and the Easter Bunny for the same reason you’re mentioning… if the kids find out they liked about those two being realy, the kids might feel the same about Jesus and God.

I disagree… kids get it if explained right.  My son left Santa a note every year (which hubby “answered” with a note from “Santa” on the reverse), along with cookies and milk.  The glow from my son when he saw “Santa’s” note was incredible.  By age 7, he had figured it out but we still do a stocking and gifts “from Santa” for each other.  We gradually explained that Santa is the idea of generosity toward others but that when kids are young, we use the person of “Santa” at Christmas because that’s easier to understand.  He totally got it and he said he never felt lied to at all.

As for the Easter Bunny, he knew  by age 4 it was us when he saw in his Easter basket some stuff I’d bought the day before… that, and he knew the “map” to the Easter eggs hidden around the house was done by Dad.  LOL!  He even stood up for another kid who still believes in the Easter Bunny when some little turd at school was running around saying the EB is not real.

He’s got plenty of time in his adulthood to be surrounded by reality and facts.  We decided to give him Santa and Easter Bunny for a few years as a child.  Oh, and he also knows that Batman, Spider Man, and Iron Man aren’t real as well.

As  a parent, one thing that I would love to learn more about is how to help set up a secular student alliance group at my child’s future high school. 

You forgot to mention which condiments go best with babies, Hemant… 😉

I’m not a parent, but I wonder if this is the kind of thing that needs to be brought about by any parent who thinks this is a good idea themselves, rather than an atheist group trying to create it in order to attract new people to the movement.

The thing about atheism/scepticism etc., is that there is no dogma saying how kids should be brought up. We don’t have any text saying that ‘god wants you to do this or that’. As a result, the things that get brought up tend to be the ones which people want to talk about rather than mentioned because a head priest thinks a holy book talks about them.

People who talk about – say – the evolution and creationism ‘debate’ are going to be people involved in the battlefield: so scientists, advocates for separation of church and state etc. The same with homoeopathy and all the rest. Similarly, for all the things you suggested, you need speakers in those respective ‘battlegrounds’.

The reason these things don’t get talked about, is probably simply that there aren’t the people who want to speak about it. Probably because current parents are up to their eyebrows in work/family related things, and don’t have the time to devote to this kind of thing. I doubt there’s any real taboo about it, just practicalities.

My personal opinion is help anyone who wants to do this kind of thing anyway you can, but I don’t think we want “any of the most well-known skeptics and skeptical sources of information … to [tackle] any of the [above] topics” unless they are coming both from a position of knowledge, and personal experience of the subject they are talking about.

I would also suggest, if you live near one, an Ethical Culture Society (or Ethical Society). I’m a member of the Ethical Society of St. Louis and we have a great Sunday School in our Society, plus an outstanding youth group and a pre-Platform discussion group called Parent Talk.

Google American Ethical Union for the site and more information. Most of the Societies are located in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, but there’s also Societies in St. Louis, Chicago and Austin, Texas, as well as an on-line Ethical Society Without Walls.

I am an atheist parent of two children and the biggest drawback for me in attending conferences is lack of childcare. That being said I think at least one person addressing issues with atheism and parenting in conferences would be swell. They don’t have to go into detail about specific woo but offer resources for parents where they can access the latest research on hot button issues. They could also discuss books and methods that helped them raise sexpositive well adjusted critical thinkers. They could also offer resources for addressing various violations of church and state issues with their childrens schools as well as advice for tackling such issues without making a big scene. Just some of my opinions.

Yes, it’s pretty much dead. The burden of producing a weekly podcast eventually caught up with us and our demands as parents. Thank you for listening.

Many of us still blog at http://sciencebasedparenting.com

Parenting Belyond Beliefe is a wonderful collection of writing about raising freethinkning kids, and two pieces deal with the Santa issues, each on a different side of the fence. Here is Dale’s take on the issue, http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=4982

I was raised a moderate xian(now atheist) and never had santa, as my mother wanted Christ in christmas, and wanted us to appreciate do for others more then for ourselves. Now with a 3 year old my partner and I decided that we will go ahead with santa, while encouraging kiddo to think critically about the issue(travel time, magic, all that) each year at an age appropriate pace. We can then draw comparisons between that myth and the religious myths still out there today!

My Humanist group is trying to start a youth group aimed at the chilren of Atheist and Humanist parents.  We already address some of these issues.  So far response has been slow but we are doing fairly well

That Free Range Parenting blog is a joke. They take valid studies and blow them out of proportion, using hyperbole and exaggeration to make their point. Free range parenting works if one is privileged enough to live in a safe small town where you know everybody who lives there. For the rest of us, it just isn’t an option.

I’ll admit I’m impressed that there’s no comment yet proclaiming that “We shouldn’t by trying to get any particular group” and that parents are just not going to come and that it’s not really a problem anyway.

Free childcare is awesome. Youth activities for children too old for childcare but too young to be left home alone for 4 days and/or too young to be interested in lectures would also be good. Alternative celebrations after events that happen in child-friendly restaurants and end early (as opposed to alcohol-infused “see you at the bar!”) and actually include a few of the well-known atheists would also be nice. Why not have dinner with the families before heading to the bar?

Beyond that as I see it focus needs to be in two places (with the disclaimer that I’m not a parent).

1. In terms of conferences and addressing parent issues, I think the impulse has to come out of the skeptical blog community. I’ve seen a worrying large number of lectures from skeptical meetings and the topics usually perfectly mirror “what’s hot” on the blogosphere, and that usually has to do with science, atheist rights, GLBT rights or sheer strategy (growing the movement, increasing visibility etc.). It gets a little repetitive after awhile. If the bigger blogs (Pharyngula, Friendly Atheist, Blaghag, Skeptichick, RichardDawkins.net etc.) made a concious effort to start talking about a wider variety of topics (like those above as well as others that interest more people of color etc.) they could start moving things so that those topics became a “topic of interest” in the community, and thereby made it onto the conference list, in addition to bringing more people in online (how many people go to these things without being at least a lurker online first?).

2. We have to start concentrating on more local projects. Conferences are great, but they’re not for everybody. The SSA makes it their business to try to get safe spaces for nonbeliever students in as many places as they can. Secular organizations and blogs should dedicate at least as much energy to promoting and extending local secular groups that meet at least once a month. Many atheist parents may never be able to go across the country to a conference, but they can sure make it to a Sunday pot-luck with the kids at the park. Actually creating a community of like-minded people on a local level will bring people in and maybe get them involved. Trying to organize a national community, particularly a minority one, without local branches is not going to work very well.

Thanks for the links. 

I’m still not understanding the benefit of the original lies. What do the kids get out of it? My son understands that Xmas is about family giving, caring, sharing. He still says hi to Santa at the mall. But he knows it’s no more real than the mascot at the college football game.Kids don’t need our silly mythical lies to develop or use their imagination. If your child said, “Hi! Meet Jimmy. He’s invisible and lives in my eyebrow!” Would you confirm for your child that Jimmy was real, just to keep the fantasy alive? To me, pretending Santa is real is the same issue.My take on the free-thinking community is that at its core it’s honest about reality, the pieces of the universe we can test and verify, always striving for knowledge. There’s plenty of mystery and wonder without creating or perpetuating false myths.I’m not here to be a critic of anyone’s parenting. To each his own. Hemant linked to an article supposedly about raising children without superstition, which actually proposed raising children with superstitious beliefs in faeries, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus.  I was merely surprised to see it promoted on this blog.

Why is midwifery a bad idea?  For the most part, it’s better science than obstetrics because it doesn’t rely on the opinion of the practitioner, but instead much more on the human body.

I do not yet have children, I’m 18 years old, I plan to wait until after college to have them, but topics like these are of great interest to me already. I would love for these to be addressed, and when I have children I don’t plan to leave them at home to go to these events, it would be wonderful if there were activities for them as well.

The biggest obstacle for me as a parent and a stay at home dad is that I don’t like 20 something college aged childless people that much. And being surrounded by parents and kids isn’t all that fun either. 

And it’s not all about day care or child care during the event. There’s the whole issue (as other parents would know) of travelling with kids. Feeding them. Making sure there’s a pool. etc etc etc. What to do with the kids while at the actual event is the easy part. 

And so I’m not just all mr. negative there’s a site that I like. 

http://www.parentingscience.com 

In the US, how rigorous the training for becoming a midwife is varies greatly from state to state.  I didn’t say they weren’t medical professionals, I said they aren’t licensed gynecologists (and implied they were also not  obstetricians).

In nearly all cases the training required to be officially recognized as a midwife is less extensive than for an obstetrician.  That doesn’t mean they’re not medical professionals.  Physicians Assistants also go through less extensive training, but they are also medical professionals, as are nurses, etc. 

What they are not, in most cases, is doctors.  And they’re no more or less subject to the biases that everyone else has than anyone else.  They are not specially in tune with women or women’s needs in a way obstetricians aren’t or anything like that.

Religion never came up when I was part of MOMS Club with my first.  And while I haven’t maintained close friendships with any of those moms, we did look out for each other when our children were little.  MOPS is a whole different story.  I have lots of atheist mom friends I met through our secular homeschooling group.  I met one through an online playdate site.  If you’re willing to put in a little effort and you don’t live in an area where being an atheist is a huge stigma, it’d be fairly easy to start up a support group of your own.

For anyone considering using a midwife at home instead of going to the hospital and having an obstetrician oversee your delivery, I would strongly recommend waiting until your 2nd baby.  That way you will have known from your 1st baby if your pelvis is wide enough.  We don’t want anybody dying here.

We have a family friend who has had 4 home deliveries with midwifes.  Her body is just built for it.  My wife, though, has fairly narrow hips and would have died if not in a hospital for her deliveries.

That is two anecdotal stories anyway.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this. I’m going to be a parent in January and I’m already freaking out because my husband and I live in Kansas and are surrounded by religious parenting resources but not much in the way of humanist or secular parenting resources. I’ve read Dale McGowan’s books and visit his blog frequently, but it’s refreshing to know that this is out there as something important.

I’m a mother to an 18 month old and the other day came across an advertisement for amber “teething” bracelets that other moms were raving about. I know a few moms who have them, but, I’ve also read no definitive evidence (beyond, “these worked for me and my kid and my mother’s elbow pains and the water on my knee” etc.,) that these magical necklaces are at all effective yet, when I mentioned that, while they were pretty, listing them as possessing some sort of healing properties was misleading I was largely ignored (which is fine) but, two women took offense, and started getting a bit hostile toward me for having said *anything* to slight these wondrous potential strangling hazards! 

I honestly believe the easiest way to scam someone is by threatening the health/well-being of their children and other loved ones. It’s a shame.  

Hemant, I sent you many links on your old blog to our blog http://www.sciencebasedparenting.com.  Many of these topics were covered there.

What’s hilarious is that I do not even have time to write this comment, as my kid is currently politely demanding, “More grapes please!” 

Bullshit. The author lives in New York, and it’s perfectly possible to bring children up to live in a city. You might think that it’s far too dangerous, and that your children are simply incapable of coping with the outside world, but that just means that you’re a victim of the paranoia that FRK sets out to debunk.

The truth is that children used to be brought up with much more freedom than they are now, were quite safe doing it, and the world has only got safer since then. You can go with your gut feelings of fear, or you can go with the facts.

I just don’t see what’s so safe about letting a 7- or 8-year-old walk or ride around a city on their own, miles away from help (and if they have a cell phone, is that truly free-range? — it might be, I’m just curious). As a parent, I just keep thinking about the worst-case scenario, and how I would feel if I allowed my son or daughter to roam freely in our city at such a young age, and something happened to them.

I know the statistics don’t agree with my paranoia, but I’m not willing to let statistics determine whether my children will roam without being harmed. It’s possible, and very easy, to raise children in a safe environment under their parents’ watchful eye, without being smothered or coddled. It’s just simple supervision. The possible harm far outweighs any possible advantages to FRP.

What’s the benefit? Your child will grow up to be more confident? You can facilitate that without putting them at possible risk. That’s just where I’m coming from with this whole FRP thing.

Hit a nerve, did I?  You know how you said you’re “a crotchety old crone?” I wasn’t actually asking you to demonstrate it.  

I was, OTOH, totally polite to you.  I simply suggested that you may not have all the information in every situation, and that you may be overreacting.  According to my friend, many people do this in her son’s presence, and most of those people react negatively.  But then what did you do?  You went and got all drama-queen diva, overreacting, hauling out the strawmen and lighting them on fire, and then YELLING IN ALL CAPS LIKE A LITTLE KID HAVING A TANTRUM, WAAAH!  Congratulations. You win the Internet Award for the Biggest Overreaction Ever.

If this is how you react to someone who questions you, I suspect that your smiley encouragements are quite possibly not coming off the way that you think they are.  And I suggest that you reevaluate your somewhat less than charming personality, Madam Protests Too Much.

(As long as they’re not bullying others into believing!)  🙂

You weren’t polite at all.  What you were was passive aggressive and snide.  And I chose not to just sit by and smile benignly while you recast my original point into your terms.

You set yourself up with plausible deniability so you could make precisely this response when I got irked at your blatant insinuation that I’m an awful person who makes snap judgments without sufficient information. 

I don’ t know you at all.  I don’t know how you treat any pets you may have.  I don’t know how you treat your coworkers.  I don’t know how you talk to your family.  I have no idea how much you give to charity, or what volunteer work you do.  I don’t know what music you like, what books you read, or anything else about you.  It is entirely possible that you’re a decent human being who might even quite like me if you actually bothered to get to know me.  My friends seem to like me, but I suppose even Cheney has friends. I guess my friends are just poor abused souls that I’ve managed to gather around me using coersion and threats of some sort, rather than people who find me interesting, fun, intelligent, and caring.

What I do know about you, though, is that you are passive aggressive and deflecting when you post in replies to comments on this blog.  I never claimed to have a charming personality, in fact, I pretty much said I didn’t right up front.  I guess I also know you’re pretty stupid for deliberately being snotty to someone who openly admits to being crotchety.  Unless you were just looking for a fight in the first place, then bravo on baiting the she-bear.  Well played.

How about you actually respond to what my original comment was about, instead of just sitting there calling me thinly veneered names?

Parents, in general, are totally batshit insane about their kids?  Do you have evidence to support this claim? I have anecdotes that refute your anecdotes.

I believe you when you say you’re a crotchety old crone, you don’t have to spend six more paragraphs proving it.

I don’t have any studies to cite specifically.  I don’t have time to find them for you. 

I had a longer reply but I started to realize I’m adding nothing to the discussion, and this is becoming about how unpleasant a person I am.  Thank you for taking the time to point this out to me.

A more accurate comparison to homeopathy, et al, would be if it was known to kill people once in a while, but could also help people, would I take that risk and use it on my children? The answer is no, if there are alternatives that are much safer.

Regardless, I plan on researching the evidence behind free-range parenting and whether it’s the only method in existence to raise children without smothering/coddling them. You act like if a parent is around watching their children, they’ll grow up with something wrong with them. They’ll grow up afraid of the world or of being on their own, or of being independent or something. And you also make it seem like free-range parenting is the ONLY way to raise children, and nothing else is good enough to bother with.

Dren?  Like the character from the movie Splice?

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0196763/

I know I said I was leaving the thread, but I can’t seem to figure out how to unsubscribe to comments yet. *embarrassed grin*  As it happens I’m glad I didn’t figure it out.

I accept your explanation for your intent, as you know your own mind and I couldn’t possibly.  I can see how what you said before relates to what you’re saying now.  However, I disagree that I completely misunderstood you.

Your clarification says:
“What I said and meant you might have in common with them is that “they make uninformed assumptions about his behavior.””

It is certainly true that I thought you were saying that I whispered about “misbehaving” children in public.  But it is also true that I thought you were saying that I make uninformed assumptions.

So I was half right, and half wrong.  You weren’t saying I was rude enough to whisper about a child right there in front of it and its parent. 

But you =were= saying that I remind you of people who make uninformed assumptions about the behavior of a child they don’t know.

Really, it was the latter I found more insulting.  Nothing in my original comment suggested that I was talking about strangers (who, for the sake of this conversation should be taken to mean “people and children I don’t know at all”).  None of the examples or conversations I alluded to would reasonably have taken place with strangers.  Yet you assumed that my disapproval of a failure of discipline would be directed at strangers.

So here’s my clarification.  I wasn’t talking about children I don’t know or situations about which I have no information.  I was talking about people I know, and know fairly well, who have been to my home on several occasions or with whom I have spent considerable time over the years talking on various fora.

My comments about parents failing to control their children, or failing to make parenting decisions based on reality rather than how they feel were not based on uninformed assumptions. 

You may have made some connection to such situations in your mind because my tone wasn’t entirely pro-child or pro-parent.  That, however, is not my fault, and has nothing to do with what I actually said in my original comment.

So I return to my impression that you have have unfairly characterized me as someone unpleasant (uninformed assumptions aren’t pleasant where you come from, are they?) as a result of, perhaps, skimming instead of really reading my original comments and responding to an over all “feel” instead of content.  It is based on this that I took offense.

As I said when I started this, I accept this was not your intent because you have so stated.  If that matters at all, at this point. Unfortunately, our intent doesn’t always shine through our words.  As for the charge of over reacting, I accept that. I did. I do at least somewhat regret that and wish I’d allowed myself some time before responding, because certainly a more calm approach would have been better received.

Chimera or not, she’s BEAUTIFUL!

Our local humanist group tried something new this year. We organized an information booth at our local fair. It is pretty big with high attendance. We had a fair amount of interest and quite a few people with kids signed up to get our newsletter and more info about our group. Most of these had never heard of us, probably being busy with life and taking kids to the fair. Anyway, we had a followup picnic and some families came and had a great time.
For myself, we have a 10 year old and it does cause a bit of a problem with child care if we both want to attend our monthly meetings. Once you add the cost of a sitter and dinner, it can be quite an expense. Hopefully with the new families there might be more interest having topics such as those listed above.

Hey man, if you want advice from atheists about parenting, make an account at http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism and make a post and ask your questions.  Parenting is a topic that comes up every now and then, but the most frequently given advisement is “Raise your kids to become critical thinkers… never discourage them from asking ‘Why?’.”

Your post reminded me of another issue that requires some skepticism: breastfeeding. It’s interesting to me what gets thrown around in that arena. My understanding is the same as yours–that it’s better for the baby’s health. But I was dismayed to see those La Leche League punks asserting that women who don’t breastfeed won’t be as close to their babies (there’s no scientific support for that to my knowledge). My mother couldn’t breastfeed me due to medical complications, but we were very close. Even so, statements like those of la leche really hurt her feelings and made her feel like a bad mother.