Raising atheists, part 1

A fairly typical question that we get on the show and in email can be boiled to, “How should I raise my kids?” As if we were qualified to answer that.

Child bearing seems to be relatively uncommon in the atheist community at large. It probably has something to do with the fact that we’re not subject to that “be fruitful and multiply” directive, and we have no moral issues with birth control.

While some people see that as a cause for panic — Oh no, the stupid people will out-breed us and Idiocracy will become a documentary! — I don’t worry about it that much. Intelligence these days is passed along more by memes than by genes, and you can have a far greater impact on the sum of human intelligence by donating your time as a teacher or a writer than by replicating your particular genetic sequence.

Anyway, for those of us who do have kids, the usual questions I hear basically fall in a few categories:

1. How can I raise them to be responsible, independent thinking adults?
2. Should I introduce them to atheism early or do everything I can NOT to indoctrinate them?
3. How do I handle my family and their peers when they inevitably want to expose my kids to the religions that I’ve been shielding them from?
4. What do I do if the child’s other parent, or other family members, want to bring the kid up in their own religion, and/or bully me into not talking about atheism?

This post addresses 1 and 2, the next post will address 3 and 4.

When it comes right down to it, I don’t think anybody has the “right” answers when it comes to parenting, although some do better than others. A quick Amazon search for books with the keyword “parenting” yields 62,830 results, and many of them contradict each other.

Pro-tip for atheists: Do not pick this one.

This is one subject where knowledge comes at least as much from direct experience and learning from past mistakes as from reading. Obviously, the issues facing an atheist parent are very similar to the problems facing all parents, but with the additional complication that you hold a minority belief and you can expect to have it constantly challenged as your child gets older. Being an effective authority figure is difficult already, before you add in the problem of having other people feel that they have a duty to undermine your authority in a major category.

I’ve got no credentials to present here; I’m not a psychologist and I don’t want people to get in trouble over my advice. The only reason I might have some useful advice is by virtue of the fact that I seem to have a reasonably happy, quick witted, and skeptical fourth grader.

But they still ask these questions regularly at the TV email address, and as parents, it generally falls on me or Jen to offer whatever words of wisdom we can come up with. Here’s a sample of recent questions.

So my 9 year kid came home with a survey from his school asking him to rate what he values from 1 to 10. On the list are things like, world peace, family security, wisdom, self respect and then the eighth one . . . salvation. That’s clearly a Christian concept right? I am not sure how to respond; this is the first time I have come across something like this. Any thoughts?

My daughter just started Kindergarten and unfortunately they are reciting the Pledge of Allegiance daily. Up to this point has had absolutely no contact with religious people outside of the bi-annual trips to visit family and even then it was a prayer before dinner and that was it. With that I don’t think she knew what was actually happening.

So my predicament is she has no concept of god or religion. Which is what I had wanted, but as I’ve come to find out she needs to atleast know that other people believe in it and know the evils of religion. I want her to be prepared and I suppose that needs to start now. What advice could you give to lay the ground-work for the concept for a 5 year old?

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