Is it harder to be a secular parent than a religious one?
When you were little and asked where babies came from, what did your family tell you?
Storks? Angels?
I got a ridiculous story about a garden.
Surprisingly my daughter hasn’t asked that question yet. She turned five in April. When it comes up, I plan on giving her a simple and straightforward explanation of sex. I don’t think she’s too young for that and hopefully, it’s a conversation we can continue throughout her childhood.
As a secular parent, I feel I am tasked with telling my daughter the truth. I think it would be easier to be a religious parent always having these ready-made explanations.
Sex, babies, death, the afterlife, gender roles, marriage — you name it, religion has an answer for it.
I always want to give my daughter real answers and I want to encourage her curiosity. If I don’t know an answer, I want to help her find it. I know that will come up. I don’t consider myself worldly or well-read so I think it would be just fine to learn alongside her.
So what do you think? Is it harder to tell your kids the truth? Is it easier to rely on a religion that has all the answers?
Well, one thing I can tell you is that telling my daughter the truth sits a lot easier on my conscience.
So I thought this meme was really fucking funny and it’s actually why I wrote this post. Inspiration comes from everywhere!
I’m so sorry — I don’t know the original artist to give credit to. I see a little watermark but can’t really make it out. If you know the artist, please let me know and I’ll post it.
I don’t know why anyone has a problem with simply saying (to the younger kids) that you grow out of a kind of seed in Mummy’s belly, and when you were big enough, my belly pushed you out. That’s more or less what my parents said, and they were pretty lousy at sex education. Besides, if the child has a younger sibling, they’re going to see her belly get big until the baby is born.
Eventually, they’ll want to know how the seed got in there (you don’t want them thinking that if they accidentally swallow an appler or orange seed they’ll have a baby.)
(As for how I learned exactly how the “seed” got there, I had to learn it from drawings on a bathroom wall. Like I said, not good at sex education.)
This is where rural kids have an advantage. We get eggs and goat’s milk at a farm. The cute 6 year old was taking me around to see all the animals. We passed a hutch with 2 rabbits in it. She said matter-of-factly, “He’s in there to help her have babies.” There aren’t many secrets about reproduction on a farm, even if the farmers are religious, like these people are.