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Poplar? @lemmy.world

Irreligious people, what's it like having kids when your parents are religious?

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.

42 comments

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 took the same approach and my kids started believing when they were in elementary school. My mom was taking them to church sometimes more for the social aspect (my mom wasn't directly preaching to them at all), so the influence was relatively weak. It caused some problems for a while but neither of them believe as teenagers now.

      Just as a word of warning, you may run into situations where your children's beliefs are different from yours and worse yet, they are getting conflicting information from multiple trusted adults. It can be very uncomfortable and confusing for them to the point that it's very upsetting because kids often idolize the adults closest to them when they are that young.

      It's very important to talk to them, but you need to tread very lightly. I ended up telling them my beliefs and telling them that it's up to them to choose what they believe in life, even if what they choose is different from mine.

      Good luck!

  • 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.

  • I was lucky that, despite being somewhat religious, my parents were fine with me being an atheist. We would even debate the merits of religion and they did not have any issues with my questioning of their beliefs. Both were Lutheran and they had raised me in that tradition. I went to Sunday school, attended the Lutheran Catechism and reached the point of Confirmation. And that was right about the time I realized that the whole thing seemed to be based on a bunch of old stories with no more evidence than elves or faeries. And that was always the crux of my issue with their religion, and one they could never argue past.

    When it came to my kids, they have been raised with my complete lack of belief and my wife being agnostic. We spend our Sunday mornings sleeping in and not going to any sort of church/temple/forest altar. Though, that last might happen, if it's ruins at the end of a nice hike. My parents never expressed any disapproval and the lack of religion was never an issue. Technically, my mother is still kicking about and could suddenly go off the deep end, though I strongly doubt that's in the cards.

    At the same time, my wife and I had discussed religion before we had kids and what we might do in the event it became an issue. The simple answer was, "fuck 'em". I love my parents, but my kids come first. If my parents had decided to get stupid over us not indoctrinating our kids in their fairy tales, then I would have just removed them from my life a few years before death did it anyway. Sure, it would have meant the kids never knowing their grandparents. But, there are lots of assholes in this world, I don't see the need to personally inflict them all upon my children.

    The best thing you can do is talk to your partner and have a plan. I would say that, if you expect it to be a point of contention with your parents, you might want to talk with them about your views on religion before it gets to that point. It doesn't need to be anything confrontational, just be up front and say, "I don't believe what you do". You don't need to go on a Dawkins style, "your religion sucks and you are morons for believing it." Just make it clear that you don't believe. It's still entirely possible to have a warm, loving relationship with folks who don't believe as you do. It just requires that each side treats the other with basic human decency and respect.

  • I don't know, because my parents were irreligious too. My dad was an atheist, and my mum is agnostic. She has some spiritual beliefs, but has no religious beliefs or belief in deities.

  • Both of my parents, as I grew up in the 80s, were not religious. I did go to Sunday school at the behest of my grandparents who were all quite religious, but I never believed in any of the beliefs they were peddling. I can completely understand the need to believe in something, as the alternative is existential dread. As I wind down my life, heading to a void, I don't find that discomforting. I don't find all of history before I was born discomforting, so why would I find all of history after I die discomforting?

42 comments