Committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting. We are variously critical rationalists, libertarians, home educators, attachment-parents, but we take our ideas where we find them.
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Stephen commented below on the importance of religious training to bringing up children.
I agree that religions are repositories of moral knowledge, and that it is important to pass that moral knowledge on (if anyone is interested, I had a long conversation about this with Elliot here. It's knowledge growth in action!). I also agree that knowing the stories of a religion can help us understand the culture in which we live, and many of the ways people behave towards each other. These are important things to pass on to our children.
The spiritual side of life - the appreciation of beauty, or of the wonder of the world, or learning to recognise moral goodness when we see it, or a sense of community with other people striving for the same goals, or a moment of meditation and appreciation of one's place in creation - these are all vitally important. But they needn't be passed on through religion. To catch them all in one go, I think you'd need to be in a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven's Eroica on top of a mountain on a clear day where you can see wilderness for miles and miles... no, that didn't include quite all of the aspects I mentioned. But you get my drift - Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow was inspirational for me - there is so much wonder involved in understanding the natural world that one needn't assign it to supernatural causes in order to be properly appreciative.
But I wouldn't want to immerse my child in Christianity, or any other religion, because of the funadmentally bad aspects of them. In short: tradition, authority and revelation are bad reasons to believe in something. I'll expand on that if anyone wants me to.
My hope is that parents can pass on good moral knowledge to their children, and also the cultural background of their society (and that might entail attending church occasionally, to enjoy the ritual and make connections with other musical, visual, linguistic etc aspects of the culture) but no, I do not think that children need religious training or indoctrination. Having introduced them to the stories of the judaeo-christian tradition, to the good moral knowledge of the tradition, and to the cultural norms of the tradition, a child can make hir own decision about the extent to which se wishes to immerse hirself (I say judaeo-christian because that is where the roots of the culture in which I live are).
Yankee Vulture left a comment about boundaries on the post two below this one, which made me think some more about the implications of parentally-imposed boundaries to behaviour.
One of the big things we learn as humans is how to interact with other people in productive ways – so that we get the information we want, so that we can negotiate easily, so that we can learn from them and have them learn from us. Any parent who does not help their child to develop the techniques of doing this is neglectful. On the importance of “civilized discourse”, we entirely agree.
But we disagree about the means of helping our children, I think. Rather than ordering my child to ‘be polite’, and punishing them if they are not (an artificial boundary - I don't know whether this is one that Yankee Vulture would impose, it's just one I picked at random), I would explore with my child the beneficial results of being polite (people like being treated nicely, and you are more likely to achieve whatever your intention was). Children are not stupid; they will appreciate practical help, hints and tips. Trying to make people be polite to each other as some sort of arbitrary convention is going to lead to all sorts of problems when the child decides to reject arbitrary conventions (and why shouldn’t they?).
I think it is important to look at the moments in our interactions with other people – with our children, our spouses, our friends, our own parents and siblings, complete strangers – and notice the points where we completely disregard the wishes and intentions of others. How do we justify our actions to ourselves? Because I’m the parent? Because I’m bigger? Because I have financial power over this person? Because they would rather obey me, despite it being contrary to what they want to do, because the alternative might jeopardise my love for them?
Are there not ways of interacting where both people get what they want? What this takes (Common preferences) is creativity, imagination, a gradual build up of trust, and the determination to build a relationship with children/parents/ whoever which acknowledges the autonomy and humanity of all parties involved.
The bit that really struck me in the comment was this: “If they want to scream and have a tantrum, fine, go for it, but not around me (in your room with the door closed)”. If someone is crying, there is probably a good reason. How does sending the child away and shutting the door help to solve whatever problem it is that the child does not have enough words to express? The one thing they’ll surely learn is that when something upsets them, or when they cannot solve a problem, parents are the last people who are likely to help.
Similarly, “When I come home at night… for at least 30 minutes, it's my wife and me in the living room and no kid allowed past the threshold”. Mightn’t it be rewarding to invite the 8-year-old in to start with, and have hir chill out quietly with a drink and snack, and hear about/tell about the day, and as the mood of that moment gets better established, to invite more of the children in to participate until after a few weeks, everyone can be happily and quietly sharing that special moment at the end of the working day? That’s if they want to. Maybe the little ones would rather be playing elsewhere sometimes. If parents talk with their children about what everyone has been doing and thinking, then both parents and children have a chance of learning together, and of ending up friends.
