Children, Choosing Their Religion

[cbayer]

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/children-choosing-their-religion/

January 3, 2013, 1:00 pm
By KJ DELL'ANTONIA

The fastest-growing religious affiliation in the United States is no religion at all. That has meant an increase in parents raising their children outside of the community provided by a church or synagogue. For Katherine Ozment, writing for Boston magazine, it also meant soul searching because, as she writes:

As ambivalent as I am about organized religion, I recognize there is something to it. Participation in a religious community has been correlated with everything from self-esteem and overall hopefulness to the avoidance of substance abuse and teen pregnancy. So I worry: Am I depriving my children of an experience that will help shape their identities in a positive way and anchor them throughout their lives?

In “Losing Our Religion,” Ozment (raised Protestant, but with a husband raised Jewish) traces her journey through explorations of secular humanism and Unitarian Universalists to an ultimate acceptance that while she and her husband may have been successfully raised in their respective religions, their children didn’t need to have the same experience. But it’s a rueful acceptance — and that rue is unnecessary. There’s nothing wrong with raising children outside of a religious tradition, and that upbringing doesn’t preclude them from being part of a community or later finding a community of their own.

Ozment’s reporting takes her to a Unitarian youth group, where one of the teenagers asks her, “Why haven’t you given your kids religion?” Caught up in the moment, and an appreciation of this hugging, grounded, happy group of young people, she sputters excuses.

Asked the same question, I’d have a different answer: because there’s no one religious community that everyone in our family will feel welcome in, and we have faith that our children will find their own way to the community they need, religious or not. (Though Ozment mentions families who choose to attend churches or synagogues for community’s sake, while glossing over any differences of belief, she also glosses over the difficulty that compromise would present for families like hers, and mine, where the very roots of those beliefs are in conflict with one partner or the other’s cultural identity.)

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[cleanhippie]

1. And this is what gives me hope for Humanity. Parents refusing to indoctrinate their children.

And instead, teaching them how to think (not what to think) so that they may make those decisions for themselves.

Reason. More and more are starting to get it.