I grew up in a Catholic household. My mother was raised Baptist but converted to Catholicism shortly after marrying my father. If the term “Holy Roller” could be applied to Catholics, this would describe my parents. They volunteer at the church, participate in the mass, bring communion to the housebound, and never miss a weekend mass.

In my mid-20s, I came out as an atheist. My family isn’t known for it’s tolerance, so my skepticism and loathing for religion doesn’t go over well at holiday reunions. Usually I’m the butt of jokes (my dad gave me a “I LOVE GOD” yo-yo one Christmas), or the subject of “her soul is going to hell” head shaking.

So, all of this backstory is leading to an exchange that took place not too long ago.

During a visit, my mom sneezed. My eldest daughter (then about three) said, “Excuse me!” only to have my mom correct her. “No, sweetie. Say, ‘God bless you.’” My daughter dutifully repeated it and I felt my spine straighten.

I turned to my mom. “Please don’t teach her to say that. That’s not something I want her to say.”

First, my mom tried to rationalize the teaching, and then she launched into her religious tirade. “Well, what if you’re wrong? You were baptized and your daughters weren’t. So, if you’re wrong, then you’ll be in heaven and your daughters won’t.”

Where to even begin?

I tried to remain level-headed, but the exchange did make me angry. I love my mom dearly, but she is a religious zealot. Which is fine. I just don’t want her beliefs influencing my kid. At the time, I think I made a few snide remarks about a big cocktail party in the sky when we die and then left the room. (Hey, if atheists need a poster child, I’m not it.)

I want my kids to discover religion on their own, through careful research and investigation when they are old enough to make sense of it all. I don’t want it shoved down their throat from birth. But, how do I not cause a rift with my parents in the meantime?

So, if you have religious parents, have their views ever influenced your kids? If so, how did you handle it?

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This routine took place during a “World of Dance” competition and the internet is abuzz with outrage over the bawdy moves and risqué costumes. While talented, the dancers do sort of look like…well, women who dance for a living--and I’m not talking about at the Met. Two of the parents made an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America to defend the video. They say it was taken out of context and never meant to be viewed by millions of strangers. Apparently, this type of routine is normal, according to the parents.

What bothers me, other than this lame explanation, is the crowd reaction. The bumping and grinding get the biggest cheer from the crowd, which surely is made up of kids, parents and other adults. It’s all just so weird to watch. But, are we overreacting?

Yes, the girls dance in a sexually suggestive manner, but they won’t automatically become promiscuous later in life. That assumption would be ridiculous. I took a lot of dance classes as a young girl and we had recitals and performances. The costumes probably were a little more bathing suit-like than burlesque, but still pretty form fitting. Still, I don’t remember doing moves like this. Not because I couldn’t do them (I couldn’t) but because I shouldn’t. Like Chris Rock said, just because you CAN drive with your feet doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Just because an 8-year old can shake her moneymaker doesn’t mean she should.

So, I don’t fault the girls. The song is catchy and they are clearly great dancers. Long-term harm? Most likely none. But, I’m wondering what kind of parents think this is normal? What world these parents have immersed themselves in where this is age appropriate?

Or, am I just out of touch with what “age appropriate” means?

Let’s hear it, moms and dads out there. Weigh in on what your reaction was….

Atheism is not this cold, arbitrary, removed thought process or ideology that promotes immortality or unethical behavior, as so many people think. In fact, atheism generally includes quite an extensive set of rational beliefs that just about everyone can agree with (or at least not disagree with); the general public just doesn’t know enough about it, and they have a lot of disinformation and misinformation to sort through in order to come to some sort of a conclusion that’s based on fact.

And I am worried a bit about how to explain to my now-16-month-old daughter, as she gets older, exactly what Mom and Dad believe, why we believe it, and why we so often seem to disregard the beliefs of other people she encounters, especially the beliefs repeated by their children.

Children are amazingly insightful and intuitive. I’ve met very few children who couldn’t sense discontent when adults around them were trying to mask it. And I’ve met very few children who aren’t really listening to every little thing you say even when you think they’re not. (Perhaps this is evolution in one of its finer moments.) So when my daughter, Lulu, comes into contact with someone who tells her that a god is real and if she doesn’t believe she’ll go to hell, or when one of the kids in her class says to her that her kitty may have died but is in heaven, I know I have to say more than just “Oh, we don’t believe that, sweetie. Here, finish your dinner.”

Because that’s not true! Who is the “we” here? Your dad and I? No, we don’t, but you might. Really. Does it make sense to you? Do you think it’s possible? What evidence do you have? Do you think you need evidence to come to a conclusion about something like this? And if not, why not?

We’re rational people. We’re not closed-minded, but we’re also not so open-minded that our brains fall out. We encourage critical thinking. In fact, I want nothing more than to encourage critical thinking in my child, because regardless of where it leads her, it will always guide her.

For just as the parents who teach faith as fact to their children acknowledge that the child will most likely repeat it to other children, our children will repeat, in some form, our responses. Civility is key here, but misunderstanding in this kind of situation can so easily happen, especially with such vested interests in these kinds of beliefs.

So I ask the rational parents out there—all of you: atheists, theists, nontheists, and anyone in between—how have you handled a situation in which your child was confronted with faith as fact? What do you do? How do you explain it? What advice can you give other parents who really need some guidance on how to confront this problem?

Yep, you read that right. Take them and leave them. Alone.

Lenore explains it best in her blog:

The crime rate in America is back to where it was in the early ’70s. Crime was going up then, and it peaked around 20 years later. By the mid ’90s it was coming down and continues to do so. So the strange fact — very hard to digest — is that if YOU were playing outside in the ’70s or ’80s, your kids today are safer than you were! I know it doesn’t feel that way. In fact, here’s an interesting poll about how the majority of people feel crime is going up when actually its going down. But anyway, the point is:

Most of us used to play outside in the park, without our parents, without cell phones, without Purell or bottled water and we survived! Thrived! We cherish the memories! And if you believe the million studies that I’m always publishing here, kids are healthier, happier and better-adjusted if they get to spend some time each day in “free play,” without adults hovering.

I know there will be shrill voices insisting, “Predators are gonna love this holiday!” but keep a level head. Crime is down. Awareness is up. There is safety in numbers, which means getting kids outside again, together. This won’t happen until we actually start DOING IT.

She makes a great case about how we (Americans) are hovering over our kids too much. Let them play outside! Have you walked around in your neighborhood recently? I have, and I don’t see what I remember from MY childhood, which was a bunch of kids running around playing games together. We played hide-n-seek, kick the can, Red Rover, and more. Do kids still play those games outside?

I’m JUST as guilty as the next paranoid mom. But, I think I know why. When I was in elementary school, a girl in the grade above mine was raped and murdered on her way home from school. I knew her well and was friendly with her family. Did it traumatize me? You bet. And, our community changed the very day that happened. Parents kept their kids home after that day. (The murderer was never caught, so that didn’t help relieve parental anxiety.) There was a definite shift in the way kids were treated. No more walking home from school…no more playing outside. It’s sad, really, because another incident never happened and the kids were the ones to suffer.

But, as Lenore herself says, “Free-Range Kids never says there is no risk in the world, only that the risk is small and worth taking, as it always has been. The trade-off is kids who make up games, who solve problems, who discover nature and get moving (to coin a phrase). Kids who don’t need a screen to entertain them. Playing outside, on their own, is what kids all over the world do. We have forgotten how vital and wonderful it is.”

So, let’s embrace this day and get our kids back outside in neighborhoods.

[Via Motherlode / NYTimes]

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Widescreen messes up our blog format, so please click the link and be prepared–very emotional message! Amazing writing and directing.

So here’s the reality: I am childfree. That means that I have no children…by choice.

Those of us who identify as childfree use this term instead of ‘childless’ – because ‘childless’ implies there is a lack of something in our lives. People without ferrets wouldn’t identify themselves as ‘ferretless.’

Childfree does not mean that I hate children. I like older children. I just don’t want any of my own. Very smart people look at me like I have two heads if I ever say that I don’t really like babies, so I rarely bring it up anymore. Saying that I don’t like cats but I don’t kill cats either also does not help.

She goes on to list the most common ignorant reactions by people who don’t believe her when she says she isn’t interested in reproducing:

1. “You’ll change your mind.” I am nearly 35 years old. I’m pretty sure that 1) I know my own mind at this point, and 2) Don’t you think that if I wanted children, it would have happened by now? Other CFers prefer to say: “When did you know you wanted children? You’ll change your mind.”

I’m running into similar assumptions–and a similar entitlement people seem to feel about announcing their expert opinions on my personal life–with regard to the expectation that since I’ve recently produced one child, another one must be on the way soon.

See, it’s not enough to pop just one out. Everybody wants to know, when am I having the next one?

It’s not my friends or family who would say the most troubling things. The truly surprising remarks come out of the mouths of my coworkers. Cultural assumptions run deep, so I try not to believe people are simply rude, but slightly misguided. But imagine yourself in my shoes….

I really don’t think I could love my son more. I’m completely dazzled by him. I knew I would love my kid, but jeez, what a kid! I can’t believe how lucky I got. But I find I am also loving the growing independence I have as he gets to be a toddler. I enjoy working, and I have to find time for writing. Throw in the second great depression and some serious job insecurity for my family, the fact that my husband and I got started on the whole baby making thing late, and more than anything else, this growing gut feeling that we both share that tells us that our family is perfect the way it is, and there you have it. We probably can’t afford another child, but for us, that is more of a relief than a tragedy. We’re not really anxious to have another child. And shouldn’t you be excited about any child? Just because you have one, does that make you more prepared for another one? It seems like a cataclysmic change that we’re honestly not eager to make, and our age means we’re basically deciding to stop at one–barring any unforseen accidents.

So in answer to the surprisingly intrusive question about whether I’m having a second child soon, I’d love to say, “Not interested. I’m very happy with just one child, and it worked out that way, so I’m stoked! Yay me!” But that doesn’t seem to be the right answer.

Here are the things I’ve heard at work.

From one of my supervisors, who also recently had a baby: “Have you ever met an only child? Aren’t they awful?” This was his way of saying that he and his wife plan on having a second child. Replace any minority for “only child” and you realize how terrible this sounds. Yet he felt comfortable saying it casually.

From another coworker: “My mother said never have just one baby. You should have another one.”

No, I’ve never met this coworker’s mother, but she seems to know me.

I’ve learned that the only acceptable response to anyone forward enough to ask whether we’re having another baby is simply, “Well, we’ll see.” That’s all. It’s short, dismissive, open ended enough to satisfy any agenda, and it completely deflects any need to defend my own positive feelings about having just one kid.

Friends of mine who’ve also decided to stick with one child report similar pressures and probing questions from near strangers.

I don’t need to make a crusade out of my daily interactions with people. I’m not on a mission to convince the world that having only one child is valid. Screw the world. When it comes to stuff like this, I’m mostly pretty private–er, except for the writing it all on the blog thing. You know, we make an exception there.

But I do find it very interesting that I’m somewhat in the closet, in some situations, about wanting a small family. I sort of follow a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Except that I’m always getting asked. So I just tell in the vaguest way possible. And that’s the most interesting thing–that people feel entitled to ask.

“Are you going to have more?”

“Are you going to try for a girl?”

“When are you having another baby?”

I’m surprised people don’t stop to think that these might be painful questions for someone going through secondary infertility. Having known so many people who struggled with this, that’s the first issue that would stop me from asking such a personal question. I wouldn’t want to ambush a woman with that kind of emotional pain.

However, it’s certainly not the case with me that I’m trying and failing to have a second child. My husband and I are just realizing, as we get close to two years after the first, that we’re kind of thinking more about getting a dog than getting pregnant again. We got rid of our glider, we’re giving away the baby clothes, and while there’s a little doubt, mostly, we’re happy with three of us. Life’s good.

I suppose that’s another possible answer, but I’ll stick with, “We’ll see,” for now. It’s more polite, anyway, than, “None of your beeswax!”

The wonderfully insightful Lenore Skenazy (of Free Range Kids) argues that we’re overdoing it. Our kids don’t need us to jump through hoops to keep them entertained. Let THEM do it themselves.

You must play with your kids is so ingrained that we feel terrible when we’re bored sick by the idea of pouring another imaginary cup of tea. But maybe, like most pain, that boredom is trying to tell us something: Kiddie games are for KIDS. They really don’t need us!

No one is saying to neglect your kids. There are times for museums, classes, swim lessons, and games of Chutes and Ladders with Dad. However, it’s also important to let children do their own thing without an adult giving direction. Sometimes we forget that.

So, thanks to Lenore for the reminder!

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Whether or not spanking equates with dumber kids is not known, and may never be known. That’s because the only way to truly show cause and effect would be to follow over time two groups of kids, one randomly assigned to get spanked and another who would not get spanked.

Obviously, that sort of study would not be palatable for anyone involved.  So the author of this article did a good job of making it clear that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.  Way to be.  That said, here’s what the study did find:

[Murray] Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids’ IQs initially and then four years later.

Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.

The results, he said, were statistically significant. And they held even after accounting for parental education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors that could affect children’s mental abilities.

Having it made it clear that a causation can’t be proven, the article does go on to say, okay, well, let’s just suppose there is a cause and effect relationship going on here.  How would that work exactly?  First up is the idea that maybe spanking induces a trauma that affects cognitive skills.  I always find that sort of thinking to be a bit hard to swallow.  It seems to me that while out and out abuse might affect cognitive ability, a little swat here and there wouldn’t really make too much of a difference.  But maybe that will turn out to be the case.

A more likely explanation to my mind, if there is indeed a causal link, might be this one:

By using hitting rather than words or other means of discipline, parents could be depriving kids of learning opportunities. “With spanking, a parent is delivering a punishment to get the child’s attention and to get them to behave in a certain way,” said Elizabeth Gershoff who studies childhood development at the University of Texas, Austin. “It’s not fostering children’s independent thinking.”

Of course, I only agree with this statement because it appeals to my own sense of what is right as a parent.  I would never resort to hitting, but I will say, “Please don’t bite mommy,” about 70 times.  And it actually finally started to work around try 67.  Now we’re moving on to, “Please don’t bite your friends at daycare.”

The most likely explanation of all:

And then there are genes, as some kids are just born smarter than others.

This last was actually the first thing that popped into my mind.  When I looked at studies about breast feeding, the claim that it could raise a child’s IQ by seven points (or that formula feeding lowers IQ by seven points–if you’d care to look at the situation that way) kept coming up.  And of course, it’s a claim that just can’t be proven, because the biggest determiner of a child’s intelligence is the parents’ intelligence, and breast feeding as a behavior is impossible to separate from other confounding factors like class, socio-economic status, etc.

This spanking study claims to have isolated just the behavior, but since that is extremely difficult to do, I am somewhat skeptical.  Still, it’s enjoyable to read an article that didn’t exaggerate the claims of the study.  I anticipate that this same study will be quoted often in more simplistic terms all over the media.

So here’s the question – what can we do to make skepticism more family-friendly? What suggestions would we have for conference organizers, such as the JREF, when it comes to reaching out to parents and their children? Or, do you think things are fine as they are?

There seems to be three schools of thought by the commenters. Our choices so far:

a. Make cons like TAM family friendly, by including some or all of the following options: provide child care, include workshops and presentations for children, and/or provide workshops for adults on how to be a skeptical parent, or raise skeptical kids.

b. Make a whole new con for families, or one just for kids and teens, like a TAM Jr.

c. Forget the whole thing, there shouldn’t be any kids at skeptical meetings.

So, I’m wondering how our readers feel about this? Your opinion might depend on several factors, such as whether you are a parent, whether your kids are young or grown, and even if you’ve ever been to a conference like TAM before.

I’m leaning between choices a and b. I love the idea of a huge meeting with other skeptics, where I get to meet some of the professionals in the field, make new friends, learn more about skeptical topics I am interested in, and also get to bring my kids and know that they are being cared for, entertained, and are learning about skepticism, critical thinking and science! That’s a dream vacation. Heck, I’d even be willing to help lead some of the activities for the kids!

However, does that mean TAM needs to change? Or would it be better to create a new conference for families, teens, and children?

I personally am all for raising skeptical kids. I want them to learn critical thinking and other skills to help them wade through all the woo-woo there is in the world. I absolutely can do some of this at home, in what I teach them and what I give them to read and to watch. I can also do this by taking them with me to Camp Inquiry. But I think it is time to offer more to our little skeptics.

So, how can we make skeptic’s meetings, and skepticism in general, family and kid friendly?

Input please!

Richard Dawkins is subsidising the camp which will offer children aged eight to 17 the chance to sing along to John Lennon’s Imagine and have lessons in evolution.

The five-day camp, based in Somerset, promises to be ‘beyond belief’ – the event’s motto – and will rival traditional faith-based breaks run by the Scouts and church groups.

It’s great to have this option for children. It’s another place that can help teach our kids, according to Dawkins, to “think for themselves sceptically and rationally.”