When I first found out I was pregnant, I was elated. My husband and I tried for about 6 months before the baby-making miracle finally occurred. However, looking down at the double pink lines was not as joyous as I had envisioned. I was actually somewhat nervous.

No. I was really nervous.

I grew up in Pennsylvania in a very—and I mean very—Catholic family. I was raised Catholic, baptized Catholic, received all the sacraments, went to Catholic school, attended CCD classes, and I attended church every week—twice—until I was 18.

I moved to South Carolina about 2 and a half years ago to further my career. I now live on the Buckle of the Bible Belt in Upstate SC, home to the most churches and dive bars in the tri-state area.

Oh, and I’m an atheist. So’s my husband.

You can imagine why I was nervous looking at the pregnancy test. Oh sure, I jumped up and down with feverish joy at the prospect of having a child, put all my gin away, and has my husband hide my cigarettes, but I was simultaneously terrified of raising that child religion-free in an area and family that are saturated in faith-based belief.

At the first ultrasound, the embryo looked like a bean, so it received the nickname “Bean.” At 20 weeks, I found out I was having a girl. I still call her Bean. I also still wonder, after these 7 and a half months of pregnancy, What if Bean doesn’t share my thoughts on faith as she gets older? Will I be able to handle that? Will she “go to the dark side”? Is it “the dark side”?

There are so many ways I can answer these questions, but I think it’s best to start out abstract and become more concrete as I think this out.

It is absolutely essential to teach children religion as cultural expression and to instill in them a proper meta-ethic from an early age. There can be no denying this. Religious ideologies saturate our cultures, and as such, it is important that children recognize and understand this. Children must learn how to act ethically, and they have to learn about what religion is, but religion is certainly unnecessary for a person to have a strong ethical and moral foundation.

In the same vein, it is also important for children to develop critical-thinking skills. As such, it is the parent’s responsibility to maintain a safe distance for the child from religious indoctrination and to let the child know that there is no empirical evidence whatsoever for a deity’s existence. This means that people choose to believe in unfalsifiable concepts, like a god, for no other reason than that they want to.

But is that “too biased”? Not from my perspective. I have seen no evidence to the contrary. But I don’t want to be a perpetrator of what I’m trying to keep my daughter away from: indoctrinate her with personal bias. I want to eradicate personal bias if at all possible. (I’m an idealist.)

My concern is that faith-based indoctrination has severe negative ramifications on both children and adults. Teaching children faith as fact is mental child abuse. It stifles creativity, hinders critical thought, opens the door for children to accept logical fallacies as truth, and most likely leads to a “crisis of faith” (read: identity deconstruction) later in life. What’s more, once one allows (or encourages) a child’s evolving reasoning process to digress into a faith-based, authoritarian pursuit, he or she practically closes the door to the spontaneous pursuit curiosity, one of humanity’s fundamental teaching tools. I could never allow that in my home, and I would never want that for my child. I went through that identity deconstruction, and for those of you who have too, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Bean may very well develop a different belief system than my own. It’s quite possible given that the first glance at most religions paints a picture of niceness, fuzzy fluff, bubbles, and glitter (Let’s face it. Which is better to hear? “Sparky is dead, but we can remember all the good times we had with him.” “Sparky died, but he is in doggy heaven still chasing his tail, and yes, when you die, you’ll see him again.”). But at the heart of all dogma one finds it exclusionary and need- and ignorance-based. By that time, however, often the comfort trumps the truth. We have to prevent this for our children. They don’t deserve this.

I will certainly encourage Bean to explore and research other religions, but until she is old enough to critically think, I will do my best to stop any faith from being passed off to her as truth. A mother is supposed to protect her children from abuse, not administer it or be a purveyor of it.

But when Bean is older, Bean can believe whatever she chooses. That is the beauty and purpose of freedom. I only hope Bean will be able to differentiate fact from fiction and use reason as her primary moral compass. Isn’t that what every mom wants for her kid?