PARENTING BOOK REVIEWS: My Not-So Little Library (Part 9)

It has been fun to go through my bookshelf and recall my favorites among all the parenting books I’ve read over the past 5+ years. I could go beyond the arbitrary eight that I’ve chosen to review (well, 9, considering two books tied for #7), but alas I’d like get back to my usual musings and rants.  So, without further ado, I bring you the last installment of my Top 8 Parenting Books.

Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief, by Dale McGowan, Molleen Matsumura, Amanda Metskas and Jan Devor.

First, I absolutely must credit my pal, Alessia Lane (please check her blog out!),* for turning me on to Dale McGowan’s first book, Parenting Beyond Belief, which she suggested I read when I was at a loss of how to approach some aspects of parenting as an atheist. That book blew my mind. I certainly recall passages that made me tear up with a feeling of “yes! this!!”. I think primarily because I finally felt like I had found some much needed camaraderie from atheist/humanist folks which have been overwhelmingly absent from my life. When I became a parent, the dichotomy felt even more glaring between us non-believers and everyone else who does believe in a higher being/god. I think this is because of things like certain rites of passage that take place during early childhood, like baptisms and communion (M’s dad and I were baptized/participated in communion, M is not/will not), and the ever present questions from well-meaning adults like “how will you explain what happens after death/how will you teach her to be a moral individual/what about Christmas (which we celebrate)/how will you explain how life, in general, came to be?” That book came into my life at such the perfect time, so thank you again, Alessia.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, then I read (and continue to refer to often) Raising Freethinkers. For any atheist/humanist/agnostic/non-believer parent out there, this book is a must read if not an “owner’s manual”. I say this because, as the book notes, 86% of Americans believe in God and 81% believe in heaven (69% believe in hell . . . which strikes me as odd, quite frankly, that the numbers would be different), though as the book points out the numbers of nonreligious folks continues to grow.  Regardless, this means that an overwhelming majority of society thinks differently than me and my kindred, and it will be visible and audible to varying degrees as M grows up. And while I am firm in my own thinking, I want to equip M with a set of tools that will serve her well on her own lifelong journey of figuring out the truth, be it by questioning authority (at least with respect with being told how to think or what to believe), analyzing all of the facts and information for credibility and coming to her own conclusions.

In fact, even if you are firmly committed to a particular religion or believe in a god, I strongly recommend this book anyway. That is, if you want your children to be able to think for themselves, and come to their own conclusions, not yours.

Here’s a passage from the book (which is virtually all Q&A style, a format that works well with this material and allows for later quick-reference as well) that highlights what I mean:

“Q: What’s wrong with simply raising my children as atheists? Why must I pretend that I think religion might also have valid answers?

A. Two different questions. Let’s dispense with the second one first. There is never a need for you to pretend about what you think. Quite the contrary: It is impossible to parent from a place of genuine integrity if you pretend to have convictions you don’t really have–or worse yet, pretend to have none at all. You will and should have an influence on your child’s own developing worldview, but influence and indoctrination are two different things. Only the former is good. . . . {so much good stuff in between in here but I can’t quote too much!} By the time she is old enough to begin searching for her own place in the world, it’s difficult for a labeled child to think objectively about the declaration she’s worn like a robe for as long as she can remember. If she decides to take it off, it becomes an emotionally charged act of defiance, a rejection of something given to her. And in some cases, the natural urge to separate from her parents can lead the teenager to throw it off because her parents gave it to her.”

(Above passage is directly quoted from Chapter 3 of Raising Freethinkers; bolding mine)

It’s passages like that which I read at a feverish pace, over and over, because they are so brilliant and on the mark about the importance of instilling critical thinking and the freedom to think for oneself in our children from very early on, really for any parent, much less the atheist ones, or families that have parents with differing (non)religious perspectives (which this book also addresses).

One important thing to note about this book: it encourages, if not demands, that all children become religiously literate—that is, having the “knowledge of religion, as opposed to the belief in it”.  As the book notes, even nonbelieving children need to be able to understand the context of the world around them, feel empowered, make their own informed opinion (for me, this reason is the most important) and avoid what the author of this chapter (Jan Devor) calls the “teen epiphany”.  She goes on to list a basic set of things that kids should eventually learn about (like basic Bible stories/characters, the basic tenets of the 5 major religions and the religious backgrounds of the child’s own extended families, including what us, as the child’s parents, do or don’t believe).  The book is full of books, websites, movies (yes, even including Heaven Can Wait, Fiddler on the Roof and The Ten Commandments) and other resources that will allow for parents to encourage critical thinking alongside religious literacy. It offers activities to do with children, role playing exercises and how to incorporate non-religious rituals into family life.

The range of topics (and list of additional resources for further explanation) is vast, including autonomy over one’s own body and sexual activity, sexual orientation, how to help your children develop emotional intelligence, personal strength and creativity, creating new rites of passage (including for death) and family traditions, how to reframe religiously rooted holidays in secular ways, how to discuss life and death without a religious context, and (perhaps increasingly important for me these days) finding and creating a community of like minded individuals (all while “pushing that sense of connectedness out across as many boundaries as possible”, that is, with folks who think differently).  The book ends with a list of worthwhile blogs to follow, six things that “the Religious (Generally) Do (Much) Better Than the Nonreligious”, a great list of films (with  age-appropriate ranges noted) exploring religious literacy, coming of age issues and death/loss, and many additional appendices and resources not covered elsewhere in the book.

At its core, the theme of this book (and as the title proclaims) is how to develop critical thinking skills in your child so that he or she can form her own opinion, yes certainly about religion, gods and the like, but really about anything throughout life. That it’s a process that shouldn’t end just because the child’s parents “said so”.

I want that kind of thinking to take place in M’s mind—and, indeed, it most certainly has this year in particular because she started attending a religiously backed preschool in September, and so conversations about Jesus, prayers (actually this one seems to be triggered by one episode of The Brady Bunch rather than school), God, Santa, saviors and everything in between are a part of our conversations almost on a daily basis. With Easter approaching, I am certain it will lead to more questions, which I always welcome. I can see her starting to work this out in her own mind, and the fact that she at least intrigued by the notion of a “higher being” is palpable on some days, sometimes admittedly uncomfortably so for me. But, because of the advice in this book, I stay the course and encourage her to find the answers herself (despite knowing my opinions, which she does) by looking around her at all the information she has at her disposal and yet to come. If I want to raise a freethinker, this is what I must do, even it when it is hard and it would be so much easier to tell her what to think based on my own 39+ year journey in forming my worldview. At the end of the day, she knows that both of her parents will love her no matter what she ultimately figures out for herself, and no matter how many twists and turns her thinking may take, just as long as she remembers to ask questions along the way.

* Alessia and I grew up for a short time together, neighbors in fact, in the Catskills of New York, until I moved to Massachusetts in sixth grade (1986). Sadly, we lost touch . . . that is, until the miracle of Facebook brought us back together again. How happy I was to see that we had even more in common than the rollerskating and Barbies when we were growing up. The woman is awesome, and you should check out her blog where she tells it like it is. Seriously, the only thing wrong with her is that she lives too far away from me.

Copyright (c) 2013 Kristen M. Ploetz