Topics Children

Question How should parents bring up their children in the cases of: 1) Parents with some religious faith or other 2) Parents who are atheist or agnostic 3) Parents who are familiar with critical thinking and who may or may not be religious 4) Parents thrown, maybe unintentionally, into parenthood without any advice on how to bring up a child. Parenthood is the greatest responsibility imaginable. What do philosophers do in such cases? Keep abreast of the latest child-rearing theories or follow their own agenda which would worry me in the case of 1), particularly?

Accepted:
May 15, 2007

Comments

As both a parent and philosopher, the question you raiseabout appropriate religious upbringing is one I thought about quite a bit as mychildren, now 19 and 22, grew up. The heart of your four-part question is this:How, if at all, should the parents’ religious convictions influence thereligious development of their children? While the influence of teachers, friends, and the general culture on achild’s religious outlook is very great, the religious (and here I includenon-religious) upbringing by parents or the primary caregivers, whetherintentional or not, is fundamental. Itcertainly warrants careful consideration by parents and prospective parents leadingup to and throughout the period of their children’s formative years, and evenbeyond. I would argue that if there is aright answer to your question, it is the sameanswer for all four of the scenarios you raise.

The approach I’ve tried to follow is that one should educateone’s children about the whole range of religious beliefs, practices, andinstitutions. That can include bringing one’s children in contact withreligious practices, such as services and ceremonies, but it also includesproviding children with the history of the various religions of the world, aswell the culture and politics of those religions. At the same time, in order toultimately be in a position to evaluate this information, children need todevelop their thinking and reasoning skills as well. The nature and quality of one’s generaleducation is also very important. This is clearly a tall order, and no oneshould expect to be able to accomplish it in anything like a complete andcomprehensive manner. Still, it is an ideal worth tilting toward. One’s children should have the relevantinformation and reasoning skills to ultimately make their own decisions aboutmatters of religion. It should be possible to do this while parents continue toexpress and act on their own convictions relating to religion, bearing in mindthat parents’ actions can have a particularly profound influence on the child.

At the start of his Meditationson First Philosophy (1641) Descartes notes that he was a child beforebecoming an adult, and that as a result, many of the beliefs he acquired werenot the result of well-informed rational reflection, but largely the influenceof his education and upbringing. He resolves to meditate on all his pastbeliefs and determine whether any of them can be established as certain. These beliefs includehis beliefs about God. While Descartes didn’t canvass the diversity ofreligions in the world at his time, he did attempt to use careful reason andreflection to determine what he ought to believe. Descartes’ example suggeststhat determining what one ought to believe, both about religion or anythingelse for that matter, is a life-long pursuit, one which we can prepare childrenfor by educating them as critical thinkers and questioners.

Another philosopher from later in the modern period ofphilosophy well worth reading is David Hume. Almost all of Hume’s writings relate in one way or another to religiousbelief, but the work most relevant is his DialoguesConcerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. Hume treatsreligion as a natural phenomenon which we can study and analyze as such. Whathe calls “natural religion” is as much a phenomenon of the natural world as arethe flora and fauna. A contemporaryphilosopher influenced by Hume is DanielC. Dennett, whose recent book Breakingthe Spell (2006) argues for the importance of a scientific understanding the influenceof religion on human behavior. For anoverview, a recent lecture by Dennett which treats the very issue you’veraised, is available at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/94.

While I’ve suggested that parents should strive to bring itabout that their children develop in such a way that they ultimately can maketheir own decisions about what, if any, religion to adopt, it’s clear that thisis not an easy thing to do. For many parents, religious beliefs areclosely intertwined with other central moral, political, and social, estheticand even scientific beliefs. This isalso true of friends, teachers, and others with whom the child comes incontact. When my daughter was in grade school, in a conversation with two otherchildren, one child asked the second, “Where do you go to church?” The secondreplied: “We don’t go to church, we go to synagogue.” The first student then asked my daughter thesame question. My daughter replied: “We don’t go to church.” So the first childinquired further: “Ah, so you go to synagogue!” My daughter replied: “No, we gomostly to restaurants.”