Title: Parenting Beyond Belief
Author: Edited by Dale McGowan
Pages: 304
Finished: December 21, 2017
Summary: A collection of essays by many freethinkers regarding their thoughts about raising secular humans. Covers many topics including religious literacy, death, wonder and science, thinking critically, and finding community.
Thoughts: I am an atheist. I was born an atheist, I was brought up by two atheist parents. I never attended a Christian church, though when I was in about third grade, my parents started taking us to a Unitarian Universalist church so we could gain some religious literacy that we didn't get from home. My husband was born an atheist (everyone is) but was brought up Methodist. When we got married, he was in a bit of a religious crisis - not really knowing what he believed. Lately, he's started calling himself an atheist.
We live in a world filled with a lot of hate for those who are different. People hate those who are different from them, whether those people happen to have a different faith, love different kinds of people, or come from different cultures. We live in a world where basic scientific fact is considered a matter of opinion and matters of opinion are considered basic facts.
We want more for our daughter. We want to raise her to understand how to think critically. We want to raise her to understand that people are people not matter where they're from, who they love, what they believe. We want her to understand that we have a lot more in common with each other than we have different. We want her to understand how the world works, how the various religious work etc. We basically want her to be able to think critically so that when she makes a choice about what she believes, we know she did it after thinking carefully about it and not because someone told her to.
This book was so helpful. It's not a parenting guide in the sense that they tell you "When your child is at this age, you do this." It's more of a "Every kid will ask you questions about death. As a secular parent who doesn't believe in an afterlife, this can be scary. Here are some things we found helpful in our household." That sort of thing. It's also FULL of resources. I borrowed this book from the library, but I'll likely purchase it so I have regular access to it. I will be adding his other book, Raising Freethinkers to my list as well.
And as an easter egg, the minister of the first UU church I ever attended was one of the contributors. This woman was only the minister for a short time while we were there before she moved on to another church, but in that time she had a profound impact on me. It was nice to see her name again.
We live in a world filled with a lot of hate for those who are different. People hate those who are different from them, whether those people happen to have a different faith, love different kinds of people, or come from different cultures. We live in a world where basic scientific fact is considered a matter of opinion and matters of opinion are considered basic facts.
We want more for our daughter. We want to raise her to understand how to think critically. We want to raise her to understand that people are people not matter where they're from, who they love, what they believe. We want her to understand that we have a lot more in common with each other than we have different. We want her to understand how the world works, how the various religious work etc. We basically want her to be able to think critically so that when she makes a choice about what she believes, we know she did it after thinking carefully about it and not because someone told her to.
This book was so helpful. It's not a parenting guide in the sense that they tell you "When your child is at this age, you do this." It's more of a "Every kid will ask you questions about death. As a secular parent who doesn't believe in an afterlife, this can be scary. Here are some things we found helpful in our household." That sort of thing. It's also FULL of resources. I borrowed this book from the library, but I'll likely purchase it so I have regular access to it. I will be adding his other book, Raising Freethinkers to my list as well.
And as an easter egg, the minister of the first UU church I ever attended was one of the contributors. This woman was only the minister for a short time while we were there before she moved on to another church, but in that time she had a profound impact on me. It was nice to see her name again.
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