My mother is fairly religious, and she occasionally offers to take the kids to Sunday school. We decline, but sometimes we go attend her church for Christmas and Easter or if she’s singing a solo. Our kids are 9 and 11 and are both familiar with Christianity, and have a general understanding of most other religions. We haven’t told them what to believe, but we explained what we believe and that everyone gets to choose what they believe. They know grandma is a Christian, and they know I’m not.

I know my mom is disappointed that we aren’t doing more to indoctrinate our kids, but she has enough faith in Jesus to reach them, and I have enough faith in them to make good decisions either way.

Just to add a view from someone living in a progressive-ish country:

Religion and differences of religion have never played a big part in my relations with anyone, nor am I aware it has affected anyone else towards me. There are very few fundamentalists here, so nobody seems to care all that much what you believe or don’t believe.

It’s strange that someone would worry about this. I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but most of my family are very deeply into religion. And my partner is priest by profession. Never has that played a role in our relations, and we do very openly talk about all this occasionally too. They are not trying to convert me, and I’m not trying to convert them. And if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction. All it takes is some understanding and empathy, and probably the humility to accept that any of us might be wrong, even one themselves. So nobody’s preaching to anyone, yet we can talk about these things very smoothly and openly if need be, like in regards to children and upbringing etc.

Disagreeing is healthy. Talking is healthy. Getting offended is not. Neither is trying to force anyone into anything, or even worse, unwarrantedly expecting something from someone.

So religion has played exactly zero part in this or anything else at least in my personal relations, or those who I know. I don’t think religion has anything to do with children either. Upbringing can be colorful and include everyone’s opinions and views, and the unique stuff just requires some open conversation and compromises from all parties, which is true for everything in life anyway.

I get to sleep in on Sundays. Otherwise it’s basically the same as how I was brought up.

I view religion as just an isolationist form of tribalism or in other words social networking. It is generally a miserly overall negative form of conservativism in social networking. It demands exclusive prejudice to various extents. It is a system of shaming. Shaming cannot motivate positive behavior. Shaming is only capable of creating a fear of getting caught. Therefore it is not even a real code of morality but instead only a code of authoritarian obedience and outsourcing of real philosophy, moral thought, and character depth.

It is natural for your folks to want their extended family to be a part of their tribe. In this vein, you need to reassure your family that they have a place in your life in meaningful ways. The trick is to never try to change your family through logic about their beliefs. These are the primary barriers that will only make your life harder.

Beliefs have no logical basis and arguing logic will only alienate you from their tribe. Humans struggle to reassess things they accepted as gullible children. Even those that are capable within their self awareness are often unwilling to disadvantage themselves substantially in life by abandoning their exclusively prejudiced social network that they were raised with as this defies the tribal survivalist instinct. It is important to understand that it is only possible to inspire curiosity, self awareness, and learning. No one can force someone else to learn, understand, or seek out accurate information. You can only change yourself and no one else. So break down the fundamental elements behind their complex social behaviors and use that understanding to address the issues and conflicts that they are not self aware of and where they create problems.

I’m atheist, used to be a very active Jehovah’s Witness, am now physically disabled and stuck living with my Witness family. It is very challenging for me to tip toe around their prejudice. I’m confident that, if I was not disabled, I could live an independent and happy life, but I wouldn’t really involve my family a whole lot. Heck I moved 2k miles away from them the first chance I had quite a long time ago. Back then I didn’t have the self awareness of the underlying psychology. Now I view all of my family’s interactions in this light of tribalism. I know they will be more prejudice when they are around certain people or after various religious events, and I don’t let their prejudice bother me. It is just tribalism and complex human social hierarchy manifesting in primitive behaviors. I don’t take offense at those behaviors any more than my cats fighting to be beside me for a little lunch food scrap. I also have my own ethics and character depth that is wholely independent of pressures from others. That independence makes it easy to turn conversations around and steer them when confronted by people that have no real moral depth and only parrot and shame.

I was lucky that, despite being somewhat religious, my parents were fine with me being an atheist. We would even debate the merits of religion and they did not have any issues with my questioning of their beliefs. Both were Lutheran and they had raised me in that tradition. I went to Sunday school, attended the Lutheran Catechism and reached the point of Confirmation. And that was right about the time I realized that the whole thing seemed to be based on a bunch of old stories with no more evidence than elves or faeries. And that was always the crux of my issue with their religion, and one they could never argue past.

When it came to my kids, they have been raised with my complete lack of belief and my wife being agnostic. We spend our Sunday mornings sleeping in and not going to any sort of church/temple/forest altar. Though, that last might happen, if it’s ruins at the end of a nice hike. My parents never expressed any disapproval and the lack of religion was never an issue. Technically, my mother is still kicking about and could suddenly go off the deep end, though I strongly doubt that’s in the cards.

At the same time, my wife and I had discussed religion before we had kids and what we might do in the event it became an issue. The simple answer was, “fuck 'em”. I love my parents, but my kids come first. If my parents had decided to get stupid over us not indoctrinating our kids in their fairy tales, then I would have just removed them from my life a few years before death did it anyway. Sure, it would have meant the kids never knowing their grandparents. But, there are lots of assholes in this world, I don’t see the need to personally inflict them all upon my children.

The best thing you can do is talk to your partner and have a plan. I would say that, if you expect it to be a point of contention with your parents, you might want to talk with them about your views on religion before it gets to that point. It doesn’t need to be anything confrontational, just be up front and say, “I don’t believe what you do”. You don’t need to go on a Dawkins style, “your religion sucks and you are morons for believing it.” Just make it clear that you don’t believe. It’s still entirely possible to have a warm, loving relationship with folks who don’t believe as you do. It just requires that each side treats the other with basic human decency and respect.

Both of my parents, as I grew up in the 80s, were not religious. I did go to Sunday school at the behest of my grandparents who were all quite religious, but I never believed in any of the beliefs they were peddling. I can completely understand the need to believe in something, as the alternative is existential dread. As I wind down my life, heading to a void, I don’t find that discomforting. I don’t find all of history before I was born discomforting, so why would I find all of history after I die discomforting?

my parents are too religious for me to have children. i will not bring a child into this world while religion is forced on anyone. i will not be having children (married; 40 years old)