Raising Freethinkers a Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief
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Raising Freethinkers A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief Dale McGowan Molleen Matsumura Amanda Metskas Jan Devor American Management Association New York ◆ Atlanta ◆ Brussels ◆ Chicago ◆ Mexico City ◆ San Francisco Shanghai ◆ Tokyo ◆ Toronto ◆ Washington, D.C. Special discounts on bulk quantities of AMACOM books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact Special Sales Department, AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Tel: 212-903-8316. Fax: 212-903-8083. E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.amacombooks.org/go/specialsales To view all AMACOM titles go to: www.amacombooks.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGowan, Dale. Raising freethinkers : a practical guide for parenting beyond belief / Dale McGowan ...[et al.]. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-1096-7 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-8144-1096-0 (pbk.) 1. Religious education of children. 2. Parenting—Religious aspects 3. Free thought. I. Title. BL2777.R4M34 2009 649'.7—dc22 2008042205 © 2009 Dale McGowan All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Man- agement Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Printing number 10987654321 Contents Preface v Acknowledgments xiii Chapter One The Inquiring Mind 1 Dale McGowan Chapter Two Living and Teaching Ethics in Your Family 33 Molleen Matsumura Chapter Three Secular Family, Religious World 67 Jan Devor Chapter Four The Physical Self 97 Amanda Metskas Chapter Five Ingredients of a Life Worth Living 129 Molleen Matsumura Chapter Six Celebrating Life 153 Jan Devor iii Contents Chapter Seven Death and Life 175 Dale McGowan Chapter Eight Finding and Creating Community 203 Amanda Metskas Chapter Nine The Grab Bag 233 Dale McGowan Appendix I: Recommended Films by Category 253 Appendix II: Lists of Principles 257 Index 000 iv Preface In April 2007, Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids With- out Religion was released. The first comprehensive book for nonreligious par- ents, PBB laid out a basic philosophy for nonreligious parenting in a wide variety of voices. The book fulfilled the promise of its preface to support and encourage nonreligious parents, but (also as promised) included relatively lit- tle in the way of practical advice. The sound you heard upon opening this book was the other shoe drop- ping. Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief is just that—a practical guide. You’ll find ideas and ponderings in these pages, but also specific answers to common questions and hundreds of activities and re- sources to make those ideas come alive. Along the way we will also address some of the larger questions about nonreligious parenting that have surfaced since the release of PBB, including the first and foremost: What exactly is nonreligious parenting? Vive la Différence—and the Common Ground Not long after the release of Parenting Beyond Belief, I received an email from a liberal Christian. She was a regular reader of my secular parenting blog, The Meming of Life, and she’d had it with me. Why, she asked, do I draw a line between “religious parenting” and “non- religious parenting”? Isn’t the kind of parenting I advocate—unbounded ques- tioning, a scientifically informed, evidence-based worldview, questioning of authority, rejecting the notion of “sinful thoughts,” developing moral judg- ment instead of simple rule following—isn’t all that just “good parenting”? Am I really saying that religious parents can’t do these things? v Preface There is nothing secular parents can do that religious parents positively cannot do, I replied, just as there is nothing that religious parents can achieve that we can’t. “So why make the distinction at all?” she asked.“Why describe something called ‘nonreligious parenting’ if it’s pretty much the same as good religious parenting?” The answer is this: Even though we can and often do end up pursuing the same ends, religious and nonreligious parenting really aren’t the same. There is a profound difference in the context, the space in which religious parenting and nonreligious parenting happen. Both secular and religious parents can raise kids to value fearless ques- tioning, think critically, question authority, and reject the idea of sin and the demonization of doubt. But the core principles of freethought encourage and support those values, while the core principles of religion discourage them. One lends itself to them; the other chafes against them. My hat is off to religious parents who encourage unrestrained doubt, ap- plaud fearless questioning, and reject appeals to authority. I admire their will- ingness to dissent from their group’s majority. Considering the current growth in Christian fundamentalism at the expense of more moderate versions, such religious parents are salmon swimming against a mighty current. At the core of traditional monotheistic religion are the ideas that doubt is bad, that certain questions are not to be asked, and that church and scripture carry some degree of inherent authority. But the most important message in her email is one too often overlooked by nonreligious and religious people alike: the fact that followers of progres- sive religion have far more in common with the nonreligious than they do with their more conservative and literalist coreligionists. Every time we dis- tinguish between ourselves and those conservative religious practitioners, we should make an equal effort to recognize our substantial common ground with those progressives. A particular strength of nonreligious parenting is that it can embrace sev- eral key human values without apology, values that religion has traditionally suppressed and feared. This embrace allows parents—gay or straight, single or partnered—to turn away from the dissonance of religion, to dance with their children in the light of knowledge, and to revel in questioning and doubt- ing as the highest human callings, rivaled only by love. vi Preface Finding Our Voice—and Each Other When I first approached agents and publishers with the idea of a book on non- religious parenting in 2003, I was confidently informed that no real audience existed for such a book. There was a book titled How to Be a Jewish Parent, serving the 2.5 percent of the U.S. population that is Jewish; another titled Ef- fective Islamic Parenting for the 1 percent that is Islamic; and even one called Raising Witches: Teaching the Wiccan Faith to Children for that 0.004 percent slice of the U.S. pie. But the 14.1 percent of the U.S. population that identify as nonreligious1 was still relatively invisible just a few years ago. That changed in October 2005 when Sam Harris’s The End of Faith hit number 4 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Six months later, there was little difficulty in finding a publisher for Parenting Beyond Belief. The book has found a large and receptive audience of parents, often grateful and sur- prised to find that they were not alone after all. I’ve heard it claimed that we’re in the midst of a “secular parenting re- naissance.” Dozens of new nonreligious parenting resources have come into being since the release of PBB in April 2007, including discussion forums, blogs, and local nonreligious parenting groups in cities including New York, Washington, DC, Raleigh, Portland (OR), Palo Alto (CA), Austin, Albu- querque, and Colorado Springs. But “renaissance” isn’t quite right. A renaissance is a rebirth—and non- religious parenting is not born again by either definition. It’s the birth of a nonreligious parenting movement we are witnessing. It’s not that nonreligious parenting is new, of course, but it’s only now that we are finding each other, forming a movement and a community, learning that we’ve been living all along in neighborhoods and cities filled with parents who are grappling with precisely the same questions we are. Even better, we’re finding a consensus on how best to answer those questions. The “Best Practices” Model Religion provides parents with answers. But on one parenting topic after an- other—moral development, sexuality, dealing with death, child discipline, avoiding substance abuse, and more—a growing body of research across mul- tiple disciplines shows that traditional religious answers often get it precisely wrong. It isn’t just a matter of “different strokes”—ignoring the best of our knowledge in favor of conservative religious practice often results in impaired vii Preface moral development,2 more dysfunctional behavior,3 equal or greater rates of teen pregnancy,4 a more confused attitude toward death,5 and equal or greater alcohol and drug abuse6 than scientifically informed secular approaches—a sobering pattern explored throughout this book. So it isn’t surprising that so many religious and nonreligious parents alike are walking away from these counterproductive ideas. But even as bad answers are discarded, the questions remain. In addition to searching out the best in- sights from research, nonreligious parents are turning to each other, building an informed and continuously tested consensus on the best practices for non- religious parenting. “Best practices” are practices that have been found most effective in a given field. In the absence of a single authority, nonreligious parents are developing their own set of best practices, informed by scientific research and shaped by their own experiences.