David Gendron (and I have no idea why I have to start every post with his name today) left a link to an article about a woman who is using her second-grade child as a weapon to battle against a minute of silence in Arkansas.
I think this is an example of a really horrible mother who is willing to sacrifice her small child just to promote her own beliefs. I hate this type of parents. We all know how I feel about religious fanatics, but there is a gazillion ways to fight them without involving children.
As we all know, I have many very passionate beliefs. But I’ll be damned if I ever use my own kid as a pretext to voice these opinions and make her an outcast at school or among her friends as a result.
I shared this before but I will do so again. It was only in adolescence that I discovered that my parents were passionately anti-Soviet. Before I grew up, they didn’t make me carry the burden of hating the place where I lived. So I enjoyed all of the books about little Lenin, all of the fuzzy Soviet cartoons, and the activities of young pioneers, and so on together with other kids. As you might have noticed, none of this prevented me from developing a healthy hatred of the USSR in adulthood.
So if my child’s friends are all crazy about Disney princesses, I will be, too. If they all love football and admire cheerleaders, I will do, too. If they are into bake sales, I will be into that. And if they decide to pray to whatever God they wish, I will only be supportive. When the kid grows up, s/he will have all the time in the world to decide how to feel about all these things.
It is a lot lot LOT less damaging to an 8-year-old to participate in group prayer to whomever than to be singled out as a weirdo by other kids.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have many good ideas today. Okay, another (not-so-great) one:
Homophobic parents are more dangerous than homosexual parents.
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Given that homosexual parents are just as dangerous or not dangerous as straight parents. . .
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Of course.
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“I think this is an example of a really horrible mother who is willing to sacrifice her small child just to promote her own beliefs. I hate this type of parents. We all know how I feel about religious fanatics, but there is a gazillion ways to fight them without involving children.”
I agree, but I have even more issues about the teacher’s behavior in this case.
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Everybody is being an idiot and nobody gives a toss about this little girl. “An 8-year-old atheist.” Seriously? She is 8. She is way too young to be an atheist, feminist, Christian, agnostic, Marxist, Libertarian, Republican, or anything of the kind. She is a small girl.
Idiots, idiots, idiots.
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The title is ridiculous, of course, but if no kid should be intimidated even though this kid is not “godly” enough, and teachers should not obey the orders.
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This is the perfect example of a kid bullied at school because she is bullied at home. Textbook case.
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no “if”.
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Identities are attributed on the basis of parental affiliations or something. Like I have said before much was — and is — ascribed to my identity on the basis of political and historical events that happened before I was born, of which I had no deep knowledge. I only later inferred that I was deemed negligent and/or offensive for not giving an account of “myself” (i.e. these historical and political events) when a request for one was implied.
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“Identities are attributed on the basis of parental affiliations or something.”
– Yes. And in this case, if the mother can’t step back and let the kid decide what to believe in such important issues, I can only imagine how she bulldozes her over in less crucial aspects of existence.
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How can she be to young to be an Atheist? Like everybody she was born one.
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I would believe that her atheism was sincere if she wasn’t a daughter of a person who uses her to combat imaginary school prayer. A normal mother would not make a big deal of a moment of silence which, by the way, can be used for perfectly legitimate pedagogic means. This one chose to create a brouhaha. Yes, I’m sure the kid has totally chosen all this.
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Atheist just means non-theist. The absence of a particular belief or set of beliefs. It is perfectly possible to have an absence of belief in a deity at 7 or 8. My daughter, for example, who was also bothered by other children at that exact age simply because she had no religion. We had to call the school for that exact reason and they took care of it. Imagine in the bible belt, it would be much worse! I became an atheist at about age 9 and have remained so ever since. I remember the exact thought process I went through to reach my conclusion too. I began my reflection upon turning 8 but it took me about a year to get there.
I still agree with your post, though, that it is wrong to use the child as a political weapon. I agree that if you live in a totalitarian system you should shield your child a bit, but I don’t think you should have to hide your beliefs from your child in the USA.
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” I agree that if you live in a totalitarian system you should shield your child a bit, but I don’t think you should have to hide your beliefs from your child in the USA.”
– The USSR in the 1980s was not all that more totalitarian than today’s US. It’s not about hiding beliefs. It’s about not offering an apocalyptic worldview that causes intense and life-long anxiety in a little creature who thinks it is really the end of the world and not just the parents’ posing.
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Ok. Then I don’t agree with you anymore. Sorry : ).
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It’s OK, I still like you. 🙂
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I do too. I don’t know why people get upset about disagreeing about marginal differences of opinion. That’s a sign of insecurity.
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” I don’t know why people get upset about disagreeing about marginal differences of opinion.”
– And this reminded me of a story I wanted to share in a blog post. 🙂
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My parents hated and looked down on Southern California, where I grew up and this is part of why I am such a patriotic angelena. It is terrible burden to have miserable parents.
I am glad they did not hide their political and religious beliefs, though, it was a relief since almost everyone else was Bible Belt and utterly insane.
In USSR of course one cannot express anti-Soviet sentiment to one’s children who might reveal this. I wouldn’t do it and it would not be out of interest in making life nice for the child, it would be out of raw self-preservation.
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“It is terrible burden to have miserable parents.”
– Very true.
“In USSR of course one cannot express anti-Soviet sentiment to one’s children who might reveal this.”
– I know crowds of people who did this, and raised bitter miserable kids who were like old people at age 10.
“I wouldn’t do it and it would not be out of interest in making life nice for the child, it would be out of raw self-preservation.”
– This was the 1980s. Nobody suffered any persecution for this any longer. After Stalin died in 1953, there were no repressions.
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The mother is full of crap. An eight year old with a political or strong religious position at that age? I suspect a bit of indoctrination going on here from an abusive parent. Shame. Get the heck out of Arkansas rather than using your child as a political pawn.
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How is atheism a strong religious view? It is the lack of a religious view.
The idea that indoctrination is the sign of an abusive parent is insightful, so why do we allow religious parents to indoctrinate their children?
If 8 is too young to have a religious view then why do the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Roman Catholic church (amongst others) make a big deal out of first communions at the age of 7 or 8?
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“The idea that indoctrination is the sign of an abusive parent is insightful, so why do we allow religious parents to indoctrinate their children?”
– Because children have less rights than domestic animals.
“If 8 is too young to have a religious view then why do the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Roman Catholic church (amongst others) make a big deal out of first communions at the age of 7 or 8?”
– Because they are freakazoids. I’m sure you’ve heard that this is not the worst thing Catholics do to children.
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“The mother is full of crap. An eight year old with a political or strong religious position at that age? I suspect a bit of indoctrination going on here from an abusive parent. Shame. Get the heck out of Arkansas rather than using your child as a political pawn.”
– Exactly. The child is already being bullied, yet the mother cares nothing about that. Because it is SO much more important that the kid doesn’t sit silent for a minute.
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// Yes. And in this case, if the mother can’t step back and let the kid decide what to believe in such important issues
It sounds as if you don’t know that usually BOTH religious parents force their children into their religion, and woe to a child who disagrees. Moreover, a big % of religious can’t stop trying to force adult, unrelated to them strangers. F.e. passing laws against abortion or gay marriage, abstinence only ad at schools for other people’s children (even if children are seen as property by them, this behavior doesn’t have to follow since other children aren’t their’s). Discrimination against atheists, if they are “out of the closet” exists too.
It’s all a prelude to something I found yesterday and became afraid:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/06/25/religiosity-varies-dramatically-across-countries/
US and Israel are among the most religious countries in the world.
% Have No Doubt God Exists:
Russia: 30.5
United States: 60.6
Israel: 65.5
% Atheist:
East Germany: 52.1
Great Britain: 18.0
Russia: 6.8
Israel: 6.0
United States: 3.0
Weirdly, we think we have more in common with more secular nations like Great Britain than we do with countries like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. In certain ways, the opposite might be true.
This explains a lot of the behaviors you mentioned.
I was shocked that only 6% were like me in Israel. And it does matter, religious beliefs find their way into politics, into public life, into my private life because of various laws and possible discrimination.
– el
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“It sounds as if you don’t know that usually BOTH religious parents force their children into their religion, and woe to a child who disagrees. ”
– My sentence that you quote starts with the words “in this case.” I’m discussing a specific case where no father was mentioned by anybody. Among my friends who were forced to attend church, in the majority of cases, it was just one parent. Parents might or might not be fanatical in an equal degree.
“Moreover, a big % of religious can’t stop trying to force adult, unrelated to them strangers.”
– In the US, only 16% out of 60% of believers are trying to force anybody into anything. That’s not a big percentage.
” F.e. passing laws against abortion or gay marriage, abstinence only ad at schools for other people’s children ”
– Laws against abortion and gay marriage were promoted irrespective of anybody’s religious beliefs. I think I already explained the mechanisms of that many times. Look at Russia where nobody practices any religion, yet homophobia is absolutely horrifying. There was a law punishing homosexuality with a prison sentence until 1991 in the atheist USSR. Abstinence education at schools is meaningless and has no effect on anybody. It is a non-issue.
“US and Israel are among the most religious countries in the world.”
– You are confusing a religious population and a religious country. In Russia, where the percentage of people who actually practice Christianity is 2%. Yet the Church is allowed to butt into the affairs of the state in a degree that is unimaginable in the US. Where the percentage of people who actually practice is many times higher. Also, a general and vague belief that some deity exists does not equal practicing a religion. Once again, look at Russia. Many people say they believe because it is currently fashionable, yet none of them are willing to practice.
“I was shocked that only 6% were like me in Israel. And it does matter, religious beliefs find their way into politics, into public life, into my private life because of various laws and possible discrimination.”
– What is at issue is not the number of people who believe this or other thing but the existence of a constitution that codifies the separation of church and state and the number of people who are willing to defend it.
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// – In the US, only 16% out of 60% of believers are trying to force anybody into anything. That’s not a big percentage.
16% of actively trying ones is a huge percentage, taking into account absolute number of believers. Because what happens is that f.e. some law, sprawn from those beliefs, is up to be voted for or against. Those 16% and other people sharing the views will usually not vote against. If only atheists and people like you vote against, their number may be smaller than of 16%.
// a constitution that codifies the separation of church and state
In Israel there is “status quo” agreement, which has its’ own big problems.
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“Those 16% and other people sharing the views will usually not vote against. If only atheists and people like you vote against, their number may be smaller than of 16%”
– The absolute majority of population in the US supports both abortion rights and gay marriage. The absolute majority of people in the deeply atheist Russia is violently opposed to gay marriage. Once again, this is not about religion.
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I didn’t really know a great deal about my parents’ political interests, except when they decided to leave the Republican Party after Watergate and become Democrats. Even then, they didn’t make a big deal of it to us. Whenever something political came on the news I’d leave the room anyway. I wasn’t interested, and sensed without really being old enough to know whey that it wouldn’t be good for me to get interested in that sort of thing.
That being said, being an American kid during the Cold War couldn’t but affect me. I always had in the back of my mind the fear that we’d be blown up in a nuclear war (and that we would be the ones to start it because of all the vociferous anti-communist propaganda and the doom-laden way Communist bloc countries were talked about, as if they were hell on earth instead of just places where people lived in a different way than we did). Instead of turning me into a little monster of patriotism, the effect of all this was to make me resigned and cynical at a young age. Being so had good effects and bad on my life, so it was a mixed bag.
Sometimes I think that this use of children by some parents like this mother is just a way of grasping at a certainty about life they think is missing now that there isn’t a big “other side” to fear. So they make up a fearsome imaginary opposition and stock them with atheists, leftists, Muslims, whatever. The truth is no one cares about the fanatic and her child. That’s what she can’t stand.
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“Sometimes I think that this use of children by some parents like this mother is just a way of grasping at a certainty about life they think is missing now that there isn’t a big “other side” to fear. So they make up a fearsome imaginary opposition and stock them with atheists, leftists, Muslims, whatever. The truth is no one cares about the fanatic and her child. That’s what she can’t stand.”
– This is very insightful. A few days ago, somebody visited the blog who saw a title of one of my posts on somebody’s blogroll and exploded with rage. The simple fact that somebody somewhere has an opinion that is different from hers was completely intolerable. It’s like it threatened the very core of her being. That was scary.
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And having read the article, I have a few things to say: 1) how on earth is a minute of silence “freakishly long”? Full disclosure: the public schools I went to had a “moment of silence” that I think was a minute, or five minutes, or whatever, I don’t really remember. All I know is it was basically a chance to wait for the chatty kids to wind down and shut up, and brought a welcome moment of calm into the usually chaotic opening moments of school, and by the time I was in high school no one even paid attention and went on with whatever they were doing anyway. There were no prayers said, except one year we had this one girl who would pray by herself. No one bothered her.
2) How rude was that state legislator to write to the mother that way? Sure she sounds like the sort of person who inserts herself into her child’s life at every moment, but that didn’t give a government authority figure the right to likewise use the child (by calling her a “fool” for not believing in god) against the mother. Government officials have a great deal of responsibility, and they should exercise it with humility.
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“how on earth is a minute of silence “freakishly long”? Full disclosure: the public schools I went to had a “moment of silence” that I think was a minute, or five minutes, or whatever, I don’t really remember. All I know is it was basically a chance to wait for the chatty kids to wind down and shut up, and brought a welcome moment of calm into the usually chaotic opening moments of school, and by the time I was in high school no one even paid attention and went on with whatever they were doing anyway.”
– I agree. This is why I said this was a legitimate pedagogical practice. Of course, when one wants to find persecution, one will see it everywhere.
“How rude was that state legislator to write to the mother that way? ”
– The legislator is completely unhinged. Why people keep voting for such a freakazoid is a mystery. This is obviously an unbalanced person.
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In fact, in my 6th grade, my teacher (the worst that I had in my life) ordained 5 minutes of silence to pray every morning. I used this time to begin to sleep!
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Sounds like a great solution! 🙂
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I wouldn’t be writing about my kid to the state legislator in that instance. But:
Eh. Your kid will pick up on your level of religiousity even if you don’t go around saying it. God-belief or non-God belief is indoctrinated. For a lesser example, my parents never went around saying that Santa Claus was real or not real. But because they never really pushed the idea or talked about it (no “Santa Claus is going to give you toys/coal” no “visiting Santa” and no dad impersonating Santa), I never believed Santa Claus was real. So I don’t assume the mother is going around preaching to her kid that God doesn’t exist.
“It is a lot lot LOT less damaging to an 8-year-old to participate in group prayer to whomever than to be singled out as a weirdo by other kids.”
Really one could use that as justification to conform to any practice. So do you think children should be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning? After all, children don’t have formed beliefs, but not professing a belief in god and allegiance to the nation-state definitely singles you out as a weirdo.
I stood silently of my own volition and it was my idea and I was in 4th grade. My reasoning was that “I’m not a citizen of this country, so why am I pledging allegiance to the flag of a country I’m not a citizen of.” My parents, however made me aware that I wasn’t a citizen. So I’m curious as to how much you’d hide your strong beliefs that aren’t mainstream in order to avoid your child mentioning them and having him/her singled out as a weirdo.
Further, other kids parrot their parents’ beliefs ALL THE TIME. I was told several times that I was going to Hell because I didn’t believe in Jesus by other kids — outside of the religious school my parents sent me to. (I was the only non-Christian in a Catholic school) So the idea that you’re protecting your kid from indoctrination and therefore making them free to make up their own minds by not voicing your beliefs is silly.
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My longwinded points
The line between indoctrination and simply making your opinions known is extremely fuzzy, especially for young children.
If you try not to indoctrinate your kids, other people are more than happy to step into that breach.
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“If you try not to indoctrinate your kids, other people are more than happy to step into that breach.”
– This is completely unimportant. The sense of security in the world is what really matters. As for ideology, that will all be figured out in adulthood. It falls to me and nobody else but me to make sure that my child either perceives the world as a secure, happy place or a threatening, miserable place. This is so major that no specific belief, religion or ideology can even begin to compare.
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“So I don’t assume the mother is going around preaching to her kid that God doesn’t exist.”
– Did your parents ever right to the legislature on the issue of Santa Claus? 🙂 And what would you assume if they did? 🙂
” So do you think children should be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning? After all, children don’t have formed beliefs, but not professing a belief in god and allegiance to the nation-state definitely singles you out as a weirdo.”
– As you might easily imagine, I hate the pledge and the idea behind it. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it. But that’s not a problem I would ever make my kid resolve. Instead, I would help her learn to enjoy it and feel good about it. Because my beliefs are a lot less important than her happiness.
“So I’m curious as to how much you’d hide your strong beliefs that aren’t mainstream in order to avoid your child mentioning them and having him/her singled out as a weirdo.”
– I will not bring them to her at all. And I will celebrate all the holidays that everybody else celebrates, and I will buy small American flags for the 4th of July, and make a barbecue, etc., etc. Because this should not be put on a child’s shoulders.
“So the idea that you’re protecting your kid from indoctrination and therefore making them free to make up their own minds by not voicing your beliefs is silly.”
– No other group, agency or institution has the power that can even be remotely comparable to that of parents in creating a secure or insecure environment. The actual beliefs are completely unimportant. The child will grow up and sort them all out. The only thing that matters is that s/he grow up in a happy, secure, welcoming world. Everything else is secondary.
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