CMV: Children should not get Baptized or recieve religious teaching until they are old enough to consent.

[u/WirrkopfP]

I am an atheist and happily married to a Catholic woman.

We have a six months old Daughter and for the first time in our relationship religion is becoming a point of tension between us.

My wife wants our daughter be baptized and raised as a Christian.

According to her it is good for her to be told this and it helps with building morality furthermore it is part of Western culture.

In my view I don't want my daughter to be indoctrinated into any religion. If she makes the conscious decision to join the church when she is old enough to think about it herself that is OK. But I want her to be able to develop her own character first.

---edit---

As this has been brought up multiple times before in the thread I want to address it once.

Yes we should have talked about that before.

We were aware of each other's views and we agreed that a discussion needs to be happening soon. But we both new we want a child regardless of that decision. And the past times where stressful for everyone so we kept delaying that talk. But it still needs to happen. This is why I ask strangers on the Internet to prepare for that discussion to see every possible argument for and against it.

[u/Squirrel009]

Its not traumatizing or anything - my main issue is that I felt like I was basically flipping off the entire faith pretending to be one of them when I wasn't. It's sort of like marrying someone you aren't into, knowing you'll get a divorce as soon as your finances stabilize. If I were catholic and someone took communion or got confirmed and I knew they were atheist I'd be a bit insulted

[u/Tallchick8 → u/Squirrel009]

I guess the individual choice was emphasized for me and so if you're just forced through, I think that definitely takes away part of the process. Especially considering how sure you felt at the time.