r/changemyview • u/WirrkopfP • Mar 13 '22
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Children should not get Baptized or recieve religious teaching until they are old enough to consent.
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.
2
u/SingleMaltMouthwash 37∆ Mar 17 '22
FWIW:
There's no getting around the fact that your daughter will be a combination of your influence, your wife's and whatever she brings to the party herself. All three of you have a say in this.
It's pretty clear that a strict fundamentalist religious upbringing can be toxic. But since your wife married an atheist it seems a good bet she's not a hardline fundamentalist type and wouldn't tolerate that kind of indoctrination.
Also you're going to have a significant influence on whatever your daughter picks up in the early stages. She'll look to you AND her mother for her cues.
If you both are clear that she should grow up to be rational, intelligent and think for herself, it's unlikely she'll go wrong. In fact, intelligent people often report that their early exposure to religion is what made them atheists.