One argument one hears a lot, especially when it comes to bullshit gender enforcement, is “But it will confuse the children!” We heard it about gay marriage (“Children won’t understand how someone can have two daddies or two mommies!”) and we hear it about circumcision (“Our son will be confused if his dick looks different from daddy’s!”) and we hear it about all the weird enforcement of gender on little kids (“Children don’t need to be confused by adult ideas of gender-neutral toys!”) and hell, a generation ago we were hearing it about stay-at-home dads (“How will children know who’s the mommy and who’s the daddy?”).
Thing is, it’s an utterly disingenuous argument; it’s not even about what it claims to be about.
Let’s be clear: everything is confusing to kids. The whole world is arbitrary and all the good stuff is on the high shelves. That’s why they ask all those damn questions all the time, and good for them. I’m sure when I noticed the difference between my father’s and stepfather’s dicks and my own, I probably asked about it. I do remember noticing, I don’t specifically recall asking, but the answer was something like “They used to think you couldn’t keep your penis clean if it had a foreskin, but now we know that’s not true.” That was probably the LEAST annoying question I asked that day.
Kids can roll with a lot of stuff, because they’re learning the rules as they go along.
You know who’s easily confused, easily thrown off-track and baffled by the questioning of rules they’ve learned? Adults.
When someone says “Kids won’t understand how two men can be married” what they mean, what they’re trying to say, is “I don’t understand how two men can be married.” When they say “Kids won’t understand why their dick looks different from daddy’s” they’re trying to explain “I don’t understand why you want to be different from tradition.” When they say “Kids won’t know who’s the daddy and who’s the mommy” they are telling you “I cannot comprehend a world without very rigid gender roles, and as far as I know neither can anyone else.”
If anyone can think of a counterexample, let me know, but from where I’m standing, it looks like every use of the “confused kids” argument is just people pushing their own incomprehension off onto some largely-hypothetical kids. Can we all agree to stop falling for it?
“Heh. Well, it’s common among Unitarian Universalists and Ethical Culture. Even if you don’t believe in a God, one can still believe in human beings, our interconnectedness, and our capacity for understanding and making the world a better place—no God is necessary for any of that. ” You see, I’ve looked into Unitarian Universalism and it seemed less to be providing all the things church provides for atheists as about being religious but giving lip service to the idea of atheism. It’s less an atheist-oriented church as a society for people who are uncomfortable with the repercussions of their atheism… Read more »
True, but if they see their parents–whom children generally view as Wonderful People Who Can Do No Wrong–treat various non-conventional gender expressions and sexual orientations as “really, fairly normal and nothing to get worked up about,” then they will come to SEE these things as nothing to get worked up about, and the Moral Guardians who push this sort of thing as being very silly.
Really, talking openly with your children and asking them about their concerns weighs more than all the fearmongering “What about the uncomprehending children!!” out there.
“I cannot comprehend a world without very rigid gender roles, and as far as I know neither can anyone else.”
I think that is very true, kids understand the world that they see and that gets explained to them. An anecdote, my cousins know that two women can be married as they have friends with two moms, but for a little while they thought that two men were not allowed to/did not get married as they don’t have any friends with two dads.
It’s very easy to simply tack on a few words to sentence but it’s not easy to actually instill certain qualities in your kids when society on many levels is working against parents working on these qualities. Never mind all the social pressures kids themselves face. Raising kids isn’t easy.
It’s really very simple. Whenever you talk to your kids about the time when they grow up (which parents all do… or should do…) you simply change your sentences by two whole words. “Maybe you’ll have a boyfriend *or girlfriend*…” “When you grow up you’ll probably buy a house together with your husband *or wife*. “Maybe you and your wife *or husband* will want kids, and maybe you won’t.” Two whole words added in make a world of difference. It is purely and simply the only thing you ever need do to convey acceptance to your children. As parents we… Read more »
@AB: there is an atheist-oriented church: Unitarian Universalism… as the joke goes, UU’s believe in the existence of at most one god (somewhat inaccurate… UU allows for polytheism and pantheism etc. as well).
I find that liberal types are more likely to not want to be involved with family stuff. This is something that really irks me because I am a liberal. Too often it seems the only people who press for family and family issues are hardcore right wing conservatives…and the stuff they press for is almost always bad.
@La Lubu
All that last post. Maybe it’s the youth heavy precense within the left, but even mentioning my kids can get me looks like I just casually lit something on fire, or may have photos I’d like you to see, which is worse. 🙂
@Hugh Tipping “Disagree, disagree, disagree. For some context, I live in a country which recently (last ten years, anyway) passed laws to make it harder for parents to use physical violence to discipline their children. There was a lot of pushback and one of the main arguments used by the status quo advocates was that the Prime Minister at the time was childless and thus had no business telling parents how to raise their children. Seems to me you’d agree with that argument.” You are ignoring what I said about empathy and how sometimes being a parent is harder than… Read more »
This whole “churches are a social venue” is very US-centric. Not just the US, but other parts of the Americas as well. Secular venues like bowling and the likes are closed off to atheists? But those aren’t really good places to meet people if you are a stranger. Churches generally have a culture of welcoming that secular places don’t tend to have—and that’s amplified in the US, which doesn’t seem to have a culture of welcoming in general. Also, since the post is all about “the children”, it’s worth mentioning that a lot of social-justice organizing in the US is… Read more »
Secular venues like bowling and the likes are closed off to atheists? And I’m pretty sure that community stuff can be organized secularly, around a hobby, an age-group, etc.
This whole “churches are a social venue” is very US-centric. Here nobody goes to church, so it’s a good way to meet people 70+ years old in a 90% empty building, yeah.
I don’t think an atheist-oriented church sounds that implausible. A priest from the Danish National Church once said that he didn’t believe in God. It created a bit of controversy and the church wasn’t too happy about it, but his congregation still liked him well enough and he was ultimately allowed to continue as a priest. And honestly, as long as parents allow their children to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, I don’t see why religion should be a problem. If the religion preaches something the parents don’t agree with it (like the Tea… Read more »
Churches are a major source of social connection for a lot of people. Atheism, for all its virtues, rarely has a similar way to let people get together and talk about how they don’t believe in God. 🙂 Also, spiritual experiences are a fact of neuroscience, are enjoyable for many people and can be induced by certain behaviors typically considered “religious.”
I can totally understand why some atheists would want to go to a church.
“Don’t care. Atheism is not about how it’s bad that churches teach illiberal doctrine, it’s about how bad it is that they teach in a belief in divinity, the supernatural, and the afterlife. If your objection to churches is that you don’t like the values they promote in society, you’re not an atheist.”
Atheism is not believing that there’s one or more gods. What you think about other people believing in god(s) or teaching their beliefs about god(s) is irrelevant to wether or not you’re an atheist
As for an atheist-oriented church… am I the only one who sees that as a truly bizarre concept? Heh. Well, it’s common among Unitarian Universalists and Ethical Culture. Even if you don’t believe in a God, one can still believe in human beings, our interconnectedness, and our capacity for understanding and making the world a better place—no God is necessary for any of that. I find it harder to see the concept that all people who attend a given church or nominally identify with a given religion agree with all the tenets espoused by its leaders. I literally find that… Read more »
….and Noah knocks one out of the park.
I haven’t been keeping score, mind you, but this post stands out to me as a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
“I’ll also add that becoming a parent and actually having to walk the walk is something you need to experience first hand to really talk about with any sort of authority. ” Disagree, disagree, disagree. For some context, I live in a country which recently (last ten years, anyway) passed laws to make it harder for parents to use physical violence to discipline their children. There was a lot of pushback and one of the main arguments used by the status quo advocates was that the Prime Minister at the time was childless and thus had no business telling parents… Read more »
:O I was wasting my keyboard’s time with that last comment when I could’ve been reading one of La Lubu’s? Refresh button fail.
A bit of rhetorical, philosophical wanking. Ignore it if you’d like- How odd is it that children should ever be prioritized when the stage of childhood is the shortest and most transient aspect of our lives? I definitely understand that there’s no greater threat or personal failure as a parent than recognizing that you are failing your children, especially if you’re failing to protect them. Caring for children is very visceral and natural. (If you happen to not give a fart in the wind about children, that’s fine too. You do you.) I understand that childhood years are formative years.… Read more »
The atheists-sending-their-kids-to-church is way more common than progressives-sending-their-kids-to-Tea-Party-Camp, for instance. It seems to me that the atheists in question are less acting out of a commendable desire to broaden their kid’s horizons as acting out insecurity about their own beliefs. Perhaps this is true in a minority of cases. In the majority, it tends to be taking-the-bad-with-the-good. There are a lot of liberal religious congregations (some of which are very atheist-friendly or even atheist-oriented, like Unitarian Universalists); there are no liberal Tea-Party organizations. In most cities (to say nothing of smaller towns) there aren’t any secular-humanist charitable orgs, either—it’s either… Read more »
Religion, at best, is useless. I say this because anything good that religion offers people can be had using 100% secular ideas. There is no need to rely on dogma and superstition to be a fulfilled, charitable, and decent person.
debaser: Is your implication supposed to be that all religions are deliberately cultivating an image of charity adn goodwill for some nefarious purpose? If not, I sincerely apologize, but if so, that’s all kinds of fucked-up. Paranoia isn’t any better than blind trust.
@debaser71: Yeah, people like to pretend that all religions are happy hand holding love your neighbor stuff. Not at all, but the kind of religion most non-religious parents don’t mind exposing their children to usually is. When my grandmother prayed with me before bedtime, my parents didn’t object because the prayer itself was considered harmless. But I never knew my grandfather was a racist (or even a sexist, though it was a bit harder to miss), or that my uncle had nationalist inclinations, until I was a teenager, at least in part because it wasn’t something they were encouraged to… Read more »
Yeah, people like to pretend that all religions are happy hand holding love your neighbor stuff.
Bravo.