I raised all of my children Pagan. I also ended up raising several other people’s children Pagan because they hung around my children and it just sort of rubbed off on them, just like Christianity and Judaism and such rubbed off on my children a bit because they played with children of those religions.
For most of them, their parents didn’t mind because I always was clear that children had to follow the dictates of their parents. I had no problem with discussing Christianity with these children (it's hard not to be intimately familiar with Christianity, it's so ubiquitous) – and a few grew up to be very Christian because they considered what I told them and went back and spoke with their minister and decided they were Christian and they were happy with it. The ones who chose non-Christian paths (and not all chose to be Pagan) did so because by the time I met them, they were already seeking some other alternative to Christianity. I like to think they got solid information from me instead of fluff, data that helped them make an informed decision, whether they embraced Christianity whole-heartedly or chose any of a number of different religions.
The parents who minded? A few changed their minds later on in life, and the rest I lost touch with so I can’t tell you what happened.
Raising my children Pagan wasn’t exactly a scientific experiment. I raised them Pagan because I was brought up to know that children followed their parent’s ethics, morals, and other beliefs and I might as well be in control of what I shared with them rather than leaving them to dangle and flop and struggle on their own. Armed with the parental wisdom I had received from my own older relatives and from the families I grew up around, I knew it was my responsibility to give my children the stability and grounding they would need to inform the rest of their lives. What I taught them as children would be the tools they used to make decisions for as long as they lived. They might learn new tools, and they might choose to abandon the tools I gave them, but it would give them a reference point. They could embrace those tools, ignore them, rebel against them, smash them, but they would always be there in some form.
So, when I became a parent, I re-thought all of my beliefs, went through them and consciously looked at them to determine why I held those beliefs, why I did things that way and not some other. Kids are full of “Whys” and I wanted to be prepared when they started asking them.
Numenism is a surprisingly easy religion in which to raise children. As a new religion, we’ve had to think about those “whys” a lot, and answer them for ourselves, to find out how they fit into our belief structure and why they belonged there. The answers were openly discussed among our House and friends. When children asked "why", well, so were we, and we could point to the answers we found or we could explore and find answers together.
When I raised my children, they were allowed to listen in. If they didn’t understand what we were talking about, they’d get bored and wander nearby to play. When they did understand what we were talking about, they were allowed to join in the conversation. If we needed to speak of things we didn’t think they were old enough to hear, we waited until they were in bed or visiting friends or relatives to discuss them. I believed in allowing children to remain children and not force them into adult level discussions and situations at too young an age.
When I went to Pagan events, Celebrations, and Gatherings, the children accompanied me and I took full and sole responsibility for their presence. It was my responsibility to keep them in my eyesight and hearing range and to supervise all of their activities. If there was somewhere they weren’t supposed to go, I kept them away from the area. That was easy enough to do.
Most people weren’t even aware my children were present unless they passed our campsite. I didn’t make my children participate in the late night group rituals, nor did I allow them to participate until I was sure they were ready for it. Face it, most of these rituals were incredibly boring for children – long periods of silence or straining to hear what might be said in the center of the circle, it was either too hot or too cold, and around here it was always windy, and people moved and did things that made no sense if you had the attention span of a flea (like my children at certain ages). Back then, public rituals of this sort almost always took so long that even if the children had pottied before the ritual, they’d have to again long before it was over. They’d get tired of standing and standing and standing, and then confused if we had to dance in a circle. So, we’d hold our own separate ritual off to the side, then play quietly, or I’d put them to bed and sit outside the tent.
There were never any other children present but mine because the debates back then were that it was horrible to raise children Pagan – they’d be discriminated against in school and we’d lose jobs and people would harass us, not to mention how utterly wrong I was to force my children to be Pagan.
It was the last argument that was the most vocal.
Many of the Pagans who learned I was raising my children Pagan were appalled. They claimed I was forcing my will on them, corrupting them, or manipulating them. They felt I was a bad parent because I was raising my children Pagan.
It wasn’t this way everywhere, just, apparently, among the local Pagans. There were hot debates about raising one’s children Pagan or not, and horror stories of discrimination were flaunted to try to get me to stop raising my children Pagan. I faced worse and harsher discrimination inside the general Pagan community than I ever did outside it.
When my children entered public school, they did so secure in the knowledge they were Pagan and what it meant to be Pagan. Their classmates and playmates didn’t really care in the early years. Later, once they started receiving religious education (catechism-type classes, Vacation Bible School, Christian Summer camp…) they became more aware of the differences. A few were cruel about it, but for the most part, there was little notice, except a few jokes at the PTA (and, in high school, the PTSA) meetings.
I allowed my children to go to their churches, but only if their friends were allowed to attend our celebrations. It was amazing how few of the pushy Christian parents wanted that to happen, so they left my children alone.
The school administration didn’t seem to care other than to comment occasionally how they wish Christian parents were as supportive as Pagan parents were.
I never lost a job because I was Pagan, never been threatened with having my children removed – even in a divorce, never had my children threatened by anything other than powerless taunts from one or two children who were quickly reprimanded by either other classmates or the teacher.
Even though I live in a deeply Christian part of the country (Texas/Oklahoma, where it seems the Dominionists reign), raising my children Pagan was considered normal by all the non-Pagans. After all, they were raising their children in their beliefs. In some way, it validated my religious beliefs if I was willing to impart them to my children so openly, and those among whom we lived accepted it.
One thing that struck me as funny was how, when my children wore religious jewelry (our religion, not theirs), it seemed to make the religion more real to them and they were more accepting of it.
Even though there wasn’t a welcome for my children in the broader Pagan community, they were cherished in Numenism.
Our celebrations and entire way of living as Numenists was kid-friendly, with or without children being present. So much of Numenism was easy to share with the children and to share in ways that weren’t threatening or intimidating to those outside of Numenism. We had coloring books, story books, toys, and activities that were related to being Numenist.
We scrapbooked our religion long before scrapbooking was popular. Our children showed their scrapbooks off to their friends – showing them the tokens they’d received at this celebration or that, photos (not many, I was a bad parent in not taking lots and lots of pictures of my children – I’m still more likely to take pictures of my garden and Itzl than my kids!), program guides, menus from feasts, ticket stubs, and other bits of memorabilia. They wore their hand-painted Pagan t-shirts with pride, and decorated their book bags with Pagan symbols – spirals, acorns, circles, cornucopias, bees, stars, moons, and lightning bolts were their favorites.
I’m pretty sure it was the scrapbooks, the utter openness and confiding nature of my children that made it so easy to raise them Pagan in a town where we were the only Pagans to have children.
I couldn’t do it so easily today.
The whole flavor of Christianity has changed to one of virulent hatred where they don’t hesitate to use violence to show their displeasure. Teachers have been so bound they can’t come to the aid of a student under attack by other students without facing criminal charges. I don’t know about other states, but here in Oklahoma it is illegal for an adult to give behavioral direction to a child not belonging to them. It is a misdemeanor crime to tell a child, “Don’t climb that ladder!” or “Please don’t hit Bobby.” or “Please get off my property.”, let alone to hold out an arm to prevent a child from running into danger, punishable with fines and jail time.
I used to run a small daycare when my children were younger. I couldn’t do it anymore; I’d be as terrified as most teachers are of being slapped with a lawsuit because a child near me (not even one in my care, just one in the vicinity) fell down and scraped their knee. I certainly couldn’t face sending my child into such a free-for-all environment as schools have become, where the children receive no direction or discipline and barely receive an education. I would have to homeschool them.
There still wouldn’t be a problem in the neighborhood with us being Pagan, though, because everyone knows we are and we still have no issues about it. That’s with one of the largest dominionist churches not even a mile from my home, and the neighborhood filled with their congregants.
I get no more vandalism than anyone else in the neighborhood from the high school kids on homecoming night or graduation or other big school events. I may actually get a bit less because the kids seem to like me and if they remember it’s my house, they usually stop and move to another house. Sometimes they’ll come back and help clean up the mess.
Work discrimination? I’ve never had it happen. I’ve never been fired from a job or been harassed into quitting. When I’ve left a job, it’s always been because I wanted to leave.
When I was divorced, religion never even entered the discussion because the lawyers and judge all agreed that religion wasn’t an allowable divorce topic. I don’t know how or why other states, other judges, allow religion to become a contentious part of a divorce and I think this is something we should investigate and stop. Any divorce that drags religion into it does so for base and cruel purposes which have nothing to do whatsoever with either parent’s ability to care for the child. Any judge who would allow religion to be brought up in the divorce needs to be un-benched because they are acting out of personal ethical values and not legal ones.
Yes I know it isn’t easy, and Bush has made it much, much harder with his promotion of religious values as a standard for hiring and firing those people over whom his office has that power (and quite a few outside of it).
Raising a child Pagan today is a much harder thing to do than it was when I raised mine.
The atmosphere of suspicion and fear fostered by our government (funny, how that’s what trickles down the easiest), the ready descent into violence fostered by many large churches, the hatred spewed out against anyone who’s different, the repression of anything considered the least politically incorrect, the reduction of our vocabulary by words we are not allowed to say (and thereby preventing us from discussing them), the censorship of our books, movies, and speech – all of this contributes to making it harder.
But no matter how hard it is, I would never advocate raising the children of Pagan parents in any other religion for any reason. Hiding only makes matters far worse than they have become in recent years.
It’s a sad state of affairs when Pagans behave in a fashion more commonly attributed to Christian values than the Christians do.
I don’t like singling Christians out for this, but if we face the truth and name it, it is the Christians who are instigating the violence, pushing religion as a valid consideration into our government and courts, vandalizing the property of people they suspect might be different from themselves (even against other Christians, how wrong is that?), getting people fired who they think are “other”, and abusing our language to change the meanings of our most basic words to suit their needs and goals.
Raising our children Pagan today is not an easy task at all.
But I would do it again, knowing how much harder it would be, and knowing what obstacles I would have to face.
My beliefs, my religion, are as valid as anyone else’s. In America, I have the right to be different. And I will fight to keep that right.