Pagan Parenting

Posted by Cyn

I’m a par­ent. I’m an eclec­tic pagan. Yes, my spir­i­tu­al­ity does play a major part in the way I par­ent. I very seri­ously believe that par­ent­ing is one of the most obvi­ous exam­ples of the rule of three work­ing in the uni­verse. Yes, every­thing we do as par­ents does very obvi­ously come back to us!

Rais­ing chil­dren in a pagan house­hold has its own spe­cial con­cerns, largely because we live in a soci­ety in which pagan­ism isn’t the major­ity belief sys­tems and isn’t even as accepted as many other belief sys­tems. Pagan par­ents don’t have the same easy access to orga­ni­za­tions, books or other resources that sup­port our beliefs as Chris­t­ian par­ents do. Thank­fully the net is help­ing us to find more resources, but still — it isn’t as if there’s a big sec­tion of par­ent­ing books by pagan authors await­ing us on the shelves at Bor­ders, is it?

As fam­i­lies, we can’t find pagan spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ties just wait­ing for us on every cor­ner. I’ve yet to see a pagan day­care cen­ter or school, but here in Geor­gia at least there are Chris­t­ian schools and day­care cen­ters every­where. Even in pub­lic schools our chil­dren encounter teach­ers and fac­ulty who assume that “of course every­one cel­e­brates Christ­mas and Easter!” and don’t stop to ques­tion the reli­gious con­tent in their lit­tle hol­i­day work­sheets and sto­ries. Or, even worse, they find that their teach­ers and fel­low stu­dents believe that pagans are devil wor­ship­pers. There aren’t many pagan children’s books pub­lished, and you don’t see tiny lit­tle pen­ta­cles next to the crosses when you look for a gift for your child at the jew­elry counter. I know of pre­cisely one pagan youth group in the entire metro Atlanta area, which has a very large pop­u­la­tion. Our sons can’t be Boy Scouts (not hon­estly, any­way, since the BSA is an expressly monothe­is­tic orga­ni­za­tion requir­ing a reli­gious oath of all mem­bers). While our daugh­ters can (thank­fully!) be Girl Scouts, they often encounter troop lead­ers and oth­ers who are not sup­port­ive, much less affirm­ing, of pagan beliefs, no mat­ter what the national and inter­na­tional Girl Scouts may have to say.

So — we have to cre­ate resources our­selves, and share the ones that exist. We truly need to sup­port each other as pagan par­ents. We need to babysit with each other and do what­ever it takes to give our chil­dren oppor­tu­ni­ties to play and learn with each other. Instead of being upset that there aren’t pagan scout­ing and youth groups, we must start them. Instead of bemoan­ing the lack of sup­port for pagan par­ents in home­school­ing groups, we must start our own sup­port groups. Instead of being upset that there aren’t enough books for pagan par­ents, we need to write them. If we want pagan lul­la­bies for our babies, we have to cre­ate them. If we want schools and day­care cen­ters,1 we need to start them — and sup­port them! We need to edu­cate school, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and indi­vid­u­als about our beliefs. We need to vote with our wal­lets and sup­port those busi­nesses that sup­port us, and politely let other busi­nesses know why we’re tak­ing our money else­where. We need to be Girl Scout lead­ers and room moth­ers and reli­gious edu­ca­tion teach­ers2 and oth­er­wise be involved with our kids and other people’s chil­dren, so they’ll have pos­i­tive exam­ples of real pagans doing nor­mal things — one of the best ways to fight prej­u­dice and neg­a­tive stereotypes.

And yes, I believe that we need to be out of the broom closet as much as pos­si­ble. What kind of exam­ple is it to our chil­dren to hide our beliefs? Yes, we need to be hon­est with our chil­dren about the fact that many peo­ple don’t believe the same way we do, and to pre­pare them to deal with prej­u­dice. But we need to walk our paths openly, proudly, hold­ing our children’s hands and tak­ing them along­side us until they are old enough to make informed choices about their beliefs on their own. I real­ize that there are peo­ple who can­not be in totally out about being pagan — believe me, hav­ing lived my entire life in the Bible Belt, I know! But be as open about it as you can respon­si­bly be in your life. So maybe you put the pen­ta­cle pen­dant inside your shirt at work — but is it nec­es­sary to pre­tend that you’re Bap­tists? I don’t think so.

Resources for Pagan Parents

Links for Pagan Children

Books for Pagan Families

 

Last updated Decem­ber 18, 2000

1 I men­tion pagan schools and day­care cen­ters because I’ve heard other pagans whin­ing about the fact that they don’t exist. I don’t nec­es­sar­ily think send­ing chil­dren to schools or day­care cen­ters—pagan or any other sort — is a good idea, but if you do want to send your kids to them, don’t com­plain because they don’t exist — cre­ate them!

2 Yes, reli­gious edu­ca­tion teach­ers. RE is what Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist con­gre­ga­tion call their “Sun­day Schools”. The UUA is sup­port­ive of pagans, and many of us have found that being active mem­bers of UU con­gre­ga­tions is in many dif­fer­ent ways an excel­lent deci­sion for our families.

Permalink | June 26th, 2012

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