Do Children Need Religion?: How Parents Today Are Thinking About the Big Questions

"Parents today - especially those who have drifted from their childhood faith or are married to someone from a different religious background - face a choice: whether or not to give their children religious instruction. Providing one's children with religious training was once among the simplest of parental duties. One did as one's parents had done, then waited for the blessings certain to follow. Now, in the space of a single generation, religious observance has gone from being the norm to being a social elective." "Drawing on her experience with her own daughter and interviews with believers, non-believers, and those struggling to define their beliefs, Martha Fay explores the questions most often raised about religion's benefits and its limitations. How do parents answer their children's questions about the origins of life and the meaning of death outside the framework of a religious system of belief? How do they instill a moral code? How do they convey a sense of community? For a psychologically sophisticated generation of parents there is the concern of balancing the structure and comfort religion provides for children against the rewards of making sense of the world on their own. Both thought-provoking and reassuring, this is a book that helps parents decide for themselves what is right for their children."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)