The Big Question

Now if you are a follower of most of the mainstream religions/spiritualities then the question of whether or not you will raise your children with your religion doesn't even come up - being part of most religions you would see it as your duty to raise your children into your religion. But with paganism things are a little bit different. For one thing there is no doctrine that tells you that you SHOULD raise your children to worship as you do. But more importantly pagans as a general rule tend to be very much more open to other religions and tend to be very much more inclined to embrace the wide scope of spiritual choices out there. So it is that many pagan parents (myself included!) struggle with the question of whether or not it is right to bring their children up in their religion, or how to include their children in their own spiritual practise without 'giving' their children a religion that the child has not chosen.
I have been thinking about this an awful lot of late because my eldest has started showing moments of spiritual interest. My very first thought was that under no circumstance did I want to give my children a religion; whatever religion that might be. I have always hated the way that many religions say that they give children the choice to join their religions but the children always have to make this choice at what I have always thought to be an inappropriately young age to be making such decisions.
But having friends that have grown up in religious communities I have seen first hand how those bonds of faith have helped them in their lives; have seen their faith guide them to be better people than they would have been without it. In short, although I have been uncomfortable with how early in their lives my friends were asked to make these spiritual decisions, I have seen how much it has benefited their lives as a whole.
But in my mind this 'big question' remained and so I began to read as many opinions as I could lay my hands on. It seems to me that most pagan parents initially had the very same thought that I had myself - that they would not raise their children in their pagan religion. But then I read a handful of opinions that had moved past this knee-jerk response to think about the bigger picture. The question of what happens if you give your children no spiritual guidance from fear of swaying their choice? This point of view really got me to thinking. Our western culture at large seems to be really losing the plot. Is this because we have lost the spiritual, the sacred? Well, erm, yes. Most pagans would agree with that and agree that we need to reconnect with the Earth and with spirit to heal our fractured societies and the Earth itself. Would we have so much willful neglect of the planet and her resources, so much violent crime, so much bigotry if we raised our children in spiritual conditions? It's a fairly big question I know, but I suspect that the answer is 'probably not'.
Another point that I saw raised in all of my reading was that if you don't give your child a spiritual foundation, a spiritual spring board as it were, how are they then as adults going to be able to make wise decisions about their own spirituality,be it paganism or not? This is another question that I don't have an answer to yet, but it strikes me as a very valid point. I am finding that at the age of 6 (though of a developmental age of maybe 4-5) my son has started enquiring about this aspect of my life, and it seems that he finds it as natural as eating or drinking.
The thing about being a pagan is that there is so much choice in how to follow your path. I am starting to wonder if raising pagan children really does rob them of a personal choice. To give them a sense of awe, a sense of the sacred, a foundation of tolerance and reverence and equality can be no bad thing. When there are so many Gods and Goddesses, traditions and techniques out there that all full under the broad pagan umbrella, I start to wonder how a pagan upbringing can be restrictive. You can be a pagan Jew can you not? Or a pagan Quaker? Even a pagan Buddhist? I know that there are people who happily merge these paths in a way that works for them.
There are of course other considerations that worry us as parents when we consider the question of whether or not to raise pagan children. I know that in some areas a pagan would be distinctly unwelcome. As parents we ask whether we want to set our children up for a life of misunderstanding or even outright hostility. I am fortunate that for me and my children this is not going to be a huge issue or the deciding factor on my children's spiritual upbringing. I will be completely honest with you. If I lived in a very Christian fundamentalist area then I would probably not overtly raise my children with my pagan spirituality because I would be afraid of the difficulties it might bring them. I am massively grateful that this isn't a consideration for my family but I'm very aware that other pagans are not so lucky.
So while I started off firmly against raising little pagans I find that more and more my views are starting to mellow and mutate. The issue is not so clear cut as it might initially seem.