Are Kids Ready for God?

Meet Julianna Snow: a five year-old girl living in Portland, Oregon with a passion for zany outfits and described by her loved ones as “bright, sharp, and lovely.” The world was introduced to Julianna and her family at the end of October 2015 in an article published by CNN with this eye-catching headline:

Julianna is living with a severe case of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disease that has rendered her unable to walk, eat, breathe independently of an oxygen machine, and control her hands, and has forced her to endure numerous painful hospital treatments to remove mucus from her airways. After many hospital stays and health scares, it has become clear to Julianna, her family, and her doctors that any subsequent infection that Julianna contracts - even just a cold - will result in death or living under sedation with a respirator. 

With the looming possibility of an infection and the ensuing gut-wrenching decisions about Julianna’s care, Julianna’s parents decided to get input from Julianna herself, asking if she would want to be hospitalized if she got sick again, or if she would prefer to go to “heaven.” Julianna has made it clear that she wants to stay at home and go to “heaven” and that she understands this means she will die.

Though many people grapple with complex religious concepts throughout their adult lives, faith beliefs may be conveyed to children in easily-digestible ways. A video in the CNN article show Julianna’s father reading her a book that professes “I can guarantee for certain God listens to you and me.” It is clear that even if children don’t have mature understandings of deities and faith traditions, the simple messages from parents about religion take hold. In discussions about her wishes for the future, Julianna states that “heaven is good” and “God will take care of [her]” when she arrives. Though some commenters have weighed in online that framing death as ‘going to heaven’ would force a child into viewing that option as preferable, Julianna’s parents explained that they originally planned to bring her to the hospital if she became ill and did not see either choice as easy or more correct than the other. 

This heartbreaking situation gives us an opportunity to examine the ways in which agents of socialization - parents, in this circumstance - transmit concepts of religion and spirituality to children and the effect this has on young people’s beliefs and choices. Religion is seen as a major social shaper of ideologies and personalities because of its ability to instill values, traditions, and kinship from a young age. However, a recent study by the Pew Research Center has revealed that between 34 and 42% of U.S. adults (percentage varies based on how religious groups are classified) currently identify with a different religious group than they did in childhood and that 56 million Americans are not affiliated with any religion. This suggests that it is not unusual for an individual’s spiritual beliefs to shift within a lifetime and begs the question: are children ready for religion?

Religions offer ways in which humans can understand the world, but they are not the only ways to do so and there is significant variety between belief sets. By imposing their own beliefs on their children, parents may - sometimes unintentionally - put significant pressure on young people to conform to certain beliefs about creation, life and death, and human nature without exposing their kids to opposing viewpoints or rejecting them. An interesting paradox is created if we compare religious and political socialization: many Americans view raising children with religion and guiding them to adopt the beliefs of their family members as a moral responsibility, while pressuring one’s child to vote in ways similar to their parent is generally considered inappropriate or, at worst, a civic failure.

For the 34-42% of American adults whose religious views have changed since childhood, divergence from their families’ belief systems may create confusion and a sense of disintegration among relatives and community members. If we consider a child being hypothetically born into a family and location different from their actual family and birthplace, their religion and beliefs may be wholly distinct from those they were raised with in reality. This makes the assignment of people to certain faith traditions by their parents seem incredibly arbitrary; though some adults accept the beliefs they were born into, others move toward different faiths or reject religion to some degree. If religious socialization is somewhat random in terms of which beliefs are conveyed to certain individuals and beliefs are known to often change after childhood, it may be premature to instill such strong religious convictions in children when they might not be ready to process their personal values and conceptions about faith.

My reflections on Julianna’s story are not meant to indict parents for sharing their religious beliefs with their children or to criticize belief in heaven. Faith has been a driving force in Julianna’s family’s journey with her disease and Julianna’s father credits it for “getting them through” this ordeal; the comfort they derive from their religion is certainly a benefit to their family. However, as young people who may be parents or in contact with children in the future, we have the responsibility to consider if and how we will share our own views about faith with kids. Will those discussions include concessions that there are alternate perspectives? Will they take place after a child has matured to have a more nuanced understanding of spirituality? And how will we respond if the child’s views end up being markedly different from our own?

All images from CNN.com