Foundation Beyond Belief has two sides — a humanist charitable giving program, and an education and support program for secular parents.
The intrepid and talented Ute Mitchell (of CFI Portland’s outstanding secular parent program) has signed on as our Foundation’s Parent Community Coordinator. Her first task is taking the pulse of the secular parenting world — finding out just who we are and what parents need who are raising their kids without religion in a predominantly religious world.
I’ve spent the last four years immersed in this topic — talking to hundreds of nontheistic parents across the US and elsewhere, reading, analyzing, hanging out on the PBB Forum — but now it’s time for something more systematic. We’ve created a 10-minute survey to get a better sense of who you are and what you need. The first of several, this one focuses on general questions including parents’ background and current attitudes, family practices, and specific needs. A survey next week will go to existing secular parenting groups to see who and where they are, what’s working for them and what’s not, and what they need in terms of support. Other individual surveys will focus on specific topics including science, dealing with death, and kids’ peer experiences.
Over 400 600 700 1100 1400 1800 people have already taken the survey since it was posted two weeks ago. We’ll close it down shortly and let you know what we find.
Click here to take survey, or under the red arrow in the sidebar.
And if you haven’t yet joined the Foundation itself, now is the time! Our webmaster has installed a brand new, fully-secure donation system (now including a PayPal option) and made several other lovely upgrades to the site. Help us meet our April 1 goal of 1000 contributing members supporting ten charities working to improve this life and this world.
Took it yesterday. Some of the questions are problematic in that they don’t allow for a “right” answer. This problem will occur whenever the person taking the survey has a spouse who was raised Christian and is still Christian. As it stands now, the responses only work when both parents are secular.
Comment: Charles – 06. February 2010 @ 9:12 am
I went ahead and blasted my cookies so I could look at the survey questions again. The “problem” questions weren’t as bad as I remember them. (It turns out the right way to answer them in my case is to leave them blank.) This may be more a matter of poor wording/expectations on the part of the answerer that all web forms must be filled in!
On a larger note, thanks for doing this! I am as curious as anyone to see the results.
Comment: Charles – 06. February 2010 @ 9:25 am
@Charles: Thanks — this was indeed a wording problem, which we fixed yesterday.
Comment: Dale – 06. February 2010 @ 10:12 am
Hi Dale,
I’m not a parent but I may one day be. I’ve been enjoying your blog for some time now and while recognizing that you are writing for a parenting audience, I wanted to let you know that your blog has been a resource for me not just as a prospective parent, but as an aunt to two fantastic kids who are being raised in religious homes and as a lover of science who often gets to speak to school children about my area of study. Your writing (both via your blog and both books) have been great in helping me navigate my relationship with my religious family members and in particular, with my siblings’ children in a way that stays true to my secular beliefs while respecting their autonomy and my siblings’ right to parent religiously.
I’m interested in hearing about the survey results when they are ready but wanted to let you know that I feel left out in a way. While the survey is asking particular questions of parents (full stop), there are a lot of us out there that have non-parental relationships with children, including close family members or children of close friends, for instance, and who relate to these kids from a secular perspective. Although this will of course, differ with the individual, in my experience, this relationship includes tackling at least some of , if not many of the questions and topics that parents encounter when raising their children.
I always feel welcome at your blog, even as a non-parent, but wanted to raise this perspective as something to think about, perhaps for future posts (or surveys).
Thanks again for your considerable efforts to assist secular parents (and non-parents).
Cheers,
Nettie
Comment: Nettie – 06. February 2010 @ 2:09 pm
Thanks for that, Nettie. I’ve heard this point made before in various ways, often by grandparents, etc. There is no question that significant non-parental adults play a huge role in the lives of children. In fact, “assets” research by the Search Institute and others points to significant non-parent adults as one of the key assets for raising confident, grounded kids.
I will indeed keep that in mind for a future post — or better yet, invite a guest to write on the subject. Beyond that, the best I can do is welcome non-parents to extrapolate what they can from my work, as you have done. So much needs doing in the area of parenting that I just can’t stretch much further. A survey especially needs to set respondent boundaries or its findings become less useful. Thanks again! You’ve got me thinking.
Comment: Dale – 06. February 2010 @ 3:32 pm
Hi Dale,
I’m so glad that you understood what I’d meant. After I posted, I was afraid that I sounded unnecessarily whiny. I absolutely understand the need for the survey boundaries in this case and for the limits that you need to set for your work and writing.
The idea of the survey asking who your readers are and what secular parents needs are, provoked my comment just to give a figurative hand wave of “-And me too!”, to be counted among your audience.
Comment: Nettie – 07. February 2010 @ 3:58 pm