I have five children. I was raised by fairly straight laced parents. My mother and her parents used to take me to church, a Baptist church, you think Catholosism is harsh? At least they are allowed to dance, play cards, and go to movies. My father and his parents are Catholic, altough my father is not a practicing Catholic. I lost my faith so long ago, that I can't tell you when it happened. Not any one incedent happened, it was a build up over the years. My children are all different. Like night and day. I have one child who is on here, she is very gothic. I have to conform in order to work where I work, at least during the day. My youngest son now lives with his father and has the opportunity to go to "confirmation" classes. I encourage it, even though I prefer not to believe in the hierarchy of organized religion. He asked me if he moved home if he could continue these classes. I told him most certainly. He knows that I would prefer not to attend services, and that I will drop him off and be there for him when the services are over. I will not stop any of my children from finding out for themselves what is going to work for them. I will also answer any questions that they have, about any of the religions that they are interested in. (I too did a lot of church youth group in my early teens.) In fact, even though I have felt, thought and believed the way I do today, when the school my children were going to decided that they weren't going to teach the kids about Hannukah because of some bigeted parents, I protested. I didn't think that it was fair or right to teach just one religious belief just because nobody in that school practiced judiism. They all have a right to be informed, about any and all religions and practices. (Within reason, I wouldn't let them watch an animal sacrifice or anything like that at a young age.) But they should have the respect of being human beings to be given the facts about any religion that they want to know about. Goth (in my opinion) is not a religion, it is a lifestyle. And I do agree with everybody else, that if the children are loved, cared for, clean, fed, housed, and educated, just because you wear black clothes, dark make-up and dye your hair different colors, doesn't make you a bad parent. If you are doing everything else right, I wouldn't worry about it. If we all raise our children to have an open mind, eventually, we will weed out the close minded people and have a truly free and maybe even peaceful world to live in. It will never happen in our natural lives, but we can insure the future by teaching our children with the hopes that they will continue the lesson.
Sorry about the long post, just needed to get that all out of my system.
