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jsalvatier comments on Recent de-convert saturated by religious community; advice? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Thanks for the reply. Glad I found it. I pretty much agree with two added counter-points:
1) My wife might very well prefer that I say approximately... nothing. I don't think that's necessarily the case, but it might come up more and more. For example, I objected to her singing my daughter praise and worship songs that claim that Jesus will come back "riding on the clouds at the trumpet call," since my daughter has no way to question whether someone can actually "ride on clouds," whether that's how the end days would happen, etc. My wife responded that it's just "an upbeat, celebratory song," and that she sung it at my daughter's request. I then made up a song on the spot with a catchy sing-song melody about god being a figment of the imagination that people just make up because it makes them feel good and asked if I could sing that to her. She didn't like the idea. In other words, she'd like to have the freedom to pray with my daughter and openly express beliefs but would prefer I kept my opinions out of it.
2) My wife really does actually believe, or thinks she does. Whether my daughter will one day see through this... I'm not sure. My wife does think that miraculous things happen as a result of prayer, but considers god's will as to who and when a mystery -- "he knows best." So... it's not like being raised by "cultural Catholics" -- my daughter is in a house with a flesh-and-blood full believer who raises hands to praise and worship, gets up at 6a to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, prays "in the spirit", etc.
Hope that offers some clarifications about the situation! My oldest has been staying home with me on Sundays while my wife takes our youngest (7mos) to Mass with her.
This recent book discusses the evidence about the influence of genes and parenting on children's life outcomes. Caplan claims that the evidence says for the most part parents have significant effects on who their children are in the short run but not in the long run. He does discuss the evidence for religiosity in particular and he finds mostly the same pattern. Parents have a large effect on what their children say about their religious labels (Christian, Muslim etc.) in the long run, but not much effect effect on how religious their children act (church attendance, that sort of thing).
Interesting. I'll have to check that out, but it tracks well with Steven Pinker's discussion of similar things in Blank Slate (amazon link), which he summarizes briefly in this TED Talk.
The talk is fascinating, especially his discussion about "twin studies," where he seems to echo much of what you suggested above. IIRC, he rated genes and peer groups as having the top influences on children. Takes a load off :)