The Talk

I knew it was coming and should have been better prepared.

I assume that in the lives of all parents comes the day when they have to have The Talk with their children but, just the same, I was caught off-guard and think I made a bit of a hash of it.

I am of course not referring to sex. That was taken care of when she was five and came home from school announcing that she was going to get married to Guillermo, a boy on her bus. When my “hmm, that’s nice dear” didn’t satisfy her she insisted “and do you know what you do when you get married Mummy?”

“What dear?”

“You kiss, lie on the bed and have sex.”

That got my attention.

“And who told you that?”

“Sophia, a girl on my bus.”

“And how old is Sophia?” (Through gritted teeth)

“Sixteen.”

The next day I rampaged into school and read the riot act about the shocking lack of supervision which allowed teenagers to proselytize sex on the school bus. It turned out that Sophia was actually eight years old. A note was sent home to her parents about inappropriate conversations while in-transit but the damage was done.

I spend several traumatized hours on amazon.com trying to find sex education books for five-year-olds. They all seemed a bit advanced but I managed to find two, one which was nicely illustrated with a serenely smiling, fully clothed woman producing a grinning baby after a “special cuddle”, a vague process of tadpole transfer, and the gradual growth of the resulting fertilized egg. The other put the whole process in the context of a swimming race (starting off at Sperm School, with all the tadpoles being instructed via blackboard and diagrams on how to swim a straight line and head directly for the egg) and introduced a rather spurious genetic twist which suggested that successful sperm produced babies destined to be a second Michael Phelps (“Sammy wasn’t great at maths but he sure could swim! He was a winner!”)

The result of all this was that my daughter, who has badly wanted a sibling for some time, took it upon herself to follow myself and my husband around (particularly at bedtime), urging “special cuddles” and explaining in great detail how his tadpoles would be travelling to my egg via both our belly buttons, therefore Bigboy and I reading newspapers while relaxing on opposite sides of the bed was not an option.

Having achieved her goal of getting me pregnant she is now working on a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the process, which she intends to use to assist Bigboy when the time comes for him to explain sex to her (as yet unborn) brother. She is convinced that Bigboy will make a poor job of it and will need all the help he can get. Also, according to her, boys are dumber than girls and therefore need things explained better.

So no, it wasn’t about sex. This was the Religion Talk.

She has of course been exposed to the R-word for some time and counts herself as an enthusiastic Christian in the same way as she is a devoted fan of Santa Claus.

Christianity as her religion of choice has been influenced by her last two nannies. The first was a Jehovah’s Witness who would occasionally take Smuggies to the Kingdom Hall when I was away on travel duty. I banned her from dragging my daughter round the neighbourhood on their Saturday morning annoy-the-ungodly routine. When Smuggies questioned this, I asked whether she would appreciate me poking her awake on a weekend to tell her that I believe that the sky is orange and that watching TV is evil and insisting that she believe the same. She saw my point. She did, however, develop a taste for Bible stories.

The next nanny was also a Christian – though of a less annoying and far more pragmatic variety – and when Smuggies started worrying that “Mummy says she doesn’t believe in God, what will happen to her?” she soothed, “we’ll just have to pray for her.” So now my daughter is given to ostentatious nightly appeals to Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild who she implores in loud and pointed whispers to “bless Mummy and TAKE CARE OF HER” (subtext: even though she is an ungodly heathen).

On my first day of school my father gathered myself and my siblings together and said, “They will ask you what religion you are. You tell them you are a practicing atheist.” We were officially excused from Religious Instruction classes. I went anyway because I, too, found the Bible highly entertaining, but there was never any danger of me developing an allegiance to a deity as psychotic as the one lauded in the Isaac and Abraham story.

Smuggies on the other hand, has never been to a religious school (mine was nominally Anglican). At her last school, which follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme, they learned about religion in the context of cultural differences. In one segment they were allowed to choose different religious symbols and illustrate them in art class. She, predictably, chose Christianity and came home proudly bearing an unconvincingly rendered stuffed cross made of grungy grey denim and foam rubber. When I refused to let her sleep in my bed clutching this creepy object she explained patiently “there’s no need to be afraid Mummy, this isn’t the actual cross they crucified Jesus on.” My (Catholic) colleague at work found this hysterically funny and posited that perhaps the Romans had velcroed Jesus to the cross. (Which of course would put His suffering and sacrifice on our behalf into an entirely new light.)

I had as yet made no serious concerted attempt to convince her of the illogicality of religious belief since she might then start demanding inconvenient truths about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, though it has to be said that all of these provide more tangible benefits and less horrendous consequences for non-compliance. I have instead encouraged her to think logically and for herself.

However, when we decided to relocate to Peru – a country so Catholic that at Easter it is de rigueur to visit seven churches in one day – I realised that the delicate balance between the atheism of the majority of my family and the lure of Jesus and his cherubim was about to be upset. Resorting once more to amazon, I bought her a great little book called ‘Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics’ by Dan Barker.

Barker doesn’t mention religion at all until about halfway through the book. Instead, he demonstrates – by way of a ghost story – that “you should prove the truth of a strange story before you believe it.” He then teaches the essentials of critical thought through the application of scientific rules such as:

Check it out;
Repeat the experiment;
Try to prove it wrong; and, most importantly
Always Ask Questions.

And it seemed to be working. I didn’t shove the book down her throat. I waited until she had to practice her English reading anyway and then presented it to her. She got interested and read it in one sitting and seemed to have been adopting proper scientific methodology if the increase in “but Mum, why...?” questions is any indication.

But then she started school.

I had toyed with the idea of sending her to a local school but was told that all schools in Peru – other than private ones following the international curriculum – required children to produce upon enrolment baptism certificates not just for themselves but for both parents and, no doubt, all their ancestors. So off to an International School she went. I was slightly reassured by the brochure which insists that religion is taught “within a context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society”. I am hoping that this refers to global society rather than Peruvian society, which is fascinating but not noticeably multicultural – particularly when it comes to religion.

But this all became – pardon the pun – academic. Turns out that about 80% of the students are Peruvians, whose parents no doubt want the advantages of an international education within the comfort zone of familiar religious norms. On top of that, it seems that Catholic children take First Communion around the age of eight, so recent First Communion celebrations are currently the talk of the school yard among my daughters’ classmates.

I don’t know much about such things but, according to Wikipedia, in Latin American countries First Communion involves parties, girls wearing “fancy dresses and a veil attached to a headdress, as well as either long or short white gloves... Gifts of a religious nature are usually given, such as rosaries, prayer books, in addition to religious statues and icons. Gifts of cash are also common.” These days I understand that the distribution of party bags to school mates is also a feature.

Parties? Fancy white dresses with gloves? Gifts? Cash?!! Now they are speaking Smuggie-language!

She came home from school yesterday with a few post-communion trinkets and a million questions. Why hadn’t she done her First Communion? What is First Communion? How had she overlooked this lucrative revenue stream?

So we had The Talk.

First I had to explain the difference between the various Christian denominations. “Which ones are the ones that knock on doors?” “And what do Catholics believe in?”

I then pointed out that there were many other religions in the world and many contradictory and illogical beliefs and that she should keep asking questions and not automatically believe everything she heard. I touched on the role of religion in war and the important role of scientific enquiry in the development of the human race.

“So Mum, if God didn’t make us, where did we come from?” And there she had me.

I was buggered. I had omitted to prepare. I had forgotten to brush-up on Darwinian theory for nine-year-olds.

I gave it my best off-the-cuff shot but my burblings about the big bang, primordial soup, amoeba, and fish crawling out of the sea and growing wings and feet and then learning to use tools began to sound about as convincing as the virgin birth, resurrection, angels with flaming swords and burning bushes that talk. And worse, none of this gobbledygook seemed to involve presents or cool necklaces. How do you get a child to grasp the concept of evolution when it doesn’t involve presents?

I was losing my audience and it was incredibly tempting to throw up my hands and say, “You know what? God did make us. And it only took seven days. Now eat your dinner or you’re going to hell.”

One thing you have to say about atheism, it is never the easy option. But, la luta continua, so I’m off to surf amazon again.

TO BE CONTINUED...