We’ve been together for about 10 years – married for four and till this day everything is pretty much perfect. We’re on par with alot of core believes and values so till this day there wasn’t really a big disagreement whatsoever.
Last year we welcomed our little daughter in a troublesome birth where the mom nearly died. Her body was so weak that it took 4 weeks for her to heal and to finally been able to care for her daughter. Breastfeeding didn’t work either. And furthermore the reasons for the complications remain and would occur with a second pregnancy – so on a health standpoint – that is off the book *(maybe that has something to do with her reasoning)*
She has been to counseling because all of that and I tried to support her as much as I could.
Besides this she knows, that not only am I an passive atheist but a strong opponent against the church. When the topic of baptism came up I strictly told her NO – my daughter can decide of her own if she wants to participate in religion if shes old enugh (around 12-13 where I live).
Since then I softend my point to a – *”do what you wanna do, but I won’t participate in any form to something like that. Tell me where I need to be and when and I will be there to stand around for an hour.”*
She just now informed that she plans to go through with it sometime around April and that there a two churches available. Her reasoning is that she *”wants to give her every blessing possible”.*
I know I said *”do what you wanna do”* but i kind of pissed off that you would do something you clearly know your partner doesn’t want to and I have doubts that in the future we will be functining like a Team when it comes to parenting or other decisions for my daughter.
Do I just swallow it and possibly blame her for it at some point? How do I communicte to her that her decision is something that deeply worries me without trieng to guildtrip her to blow off the baptism?
TL;DR
My wife wants to baptism our daughter even tho I REALLY don’t want to. I fear that this is just the beginning of “I’m the mom I make the rules”- parenting
34 comments
So don’t say do what you want if you don’t want her to do that. You can’t put the blame just on her when you also gave her the go ahead
You said do what you want and you would stand there for an hour. So she did and will probably expect you to honor what you said and now you’re mad? I don’t get it.
OP. What on earth.
“Do I just swallow it and possibly blame her for it at some point?”
No, of course not. Of course you should instead *have a conversation with your wife* about how your feelings have changed about this.
Listen, this is Big Deal stuff, and it’s stuff that’s beyond Reddit advice.
Ask your wife if her therapist can recommend someone you could have a few sessions of family therapy with. I think it would be really helpful for you both to have this specific conversation with a professional present, because there’s already so many big emotions here and it’s going to be difficult for you to understand each other. Find someone who could guide you through that conversation.
Best of luck, OP
Baptism of a baby with parental consent, which you gave, isn’t a big deal IMO. The child will still be able to decide what they do or don’t believe when they get older.
If your wife wants to take your child to church every week that would be far more of a concern. That said, I had to go to church regularly and am now a committed atheist.
But you don’t seem to be thinking of this in terms of your wife’s welfare or your child’s. You might well need help to talk this through with someone neutral, but I’m not sure why you’re surprised at the situation. Religion means something to most religious people, and they want that for their children. Why would you wait until your child arrived to work this stuff through?
Oof. You guys should have talked a lot more on these values.
Only suggestion I have it that you both find a MFT therapist.
I dunno man, if my wife nearly died giving birth then something like a baptism would be ok to me lol
You are setting your wife up to fail. You are expecting her to be a mindreader and infer the *real* meaning behind your soft ‘go ahead’, and then you are angry when she doesn’t. It reads like a love test and that’s just not on.
Look, loving each other doesn’t mean knowing the other’s thoughts and emotions without asking. It just doesn’t! If you change your mind about something, that is fine, it happens, but you actively have to let them know. You have to use your words and say what you mean.
If you think you can’t live with this, then talk to her. Don’t let this fester. And whatever you two figure out in the end – either of you should stand behind that decision.
Edit – about the blessing itself: I empathize with the ‘what if?’ anxiety of your wife, even as an atheist. My Catholic grandma used to baptize her grandchildren in secret. There may be a compromise for you two in a non-Church, personal baptism of sorts – religions do recognize these to a point.
> Do I just swallow it and possibly blame her for it at some point?
No that’s terrible and unfair. If you think you’re going to blame her tell her now so she can make an informed decision. Don’t lie and say she can do what she wants and you’re fine with it.
It sounds like the baptism will be meaningless nonsense to you but meaningful to the mum, so I think you should let her do it and let it go. If you can’t do that though, you need to be upfront about it now – you can’t get retroactively mad about it.
It’s weird that you’re married and have had a kid with someone religious when you’re so against it.
Are we talking about baptism here and that’s it? Or are we now talking about immersing this child into a religion? Going to church on a regular basis etc.
Those are two very different things.
To me, the first is, yeah whatever. Loads of parents do that.
The second no way.
Look, I went through the whole Catholic rigamarole as a kid.
Baptism, Reconciliation, Confirmation. The works.
My parents weren’t even religious – they just wanted me to get into the good local high school, which happened to be a Catholic one.
I’m an adult now. I get to choose what to do with my time. And zero percent of that time is spent believing in a god or performing religious activities.
So having a baptism, or any of the other ceremonies that these people like to do, isn’t the end of the world. You also don’t have to attend at all. Even if you promised to. You already changed your mind once – you can do it again.
But the baptism isn’t the issue.
The issue is that she wants to raise your kid as a religious person and you don’t.
You thought you were both on the same page before – which clearly isn’t the case.
So what’s going to happen when your kid is old enough to attend church? To understand what’s being said and be forced to participate by her mother?
You don’t have a good track record of standing your ground when it comes to the hard position of “nothing religious until she’s old enough”, so it might be time to sit down and explore what life might ACTUALLY look like with your wife.
Find out what she would ideally want your kid to be doing through their childhood. Agree together on which of those ceremonies is acceptable to you both.
THEN. Demand equal time.
Whatever time she gets with the kid on things like going to church? You get the same amount of time to explore YOUR heritage.
That might involve educating your daughter on all religions of the world. Get her used to critically evaluating the belief systems she comes across, so that she’s better equipped to evaluate her mother’s one.
Introduce her to the core ceremonies of atheism. Which involve doing whatever the hell you want on the weekend. Going and getting cheeseburgers and icecream with your daughter and having a great time together.
Be there for her, and be supportive. Listen to her worries.
And be prepared for her to grow up in a completely different way than you’d like her to.
Even after all of your hard work, she may turn out to be a faithful Christian who sincerely believes in her sky daddy.
And that’s ok. Everyone gets to choose what they want to do with their own life. Focus on the important things. Is she kind to people? Is she successfully navigating life?
If you have a great relationship with her, and she’s a great person to be around? Then it won’t matter if she goes to church on the weekend.
If she doesn’t end up becoming a good person, for whatever reason? Then you can make your decisions about whether and how much to stay in contact then. That’s a long, long time away, so don’t get ahead of yourself.
Since you’re an atheist, it’s nothing more than giving your child a very ineffective bath. It’s not a contract binding you to the church, you as an atheist should see that.
>Since then I softend my point to a – “do what you wanna do, but I won’t participate in any form to something like that. Tell me where I need to be and when and I will be there to stand around for an hour.”
>
>I know I said “do what you wanna do” but i kind of pissed off that you would do something you clearly know your partner doesn’t want to
Can’t have it both ways dude. “I don’t want to, but you can if you want” can’t then be followed by “how dare you listen to the words I said and do the thing I said you can do!”
If it was this important to you, you should have taken a stand at the time and not “softened your point”. I’d also point out that this goes both ways – if you don’t want X and she really wants X, one of you is going to be disappointed! What, she should give up on something important to her because of your feelings…but you can’t be expected to do the same?
Your fear that this is some slippery slope is irrational. She’s not saying she makes the rules – a) **you told her it was OK**, and b) your feelings and wants aren’t any more important than hers.
The **only** way stuff like this ever gets resolved is by having an open honest discussion about it and either figuring out a middle ground, a compromise, or by one person accepting that *this time* they don’t get their way, but also the other person appreciating that and bearing it in mind the next time there’s another decision with no easy compromise.
No couple will ever agree 100% on everything. Before getting married you need to nail down the absolute dealbreakers and make sure you’re on the same page. But there’ll be a lot of smaller stuff which isn’t divorce-worthy but also can’t be shrugged off, and any healthy couple needs to figure it out together. Not claim they’re indifferent when they’re not, and then secretly harbour resentment.
I’d also point out that if you’re an atheist, why do you care so much that someone wearing a funny hat is splashing some water around? Because it doesn’t mean anything **to you**, you don’t believe it changes anything or accomplishes anything. Which means this might be less about worrying “she’s the mom she makes the rules” and maybe just an edge of “I think **I** should make the rules”. **Both** of you make the rules – you figure out agreement for the really definitive things and you acknowledge one or the other of you will “win”/”lose” other times, and it’ll all even out. Provided it *does* even out of course, but absent any specific reason to worry it won’t, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.
How did you get to the point of spending a decade together, getting married, and having a child, without ever having discussed this until now?
Our kid is baptised, but not a part of our church. This was our compromise. The baptism was important for me, my husband felt strongly our son should be free of any ties with any church to choose for himself. We both got what we wanted. I’m a Lutheran though, so church as an institution isn’t something I’m keen on anyway.
As an atheist, I don’t really see the harm in the baptism. It’s a pointless ritual, but it’s more for the parents than the child and it sounds like your wife has been through a lot. I would pick your battles here, sometimes you have to compromise in relationships if you want to remain an effective team. It would be different if your wife wanted to really push a religious mindset / religious education on her.
On a side-note trying to completely exclude religion from your lives is unlikely to be possible. The approach I’ve taken with my own kids is just to expose them to different mythologies, world religions etc. Which seems to inoculate them to a lot of the preaching that they may otherwise accept uncritically.
OP: Do what you want
Wife: *does perfectly reasonable thing she said she was gonna do*
OP: *shocked Pikachu*
Don’t be such a sook
Saying “Do what you want” and then being pissed that she does what she wants is gonna put you on the fast track to having an EX wife.
Mean what you say and say what you mean. Communicate, FFS.
I don’t see the point in baptizing your daughter, but obviously her mother does.
My thought is, let it go. It’s just a baptism. It won’t harm her. She’s not raising her in church or teaching her religion. It’s just a simple baptism that your daughter won’t even remember later. There will be no harm done. As an atheist, it’s not like you’re an opposing religion that believes baptizing her will send her to hell or something. So what if someone sprinkles a little water on your daughter? It will be meaningless to you as an atheist and meaningless to your daughter because she’s young, won’t understand, and won’t remember. So let your wife do it to make herself feel better. Why not?
I’m an atheist too but I was raised Catholic. Went through all the milestones (baptism, communion, confirmation etc), was taught religion daily in school, went to mass for Xmas, Easter and the odd Sunday Mass with nana.
After all that, I don’t believe in it.
However, if I were in your position, her wanting to get the child baptised wouldn’t be an issue. Mostly because it’s just ‘procedure’ or ‘tradition’ and I think there’s no harm in it if it’s something she believes and takes comfort in. As long as its not some super intense indoctrination she has planned.
Your kid will make their own decision on it someday regardless. Just give them the options and information to decide for themselves.
YTA – Only for the way you’re handling this. She asked, you gave her your support. Don’t get pissed off at her for going ahead with it when you said to.
So your wife and child almost DIED. Your wife wants to baptise your child (not, from what you have said, force the kid to attend church) after having been faced with the very real possibility of said child’s death. You gave her the okay to do this. And your strongest emotion abut the situation is that she didn’t read your mind and go along with your beliefs. While compromise is important in relationships, you seem to be strangely unempathetic towards the fact that your wife and child both had major medical scares, and you also view your own lack of communication skills as your wife maliciously overruling your wishes.
Please examine why your instinct is to assume she’s trying to disrespect you, instead of seeing how you can understand her motives and work together. You are worried about teamwork, but you are the one actually showing an inability to work together to solve problems (opting instead for passive aggression).
Quick question: why the hell wasn’t this discussed prior to having kids?!
Look, I’m probably closer to your actual views on the topic than your wife’s. But you did say she could do what she wants on this. It is really not fair to then get pissed when she did just that. And furthermore…dude, pick your battles. Your wife gave birth to your child, a very traumatic experience. Maybe you could ease up and just let your wife do something that will put her at ease. You can have a larger conversation about religion and how to raise the kid, but a baptism isn’t a huge deal.
Catholics believe that baptizing a baby means they can go to heaven. Your wife recently had a near death experience; can you understand how that would cause her to seek comfort in her religion? She’s probably thinking that if she died that she would spend eternity apart from her only child.
I’m an atheist and like you, I don’t believe in that. But I understand that other people do. Can you put yourself in your wife’s shoes? This would likely help her emotionally and all it means is the baby gets some water sprinkled over her head.
The baby’s mother is a Catholic. That means that you likely won’t be able to raise her without religion – if this is so important to you, you shouldn’t have had kids with a Catholic. Even if you divorced, she would have the right to bring that kid to a church.
What you can do is be open and honest about your perspective, tell your daughter when she’s older that you don’t believe in God, and that she can make her own choice.
“Last year we welcomed our little daughter in a troublesome birth where the mom nearly died. Her body was so weak that it took 4 weeks for her to heal and to finally been able to care for her daughter”
This is a horrifying way to talk about your wife. “the mom” “her daughter”
OP, are you in therapy? I can’t figure out if you hate your wife or if you’re just traumatized from this awful thing that happened.
As an atheist myself, I would have absolutely no problem with my wife giving my kid a ONE TIME religious ritual which I have absolutely no belief in.
I mean, what is happening, some latin verses done and some water splashed on my kid?
More happens at a victory baseball game win with champagne!
You told her to do what she wants and she’s doing exactly that. You don’t get to blame her later for her doing something that you told her you didn’t care one way or the other about initially. It’s fair enough that you don’t want to be involved. And it sounds like she’s not making you be involved, so…
I mean, if you’re really a passive atheist then having a baptism shouldn’t really be a big deal for you anyway since you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe in the sacrament so all it really amounts to you is some guy with a backwards collar putting some water and oil on a kids head in a church. I mean it sounds like the pregnancy, delivery and post partum were very tough on your wife. If having just a baptism will give her some measure of peace, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want your wife to have that.
However, ideally, what faith if any you were going to raise a child is something you probably should have discussed before you got married.
I’m an atheist and am shaking my head at you. Dude you and I both know that shit is just for pretend anyway. So what’s the harm?? Your daughter isn’t going to catch religion cooties and it’ll make your wife feel better. If this was really such a problem, you need to look right at yourself – why did you give your permission? And even deeper, if it was such a problem why did you marry her? This is entirely on you – deal with your shit. Go to therapy if you have to.
If you really don’t like it – your passive aggressive “do what you want to do” is part of the problem. You need to actually use your words, explain what you mean and what you expect. You are playing with some poor child’s future life choices by being weak. YOUR child’s.
On one hand – a baptism is nothing. It means nothing. It doesn’t do anything.
And as done on an infant is irrelevant to their life.
If you wait until later, the child actually has to be indoctrinated to believe before baptism.
And 12 year olds only believe in the god their parents let them believe in, so, you know that really isn’t an effective – let them choose strategy.
On the other hand – and part of the getting the child to believe, all the indoctrination usually follows that precedent of baptism or intent to baptize.
Are we suddenly going to start going to church, praying at meals and having bed time prayers? Bible studies?
And how do you as an atheist intend to handle that?
If your wife is intent on instilling a god belief in your child, then you have to be active, and intent on educating your child about ALL religions. Different god beliefs come and go over history, usually with political power.
Passive aggressiveness is weak and will lead to failure on your part to protect your child.
Educate yourself and speak up.
When you discussed this before getting married, what was the agreement you two came to?
> Last year we welcomed our little daughter in a troublesome birth where **the mom** nearly died.
> … it took 4 weeks for her to heal and to finally been able to care for **her daughter.**
I’m more concerned with the fact that you just referred to your wife as “the mom” and the child you just had with her as “her daughter.”
You’ve just subconsciously revealed you see yourself as an individual operating separately from your family.
you are the annoying kind of person who thinks people can read your mind. You said do what you want, she’s doing, if it’s important to her let it be. My brother is an atheist and his gf is really catholic he will be baptize so they can marry in the church bcuz he knows what it’s important to her.
I don’t understand the big deal about pleasing your partner even if you don’t believe, so let them, it’s important to them.
if youre an atheist why do you even care? you know that baptisms arent some kind of magical spell that bind your child to the church forever and make her a servant of christ or whatever. it’s literally just some dude saying stuff while he sprinkles water on a baby’s head and it’s only meaningful if your daughter wants it to be when she’s older. unless the baptism water is from a dysentery riddled puddle, it’s a small, harmless gesture that will make your traumatized wife feel more secure; why die on this hill?
Did you really refer to your wife as “the mom” in your post?!? And your daughter as “her daughter”?
Is this some sad fake attempt for useless internet karma?