My [28F] husband [28m] wants to raise our child athiestic but I want our child to make their own decisions. It's driving a wedge between us. How do we proceed?

Yes, we had this conversation prior to having children and I thought we agreed that we would allow them to make their own choice without us inserting their own opinion. Seems I misunderstood or he's changed his mind.

Our son is starting to ask questions about spirituality. I was raised Christian home and consider myself agnostic. When our son asks questions about Jesus, I answer them in a Christian point of view and always preface it, "Well, Christians believe...." Etc. We are in the bible belt so our son is primarily surrounded by Christian friends and family, but our household is not. I do not wish to insert my own opinion upon him whatsoever and want him to make his own choice in this matter. My husband is a die hard atheist who is absolutely certain there is no god, though I have never heard him declare that to our son.

My husband overheard a conversation where I was telling our son about what Christians believe in regards to heaven/hell. I prefaced it the same as I always do... "Christians believe..." "And some people believe..." When he asked me again if there is a heaven or hell, I just asked him, "What do you think?" I really try and not make his opinion for him because I know the slightest given opinion from me may very well change his whole world. Frankly, as an agnostic, I don't want to be responsible for ANYONE'S potentially existing soul, even my own children's. I want them to make that choice themselves, as an adult.

After overhearing this conversation, my husband spoke to me afterwards and got extremely upset that I did not shoot this idea of heaven or hell down entirely. Not angry/pissed/yelling but he was clearly irrate that i would bother giving religious points of view at all.

I reiterated that I thought we agreed to raise our child free of our own opinions, and he said that if we do that, our child will grow up to become a Christian free of any other influence considering we live in the bible belt.... While he's not entirely wrong, I'm not really sure what he wants the outcome to be.

We talked for a while longer and I straight up asked if he still wanted to allow our child to grow up free of our own religious opinions, and he said "Sure, but I feel like you're giving an unequal share of consideration to Christianity." But that's literally all my child asks about because it's all he's exposed to here in the south.

Tl;Dr - I feel completely cornered. We agreed to raise our son free of my agnostic opinions, and free of his athiestic opinions, but my son only ever asks Christian oriented questions because we live in the bible belt. My husband feels I am raising him to be a Christian because I answer his Christian based questions from a Christian point of view. I want him to make his own decisions and have never butt in mine. I feel like this is driving a wedge between us. How do I proceed?

Submitted December 17, 2021 at 09:34PM by Old_Perception22 https://ift.tt/3FdGnNm