My wife had a similar up bringing as far as temple went. She might be more spiritual than me but not much.

But the weird thing is I'm struggling with what we'll do with our child who will be born in a few months. Judiasm is a religion so incredibly intertwined with a culture and community. I kind of want my child to share the same experiences because it helped me with my, non-religious, identity.

Bar/Bat Mitzvahs are a pretty cool, albeit expensive, cultural experience. Same with Jewish day/overnight camps…there is actually little religion there and more community. Plus I love some of the holidays liek Passover and Hanukkah because of the stories, but I don't like the high holidays that are the most important to the religion because they are preachy.

I found your thoughts about advertising interesting too, and I like Jen's comment. I make my living off of advertising/marketing and therefore I'm really cynical about it, but I love it.

So maybe that's how I should treat religion. Allow my child to have the same experiences, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Hebrew school (that's more culture than religion vs. Sunday school), and camp while at the same time letting him or her know to be cynical about what is taught and not believe it all.

We try to talk to them about our thought processes when making decisions, including trying to admit when we really are being arbitrary, if we can be be honest with ourselves about that.

Specifically about commercials and ads, we've tried to take them as they come. “Oh, that toy looks like it's probably not very well made in real life. Remember how the last one we got fell apart?” or “That does look cool! I saw it in the store yesterday.” We do it for grown-up products too.

My wife Air runs a podcast about beauty and cosmetics, and we're constantly pointing out the weird new “technologies” that appear in skincare advertising and laugh at the pseudo-scientific names the companies come up with (oooh, “Regenerist!”). Conversely, though, Air also reviews a lot of products, and talks about which ones really are good and which ones aren't. And the kids ask questions like, “Why are long eyelashes supposed to be pretty anyway?”

Another example: I've hemmed and hawed about getting an iPhone for a long time now, and I've often discussed my reasoning for not getting one, even after Air got one herself. Now I've decided I will, and we've talked about what changed my mind, including both my rational and irrational reasons for doing it, and how our budget plays into the choice.

I think it helps for children to see that adults often muddle our way through too, and we don't always make the right choices. But that's okay.

The reason I share that/am open about it is not because I attend church every Sunday as an adult, or have a particular agenda to convey myself, but because I like to let people know that even parents with a specific faith (the word religion is WAY too loaded for most people, and doesn't speak to the personal aspects of belief) can raise their kids to think for themselves and make their own choices.

My parents always emphasized that faith wasn't something you inherited or had impressed on you, but something you would choose to embrace, according to your own will and your own experiences. I had to make my own calls according to what I understood to be true, just as they had done for themselves. Sure, they would likely want me to embrace their views, but not because I had to — because it made sense to them and was positive for them, and they'd want that same thing for me.

But they wouldn't want that by force or by pushing — that would have just made my own belief a shadow of theirs, and based on influence instead of choice.

My friends and I who come from families where our parents embraced a certain faith have a wildly disparate range of experiences with how our parents chose to pass that down, but I would say my experience ranks among the most positive.

On a different note, faith isn't the only type of worldview or framework that parents pass on to their kids. Politics, economics, work ethic, social behaviours, and health stuff comes up a lot, too.

The kids who always had to play sports or take lessons, the kids who had to do well in school or face humiliation, the kids who were expected to look or act a certain way to reflect a certain type of social status, the kids who were told that “our family belongs to such and such a political party, we always have”, the kids who were either subject to super-emotional or under-emotional relationship patterns, the kids who had parents who experimented/faced addiction issues, etc… they all have influences and ideas and experiences and scars from all that stuff that are just as powerful as faith echoes.

We all pass stuff on to our kids, for better or for worse. Faith gets a lot of attention because it influences a lot of areas in life, but there are plenty of other things we do and believe that have a powerful impact.

One thing you mentioned that I'd love to hear more about, is how you approached the area of critical thinking and examination, especially of TV commercials. I suppose as someone in marketing, I'm more sensitive than most, but I often see a negative judgement of advertising taught equally along with the awareness.

The fact that commericals try to sell things isn't inherently bad – the shared revenue model of most media is what allows us access at an affordable rate a lot of the time. Like with anything else, there are bad commercials and shady tactics – but a lack of critical thinking is the problem, not the ads or the vehicles delivering them.