The lid is still there
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The image I keep coming back to is a fly in a jar.
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The lid is there from the beginning. The fly learns the space it has. Later, someone removes the lid, but the fly still moves as though it is trapped.
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That is how I think about childhood indoctrination. You can eventually give someone books, an internet connection, permission to ask questions. The limits they learned may still be there. They may feel guilty before they can even finish the question.
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This is why “they can choose when they grow up” feels so insufficient to me. A lot has already happened by then. They have already learned who they are supposed to be, which doubts disappoint their parents, and which thoughts might make them a bad person.
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My objection includes the ordinary stuff. “Our god is the right god.” “We do this so we can go to heaven.” Statements delivered casually by the people a child depends on for almost everything.
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People keep answering as though I am only talking about the most frightening households. I am asking about making the belief part of the child’s starting reality at all.
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The part that saddens me most is how easily this gets called love. A parent can mean well. A child can feel loved. I still want to ask what happens to the child’s ability to disagree. Good intentions cannot answer that for them.
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I am not claiming that everyone raised religiously has the same experience. I am describing the reason the arrangement bothers me so deeply: the person being shaped gets very little say in it, and may later have to fight just to recognize what was done.
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I also know the lid can stop feeling real. I changed my mind. That possibility matters to me.
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I wish people did not have to spend so much of their lives earning room to think that they should have had growing up.