I think you meant “as if the FORMER turns up in the daily mail but certainly not the child’s heart.”

Also, there was a big factor you neglected. As Rosalind Wiseman pointed out in her 2006 book “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads” (or maybe it was in her book “Queen Bees and Wannabes”), it is not, unfortunately, enough to repeat your moral values constantly. Any child old enough to be alone in a store for five minutes already knows that stealing is wrong. What REALLY stops them from stealing is knowing how horrific the PUNISHMENT – and the parents’ rage and/or tearful disappointment – is going to be.

Maybe people who keep their kids cloistered and flabby ARE teaching them the same values you would. However, they may be simply too cowardly to make their kids afraid of parental anger – or even to generate any anger in the first place, for fear of losing their kids’ affection. Therefore, they cannot let their kids roam freely, because it’s too likely they’ll behave like convicts. As Dr. Rosemond has said: “The only punishment that ‘fits the crime’ is the one that stops the bad behavior.”

I.e., in small children, remorse comes much later. Fear of punishment comes first. (Miss Manners also has pointed out that kids are not naturally grateful – they only learn to feel that way after years of being forced to say “thank you.”)

In the same vein, I don’t know how many criminals were raised to believe in God, but even non-criminals can’t help noticing that humans do much better at punishing murder and robbery than God does. Maybe that’s also one reason that, when teens do well in school and respect the law but don’t like their parents much, the parents pick their battles by backing off regarding religion. Better for kids to walk the walk than just talk the talk.

Regarding those last two sentences, I wanted to spell that out by adding: The Reverend George MacDonald (1824-1905) once said: “Better to be an atheist who does the will of God than a Christian who does not.”

Considering he supported the right of the poor to sit with the rich in church, as well as the right of women to be educated, both of which were rejected by the higher authorities in the Congregationalist church, I’d say he knew something of what he was talking about.

A follow up thought on your column “I Am Woman Hear Me Talk”: it seems like everytime I see a female driving on the road she has a cell phone in her ear. Is that just me, or has anyone else noticed that too. It’s the same thing at the grocery store, or anywhere. The cell phone is in the ear and it’s non-stop 24/7.

I wanted to add: Call it a hunch, but I bet that parents who don’t put their foot down when it comes to their teens and religious attendance are not that religious themselves, and the teens know it, so trying to be stricter would seem too much like saying “do as I say, not as I do.” (How often have you ever heard anyone say that in so many words to a kid?)

So the question is, can you be a strict parent and raise a truly moral kid without being religious? I say yes.