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“Becoming a Parent Changes Everything”: How Nonbeliever and Pagan Parents Manage Stigma in the U.S. Bible Belt

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Abstract

Despite the increasing visibility of secularism and alternative religions in the United States, few have paid attention to the relationship between family roles and religious identity outside of mainstream Christian denominations. Guided by insights from theories of identity work, I compare stigma management strategies by two religiously marginalized groups. Based on participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis, I show how nonbeliever and Pagan parents in the Bible Belt respond to perceived threats to their moral identities as “good parents.” Nonbeliever and Pagan parents manage their spoiled identities by engaging in defensive othering amongst subordinates, a form of stigma management, to distance themselves from discrediting stereotypes—specifically the “militant atheist” and the “hedonistic Pagan.” I demonstrate that access to greater financial and cultural capital (nonbeliever parents) allows for reliance on defensive othering to massage interpersonal relations, whereas access to low levels of financial and cultural capital (Pagan parents), prompts the need to rely on defensive othering as a matter of survival. Becoming a parent changes the dynamic of stigma management for individuals; pushing individual parents away from social justice activism and ultimately undercutting broader social movements for equality.

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Notes

  1. All names of individuals and organizations have been changed to pseudonyms to protect the identity of research participants.

  2. I use the language of “Pagan” and “Paganism” because these are the terms used by the people I studied. Technically, however, “neo-Pagan” and “neo-Paganism” are the more accurate terms for the modern movements of polytheistic, “environmentally-based” religions whose members share a desire to revive or reconstruct historic spiritual traditions.

  3. Justification of language identifiers is discussed later in the Methods section.

  4. For an example of an exception see the work of Lazano and Foltz (1990).

  5. Based on data from the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Survey (2015), states in the U.S. South that hold a higher-than-national average of Evangelical Christians (25%) include: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

  6. For an examination of the ongoing debates among nonbelievers over labels, I refer you to Blankholm (2014).

  7. My initial research interest was in studying atheist parents. It wasn’t until I was in the field that I realized just how contentious and ill-fitting the term “atheist” is for many nonbeliever parents.

  8. Organizers of the secular parenting group admitted that my intense interest in the experiences of secular parents helped catalyze the formation of the group. I did not pitch this idea, nor did I have any hand in founding the group, but it is an example of the effect a researcher can have on their participants unwittingly.

  9. Please note that these extreme examples are plucked out of context and provided only to illustrate the point that (mainly) childless atheist meetings varied in tone from secular parent meetings. They are not meant to be taken as a thorough analysis of conversations or attitudes of members at atheist meetings. Meetings were diverse in content and tone even as they almost always included some conversations and uptake around what can be interpreted as “militant atheism.”

  10. Due to space constraints, I can only note this finding in passing and not develop it further in this manuscript. I hope to develop it further in future work.

  11. “Skyclad” refers to ritual work done in the nude. In my experience, skyclad work is talked about often by members of the community but very rarely occurs. My impression of this discrepancy was backed up by two Wiccan high priestesses I interviewed.

  12. All spelling and capitalization (with the exception of names) taken from the SPL website are presented verbatim to preserve the integrity and tone of the data.

  13. The issue of nonbelievers’ emotional struggles with Christian others is explored in another, as yet unpublished, manuscript.

  14. One Norse father even claimed fearing for his personal safety on the construction site where he worked once his beliefs were discovered by others.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank David Smilde and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this manuscript as well as Joseph Blankholm, Amy Armenia, and Matthew Nichter for their consultation. The author would also like to thank Michael Schwalbe for his tireless mentoring efforts throughout the data collection and analysis process.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Cornell Social Sciences Building, Rollins College, 1000 Holt Avenue—2761, Winter Park, FL, 32789, USA

    Amy I. McClure

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Correspondence to Amy I. McClure.

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McClure, A.I. “Becoming a Parent Changes Everything”: How Nonbeliever and Pagan Parents Manage Stigma in the U.S. Bible Belt. Qual Sociol 40, 331–352 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-017-9359-6

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