Laurent, you are porbably a better father then I am - as a radical atheist and relativly plain spoken person I will find it probably impossible not to tell my son my opinion. Kindergartens in germany are a sad story - there are too few, and they are often expensive (500 euros ore more per month) and they are traditionally attached to a confession, even if the city pays like 99% of the costs. This is different in the bigger cities, but where I live there are like 30 kindergartens with confessions and 20 without, but the latter are not easily reachable or have lacking hours (like no fridays.)

@ChristianSauer This might differ depending on the exact location. In my region the fee is based on your income and about 100-150€ per months when the child is at least 3 years old. Double the amount for an age below 3. But what I find rather disturbing is declaring yourself a radical atheist. Radicality is something you should avoid in any case, preaching about atheism is in no way different than preaching about a religion. Just the viewpoint is different. I say this as an atheist myself.

@ChristianSauer Expensive? 500 euro per month is at the lower end of what they cost in the Czech Republic. With less than 2/3 of your (german) net household income.

@ChristianSauer, I'm located in East Germany. Low fees (160 Euro/ month for 9 hours a day, starting from age 1) and no religion in public Kindergarten. So it depends on the location.

@ChristianSauer > Leaving the "good father/bad father" discussion aside (I don't think there's any scale to evaluate parenting), I actually have no issue expressing my (sometimes strong) opinions to my kid or anyone else. I just try to always mention this is an opinion, not "the truth". Ans this for topics like religion, politics, and so on. That said I can imagine it's easier to do this as an agnostic than an atheist or believer of any kind, and it can sometimes be very challenging anyway, but that's also part of parenting: you get the chance to become better yourself :-)

@KamiKaze It is based on our income, just the scale was made up when people with ~60k euros where filthy rich... Radicalism is perhaps not the most fitting word - I am rather outspoken atheist, not a closet atheist like a lot of people. Does not stop me from having lots of believers as friends, and having good discussions about (non) faith.

@DRF Wow, thats a lot of money - why do you have to pay so much? I always thought ex communist countries would have better child care for historical reasons.

@ChristianSauer When you do the math it works out about right. There has been a lot of development without appropriate state infrastructure in place. This leaves us with the places where you would need child care woefully underserved by the state, leaving us to go with private facilities. In turn if you do the math for what it costs to run a child care facility assuming reasonable rate of children to teacher you find that 400-500EU per child is about right assuming the teachers are paid even a median wage. That's assuming the facility isn't really making a profit.

Especially in the more rural areas you will have a problem finding a non confessional one because nothing much changes there, and there have always been those and not much else needed, and if then it might be just an hour or two extra per day you need to spend driving around. Also since it is now guaranteed by law to get a place, places got a scarce resource and you might get turned down by many more favorable places.

1500 euros/month in Shanghai to get a non-confessional German-speaking kindergarten.

@KamiKaze Being a radical atheist is very different from being a radical theist. Being a radical theist (of some religion) implies that you are radical about a huge amount of moral beliefs, way of life, etc.. Being a radical atheist just means that you are radical about one single statement with absolutely no direct implications on any of your morals or your day to day life, etc. This is as radical as atheism can get without significantly changing the meaning of the word (the word antitheism exists for a reason and is different from radical atheism).

@Clay07g Maybe I should strive to get to know more obnoxious atheists. :D

@ChristianSauer To me, there is nothing wrong with expressing your opinion to your children, but they should be made aware that it is your opinion, and that no one really has the answers (when it comes to religion)

@ChristianSauer try to go to eastern Germany. We have plenty of Kindergarten places, and usually non-confessional ones, too.