In atheism, Deborah Ann Mitchell (c.1970-) is an American writer, a deconverted Catholic turned agnostic turned “secular humanist” (Ѻ), “non-believer” (Ѻ), press-popularized “atheist mother” (2013), turned “humanist sometimes leaning towards atheism” (2014), noted for []

Kids Without Religion | Blog
In 2009, Mitchell started a WordPress blog entitled “Kids Without Religion: Raising Kids as Independent, Logical Thinkers”, turned (Ѻ) 2013 personalized URL RaisingKidsWithoutReligion.net, wherein she began to blog about how she choose to raise her kids without religion. In 2010, her blog was getting flow from: parentingbeyondbelief.com and search queries: raising kids without religion, raising children without religion, and religion for kids. (Ѻ)

In Jan 2013, Mitchell penned an essay entitled “Why I Raise My Children Without God”, which she decided to share with CNN.com’s iReport, because: [1]

“I just felt there is not a voice out there for women or moms like me. I think people misunderstand or are fearful of people who don’t believe in god.”

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The tombstone of a dog named Sosume, buried on 25 Jan 2001, that accompanies Mitchell's viral iReport article “Why I Raise My Children Without God”. [1]

The tombstone of a dog named Sosume, buried on 25 Jan 2001, that accompanies Mitchell's viral iReport article “Why I Raise My Children Without God”. [1]

Viralness
The essay, which as of Sep 2016 had over 9,500 comments and 885,000 views, within two became the most commented on story in iReport’s history, and the second-most viewed iReport ever, since the 2008 (Ѻ) launching of iReports. [2] In the course of two weeks, from Jan 14 to Jan 31, the essay was viewed by more than 758,300 people, recommended by 65,000 and shared more than 7,700 times. The essay was also flagged, for inappropriateness, so many times, that CNN producers had to affix the following banner to the essay:

Update: CNN hasn't flagged this iReport as inappropriate, but some community members have. This is a divisive topic, however it does not violate our Community Guidelines, so we ask people to please stop flagging it. We will continue to review the story as often as possible.
- dsashin, CNN iReport producer

On 30 Jan 2013, Mitchell appeared on Current TV to speak with host John Fugelsang about her viral essay.

Brainwashing
The opening two nerve-touching paragraphs, condensed below, are evidence to this viralness:

“When my son was around 3-years-old, he used to ask me a lot of questions about heaven. Where is it? How do people walk without a body? How will I find you? You know the questions that kids ask. For over a year, I lied to him and made up stories that I didn’t believe about heaven. Like most parents, I love my child so much that I didn’t want him to be scared. I wanted him to feel safe and loved and full of hope. But the trade-off was that I would have to make stuff up, and I would have to brainwash him into believing stories that didn’t make sense, stories that I didn’t believe either.”

This brings to mind the following Facebook reaction commentary, following Libb Thims public notice that he and Atheism Reviews co-host Thor, father of a two year old, would be teaching an "atheism for kids" class on Mon Aug 10th, 2015:

“What you're doing to those children is child abuse and brain washing in my view. You could invert that argument and point it at myself, but I don't hold classes for children telling them to knock down silly ideas of false claims.”
— Tim (2015), response to advert promo for "Zerotheism for Kids" lecture, Jul 29

Thims replied (Ѻ), in short, if the child had been given the correct information, in the first place, there would be no need for such as class, which is but a de-brainwashing class or reversal of the original brainwashing, so to say (i.e. most kids are taught Egyptian mythology based morality and meaning, in the form of Christianity, which points them in a backwards direction, and then told to go forward into the world).

Boy Scouts
Among other subjects, Mitchell also spoke about the Boy Scouts and problems she and her family ran into when her son was asked to earn a religious badge. When the mother told the organization that the family is agnostic and doesn’t believe in a specific god, she was told that her son must believe in god to be in the Scouts.

Religion
Mitchell was raised Catholic, but “lost her religion” in her early 20s.

Education
Mitchell has completed her undergraduate degree at North Carolina State University and her MA at the University of Texas at Dallas in the humanities with a major in the history of ideas.

Further reading
1. Mitchell, Deborah. (2013). “Why I Raise My Children Without God” (Ѻ), iReport, CNN.com, Jan 14.
2. Hallowell, Billy. (2013). “Atheist Mom Who Penned Viral Essay About Raising Kids ‘Without God’ Speaks Out” (Ѻ), TheBlaze.com, Jan 31.
3. Mitchell, Deborah. (2014). Growing Up Godless: a Parent’s Guide to Raising Kids Without Religion (foreword: Dale McGowan). Sterling Publishing.

Further reading
● Mitchell, Deborah. (2014). “How to Spot an Atheist: Fine-tune Your Atheist Radar and Be on the Lookout” (Ѻ), Deilhy.org, Mar 20.
● Mitchell, Deborah. (2014). “How the Devil Made Me Keep My Faith: Recollections from a Demon-filled Catholic Childhood” (Ѻ), FaithStreet.com, Jun 25.

Videos
● Pakman, David. (2014). “Raising Kids Godless in Texas: Interview with Deborah Mitchell” (9:51) (Ѻ), Apr 10, David Pakman Show.

Podcast
● Episode 79: Author Deborah Mitchell: Growing Up Godless (2014), The Intellectual Saviors – PodcastPedia.org.