Cheers holmes,
Always good to hear from you. I suspect that we aren't disagreeing very much here, and that I've just not made myself sufficiently clear. Perhaps there is an issue of substance here though; you'll soon see.
When I used the word "impose" I was thinking of emotional blackmail, primarily - though verbal abuse, the threat of physical abuse and actual physical harm would definitely be be other techniques for imposing beliefs on children. I've seen people be heavily pressured to adopt a faith by their parents, and I've seen people be treated with aloofness by their parents for adopting a faith. In both instances I felt something sad was happening.
I hadn't thought about the "re-inventing the wheel" aspect. On reflection though, I don't think its necessarily a problem.
After all, you can't realistically hide your beliefs from your children. They are going to get a fairly developed idea of your philosophy just by being around you. Ideally though, I think you wouldn't be dogmatic about the things you believe, to the extent that you would expose them to as many other ideas as you can comfortably manage. Swamp the little critters in stuff.
You'd just act naturally and love your kids, and give them the tools for argument, and probably have some unavoidable influence on them but never judge them if they disagreed with you - just challenge their ideas to see if they'd thought about it.
I hear your worry about the siren song of others who might nab your children's souls if you are too busy being open-minded. I can only really offer a personal perspective here. My mother and father did a thorough job of instilling a sense of skepticism in me from a very early age. They did such a good job in fact that for as long as I can remember I have always found those who try to pressure me and not argue me into their beliefs to be flagged up by my early warning systems. Perhaps I haven't been submitted to the same degree of pressure as others though, it's true.
But I think a child armed with a rational approach to argument is going to be a lot less likely to go and believe something really wacky than a child schooled into believing things are a certain way
just because.
Naieve? Probably. Like I just said to Chiroptera, I've never raised even one child so I haven't lived at the sharp-end of child-rearing. I probably have a pretty unrealistic idea of how these things work.