For many religious people, raising their children in their faith is an important part of their religious practice. They might see getting their kids into heaven as one of the most important things they can do as parent. And certainly, adults should have the right to practice their religion freely, but children are impressionable and unlikely to realize that they are being indoctrinated into one religion out of the thousands that humans practice.
And many faith traditions have beliefs that are at odds with science or support bigoted worldviews. For example, a queer person being raised in the Catholic Church would be taught that they are inherently disordered and would likely be discouraged from being involved in LGBTQ support groups.
Where do you think the line is between practicing your own religion faithfully and unethically forcing your beliefs on someone else?
The problem with “faith” is its literal meaning: belief that is not based on evidence.
A society based on faith can only work is everybody has the same faith (think: Ancient Rome, theocracies, communist countries). The only reason modern Western democracies work is precisely that they are not based on faith but rather on evidence, on reason, on truth-seeking. This is the amazing and historically anomalous heritage of the enlightenment and it’s looking more fragile by the day.
Teaching kids fairytales and calling it truth is the reason religion exists. It’s the reason it’s so hard for adults to leave the religions they assimilated as children. And in a free society where we have to find a way to live together, it’s profoundly dangerous.
So my answer is: no.
As far as I know, Ancient Rome (pre-christian) welcomed many and very different faiths.
That’s fair. Although I believe the Jewish minority was the only one that seriously dissented from the prevailing polytheism.
My main point is that secular liberalism is the only political system that has been shown to protect individual freedom and rights - i.e. without the need for a shared supernatural mythology or an iron fist. And this system relies on a shared commitment to evidence, reason, facts.
In this context, to inculcate irrational beliefs in children seems to me to be like playing with fire.