How to change fear, indeed.  Control thrives on instilling fear.

I've read some articles on the differing perceptions and reasons for the timing of first communion and confirmation.  The confirmation age and process for our daughter (and her cousins "back home") was different from what it was when I was confirmed -- and both differ from when my parents were confirmed.

But they all seem to leave baptism to the babies, when that's really a parental choice.  Maybe we need a sacrament of some new kind of churching, not for "cleansing" of the mother, but in which both parents of the child undergo some kind of particular promise-making and receive some kind of blessing/grace as they pledge to raise the child before Christ.